Addie flushed and rubbed her hands down the thighs of her jeans. “I really should look for a job.”
“School doesn’t get out until three,” Lissie reasoned, climbing down from the chair. “That gives you plenty of time.”
“I’ll take a late lunch hour,” Frank put in, offering Addie a bear claw. Her all-time favorite. Had he remembered that, or was it just coincidence? “I heard there was an opening over at the Wooden Nickel. Receptionist and classified ad sales.”
Addie lowered the bear claw.
“Kind of a comedown from big-city journalism,” Frank said. “But other than waitressing at the Lumberjack Diner, that’s about all Pine Crossing has to offer in the way of employment.”
She studied his face. So he did know, then—about what had happened in California. She wished she dared ask him how much he knew, but she didn’t. Not with Lissie there, and Henry already so upset.
“I’ll take the kids to school,” Frank went on, raising Addie’s hand, pastry and all, back to her mouth even as he turned to the kids. “Hey, Hank,” he said. “How’d you like a ride in a squad car?”
The snow was still drifting down, in big, fat, pristine flakes, when Addie set out for the Wooden Nickel, armed with a truthful resumé and high hopes. The Nickel wasn’t really a newspaper, just a supermarket giveaway, but that didn’t mean the editor wouldn’t have heard about her exploits in California. Even though the job probably didn’t involve writing anything but copy for classified ads, she might be considered a bad risk.
The wheels of the Buick crunched in the mounting snow as she pulled up in front of the small storefront where the Wooden Nickel was published. Like most of the businesses in town, it faced the square, where a large, bare evergreen tree had been erected.
She smiled. The lighting of the tree was a big deal in Pine Crossing, right up there with the pageant at St. Mary’s. Henry would probably enjoy it, and the festivities might even take his mind off his father’s disinterest, if only for an evening.
Her smile faded. Call him, Toby, she pleaded silently. Please call him.
Mr. Renfrew was the editor of the Wooden Nickel, just as he had been when Addie was a child. He beamed as she stepped into the office, brushing snow from the sleeves of her coat.
“Addie Hutton!” he cried, looking like Santa, even in his flannel shirt and woolen trousers, as he came out from behind the counter. “It’s wonderful to see you again!”
He hugged her, and she hugged him back. “Thanks,” she said after swallowing.
“Frank was by a little while ago. Said you might be in the market for a job.”
It was just like Frank to try and pave the way. Addie didn’t know whether to be annoyed or appreciative, and decided she was both. “I brought a resumé,” she said. She had only a few hundred dollars in her checking account, until the money from the sale of her furniture and other personal belongings came through from the auction house in California, and now there was Henry to think about.
She needed work.
“No need for anything like that,” Mr. Renfrew said with a wave of his plump, age-spotted hand. “I’ve known you all your life, Addie. Knew your father for most of his.” He paused, frowned. “I can’t pay you much, though. You realize that, don’t you?”
Addie smiled, nodded. Her eyes were burning again.
“Then it’s settled. You can start tomorrow. Nine o’clock sharp.”
“Thank you,” Addie said, almost overcome. Her salary at the Wooden Nickel probably wouldn’t have covered her gym membership back home, but she blessed every penny of it.
Mr. Renfrew gave her a tour of the small operation and showed her which of the three desks was hers.
When she stepped back out into the cold, Frank just happened to be loitering on the sidewalk, watching as members of the volunteer fire department strung lights on the community tree from various rungs of the truck ladder.
Addie poked him good-naturedly in the back. “You put in a good word for me, didn’t you?” she accused. “With Mr. Renfrew, I mean.”
Frank grinned down at her. “Maybe I did,” he admitted. “Truth is, he didn’t need much persuading. How about a cup of coffee over at the Lumberjack?”
She looked pointedly at the mug in his right hand. “Looks as if you carry your own,” she teased.
Something changed in his face, something so subtle that she might have missed it if she hadn’t been looking so closely, trying to read him. Then his grin broadened, and he upended the cup, dumping the dregs of his coffee into a snowbank. “I guess I need a refill,” he said.
They walked to the diner, on the opposite side of the square, Frank exchanging gruff male greetings with the light-stringing firemen as they passed.
Inside the diner, they took seats in a booth, and the waitress filled Frank’s mug automatically, before turning over the clean cup in front of Addie and pouring a serving for her.
“What happened in California?” Frank asked bluntly, when they were alone.
Addie looked out into the square, watching the firemen and the passersby, and her hand trembled a little as she raised the cup to her mouth. “I made a mistake,” she said, after a long time, when she could meet his eyes again. “A really stupid one.”
“You’ve never done anything stupid in your life,” Frank said.
Except when I gave back your engagement ring, Addie thought, and immediately backed away from that memory. “That’s debatable.” She sighed. “I got a tip on a big scandal brewing in the city attorney’s office,” she said miserably. “I checked and rechecked the facts, but I should have triple-checked them. I wrote an article that shook the courthouse from top to bottom. I was nearly jailed when I wouldn’t reveal my source—and then that source turned out to be a master liar. People’s reputations and careers were damaged. My newspaper was sued, and I was fired.”
Frank shook his head. “Must have been rough.”
Addie bit her lower lip, then squared her shoulders. “It was,” she admitted solemnly. “Thanks to you, I have a job and a place to live.” She leaned forward. “We have to talk about rent, Frank.”
He leaned forward, too. “That whole place should have been yours. I’m not going to charge you rent.”
“It should have been Eliza’s, and she left it to you,” Addie insisted. “And I am going to pay rent. If you refuse, I’ll move.”
He grinned. “Good luck finding anything in Pine Crossing,” he said.
She slumped back in her seat. “I’m paying. You need the money. You can’t possibly be making very much.”
He lifted his cup to his mouth, chuckled. “Still stubborn as hell, I see,” he observed. “And it just so happens that I do all right, from a financial standpoint anyway.” He set the mug down again, regarded her thoughtfully. “Tell me about the boy,” he said.
She smiled at the mention of Henry. For all the problems, it was a blessing having him with her, a gift. She loved him desperately—he was the child she might never have. She was thirty-five, after all, and her life was a train wreck. “Henry is my stepson. His father and I were badly matched, and the marriage came crashing down under its own weight a couple of years ago. I fell out of love with Toby, but Henry is still my man.”
“He seems troubled,” Frank remarked. The diner’s overhead lights shimmered in his dark hair and on the broad shoulders of his jacket. Danced along the upper half of his badge.
“My ex-husband isn’t the most responsible father in the world. He remarried recently, and evidently, the new Mrs. Springer is not inclined to raise another woman’s child. Toby brought him as far as Denver by plane, then put him on a bus, like so much freight. Henry came all that way alone. He must have been so scared.”
Frank’s jawline tightened, and a flush climbed his neck. “Tell your ex-husband,” he muttered, “never to break the speed limit in my town.”
While Floyd the beagle galloped around the snowman in ever-widening circles, barking joyously at falling flakes, Henry and Lissie
pressed small stones into Frosty’s chest, and Addie added the finishing touch: one of Frank’s old baseball caps.
The moment was so perfect that it worried Frank a little.
He was telling himself not to be a fool when Almira Pidgett’s vintage Desoto ground up to the curb. She leaned across the seat, rolled down the passenger window, and glowered through the snowfall.
“Well,” she called, raising her voice several decibels above shrill to be heard over the happy beagle, “it’s nice to see our chief of police hard at work, making our community safe from crime.”
Lissie and Henry went still, and some of the delight drained from Addie’s face. Out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw Lissie straighten her halo.
You old bat, Frank thought, but he smiled as he strolled toward the Desoto, his hands in the pockets of his uniform jacket. “Hello, Miss Pidgett,” he said affably, bending to look through the open window. “Care to help us finish our snowman?”
“Hmmph,” she said. “Is that Addie Hutton over there? I must say, she doesn’t look much the worse for wear, for someone who almost went to prison.”
Frank’s smile didn’t waver, even though he would have liked to reach across that seat and close both hands around Almira’s neck. “You ought to work up a little Christmas spirit, Miss Pidgett,” he said. “If you don’t, you might just be visited by three spirits one of these nights, like old Ebenezer Scrooge.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“It’s a Christmas tree,” Henry announced importantly, the following morning, after opening the fourth box. Frank had lifted him onto the counter for the unveiling. “Are we going to get a Christmas tree, Addie?”
“Sure,” Addie said, a little too quickly. Her smile felt wobbly on her face. There had still been no call from Toby, no response to her barrage of e-mails and phone messages. And every day that Henry stayed with her would make it that much more difficult, when the time came, to give him up.
“It’s too early for a tree,” Lissie said practically, watching as Henry scrambled down off the counter with no help from Frank. She looked especially festive that day, having replaced the snow-soaked gold tinsel in her halo with bright silver. “The needles will fall off.”
“We had a fake one in California,” Henry said. “It was made of the same stuff as that thing on your head, so the needles never fell off. We could have left it up till the Fourth of July.”
“That’s stupid,” Lissie responded. “Who wants a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July?”
“Liss,” Frank said. “Throwing the word ‘stupid’ around is conduct unbecoming to an angel.”
The little girl sighed hugely. “It’s useless trying to be an angel anyway,” she said. “I guess I’m going to be a shepherd for the rest of my life.”
Addie straightened Lissie’s halo. “Nonsense,” she said, suppressing a smile. “I think it’s safe to say that you most certainly will not be a shepherd three weeks from now.”
Outside, in the driveway, a horn bleated out one cheery little honk.
“Car pool,” Frank explained when Addie lifted her eyebrows in question.
She hastened to zip Henry into his coat. He endured this fussing with characteristic stoicism, and when he and Lissie had gone, Frank lingered to refill his cup at the percolator.
“No word from Wonder Dad, huh?” he asked.
Addie shook her head. “How can he do this, Frank?” she muttered miserably. “How can he just not call? For all he knows, Henry never arrived, or I wasn’t here when he did.”
“He knows,” Frank said easily. “You’ve been calling and e-mailing, haven’t you?”
Addie nodded, pulling on her coat and reaching for her purse. She wanted to get to work early, show Mr. Renfrew she was dependable. “But he hasn’t answered.”
“And you think that means he didn’t get the messages?”
Addie paused in the act of unplugging the coffeepot. Frank had a point. Toby was a master at avoiding confrontation, not to mention personal responsibility. He wouldn’t call, or even respond to her e-mails, until he was sure she’d had time enough to cool off.
She sighed. “You’re right,” she said.
Frank gave her a crooked grin and spread his hands. “Are we still on for the tree-lighting ceremony tonight?” he asked.
Addie nodded, glanced at the Advent calendar, with its four open boxes. Twenty to go. “Have you noticed a pattern?” she asked. “I mean, maybe I’m being fanciful here, but the first day, there was a teddy bear. Henry was carrying a bear when he got off the bus. Then—okay, the ballerina doesn’t fit the theory—but yesterday was the snowman. We built one. And today, it’s the Christmas tree, and the shindig at the square just happens to be tonight.”
Frank put a hand to the small of her back and gently propelled her toward the doorway. “The bear,” he said, “was pure coincidence. The snowman gave the kids the idea to build one. And the fire department always lights the tree three weeks before Christmas.”
They’d crossed the living room, and Frank opened the front door to a gust of dry, biting wind. Addie pulled her coat more tightly around her. “All very practical,” she said with a tentative smile, “but I heard you tell Miss Pidgett she might be visited by three spirits some night soon. If that’s not fanciful, I don’t know what is.”
They descended the steps, and Frank didn’t smile at her remark. He seemed distracted. “Lissie really wants that part,” he fretted. “The one in the pageant at St. Mary’s, I mean. And Almira isn’t going to give it to her, not because the kid couldn’t pull it off, but because she doesn’t like me.”
Addie thought of Lissie’s tinsel halo and felt a pinch of sorrow in the deepest region of her heart. “Maybe if you talked to Miss Pidgett, explained—”
Frank stopped beside his squad car, which was parked in the driveway, beside Addie’s station wagon. “I can’t do that, Addie,” he said quietly. “I’m the chief of police. I can’t ask the woman to do my kid a favor.”
She touched his arm. Started to say that she could speak to Miss Pidgett, and promptly closed her mouth. She knew how Frank would react to that suggestion; he’d say she was over the line, and he’d be right.
Frank surprised her. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Thanks, Addie,” he said.
“For what?”
“For coming home.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Addie stopped on the sidewalk outside the Wooden Nickel, at eight forty-five A.M. precisely, to admire the glowing tree in the center of the square. She hoped she would never forget the reflection of those colored lights shining on Henry and Lissie’s upturned faces the night before. After the celebration, they’d all gone back to Frank’s place for spaghetti and hot cocoa, and Addie had been amazed that she didn’t so much as hesitate on the threshold.
When she and her father had lived there, the very walls had seemed to echo with loneliness, except when Eliza or Frank were around.
Now another father and daughter occupied the space. The furniture was different, of course, but so was the atmosphere. Sorrow had visited those rooms, leaving its mark, but despite that, the house seemed to exude warmth, stability—love.
A rush of cold wind brought Addie abruptly back to the present moment. She shivered and pushed open the front door of the Wooden Nickel, and very nearly sent Mr. Renfrew sprawling.
He was teetering on top of a foot ladder, affixing a silver bell above the door.
Addie gasped and reached out to steady her employer. “I’m sorry!” she cried.
Mr. Renfrew grinned down at her. “What do you think of the bell?” he asked proudly. “It belonged to my grandmother.”
Addie put a hand to her heart. The bell was silver, with a loop of red ribbon attached to the top.
“What’s the matter?” Mr. Renfrew asked, getting down from the ladder.
In her mind’s eye, Addie was seeing the little bell in the Christmas box Lissie had opened that morning. Silver, with red thread.
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She smiled. “Nothing at all,” she said happily, unbuttoning her coat. “It looks wonderful.”
“There’s a phone message for you, Addie,” put in Stella Dorrity, who worked part-time helping Mr. Renfrew with the ad layouts. “He left a number.”
Addie felt her smile fade. “Thank you,” she said, reaching out for the sticky note Stella offered.
Toby. Where on earth had he gotten her work number? She’d only been hired the day before.
Shakily, she hung up her coat and fished her cell phone out of her purse. “Do you mind if I return the call before I start work?” she asked Mr. Renfrew.
“You go right ahead,” he said, still admiring his bell.
“You’d better move that ladder,” Stella told him, arms folded, “before somebody breaks their neck.”
Addie slipped into the cramped little room behind the reception desk, where the copy machine, lunch table, and a small refrigerator stood shoulder to shoulder.
She punched in the number Stella had taken down, not recognizing the area code.
Toby answered on the third ring. “Yo,” he said.
“It’s about time you bothered to check up on your son!” Addie whispered.
A sigh. “I knew you’d take care of him.”
“He’s scared to death,” Addie sputtered. “When I saw him get off that bus, all alone—”
“You were there,” Toby broke in. “That’s what matters.”
“What if I hadn’t been, Toby? Did you ever think of that?”
“Listen to me, Addie. I know you’re furious, and I guess you have a right to be. But I had to do something. The blended-family thing isn’t working for Elle.”
Addie closed her eyes, counted to ten, then to fifteen, for good measure. Even then, she wanted to take Toby’s head off at the shoulders. “Isn’t that a pity? Tell me, Tobe, did you think about any of this before you decided to tie the knot?”
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