Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

Her head shot up. It was true! She was exactly like her father: driven, controlling, and inflexible. It was the most depressing thought she'd had in a long time.

  She stared glumly at Quinn, as at ease in the kitchen as he was on a gridiron, and wondered how he had managed to turn out so well. "You're amazing," she said, watching as he slid the three pumpkin pies into Mrs. Dewsbury's oven. "I wish I had your ... your range of interests."

  Quinn said dryly, "Oh, yeah—I'm a regular Renaissance man." He set the timer and said, "Three down, three to go."

  "More pumpkin?"

  "Two apples and a mince."

  Now that he said so, she did smell other wonderful aromas wafting from the stove. It shocked her, how oblivious she was to everything but his presence.

  She made herself look at something besides him. What she saw was wainscoting nubby from a dozen coats of paint and cupboards that couldn't be more plain. A fridge that was old, a stove that was older. Dotted sheer curtains yellowed with age. A countertop buried under clunky mug racks and jugs jammed with utensils that Mrs. Dewsbury couldn't possibly need, gifts from grandkids, perhaps. A kitchen, in short, that was worn and mussy—a little like Mrs. Dewsbury—but a room that resonated with lifetimes of living. It made Olivia feel lonely somehow.

  "Is there anything I can do?'' she offered. "Peel apples or anything—?"

  Very patiently, he said, "They're peeled. They're sliced. They're ready to go."

  "Oh! And here they are," she said, staring into a bowl of them in front of her. By now she was completely rattled.

  She had the feeling that he wanted to say something, but that he was holding back out of simple politeness. Let me finish the damn pies. That's what she decided he wanted to say. Well trained, Olivia stood up; she was determined to exit before she was asked.

  "I should be going," she said, pushing her chair in and undraping her coat from the back of it. "It's Christmas Eve and I have a million things to do."

  "Yeah, me, too," he muttered, taking a bowl from the fridge.

  He didn't sound very happy with her. Was it because she had turned away from the burning look he'd given her? Had he given her a burning look? Who knew? When she was around him, her instincts bounced around like bullets in a spaghetti western.

  She had her hand on the doorknob and was about to wish him a merry Christmas, but instead she turned and blurted out, "What do you plan to do?"

  "After the pies?"

  "I mean, now that the D.A. has refused your request to reopen the investigation."

  He thumped another wad of dough on the board and said, "I guess I'll have to reopen it on my own."

  "Oh, Quinn—is that a good idea? You run the risk of alienating everyone in town."

  "Including your parents, of course," he said, giving her a level look.

  "Obviously. But that's not why I wish you wouldn't pursue this. The reason is—" She bit her lip, unwilling to trust those haphazard instincts of hers. "It's because ..."

  He was waiting for her answer now. His green eyes were alight with curiosity: What dumb thing was she about to say this time?

  It made Olivia veer away from the truth—that she thought they really might be able to have something together, if only he treaded gingerly and let people get to know him better.

  But there was another truth, and it was nearly as compelling to her as the one she was afraid to say out loud. She looked him straight in the eye and said, "There's something unseemly about hurting innocent people to satisfy your own selfish needs."

  That got his attention. He wiped his hands on the dish towel that was jammed in his jeans, then tossed it on the table and walked over to her. Without the towel tucked in his waist, he didn't look so warm and friendly anymore. He looked big and strong and way too threatening.

  She winced, afraid that he was going to boot her out of his kitchen. But that, apparently, was not on his mind as he caught her upper arm and brought his face within Tic Tac distance of hers.

  "Listen to me, Miss Bennett. There was nothing seemly about having to skulk off with my father in the middle of the night. There was nothing seemly about changing over to my middle name and putting up with an itchy beard to hide my face. There was nothing seemly about running like a bat out of hell from a situation when my father could have—should have—been honored as a hero. There was nothing—"

  "What do you mean, 'hero'?"

  "Just what I said. It's ironic that he's being blamed for taking a life when the opposite is—aw, hell! Never mind."

  He let go of her with something like distaste, which was more shocking to Olivia than his diatribe. She blinked and, after an eternity, remembered to exhale. "I guess you've made your intentions pretty clear," she said in lofty tones. "You're going to press your case for an exhumation."

  "Bingo."

  "Fine." Her lip began to tremble; she refused to let it. "Then let me wish you a merry Christmas and be on my way."

  He gave her a look of cool contempt. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, in it that reminded her of Julia Child.

  She turned and pulled the door open so quickly that it bumped her knee. He's obsessed, she told herself. I'm out of here.

  On the porch she tripped over the cardboard box filled with his trophies, which she never did get around to telling him she'd brought. She had started down the steps in a flight to her minivan when she stopped, reached into the pocket of her coat, and pulled out the green bow that she'd stuffed there earlier. She crushed the bow in her hand, then tossed it at the brass football sticking out of the box.

  "Merry Christmas, my ass," she muttered, and hurried back to her car.

  Chapter 8

  Two apples and a mince: burnt to a crisp.

  Quinn had checked out Mrs. Dewsbury's backup electric stove in the basement before he used it, and the burners worked fine. But it turned out that the oven was another story. Half an hour after he put the pies in, the piercing shrieks of two new smoke alarms brought him hightailing back from the storage shed where he'd been in the process of installing a motion-detecting spotlight to light up the yard.

  By the time he aired out the smoke-filled house, found a supermarket still open, and re-peeled, re-cooked, and re-baked replacements for the three casualties, it was marching up on midnight. Lucky for him that his new Dodge Ram had been delivered as promised earlier in the day; it made his mood a lot less foul.

  There weren't many relationships in life more intense than that between a man and a brand-new truck, so Quinn searched for and found an excuse to take his sassy Ram out for another spin: to deliver the pies to Father Tom before Midnight Mass. It wasn't the most logical time to drop them off, but what the hell. It was Christmas Eve, and Quinn had just given himself the only present he was going to get.

  He loaded the pies into the sparkling clean tool bins of his shiny blue pickup and then all the way to St. Swithin's had to fight an impulse to drive like a wild and stupid teenager. He liked owning his own vehicle outright. Always had, always would. Leasing left him cold, and renting had caused him physical agony. Yup. Buying a truck on the wrong coast of America was the only reasonable thing to do.

  Ah, well. At least he hadn't ordered the plow attachment.

  Yet.

  Quinn intercepted Father Tom as he was about to enter the sacristy to don his vestments for the high Mass. The priest's greeting was distracted: The organist hadn't shown, and he should've been warming up the audience by then.

  "I don't really see the parishioners muddling through the hymns a cappella, he said wryly to Quinn. "We could use someone to give us the pitch. I don't suppose that you—?"

  Quinn crisscrossed his hands in front of him as if poor Father Tom were Count Dracula in a cassock. "Not me, Father," he said in something like terror. "I don't have any musical talent at all."

  "Then it's the only talent you don't have," the priest said generously. "Okay ... you may as well take the pies directly down to the hall. See that exit sign? Take the back steps next to it. You got Saran W
rap?"

  "I brought a roll, just in case."

  "Good man," said Father Tom, slapping him on the back. They broke up their huddle and the priest went off to nourish men's souls while Quinn made arrangements for their stomachs.

  The basement was set up not with the usual long tables but with round tables that seated eight, giving the hall the cozy air of a family restaurant. Red checkered tablecloths and centerpieces of holly and winterberry were a nice touch. The ladies' auxiliary had done a great job. In no way, shape, or form did it look like a soup kitchen.

  And really, why should it? People down on their luck or with no place to go should be able to spend Christmas in good company like anyone else. Better, actually: At least no one would be feuding in the halls of St. Swithin's.

  Quinn saw the folding buffet table that the priest had told him would be for desserts; it was lined up against the far wall, with cups and saucers arranged on it, along with two stacks of dessert plates way higher than Quinn had pieces of pie for. He hoped that Father Tom wasn't kidding about the brownies and the pressed cookies.

  He was impressed to see that they were using real cloth napkins, rolled around what must have been silverware and laid out alongside the plates.

  Or not. At first puzzled and then with a quickening sense of dread, Quinn approached the long table. What looked from across the hall like large rolled napkins were in reality ... bleached bones, lined up as neatly as any hostess could wish.

  The sight of them in the innocent setting was like being kicked in the stomach, and it left Quinn much more breathless than the smashed-in windshield had done. He dumped the two pies he was holding onto another table and returned to the macabre display. Bones. Of what, for God's sake?

  A dog, most likely. Someone had dug up the family pet, cleaned off the bones, and laid them here. It was a reasonable presumption, and it left Quinn reeling. Disinterment, that's what this was about. Someone was making a statement about Quinn's latest foray down the halls of justice. And if Quinn hadn't stumbled into the basement hall at that unlikely hour, some white-haired volunteers with kind intentions and weak hearts would have had the shock of their lives when they showed up the next day to help serve. News of the prank would have traveled at warp speed, dinner would have been a disaster, and it would have been Quinn's fault and no one else's.

  Damn it to hell!

  He worked quickly, clearing the table of everything but the bones and then shrouding them in the cloth that they were laid out on. Quinn's sense of liturgy, never very precise, was turned upside down by the grisly prank. This was the season of birth, not of bones. He stuffed the hapless pet's remains, still in the tablecloth, into a black garbage bag and looped the open end of the bag into a tight knot, and then another.

  I'll have to stay here the whole blessed night.

  It was going to be pointless to stand guard over the hall—no one would be back, he was sure—but if he went home he knew he wouldn't sleep a wink. He looked around for a nice soft La-Z-Boy, but all he saw were metal folding chairs. So, okay, it was going to be not only pointless but painful to spend the night there.

  Quinn slung the garbage bag over his shoulder, feeling more like the Grim Reaper than Santa Claus, and carried it out to his truck. After that, he decided to take a quick walk around the white-steepled church, not so much for the cold night air, which he welcomed, but to see if anyone strange and twisted was lurking in the shrubbery.

  Who? That was the question. Obviously it had to be someone who knew that Quinn had gone to the D.A. with a request for exhumation.

  Hold it. Back up, Doughboy. It could have been somebody who knew from Chief Vickers that Quinn was planning to go to the D.A.

  Well, that really narrowed it down.

  Whoever did it must also have known that Quinn had volunteered to help out with the church dinner. Could the villain of this disgusting little pageant conceivably be a member of the parish? A deacon, a lady on the auxiliary committee, the freaking organist, even?

  Where was the organist, anyway?

  Quinn peered behind the flat-topped yews and rummaged through the holly bushes, expecting with every poke to see someone's evil, beady eyes staring back at him. Before long, he realized where the organist was when he was yanked from his spooky reverie by the sonorous notes of the church's old Wurlitzer rising up and through the stained glass windows: "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

  The Christmas carol was too appropriate, somehow; it gave him chills. What was he listening for? What was he looking for?

  Was someone reminded, by Quinn's presence in Keepsake, of his own lost promise in life and taking it out on Quinn? Or was someone afraid that Quinn was going to prove Francis Leary's innocence—and in the bargain, prove that person's guilt?

  Quinn continued his circuit around the church but paused at the life-sized crèche that was set up facing the busier of the two streets that the church abutted. Although Quinn hadn't practiced his faith for many years, he felt obliged to make sure that no one had stolen the straw from baby Jesus' crib again or committed some other wickedness there.

  Things looked okay. Baby Jesus looked snug and warm, and nobody had broken off the nose of one of the three kings or moved the donkey into some scandalous position.

  Hey guys. You see anyone suspicious go skulking past?

  The swarthy kings were silent, but Quinn had the sense that they knew more than they were letting on. He turned his gaze to the illogically blue eyes of the infant lying in the manger and thought, I know that you know. But you're not gonna say, are you?

  Quinn sighed. He was hoping for an offhand miracle, just like in the movies. He swept his gaze from the kings to Mary to Joseph to Jesus again, but no one moved, no one spoke. The only one puffing white breath into the ice-cold night was Quinn. He was warm, he was alive, and he was utterly alone in the universe.

  It was his first Christmas without his father, and it was yet another Christmas without a wife and a family of his own. His isolation threw him into a sudden and profound depression.

  "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear ..."

  Again Quinn was struck by the irony of the organist's choice of hymns. He looked up at the sky, awash with stars twinkling cold and remote. It was midnight, and it was clear, but what was it that had come? Who? That's what he wanted so desperately to know.

  After a last sweeping glance around the crèche, Quinn decided to head back to the basement hall, to spend the night in dreary vigilance. As he passed the double arched doors of the historic New England church, he heard the strains of a carol that was his father's favorite: "Angels We Have Heard on High."

  Quinn stopped where he was at the foot of the steps. He could hear his father asking good-naturedly, "Why are all the best songs always about angels?" He could hear his father's voice, a surprisingly rich baritone, singing the refrain:

  "Glo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ria, in excelsis Deo ..."

  And he found himself ascending the steps of St. Swithin's and quietly opening the heavy church door, because inside was where he was sure he'd find his father.

  "Son, what does that mean, anyway—'in excelsis Deo'?" his father had once asked.

  Quinn had answered, "It means 'in exultation of God,' Dad," and had turned the page of his novel, secretly annoyed that his father liked to sing along with his Christmas cassettes. What if someone were passing by the gardener's cottage and happened to hear him?

  Quinn paused at the back of the crowded church and then slipped into the last pew. Except for his father's funeral, it was the first time he'd been in a church since he ran from Keepsake. His father used to mourn Quinn's obstinate refusal to go, but what could the man do about it? By then Quinn was eighteen—old enough to drink, vote, and be bitter.

  Quinn sighed heavily. He wouldn't stay. What was the point, really? He didn't believe. He would just finish out the one carol ....

  At the main altar, Father Tom looked somehow too big, too real, too ordinary to be conducting Mass. A lineback
er, yes. But a priest? Quinn smiled. Father Tom was an excellent priest, but he would've made a damn good father, too. Which, come to think of it, he was. And Quinn's father—Francis Leary— had been a wonderful father. And Quinn, who was so much less worthy than either of the men, was not a father in any sense of the word.

  He felt a lump rise and catch in his throat. His thoughts became blurred in a glaze of tears as he realized somewhere deep in his soul that Francis Leary—the only father he would ever have—was dead and gone forever.

  And he was innocent of the crime. He wasn't a taker of lives, but a saver of them. And somehow Quinn had to let everyone know, and then he himself would no longer be an outcast. He felt his spirit aching to join those of the congregation's, and in the middle of that longing, he felt his soul reach just a little bit higher, a little bit closer to his dad.

  It was an amazing moment of transcendence for him, and as the carol ended, followed almost at once by another, more poignant one—"O Little Town of Bethlehem"—he was even more amazed to find his thoughts drifting serenely from his father to Olivia Bennett.

  Liv! The brainy kid who'd aced him on a math final in their junior year at Keepsake High, the witch who'd once tricked him into confessing that he didn't have a clue what the capital of Montana was—she was there, not in person maybe, because the Bennetts were Episcopalian, but ... there, nonetheless. Her smile, her dark eyes ... oh, her voice, he could listen to that voice argue with him all day long and not get tired of it. She was warm and kindhearted and she smelled like an angel and no one looked more beautiful in lavender blue. It scared him, how much Olivia was there ... and it made him feel profoundly awed.

  Because somehow, in that church, in that community, he was able to leave all his bitterness and resentment and self-righteousness at the door and join everyone else, if only briefly, in simple praise of the season.

  And for that, he was glad.

  Chapter 9

  Technically speaking, Olivia didn't belong in her brother's living room. And yet on Christmas morning there she was, dressed in pajamas like everyone else and plopped on the floor near Rand and Eileen's tree, helping their kids read the to-and-from tags on the mountains of gifts stacked under it.