by Emily March
“I always try to be prepared.”
“Celeste, you are amazing.” As he tucked the phone into his pocket, she gave him a smile so brilliant and bright that it warmed him from the inside out. “I’ve a special Christmas message for you this year.”
She took his hands, her blue eyes gleaming with a mesmerizing intensity that had Devin holding his breath as she said, “Christmas is a promise. Christmas is a gift. Don’t be a prisoner of the past. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t be afraid to make another run at the dream. Open your eyes and heart and imaginings to the possibilities that await. You must believe. Wishes can and do come true. And when the Christmas bells ring, Devin Murphy, don’t you fail to answer.”
He responded the only way he knew how. “Yes, ma’am.” Later that afternoon as he searched through his mother’s craft room for the tape he needed to finish his gift wrapping and “Carol of the Bells” began to chime from his pocket, he recalled her words.
Part of him didn’t want to answer. He’d been around Eternity Springs and Celeste Blessing long enough to know that when she started talking weird, weird things tended to happen.
He touched the green button to connect the call and brought the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
A small voice asked, “Is this Santa Claus?”
Devin’s gaze locked on a roll of wrapping paper—red with white Santa silhouettes. Okay, genius, how do you handle this?
He cleared his throat. “Who is asking?”
“I’m Reilly from Nashville. Remember? I gave you my Christmas list at the hospital last week. At the party for sick kids?”
A party for sick kids. Devin sat down abruptly. “Hello, Reilly from Nashville.”
“So you remember me?”
“Santa has a great memory.”
“Okay. Good. I’m sorry if that sounded mean. I didn’t mean to be mean. I’m scared to be calling you.”
“No need to be scared, buddy. Talk to me like I’m a normal dude.”
“Okay. Sure. I can do that.”
Devin waited, but Reilly didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry to continue. After a pause of more than half a minute, Devin prodded. “I expect you had a reason for calling Santa Claus?”
The boy spoke on a heavy sigh. “I do. We were supposed to go to see Charlie Brown’s Christmas at the hotel and throw snowballs and ride the slide. We had tickets and everything. But Mom got called to work—she always gets called to work—and we’re not going to have time. So that’s why I thought maybe . . . well, I wanted to ask you . . . is it too late to add to my list, Santa?”
Well, crap. “It is Christmas Eve.”
“I know. It’s too late, isn’t it?”
The boy sounded so dejected that Devin found himself wanting to fix the problem. He gave the lazy Susan on his mother’s craft table a spin as he formulated his response. “It’s complicated, what with the sleigh already loaded and everything. Let me ask you a few questions, and I’ll see what I can do. First, how did you get this phone number?”
“An angel gave it to me.”
Devin stopped the lazy Susan mid spin. Why does this not surprise me?
“Not a real angel,” Reilly clarified. “There’s this store at the mall where little kids can buy presents, and the lady who wrapped the perfume I picked out for my mom was dressed like an angel. She’s the one who told me your phone number is North-Pole-One.”
An angel. Christmas is a promise. Christmas is a gift. . . . Open your eyes and heart and imaginings to the possibilities.
Except this angel worked at a store in Nashville. Devin wondered if Celeste had a sister. Or maybe a cousin. She was from the South, wasn’t she? “Are you calling from your own phone, Reilly?”
“No. I don’t have my own phone. Mom won’t let me have one until I’m at least eight, and that’s two whole years away. This is Mom’s phone. She lets me play games on it when I’m waiting for her at work.”
Okay, that was good. That meant Devin had the mother’s phone number. He could call her later and let her know about this conversation. “All righty, then. Now, back to your Christmas list. I need you to understand that I can’t make any promises. My sleigh is all loaded up and most of my elves have already clocked out and are taking off for vacation.”
“It’s not really a list, Santa. It’s a wish.”
“I think fairy godmothers are the ones in charge of wishes.”
“Not Christmas wishes. This is a Christmas wish.”
A Christmas wish, huh? For a kid who visited Santa at a hospital party for sick kids. Murphy, you are so in over your head. Devin cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and braced himself. “So, Reilly. What is your Christmas wish?”
“A daddy. I want a daddy of my own.”
Devin let out a long breath. While he searched for the right words to respond, the boy continued. “If Mom and I had a daddy, everything would be so much better. She wouldn’t have to work so much, and I wouldn’t have to stay with Mrs. White so often.”
“Mrs. White?”
“My sitter. And if I had a dad, he’d throw a football with me and take me fishing and we could go on vacation and camp in the national parks. And when we had tickets to the ice show and Mom got called in to work, my dad could take me.”
“Have you talked to your mother about this wish of yours?”
Glumly, the boy replied, “Yes. She told me that daddies don’t grow on trees—not even Christmas trees.”
Smart mom.
“So what do you think, Santa? Can you make my Christmas wish come true?”
Noise outside in the backyard caught Devin’s attention, and he glanced out the window to see his little brother chucking snowballs and taunts at their dad. Reilly from Nashville doesn’t have a Cam Murphy in his life.
But he did have ties to a hospital.
Devin rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I’ll tell you what. This is a tough one. Even if this wasn’t Christmas Eve and my sleigh was already packed up, I couldn’t very well wrap up a dad and leave him beneath your Christmas tree, could I?”
“I guess not. Unless you put him in one of those big bags like bicycles come in.”
“He couldn’t breathe if I did that,” Devin pointed out. “By the way, never put a bag over your head, buddy. That’s dangerous.”
“Yessir.”
“Now back to this wish. Someone reminded me today that Christmas is a gift. It’s a promise. There’s the answer to your Christmas wish question right there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You gotta believe in the promise, Reilly. You gotta hold onto your hope, even when what you wished for isn’t under your tree on December twenty-fifth. Because Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s not just a season. It’s the love that’s in your heart.”
Following a moment of silence, Reilly said, “I still don’t understand.”
Devin closed his eyes. That’s because I’m not making sense. I’ve been hanging with Celeste way too much. “It’s a good wish. You hold onto it. Keep wishing it. Believe it will come true.”
“And then it will come true?” Reilly asked, his question full of hope.
“You believed enough to call Santa on Christmas Eve. What do you think?”
“I think I’m gonna believe!”
“There you go. And now, I have an elf giving me the stink eye. It’s time for Rudolph and his pals to do their thing. Goodbye, Reilly from Nashville. Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas, Santa Claus.”
Devin disconnected the call and let out a low, slow whistle of relief as out on the back lawn, his little brother gave a delightfully terrified squeal. Devin glanced out to see that Cam had the boy in an armlock and was washing his face with snow.
In that moment, Devin remembered Celeste’s advice. Don’t be a prisoner of the past. If at first you don’t succeed, don’t be afraid to make another run at the dream. Open your eyes and heart and imaginings to the possibilities that await. You must believe. Wis
hes can and do come true.
“It’s a nice idea, Celeste,” he murmured. But like the saying went, If wishes were horses beggars would ride. And little boys wouldn’t be going to hospital Christmas parties.
And somewhere in another part of the world, another little boy built sandcastles on a beach, with his daddy. The daddy who wasn’t Devin, after all.
Three
“One more,” Jenna murmured as she measured the box against the roll of wrapping paper to gauge where to make the cut. Every year when she found herself wrapping packages on Christmas Eve, she promised herself that next year she’d do better. Of course, the Christmas Eve wrapping problem wouldn’t be so bad if she’d do something about her Christmas Eve buying problem.
It was a bad habit. Invariably as the final hours ticked by toward Christmas, no matter how many packages sat beneath their tree, panic kicked in. Jenna worried she hadn’t bought enough or purchased the right thing. Guilt had gotten the better of her again this year because she’d had to drag Reilly to the clinic when she got called in to cover for another doctor. On the way home, she’d stopped by the bookstore and covertly purchased three more books.
“It’s always okay to buy books,” she justified as she skimmed the scissors along the paper with precision. That’s what her mom had always said, anyway. At the thought, a wave of grief rolled through her. She missed her parents every day of her life, but holidays always sharpened the sense of loss. The ugly gift in last week’s mail had made the pain unusually acute. If Mom were here today, she would tell Jenna not to fret over her last minute purchases, but she’d also add, “Next time, get them gift wrapped.”
Jenna was tying a bow of green yarn around a wrapped book when she heard the muffled ringtone of a cell phone coming from her handbag. She shot a worried look toward it. This couldn’t be good. Who would be calling her at four o’clock on Christmas Eve? Only a handful of people had this number, and they’d all be busy with family this afternoon. A call on that phone at a time like this might well mean somebody she cared about was ill or hurt.
She dug her phone out of her bag and checked the number. She didn’t recognize it. She didn’t recognize the area code.
Her stomach did a sick flip.
She’d changed her phone number after the harassment started in the fall. This number was unlisted. Anyone who had this number knew to phone her work line in an emergency. If the caller was a friend with a problem, her pager would go off any second now. Her friends all knew what to say to have the answering service put their call through.
This caller wasn’t a friend.
Maybe it was simply a wrong number. It could be that simple. Everything didn’t have to be part of the prankster’s assault on her.
Whoever the jerk was, surely he had better things to do on Christmas Eve than to prank call her. “Even sociopaths have families,” she muttered before tossing the phone back into her bag. She wasn’t going to answer it. She had presents to put beneath the tree and a six-year-old boy to get to the children’s service at church.
She didn’t hear the phone ring a second time ten minutes later because she was on her hands and knees looking beneath Reilly’s bed for a missing shoe. The next time it rang, Jenna had it silenced for the church service, and since she neglected to switch it back, she didn’t hear the fourth or fifth calls either.
It wasn’t until the evening of Christmas Day that she pulled her phone out of her purse and checked the display. Five missed calls from that same number. She froze as tension washed through her.
In the den, Reilly cheered and called excitedly, “I did it, Mom! I put the train track together all by myself. It works!”
“Awesome. I’ll be right there, Reilly.”
Jenna tossed the phone back into her purse. She wasn’t going to let these phone calls bother her. She and Reilly had enjoyed a perfectly lovely holiday, and she wasn’t going to spoil the mood by fretting over something that was probably nothing more than a wrong number, somebody wanting to wish Merry Christmas to someone he or she obviously seldom called. Since she’d never set up voice mail for her new number, he wouldn’t know he had the number wrong. If the phone calls continued into next week, well, she could worry about it then.
She went into the den and played trains with her son. The following day, she never heard her phone ring. With Reilly out of school, Jenna had cleared as much of her work schedule as possible. She stayed so busy with her son that she forgot all about the unsettling calls—until a friend phoned three days after Christmas, and she took a good look at her call history.
In the days following Christmas, it turned out that Reilly from Nashville had a lot to say to Santa. Devin didn’t quite know what to do about it.
He’d tried to get hold of the boy’s mother on Christmas Eve to tell her about the dad request, but she never answered the phone. Once Christmas was over, Devin figured his responsibility to inform her of Reilly’s call was over too.
But then the day after Christmas when Devin was up at the Rocking L summer camp helping his brother-in-law repair damage done to one of the cabins by some mischievous raccoons, the boy called again. “Hi, Santa. This is Reilly from Nashville. Thank you for all the nice presents. I really love everything, especially the book about Yellowstone National Park. That was a really great surprise. I want to go there some day. I want to visit all the national parks. There are fifty-nine of them. Did you know that?”
“I did not know that,” Devin replied. He propped a hip on a sawhorse and set his hammer down.
“You should read the book you gave me. I learned it there. Did you have a good Christmas, Santa?”
“I had an excellent Christmas.”
“That’s good. I’ll bet you were tired. Were you tired?”
“I was tired.”
“Because you went all over the world delivering presents. You have to go to lots and lots of places. What’s your favorite place in the world to visit? Is it Orlando? Because of the Magic Kingdom?”
“No.” Devin’s lips twisted. Personally, he wasn’t a fan of theme parks. Give him real parks anytime. “My favorite place to visit is a little town in Colorado called Eternity Springs. For me, it’s the most magical place in the world.”
“Because it has magicians and wizards and superheroes?”
Devin thought of Celeste and he grinned. Something like that. “Not exactly. Eternity Springs has family magic. People who come to Eternity Springs think it’s very special.”
As the conversation continued, Devin tried to subtly pump Reilly for information in an attempt to ascertain the state of the boy’s health. Was he a cancer patient? And if so, how sick was he? Devin desperately wanted to know.
But nothing Reilly said answered the question, and when he mentioned his mother, Devin cut to the chase. “That reminds me. I’d like to speak with your mother. Would you put her on the phone, please?”
Following a moment’s silence, Reilly said, “You’re not going to tell her I’ve been bad, are you?”
“No, that’s not why I want to talk to her.” Devin waited a beat and asked, “Have you been bad, Reilly?”
This time the silence lasted longer. Finally, the boy said, “No, I haven’t been bad. But Santa, she can’t come to the phone. She’s talking on her work phone so she can’t talk to you. She’s supposed to not be working this week because I’m out of school, but that never works out. She works all the time. That’s why I need a dad. I gotta go now, Santa. And don’t worry, I’m still believing! Bye!”
The call disconnected. Devin stood staring at his phone when Chase Timberlake walked into the cabin toting a two-by-four. He gave Devin a quick once over, then asked, “Something wrong?”
“No. Not really.” Devin considered explaining the call, but before he decided what to say, his phone rang again. The call was from his own number. “Hello?”
“Good news, Devin,” Celeste Blessing said. “I fixed your phone.”
“Wow. I’m impressed. You have a magic touch, Cel
este.”
“Like I said, I had a little trick. The bad news is that it’s ringing off the wall. You’re missing a lot of calls.” Devin realized he didn’t really mind. It had been nice not to be tethered to his screen these past few days, though it might have given his social life a hit or two. Wonder if his New Year’s Eve date with the ski instructor at Wolf Creek was still on?
He shrugged, not really caring one way or the other. Message there, much? “That’s okay. They’ve waited this long, they can wait a little longer. I’m up at the Rocking L helping Chase with a project. I’ll pick my phone up on my way home.”
“That sounds great. I’ll leave it at the front desk.” With amusement in her voice, she added, “On silence.”
As he drove to Angel’s Rest later that afternoon, Devin considered the problem of the burner phone. He couldn’t very well return it to Celeste. What if Reilly called again? He couldn’t have Santa going MIA. But neither could this Santa Claus hotline go on forever. Well, unless the boy was sick. He’d talk to him every single day if that was the case and talking to Santa helped him.
He really needed to get in touch with the little guy’s mom. When he parked his truck, he dialed Reilly’s number hoping his mother would pick up. After twelve unanswered rings, he gave up. Maybe tonight he’d get on the Internet and see what sort of luck he’d have tracking her down. If worse came to worse, he’d ask Daniel Garrett to help him. The former police detective could probably track her down in minutes.
Celeste did indeed have his phone working like new, and he spent the rest of the evening returning calls and soothing ruffled feathers. The New Year’s Eve date was off but he didn’t mind. Ringing in the New Year with family and friends at Murphy’s Pub had more appeal than hitting the slopes, so to speak.
The following morning he tried Reilly’s number again before meeting his sister and brother-in-law for a couple hours of cross-country skiing. Again, nobody answered. That afternoon, he offered to do errands for his mom. He had just tossed a twenty-pound sack of dog food into his basket at the Trading Post grocery store when the burner phone rang. “Hello, Reilly.”