Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Other Books & About the Author
Christmas in New York
(An Out of Time Christmas Novella)
Time-Traveling adventurers Simon and Elizabeth Cross return in an all-new Christmas novella!
Along with their young daughter, Charlotte, the Crosses travel back to 1937 New York City to visit an old friend, Charlie Blue. But Charlie's in trouble -- holiday-sized trouble -- and their plans for a pleasant little Christmas vacation soon fly out the window.
Christmas in New York is the fast-paced and heartwarming tale of the true meaning of Christmas -- and the importance of the people we share it with.
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~~~
Copyright Notice
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Monique Martin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission.
Cover Design & Layout: TERyvisions
Original Photo: EM Bofinger, WPA, NYCMA
For more information, please contact
[email protected]
~~~
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the help of many people. I’d like to thank Mom and George, Dad, Michael, Cidney, Cynthia, DeAnn, Phoenix and The Diaspora.
I’d also like to give a special thanks to Anne without whom the last few books would never have been and Laura for stepping in when I needed her most.
Chapter One
THE ONLY THING BETTER than Christmas was Christmas in New York. Not that there was anything wrong with Christmas in Santa Barbara or London or anywhere else for that matter, Elizabeth thought. There was simply something special about Christmas here, in New York. Maybe it was because she’d watched Miracle on 34th Street way, way too many times. Or maybe it was because this was where her life with Simon began ten years ago.
Ten years ago? Lawdy.
Whatever the reason, she couldn’t hide her excitement as they walked down the sidewalk toward 4th Street. 30 blocks shy of the movie miracle, but she had a miracle of her own.
“Across and to the left, I think,” Simon said as he jutted his chin toward a busy intersection ahead.
“Are you sure?” Elizabeth asked. “I thought it was to the right.”
“I’m sure,” he said, sounding quite sure to the untrained ear, but Elizabeth knew her husband too well. He wasn’t sure, but he also wasn’t about to admit it.
“Is it far?”
Elizabeth glanced down at her daughter Charlotte and squeezed her hand. Her very own little miracle. “Not unless your father gets us lost.”
“I’m not going to—” Simon began to argue but stopped once he saw the smile on her face.
She shouldn’t have teased him. This was hard for him. Time traveling with Charlotte always made him uneasy; heck, it made her uneasy, too, but coming here was different for him. This was back to the place it all happened. For Elizabeth, the memories were good. She had a gift that way, filtering out the bad and saving the good. Simon, on the other hand, held onto the bad, tight. Not that she could blame him.
When they’d first come to New York, it had been an accident. It wasn’t every day you were whisked back in time to 1929 New York with no idea how you got there or how to get home.
Who knew then that what had started as an accident with Simon’s grandfather’s mysterious pocket watch would become careers with the Council for Temporal Studies, an organization that protected the timeline? When time changed, when things were not as they should have been, Simon and Elizabeth were sent back to fix them. But that first trip back in time? That had not been planned and they had no idea what they’d done or how to undo it.
Luckily, they’d been together when it happened. And had been together ever since. But the memories of that trip back in time were complicated for Simon. Elizabeth had nearly died at the hands of a literally blood-thirsty gangster. For Simon, New York wasn’t just the place he’d found her, it was the place he’d nearly lost her.
Convincing him to come back and bring their daughter was no mean feat. It was a good thing she specialized in those.
It all started when Simon innocently asked Charlotte what she’d like for Christmas. He definitely wasn’t prepared for her answer.
“I want to meet Charlie.”
Five little words, but boy howdy, were they loaded with emotional baggage. And bags did not fly free with Simon.
Charlie Blue, bar owner, ex-boxer, and all around wonderful man. Without him, neither Simon nor Elizabeth would have survived their first trip back in time and, even if they had, they might not have admitted how they really felt about each other. Not without Charlie.
Charlotte smiled up at her mother, a rogue snowflake landing on her nose. They owed him everything.
Charlotte’s eyes crossed as she stared at the rogue snowflake and then grinned up at the sky. “Snow!”
“A little.”
Next to them, Simon grumbled.
To say Simon had reservations about the idea of visiting Charlie in 1937 was like saying the Hatfields weren’t overly fond of the McCoys.
In the end, though, he’d given in. Elizabeth snuck a look at her daughter, all three and a half feet of her. She might be only eight and half and small for her age, but she was mighty. Simon was no match for her. And Travers from the Council was no match for him.
It was expressly forbidden to use the time traveling watches for personal use, and with good reason. But sometimes exceptions were granted. And they were granted a little more often when the Council in question owed you their very existence several times over.
The trio reached the busy intersection and Simon gave Charlotte’s hand a gentle tug. “Stay close.”
Charlotte nodded eagerly. She was too excited to be anything else. To be honest, Elizabeth was, too. She missed Charlie.
A car’s brakes squealed as it came to a rough stop at the red light in front of them. She’d nearly forgotten how big the cars of the 1930s were. Giant hulking black dogs.
The cars idled at the stoplight, steam billowing from their tailpipes and disappearing into the cold December air. Old snow was dirty slush under their feet as they crossed 4th Street.
Signs of the Great Depression that had plagued the country for nearly a decade lingered. The country had overcome the worst of it, but a recession in 1937 made people feel the fear of backsliding to horrors of the early 30s. Despite that, most indicators were subtle; a few more men standing around jobless, clothes a little more shopworn, faces a little more haggard. But despite it, there was an energy in the air. Maybe it was Christmas or maybe it was just New York, but hope was never far away.
The smell of roasting chestnuts filled the air and Elizabeth turned to see a man with a pushcart coming up the street.
“We gotta get some,” she said. Simon looked skeptical. “What’s more Christmasy than chestnuts roasting by an open fire?”
“In the street.”
Elizabeth laughed
. “You take it where you can get it, and we can get it here.”
She and Charlotte walked toward the cart, Simon not far behind.
“Oh,” Elizabeth added, “Christmas trees! We should get one for Charlie.”
While her mother and father argued over whether they should buy a tree or if Charlie already had one or even wanted one, Charlotte took the chance to look around. She’d heard so many stories about New York, not just from her mom but from Uncle Teddy and Uncle Jack, too. Now, she was here.
The crowd on the sidewalk walked faster than they did at home. Maybe it was just because it was cold, Charlotte thought, and instinctively pulled her new royal blue wool coat a little more tightly around her.
A boy about her age swerved in and out of the people crossing the street. He was taller than she was and looked even taller than that because his pants legs were too short. His bare ankles poked out above the top of his short brown boots. He saw her looking at him and stuck his tongue out. She returned the favor and won a bright smile from the boy. But it didn’t last long; something caught his attention and he hurried toward it.
Charlotte took a few steps away from her parents to watch him.
The boy walked against the crowd for about twenty feet then did a quick U-turn and started back. He stood with some people at the intersection he’d just crossed. What was he doing?
The boy moved up close behind a man in a gray suit. Unlike just about everyone else, he didn’t have an overcoat on. The boy glanced around then raised his hand and reached into the man’s side pocket. Carefully, he slipped something from it. A wallet! He was stealing that man’s wallet.
“Hey!” Charlotte cried out.
Her call caught the man’s attention and he turned, seeing the boy as he did. He grabbed onto the boy’s wrist, hard. So hard that the boy winced in pain.
The boy looked around for an escape but there wasn’t one. His eyes caught Charlotte’s and she felt his panic. Her own heart began to race.
The light changed and the crowd began to cross, but the man and the boy stayed behind. The man snatched the wallet from the boy’s hand and looked around, probably for a policeman.
He jerked him violently back onto the sidewalk. The boy wriggled in the man’s grasp, but he couldn’t get loose. Charlotte’s heart sped up in her chest, matching the boy’s fear. Then the man whistled and waved to someone. A nearby policeman started toward them.
The boy looked back at Charlotte, but this time his expression wasn’t panic, it was pleading. For help.
Charlotte didn’t think about what to do, she just did it. Which, according to her father, was a bad habit she got from her mother. Either way, she took a step forward and stumbled to the ground, arms waving, sure to cry out loudly as she did. Mrs. Farblestein’s second grade drama class was not wasted on her!
Several people, including the policeman, came toward her. The distraction was just enough for the boy to wiggle out of the man’s grasp. He slipped away and ran back into the crowd.
“Hey!” the man cried out after him.
Charlotte saw the boy turn back once as he ran. He looked right at her before she lost sight of him.
“Charlotte?!”
That was her dad’s voice, tense, worried.
Just as the policeman helped her to her feet, her mother and father appeared at her side.
“Are you all right?” her mom asked.
Her father knelt down next to her, not even caring that his knee was getting soaked and dirty in the slushy snow of the sidewalk.
“Charlotte? What happened?”
She looked between them, guilt at making them worry curling up inside her stomach. “I … I just tripped. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not hurt?”
She shook her head.
Her father eyed her carefully, then nodded and stood with a sigh. “Good.”
Her mother looked at her oddly for a moment, her gaze lingering just long enough for Charlotte to feel the weight of it.
“You’re sure?”
Charlotte nodded again. Her mother smiled and touched her cheek. Then she held out a brown paper cone filled with warm chestnuts. “Nut?”
Charlotte’s eyes slid to her father who shook his head slyly, silently saying, “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
“No, thank you,” Charlotte said.
The exchange wasn’t lost on her mother, who frowned and then shrugged. “More for me.”
She peeled one and popped it into her mouth, a broad smile on her face. The smile melted like the snow, though, and she had to force herself to swallow.
“Earthy. Definitely smell better than they taste.”
She quickly found a ragged-looking man leaning against a nearby building and gave him the rest of her chestnuts. He must have liked earthy, whatever that was, because he started eating right away.
“If you’re finished?” her father asked her mother.
Her mother rejoined them and they continued down the street. Charlotte looked over her shoulder to see if she could catch a glimpse of the boy, but he was nowhere to be seen.
~~~
Climbing up the steps of Charlie’s brownstone in the Lower East Side, Elizabeth could barely contain her excitement or believe this would become one of the trendiest areas in Manhattan. Right now, it was far from that. It was a place where immigrants and low-income families could find a place to live. And somewhere in there was Charlie.
Ever since they’d returned home from their trip back to New York in 1929, she’d wondered what became of him. She’d tried Googling him, but didn’t find much. Or anything, really. But after a few favors, Travers at the Council for Temporal Studies assured her that Charlie was alive and still living in the same old apartment. He reluctantly gave them the address but more than that he couldn’t say. Other than being sure Charlie was alive, there were virtually no records of his existence. Or of most people’s of the time, for that matter. Many of the records that had existed were lost to time.
For Elizabeth, it was one of the odd things about time travel. When you left people behind, you really left them behind. It wasn’t like you could call or write and check in. Decades, sometimes centuries, stretched out between you.
Elizabeth wondered about everyone they’d met on their missions. What happened to them after they left? Were they happy? Did things work out? She’d asked herself those questions about every person they’d met, but Charlie always held a special place in her heart. And, she thought, as Simon held the front door to the building for her and Charlotte, she was about to find out. Finally.
She held Charlotte’s hand as they climbed the dark staircase to the second floor. The building was old and showing its age. The stairs creaked beneath their feet and the light over the stairs was out. But nothing was going to dampen Elizabeth’s spirit. Not today.
They reached the second floor and sounds of Fiorello LaGuardia’s high-pitched, squeaky voice filtered through a doorway as someone listened to one of the mayor’s frequent radio addresses.
“This is a fight for the heart of our city against a cruel, vicious and corrupt political machine. Our crusade is not over. Stand with me, good citizens of New York, and together we can defeat the Tammany Hall machine!”
The sound faded to nothing as they walked down the hall, and they finally reached apartment 2C. Elizabeth shared a look of excitement with Charlotte, who was literally bouncing up and down with anticipation.
Simon raised his fist and knocked on the door.
Butterflies flitted about in the pit of Elizabeth’s stomach as they waited. And waited a little more.
Simon looked at her in silent question then knocked again.
“All right, all right,” came a muffled voice from inside. She’d know it anywhere. Charlie.
She could hear his footfalls as he came to the door, unlocked it and opened it. “What do you want?”
Elizabeth grinned widely waiting for the look of recognition in his eyes. He looked at her blankly for a moment, not re
alizing who she was. He looked tired and haggard. His chin was covered in rough, gray stubble and his eyes were dark and baggy.
“Hi,” she said, unsure suddenly. “It’s Elizabeth and Simon,” she added quickly gesturing to her husband.
When he didn’t say anything she kept talking. “Do you remember us? We were—”
“I remember.” His voice was rough and deep. “Lizzy.”
He looked at her again and she could see the spark in his eyes, the light that was always there when he saw her, but there was something else there, too. Something darker, something broken.
Elizabeth wanted to hug him, almost reached out to do it, but held herself back.
Charlie’s eyes shifted to Simon. “And the Professor. I …”
He looked down and pulled the door halfway closed to block their view of the apartment. “Now’s not really a good time, I …”
“We didn’t mean to impose,” Simon said. “We were just in town and—”
Charlie caught sight of Charlotte then. Half-hidden behind her father’s legs, she took a small step forward. Elizabeth could sense her unease. This wasn’t the Charlie she’d been expecting, that any of them had been expecting.
“Hello,” Charlotte said, giving him a faltering smile.
Charlie stared at her for a moment.
“This is Charlotte, our daughter,” Elizabeth said.
Charlie’s eyes grew moist as he looked at her. “Charlotte,” he said softly.
“She was named after you,” Simon said.
Elizabeth could see Charlie fighting to hold back his emotions. He scrubbed his chin with one of his big meaty hands. “Yeah?”
“We’d love to catch up,” Elizabeth said, “if you …”
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