Caleb's Christmas Wish

by Debra Salonen

  At some level, it occurred to her that Kenny’s older much-loved Jeep was missing from its spot in the garage. She vaguely remembered hearing Officer Deese mention the make of the car in the accident, but it hadn’t sunk in. Did a car of that age have air bags, she wondered? Or side impact protection? Both issues had been of major importance to Pam when picking out a family car.

  A tiny flash of anger flared. Why, she wanted to cry? Why take the Jeep? Allison knew why. It was a guy thing, Pam would have said, and the two friends would have laughed and shaken their heads.

  Once Caleb was safely buckled in the Subaru, she backed the car up and pulled forward to the curb so they could follow the ambulance. The Rydell house was the corner lot – almost three acres – at the mouth of a cul-de-sac. Cordelia’s undeveloped parcel sat to the right. Three other homes to the left made up Sequoia Circle.

  Pam’s immediate neighbors were a couple whom Allison had met several times. A few years older than Pam and Kenny, the husband, Marc, was a pilot with United. Wife Gayle, a retired flight attendant, was now a stay-at-home mom of three. Their youngest son was Caleb’s age, so Pam and Gayle traded baby-sitting quite a bit.

  It occurred to Allison to ask Gayle to watch Caleb – until she remembered Pam saying that her neighbors had flown to Hawaii for Thanksgiving.

  “They travel a lot,” Pam had said awhile back.

  Detecting a touch of envy in her voice, Allison asked whether Pam missed the touring she and Kenny had done when he’d played in the band.

  “Are you nuts,” she’d exclaimed. “I love my life. Just the way it is.”

  Just the way it is.

  A small whimper slipped past her resolve.

  “Go, Aunt Allison, go,” a voice prompted from the back seat.

  She took her foot off the brake, but waited for a nod from Officer Deese before following the ambulance. The boxy white van maintained a safe pace, well within the legal limits, all the way to Fresno. She didn’t dare question whether that was a good omen, or bad.

  Chapter 2

  Jake Westin stood on the balcony of his third-floor condo and watched the palm trees decorated in twinkling Christmas lights sway in the balmy Miami breeze. During the day Jake could watch throngs of sunbathers along the white sand. But now, the ocean looked like a black slate littered with neon confetti—reflections from the holiday lights of businesses that lined the boulevard.

  Leaving the patio doors ajar, he walked to his kitchen and opened the Sub-Zero refrigerator, which was well stocked with healthy choices. He took a bottle of Chimay, his favorite Belgian beer, from the shelf. His first alcohol of the night. Jake’s early years had been packed with substance abusers and he’d vowed never to let that kind of ugliness be part of his life.

  Jake had just returned from dinner with a former colleague from the New York investment firm where he once worked. He didn’t miss Wall Street. The adrenaline rush he’d once relied on from buying and selling stock paled in comparison to the satisfaction he got from watching a “sleeper” split and add several zeroes to a client’s bottom line.

  He set the portly bottle on the marble countertop and used his whimsical “talking” bottle opener to pry off the cap. “Oh, yeah, time for a beer. Heh, heh, heh,” it said in a goofy voice that made him smile. A cheesy plastic gift from his godson, Caleb—the smartest, funniest, coolest child on the planet. Anything that reminded Jake of Caleb usually improved his mood.

  The time they’d spent together in early August had been the best of Jake’s recent memory. Not that Jake’s life was anything to complain about. He did what he wanted, when he wanted and he had no one to answer to but his clients. His small, elite cadre of investors paid him obscenely large commissions to shepherd their stocks, bonds, offshore accounts and annuities. Through careful—some called it intuitive—investing, Jake was set for life. Provided he didn’t do something stupid—like marry a woman who would take half when she split.

  Jake had seen it happen far too often. Just as he’d witnessed older men toss away their comfortable life and comfortable wife for a handful of youth. This probably explained why he was thirty-six and still single. But life was good in Miami. If a recurrent sense of loneliness didn’t clear up soon, he’d get a dog. He’d been considering the idea for some time.

  Maybe I’ll do a little dog shopping online, he thought, carrying his beer to his desk. He still hadn’t ordered Caleb’s Christmas gift, either. He’d had his mind set on a Junior Trampoline until Caleb broke a finger falling off the scooter Jake had sent as an Easter gift. Maybe a less dangerous toy. Something involving trucks and bulldozers, Kenny had suggested.

  Jake sat down and clicked on his e-mail icon. He waited for Kenny’s name to come up under his Instant Messaging Buddies column. Maybe they’re not back yet, he decided, when the name failed to appear.

  He'd talked to Kenny yesterday—about an hour before their dinner guests were due to arrive to share a Thanksgiving feast, and Ken mentioned that he and Pam were planning to go skiing today. Jake hadn't asked how far they had to drive.

  Corny though it was, Jake had long idealized the image of a white Christmas. All part of the ridiculous—utterly fictional-dad and son building a snowman in front of a Currier & Ives picket-fence-smoke-curling-out-of-a-chimney scene that seemed ingrained in his subconscious. Why this was supposed to be a good thing, he had no idea, but every year when the holidays rolled around, up popped this peculiar longing for something so far outside his realm of possibility it was almost laughable.

  Besides. Jake hated snow. He'd spent four long, disgusting winters in New York. One Christmas he’d even flown to Switzerland when he’d mistakenly thought he was in love. The ski resort in the Alps had been romantic and expensive. He’d returned in a cast. His femur healed, but his heart was never quite the same. As a result, he'd sworn off skiing, serious relationships and cold precipitation.

  Jake took a sip of his icy beer and let out a satisfied sigh. The upcoming holidays were not his favorite time of year. No family to share them with. But considering that nearly all of his contemporaries—the Rydells being the lone exception—had been through at least one divorce, Jake was content to remain single. Divorces were expensive and emotionally messy. And if there were children...

  He shook his head. Nope, he thought, I’m better off with my nice, simple life. No wife. No kids. Well, except for his godson.

  Jake glanced at the framed photograph on his bookshelf. Caleb Rydell—awesome and three thousand miles away. What could be better?

  He'd balked at the idea of being anybody’s godparent when Kenny called him out of the blue five years ago. “Hey, you know me, Ken. I'm more sinner than saint.”

  But Kenny hadn’t been put off. “Don’t worry, amigo. This gig is nothing that will get you in trouble with your god. Pam and I have talked this over. We decided we need to have someone picked out to watch the kid’s back if anything ever happens to us," Kenny had said, in a tone that got Jake's attention. Growing up the way they had, they’d learned the importance of backup—of finding that one person you could always count on. Kenny had been there for Jake when the bottom fell out of Jake’s life. How could Jake refuse?

  “Okay.” Jake had responded.

  Although Kenny’s lot in life had changed after his abusive father had gone to jail and his mother had married Al Rydell—a childless man with a car lot in the mountains—Ken never flaunted his good fortune. That first year after Kenny and his mother moved, Jake took Amtrak twice to Fresno to visit his friend. Al was a big, gregarious fellow who’d adopted Kenny and given him his name. When he opened his own company, he tried to teach his new son the car business. But with typical teenage rebellion, Kenny bit the hand that fed him—skipping school, smoking pot and getting busted for drugs. He dropped out of junior college and took off for L.A. with his garage band buddies.

  Jake had been on his own two years by that time. He and Kenny shared rent with about half a dozen other guys while Jake worked three jobs and w
ent to night school. Kenny’s band broke up, but he got a new gig with a group called Criminally Insane. The quartet played the L.A. scene for a couple of years before catching the eye of a promoter. The band got a recording contract about the same time Jake landed an internship with a brokerage house and moved to NYC so he could try his hand on Wall Street.

  New York was a great proving ground and Jake did well. He thought on his feet and trusted his gut. But the winters sucked the life out of him. He was a southern California boy. Whatever antifreeze existed in Northerners’ blood was missing from his.

  When an offer came from his then-fiancée’s father to work for his firm in Miami, Jake took it. Miami was hot—cool hot. Even though his relationship soured and he lost his job, Jake landed on his feet in the warm sand. He couldn’t picture himself living anywhere else.

  He shook his head and took another gulp. What was this weird depression all about? The fact that he’d eaten Thanksgiving dinner—Chinese takeout—alone? He’d been invited to dine with Matt Hughes, Jake’s twenty- eight-year-old assistant, and his wife, but at the last minute Matt had called to say that their six-month old son had been throwing up all night and they were too exhausted to cook, let alone entertain.

  Jake understood. His younger brother had been a sickly child. Many a night Jake had stayed up to care for the little guy when neither of their parents could be bothered. He’d sent flowers to Matt’s wife, using a delivery service called 24/7, then set out to enjoy his carefree day. But Kenny’s call around one in the afternoon—the chatter in the background between Pam and Caleb, the football talk, the latest updates on Caleb’s progress at preschool—had evoked a feeling of loneliness. His life seemed flat and empty by comparison.

  “Shake it off, man,” he muttered, sitting forward to tap his mouse. Suddenly a new image filled the wide, flat-screen monitor. A toddler in the foreground, grinning against a backdrop of sugar-white sand and aqua water. A bright pink bucket and neon green plastic shovel matched the little boy’s Hawaiian print swim trunks. Caleb Rydell. Cutest kid on the planet. White blond hair cut in a spiky flat-top that reminded Jake of some cartoon character he couldn’t name.

  “Hey, kid, how’s it hanging?” Jake said, inching his chair closer to the desk. “What’s new in Preschool Land?”

  He clicked on the icon to open his Internet home page and Caleb’s image disappeared. He entered a Google search for Golden Retrievers and had just sat back, waiting for the list to appear when the phone rang. His private line. He glanced at the clock and frowned. Who in the hell called at this time of night?

  “Hello?”

  “Uh...um, is this Jake Westin?"

  A woman’s voice. Unfamiliar. “It is.”

  “I'm sorry to call so late. I forgot about the time difference. My name is Allison Jeffries. I’m a friend of Pam and Kenny Rydell.”

  A bad feeling took root in his belly. He knew Allison’s name even though they’d never met. She was his female counterpart—as far as Caleb was concerned. The godmother.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Car wreck. Pam and Kenny...” Her hesitation confirmed his fear. “They were going skiing this morning. Early. Black ice. Three cars. The Jeep was caught in the middle. They...” She stopped, obviously unable to articulate what Jake knew she was going to say.

  “They’re dead?”

  Her answer was more a tiny peep than a word, but it hit him as hard as a rogue wave that had once knocked him off his board and dragged him under water. He’d thought he was going to drown.

  Kenny and Pam dead? No, it just wasn’t possible. “I... I just talked to them yesterday,” he said inanely. “Thanksgiving.”

  The word came out as a whisper.

  “I know. I was here.”

  She excused herself a moment and in the distance Jake could hear her blowing her nose. When she came back on the line, she swallowed loudly and took a shaky breath. “They’re gone.”

  Jake ran his hand across his eyes. “What about...? Oh, God, please tell me Caleb wasn’t in the car.” The last came out as a gruff command. An order.

  “No, thank heaven. He was here with Cordelia. But that’s another problem. She was so stricken by the news, she suffered a heart attack. Caleb and I have been at the hospital all day.”

  Jake swore under his breath.

  Allison went on. “She was in surgery for almost seven hours. I was afraid to leave. She doesn’t have any other family. Not here, anyway. And I didn’t think to take Pam’s address book with me when we left the house, so I couldn’t call anyone. Your number is unlisted, I was told.”

  Her tone seemed slightly accusatory, but Jake put it down to stress. She must have been through hell. Losing her friends, worrying about Cordelia and entertaining a preschooler at a hospital.

  “Is the little guy there?”

  “He crashed—I mean, he fell asleep on the drive home. I carried him to bed. I just left his clothes on. Well, not his shoes, of course, but...”

  He waited for her to finish but apparently that was all she could get out. “Does he know? About his parents?”

  She started to cry again. The sound made Jake’s insides twist. He ground the heel of his hand against his forehead.

  “No,” she said between sobs. “I...I...couldn’t. I...tried, but I didn’t know how. A p-pastor came by the waiting room. He said we should wait until we know for sure that C-Cordelia is out of the woods. Some good news to offset the b-bad.”

  “How soon will we know something?” he asked, trying to stay focused on what needed to happen, not what had happened.

  “She came through surgery okay, but she’s still in Intensive Care. They said they’d call if anything changed.”

  Jake adored Pam, but he’d never managed to win over her mother. Cordelia had joined the family several times when the Rydells came to the East Coast. And though he’d done his best to be cordial, none of his reputed charm worked where Cordelia was concerned. She was polite to him, but far from warm.

  Still, she was his godson’s grandmother, and Jake knew the two were close. Pam had even suggested that the reason her mother was so distant around Jake was that Cordelia felt threatened by Jake’s relationship with the child. “Jake spoils Caleb,” he’d once overheard Cordelia complain to Pam.

  Pam had laughed off her mother’s worries, saying, “It’s a couple of weeks every summer, Mom. Caleb loves Jake. Let it go.”

  Pam. Smart. Funny. A good mother. A princess who thought nothing of keeping him and Kenny waiting an hour so she could “get beautiful,” but never failed to champion his bond with Kenny and her son. “My guys need you, Jake the Rake,” she’d once told him. “They’d turn into redneck mountain men if not for you.” She’d laughed, and Jake had laughed, too, grateful that his best friend’s wife welcomed him into their life.

  Pam. Oh, God…

  Allison’s sniffles brought him back to the present. Action. He needed to take action. But where to start? His mind didn’t seem to know how to function in the face of such loss.

  “Other than waiting to hear about Cordelia, is there anything I can do?” he asked.

  “You’ll come, won’t you?” she asked. Her voice sounded like a ten-year-old’s, tremulous and fearful. He tried to picture her. Early thirties. Short dark hair. Glasses. He’d seen photos, as he was sure she’d seen shots of him, but they’d never really spoken. “I talked to my mother about what has to be done. My grandfather passed away last summer, so she’s been through this. But, my father is going into the hospital for some tests and she can’t come. I...I don’t think I can do this alone.”

  If she had to ask, she sure as hell didn’t know him, “Of course I’m coming. First flight out in the morning,” he said, his tone sharper than he’d intended. He suddenly felt very old and tired. “I meant was there anything you needed me to do between now and when I get there.”

  She let out a shaky sigh. “I don’t think so. There’s so much...but, I guess one thing you should be thinking a
bout is what will happen with Caleb. I had a minute alone with Cordelia’s doctor, and he told me that she’s going to need a lengthy rehabilitation. Several weeks, at least. I don’t know how long you can be gone from—” Jake cut her off. “I have an assistant who can handle things here. We’ll worry about the long term when I get there. Okay?”

  When she didn’t answer right away, his temper snapped. The kid’s parents weren’t even in their graves and people were talking about what to do with him. As if he were a pawn in a chess game.

  “If you’re worried that you’re going to get stuck taking care of him, don’t be. If Cordelia’s permanently out of the picture, he can come back to Miami with me,” Jake said, flatly. “I’ll adopt him.”

  The pause that followed seemed charged with emotion. She spoke again, her tone clipped. “That wasn’t what I was getting at. Unless something has changed that I don’t know about, you and I are both named as Caleb’s guardians in Pam and Kenny’s wills. But Cordelia is Caleb’s only blood relative, and she’s been living next door for most of his life. Caleb is very close to his grandmother.” She took a deep breath. “I just wanted you to start thinking about the big picture. He’s a little boy whose world has just been turned upside down. There are no simple solutions here, Jake.”

  She was right, of course. They had to put Caleb first.

  But Jake would make certain she—and Cordelia when she was well enough—understood that he planned to be a part of Caleb’s life. Not just because he’d given his word to his best friend five years ago, but because he knew all too well how devastating it was to lose your family.

  “So, we’ll talk more when you get here, right?” Her question was conciliatory. “Do you want us to pick you up at the airport?”