Dead of Winter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  First things first—she’d better make sure it will even reach the outlet. If not, this task will have to wait.

  She has to pull it taut for the prongs to reach the outlet, but it will probably work. Maybe she should try it, just to make sure it isn’t a hair too short.

  She plugs it in.

  Not only does it reach, but the porch is bathed in vibrant light.

  She looks up, stunned. Every string is lit. Every bulb is lit.

  How could the electrician have been so wrong?

  How could she have gotten it so right?

  It’s Lily Dale. That’s how. Simple as that.

  As she gazes at the lights, she hears a voice calling out in the night.

  A man’s voice in the clearing up at the end of the street.

  “Help! . . . Please!”

  Looking toward it, she can barely make out the headlights of a pickup truck parked there.

  Drew. Drew is in trouble.

  * * *

  Misty was right. Up ahead she sees a human form slumped on the ground.

  “Help!” Elvis gasps. “Please . . .”

  She makes her way toward him, breathing hard herself. “It’s going to be okay,” she pants, reaching Elvis. “You need your inhaler. You need . . .”

  She stops short.

  He’s wheezing, yes, but he’s not in distress.

  He’s holding the gun.

  Aiming it at her and smiling a cunning smile.

  * * *

  Bella starts toward the pickup truck.

  It’s off the road, mired in deep snow. Did Drew slide on the ice? Was he stricken while trying to push it back onto the road? Pulled muscle, back spasm, heart attack . . . ?

  Or is it something else, something far more menacing?

  About to call out to him, she thinks of Virgil Barbor and the man in the lake.

  She stops, standing in the snowy lane, weighing her options.

  Maybe she should go back for help. Get Grange and Luther. But that might be too late.

  She starts moving again. The road hasn’t been plowed recently enough, but it’s easier going than what lies beyond. She wades into the deep snow as quietly as she can, toward the headlights and the voice . . .

  Voices.

  A man . . .

  Not Drew.

  And a woman. Misty.

  “Don’t do this,” she’s saying. “You’re a good guy, remember?”

  “You’re wrong. I’m not a good guy at all. I’m a bad guy. Maybe not as bad as my pal Yuri, but you’ll see what happens to people who try to take what’s mine.”

  “I didn’t take anything.”

  “You took my rings.”

  He—whoever he is—pauses to cough. He’s breathing hard, gasping a little bit.

  “I didn’t take your rings,” Misty protests. “I told you, I know where they are, but I—”

  “You know where they are because you found them, and you could tell right away they’re not lousy costume jewelry, right? Not like those customs idiots who wave me back and forth across the border every damn day. They can’t tell the difference between a gold pendant from the party store’s King of Rock and Roll costume and a priceless medallion that belonged to a sixteenth-century king.”

  His laugh dissolves into another coughing fit.

  Bella creeps closer and crouches behind the truck. From here, she can see them standing a few yards away. Misty is cowering before a man who has his back to the truck.

  Bella’s icy hand reaches for the flashlight in her coat pocket. The one she doesn’t let Max and Jiffy use because it’s heavy enough to crush a skull.

  “Look, I didn’t find your rings, but I’ll tell you where they are.”

  “Yeah, sure you will. They’re not at Valley View.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out at the Stump. They’re hidden at the Stump. I’ll show you, just—what are you doing?”

  The man has shifted his position.

  Now Bella can see that he’s holding a gun. Raised with both hands.

  “Please,” Misty wails, “I just want to be with my son! Please don’t do this!”

  “Oh, you’ll be with your son,” he says. “According to you people, no one ever dies. Our families are always with us. Isn’t that right?”

  Bella steals toward them, step by painstaking step.

  “I mean . . .” He gives a bitter, gasping laugh. “That would explain a lot. Maybe it’s my old man hanging around me. I cut him out of my life while he was alive, and everything was great. I was on a roll. Singing, playing the tables, winning big. Then he kicks the bucket, and everything starts to go wrong. My luck turns. He’s making my life miserable again. You know what, I bet?”

  He pauses to cough again.

  “I bet Yuri’s haunting Ginger. Him and all those dead kings looking for their stolen jewels. What do you think?”

  Bella hears an unmistakable click.

  “Cat got your tongue, Misty Starr?” He wheezes. “This place is nothing but bad luck. I’m going to get my rings and get out of here for good. Don’t even think about trying to catch me. You won’t be able to do that from the Other Side.”

  He’s about to pull the trigger.

  Bella lunges forward, swinging the flashlight with all her might. It catches him in the back of the head.

  The gun flies from his fingers and disappears into a powdery snowbank as he drops to his knees, then keels over.

  Misty, too, is on the ground, crying.

  Bella dials 9-1-1, blurts a plea for help, and then sinks down beside her. “It’s going to be okay, Misty.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she wails. “Priscilla . . .”

  She’s in shock, confused. Bella wraps her arms around her. “No, sweetie, it’s me. Bella.”

  “I know! I mean she took him! She took my boy!”

  “Who?”

  “Priscilla! She’s a kidnapper! You were right.”

  Confused, Bella says, “Right about what? I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to say it. I could hear it in your head. Every time you looked at me, you were thinking I should have been taking better care of Jiffy. Watching him, the way you did. But . . . it’s not easy for me. I’m all alone, and it’s so hard, Bella! It’s just so hard!”

  “I know,” Bella says, holding her tightly as she sobs, feeling tears slipping from her own eyes. “I know.”

  She had wanted to believe that Misty was different—an inattentive, lax mother who could have prevented Jiffy’s disappearance. But they have so much in common, beginning with two little boys who love them and each other.

  Could Misty improve her parenting skills? Yes. But no parent could fully ensure a child’s safety. You could make him wear a helmet, but you couldn’t encase him in protective bulletproof glass. You could keep an eye on him, but you couldn’t guard him 24-7. You could be wary of strangers, but you couldn’t prevent them from ever crossing his path.

  “If I can just get him back,” Misty says as Bella strokes her hair like a child’s, “I swear I’ll never take my eyes off him again! I’ll never let anything happen to him. I’ll spend every minute the rest of my life keeping him safe, just like you do.”

  “Misty, don’t beat yourself up. I do what I can to keep Max safe. But the older he gets, the more he wants me to let go, and the more I”—she pauses to swallow—“the more I have to.”

  “But that’s not right. If you let go, he might—”

  “I know. He might. So I can hope that he’ll be safe from harm forever, and I can pray that he has a guardian angel watching over him when I can’t, but there’s no guarantee. You can’t blame yourself every time something—”

  “No, I can. I should have listened.”

  “To what?”

  “Spirit. I had that vision, and I knew someone was trying to tell me something. My father was driving that bus! I’m so afraid it means—”

  She breaks off as Bella’s p
hone rings in her hand.

  “Oh, no,” she says, and clutches Bella’s arm. “I’m afraid. What if—?”

  “It’s going to be okay, Misty.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I know this! I do. I know,” she lies and answers the phone.

  Luther.

  It has to be good news. It has to be.

  “Bella, you were right.”

  “I was . . .” She tries to keep breathing, tries to keep her voice steady for Misty’s sake. “Right about what?”

  “They just found him.”

  Scarcely daring to breathe, she manages to ask, “Is he—?”

  “What is it?” Misty asks, voice drenched in terror. “What?”

  “He’s safe and sound at the grandfather’s house,” Luther is saying, and Bella exhales, closing her eyes in a silent, thankful prayer as he goes on.

  “Bella? Is Jiffy . . . ?” Misty chokes on her son’s name.

  Jiffy is . . .

  Troubled. Complicated. Hurting. The whole family is hurting. There are so many mistakes all around . . .

  But in this moment, only one thing matters.

  Bella kneels beside the terrified woman and gently delivers the greatest gift a mother’s heart desires.

  “Jiffy is safe.”

  “He is? He’s—?”

  “Yes. They’ve found him.”

  “Oh, thank you . . . thank you!” Misty collapses into her arms.

  “What happened?” she asks Luther. “How did he get there?”

  “Long story, and they’re still sorting it out, but sounds like Mike Arden’s been back in touch with an old girlfriend for a while. Guess he told her he was worried about his wife’s mental state, so either he asked her to check on things out here or she took it upon herself. Sounds like she’s the one who has a few screws loose. She’s saying she took Jiffy with her to keep him safe. Claims Arden told her to take him back to Bethlehem and that he’d let Misty know.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “On a plane headed back to the states, and the girlfriend is in custody.”

  “How’s Jiffy?”

  “I didn’t talk to him,” Luther says, “but they say he’s put in a takeout request for curly fries with cheese and bacon, so it sounds like he’s just fine.”

  Bella hangs up and half laughs, half cries as she relays it all to Misty.

  “I need to get to him, Bella. I need—he needs me,” she amends.

  “Luther’s on his way here, and we’ll figure out how to make that happen. For now, just be thankful that . . . that . . .” Bella can’t go on, searching the heavens with teary eyes.

  This time, it has to be there.

  A star, a star . . .

  One bright star that will answer her own most fervent question. One bright, shining, mystical star . . .

  She finds only an endless night sky and falling flakes that dust her face, melting into teardrops.

  Of course it isn’t there. This isn’t a Hallmark Christmas movie. This is real life, and reality is marred by mishaps and bad guys, by meteorology and science and logic . . .

  “The bus!” Misty says. “I get it!”

  “What bus? Get what?”

  “My vision . . . my dad, driving Jiffy on the bus . . . he was trying to let me know that he was trying to protect him, even if I couldn’t. Like you said.”

  “Like I said?”

  “Yeah. Like some kind of, you know . . . guardian angel.” Misty lets out a choked little laugh. “Funny, since he was no angel when he was here on earth. I guess we all have our moment sooner or later, right?”

  Bella smiles, too. And somewhere out there in this colossal storm, she hears someone whistling a familiar carol.

  Ah, the Lily Dale theme song, with lyrical questions that Bella answers silently.

  No, I don’t hear what you hear! And I don’t see what you see! I want to, but I can’t because . . . because if I believe in meteorology and in logic and in science, then I can’t possibly believe—

  She hears something else. In her head. Not, as far as she knows, the way her medium friends hear Spirit—claim to hear Spirit. Not the way she herself hears the imaginary whistler or her own voice, coaching her back down to earth where she belongs.

  She hears Max, longing to believe in Santa: “Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  Smart boy, her son.

  Our son.

  Again, she tilts her head back.

  Good old science and logic.

  Somewhere up there, beyond the stormy sky . . .

  Beyond what she can see in this moment or in this realm . . .

  There is a star.

  Millions of stars, shining brightly.

  Epilogue

  A lifetime—or a season, at least—seems to have passed since the blizzard that ultimately dumped not three, but more than four feet of snow on Lily Dale.

  It’s been just over a week, though. A week of climbing temperatures that melted mountainous drifts into slushy heaps and rivers running along rutted lanes. Now they’re reduced to a smattering of shallow puddles, glinting in unseasonable sunshine.

  So much for a white Christmas—Mitch’s “safe bet” back when Max had asked him what in this world he could count on. Today’s temperature is expected to rival the Fourth of July’s high.

  “I thought it was going to snow!” Max had grumbled when he bounded into the Rose Room this morning at dawn, eager to see what Santa left under the tree.

  “That’s Lily Dale for you,” Bella had heard herself say, smiling. Spoken like a true local.

  Max forgot all about the disappointing green Christmas outside when he spotted the heap of gifts under the towering Fraser fir in the parlor. Not just the metal detector Bella had bought him at Mitch’s, but stacks of other gifts sent her way in preparation for today, courtesy of various “Santas” in their lives.

  “How can I ever repay you?” she’d asked around a lump in her throat whenever someone new showed up to furtively deliver Christmas morning gifts for Max.

  Odelia, Calla, Drew, Luther, Mitch—even Pandora.

  They had all brushed off her gratitude, but she did think of a way to thank them—with an old-fashioned Christmas feast. She and Max decorated Valley View from porch to parlor—freshly painted a lovely Sylvan Mist—and well beyond.

  The more the merrier, she’d told herself whenever she thought of another name for her guest list. They’d all accepted her invitation.

  Caught up in a flurry of holiday preparations, she’s occasionally managed to forget the horror of what happened and of what might have happened if—

  “If is a dangerous word when you’re thinking about the past,” Drew had told her the other night. “The future, too, for that matter.”

  “Why?” Max, who’d overheard, had asked.

  They’d been trimming the tree with ornaments from the basement along with some Drew had let Max pick out—a glorious mishmash of delicate baubles and plastic toys, with a Ninja Zombie action figure riding the crest alongside the gold filigree star that’s graced many a Valley View Christmas tree.

  “Wasting brain power and energy on conjecture is dangerous,” Drew had explained to Max, who was tossing vast clumps of tinsel at one small section of the tree.

  “I don’t get it, Dr. Drew.”

  “When you use if related to something that might happen or could have happened . . . why bother? Just be glad that it didn’t happen, and move on.”

  “Well, I can’t move on if Santa doesn’t bring me a snowboard, and I’m going to be sad that it didn’t happen. Not glad.”

  “I have a feeling he might if you’re a good boy,” Drew had said, winking at Bella across the shimmery boughs.

  The snowboard had already been wrapped and hidden in Bella’s closet by that time. Drew had bought it as part of the Santa bounty and had been bringing it to her the day of the storm.

  Yes, he’d arrived too late to save her, but she’
d saved herself—and Misty.

  “Don’t worry, Bella,” he had said the night that they decorated the tree. “I’ll teach Max how to use it.”

  “You know how to snowboard?”

  “Hey, I know how to do a lot of things that might surprise you. Some things with more skill than others,” he’d added with a—maybe suggestive?—grin.

  Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted it to be in that moment, on a cozy, happy, night.

  It wasn’t until she’d climbed into bed after midnight that she realized the significance of the day that had just come to an end.

  Somehow, the one-year anniversary of Sam’s death had come and gone without her awareness. The day that she’d been dreading was already behind her, as was her year of sorrow and change.

  “Hey, I was right!” Max had exclaimed when he saw the presents waiting under the tree. “Santa is real!”

  “He sure is, Max,” Bella had said, wiping tears on the sleeve of her robe.

  Now her son is in the parlor building a Lego ninja with Drew and the puppies he’d brought to spend the day, along with their sweet, nicely recuperating Mama.

  “Hey, Mom,” Max had said when he’d seen them. “Can I keep—?”

  “No way! Chance and Spidey would never . . .”

  Then she’d noticed that Chance and Spidey might, indeed, be okay with it. Hearing the happy, yappy crew, the cats had slipped into the room to investigate and were perched on the sofa, watching serenely.

  After changing her “No way” to a “We’ll see,” Bella had retreated to the kitchen, where she’s putting the finishing touches on the meal she just removed from the oven.

  A full five minutes after Odelia offered to toss the salad, it still sits neatly layered in the cut glass bowl on the counter, dressing on the side in a crystal cruet. Odelia stands at the stove stirring, stirring, stirring the hot wassail she claims would have been much better made in a Crock-Pot.

  For once, her moodiness has nothing to do with Pandora, who’d lugged her portable electric organ over to Valley View along with an enormous Yorkshire pudding and a sack full of instruments.

  In the hall, Mitch’s tenor accompanies her operatic trill as they work their way through a festive Christmas medley. Long-widowed and still saddened over Virgil’s tragic loss, Mitch didn’t seem to mind the sleigh bells Pandora had forced into his hand the moment he crossed the threshold or being bulldozed into singing every verse of “Jingle Bells” with her. They’ve moved on to “Feliz Navidad,” sleigh bells swapped out for maracas and, for all Bella knows, Pandora’s “Father Christmas” cap exchanged for a sombrero.