by Jenn Moffatt
Table of Contents
Blurb
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
About the Author
By Jenn Moffatt
Visit Dreamspinner Press
Copyright
Christmas Ghosts
By Jenn Moffatt
Dealing with the unexpected loss of his mother isn’t how carpenter Steve Browning planned to spend his Christmas. Hoping her costume jewelry can bring some happiness to others, he takes it to the local community theater, where he runs into his first love, Troy Baxter.
Troy’s trying to help his sister put on a gender-fluid version of A Christmas Carol, but no one on the cast or crew knows which end of a hammer to hold let alone use a power tool. Then a face from the past brings a present-day miracle… one that could lead to the happy future they both thought they gave up back in high school.
One
IT WAS one of those weirdly warm days that pop up in the middle of winter, not that San Luis Obispo’s weather was frightening in general, but usually Steven Browning would be wearing at least a hoodie while he was working outside. Today he was wearing a beat-up Dr Pepper T-shirt that his mom said was too thin to make rags out of. Sure, there were a couple of holes in it here and there, and the armpit had given out when he’d tossed a final bag of trash into the back of his truck earlier, but he still loved it. That shirt had been around the world with him.
Slumping against the tailgate for a moment, he took a few heavy breaths, with his elbows resting on the edge, and ran his fingers through his sandy-blond hair. The bed was filled with boxes from every place his mom could order stuff online, mostly Amazon, but a few Walmart and Home Shopping boxes broke up the matching set. The only consistent thing was her name on the address labels, Ava Browning.
“We should’ve blacked out the address on the boxes,” he told his younger brother, who was trying to fit his feet between the last few boxes to Tetris them together in the bed of the truck.
“I think we’ll be safe from ninjas breaking in,” Peter answered over his shoulder. His green eyes were puffy from the crying jag they’d shared in the middle of their mother’s walk-in closet when they’d taken the last of her clothes from the hangers. “Besides, everyone at the theater already knows where I live.”
It was ten days until Christmas and less than one since their mother died in the house they shared. Steven had known something was wrong, but she never told him how bad it was. She went to doctor’s appointments often, but he just assumed it was because she was “aging gracefully” as she used to put it. She’d driven herself, and his stomach had been churning with guilt because he hadn’t gone with her. But she didn’t seem to need him for that. He was the Sherpa. He carried the groceries. He fixed things around the house, and he’d helped her pick out a nice little SUV so he wouldn’t need to play mechanic on his days off.
Cancer was sneaky, though. Sometimes it took years and didn’t win. Other times it would run and hide, only to return for a repeat performance that might never actually kill you. Or it could be like it’d been with Mom. A trip to the ER, a chest X-ray, and suddenly the person you needed the most in the world and needed you in return was on hospice. He’d had no warning. No preparation other than her insisting his name be on her bank accounts and the house after his dad had died half a dozen years ago in a car accident.
She’d made them promise not to give up, not to fall apart, and to accept that it was her time. But it still hurt. Pete had come up as soon as his finals were over from Cal Poly’s Pomona campus pretty much as he’d planned to for Christmas break. They were alone now. Their aunt, who’d helped them sort through her belongings while watching over her at the end, had gone home to her family states away, and Steve was the only one still living in SLO.
They’d had invites from cousins, aunts, and uncles to spend the holidays with them, but he didn’t think they’d be able to handle the pressure of being surrounded by a suffocating blanket of people worrying about them and asking questions. It was easier to be alone. At least they thought it’d be. There was also flat out too much to do.
With the clothes loaded into the bed, they headed back into the house, and Steve stopped to check on the dog’s water bowl along the way. The old girl looked up at him; her muzzle was nearly white, and he let out a ragged sigh that she’d outlived both his parents. Her stubby tail wagged for him, and her butt wiggled when he gave her a treat. “No one to tell me not to spoil you anymore, Ophie. Just don’t die while I’m out, okay? I could not fucking handle that.”
“I’d know!” Pete chimed in from the refrigerator where he grabbed a bottle of water and cracked it open. “We do not need a fat Min Pin, and I’m going to start walking her like Dad used to now that I’m transferring schools.”
“You don’t need to do that. You know that, right?” Steve said, picking at a serious dust bunny that was clinging to his shirt. “I’m twenty-five. I know how to live alone. I’ve done it before.”
“I know, but I feel like I want to be home. It’s my last year or year and a half of college. I can do it here as easily as I can in Los Angeles.”
“But you’re skipping spring semester.”
“Dude, our mom died. I can’t deal with school and that—not now. I’m staying up here. Going to Cal Poly SLO in the fall, so stop trying to talk me out of it. It’s not as if you’re planning major parties and orgies in the empty house, right?”
“Well, just the one I had planned for New Year’s Eve. You’re going out that night. I hope.”
“That could be arranged, and I’ve got time to set up security cameras to capture all your gay glory in scratchy black and white.”
“Good to know.” Steve chuckled and nodded. “If there are any good shots, we can put them in a scrapbook.”
“All we have to do, big brother,” Pete said as he wrapped his arms around Steve to share a warm hug, “is remember the two big rules.”
“You can be strong without being cruel, and you can be sad without being broken.” His voice caught in his throat, and he felt a fresh batch of hot tears flow. “And Han shot first.”
“Damn right. I’ll work on cleaning the room while you drop off the stuff. Still think we should’ve had a coin toss or something for the master.”
“He who pays the property tax gets the master, little brother. The rest will be teamwork.”
Steve washed his face in the freshly scrubbed master bath and wrinkled his nose at the beard that was growing in, making him look like his dad. Usually he shaved down to a manly stubble, even though beards were in style these days, but he’d been too busy to bother. It was getting a little wild, though, and if he didn’t trim it in a day or two, he’d really look like the old man. He peeled off the Dr Pepper shirt and tossed it into the bathtub that was being used as a really big hamper. Once he moved his stuff into the suite, he’d sort things out.
After putting on a clean T-shirt, black with AC/DC’s logo emblazoned on it, and a fresh pair of jeans, Steve grabbed his phone, keys, and the large box of costume jewelry their mom had collected over the years. Their dad called her his magpie, and it fit.
“You keep busy, sweetheart,” Steve told Ophie on his way to the door. Of course busy for a fourteen-year-old Min Pin meant napping in a sunbeam for hours on end, which wasn’t a whole lot different than how she’d spent her days since his dad died. He’d walked all over town with the little dog, but Steve was too busy with his job to give her the time. And Mom had been more into workout videos than five-mile walks with a dog with short legs. For Ophelia’s sake, at the very least, it was great Pete was moving home, and Steve knew it’d be better for him too.
He thumbed the Bluetooth on his phone and turned up the volume on the truck’s stereo until the hard rock music he loved rattled the glass. He didn’t leave it loud for long. He’d outgrown the need to annoy the neighbors years ago, and he pretty much hated it when he could hear the music from someone else’s car louder than what he was listening to.
Leaving the house on his own was normal. Doing it so late in the day and it not being the weekend was the weird part. His job as a contractor started early in the morning, although the winter holidays weren’t exactly filled with people remodeling their kitchens and bathrooms. Business would pick up in the spring, which was okay since he wasn’t sure he could focus on the job with all he had to do and the grief he was trying to control.
Their house was nice, and thanks to his skills with a hammer and a power saw, it had the best remodel in the cul-de-sac. He’d been taking care of the house since he’d been old enough to get a driver’s permit. It’d been how he paid for his first truck, and he’d been lucky to learn from his dad, which made it super easy for him to get his license when he entered the family business.
He was starting to think his family was cursed or something, but he hadn’t found any ancient burial grounds last time he’d been working on the plumbing under the master bath. Although he did think about burning some sage to cleanse the house. He did live in California after all, and it never hurt to channel your inner hippie, yuppy, hipster… or whatever the current flavor was. As long as kale wasn’t involved, he’d be okay with just about anything.
Two
“WHAT ARE you going to do about Steve?” Camille Baxter asked as she twisted the keys in the backstage door access to the repertory theater. The lock was old and sticky, although not as old as the heavy door she was trying to open. Bright green paint was peeling off it in chunks, and her brother, Troy, made a mental note to repaint the door come summer and not the same color as the dumpsters that lined the rear parking and alley behind the building.
Stepping closer and leaning past her, Troy took hold of the key and the knob, jiggled it to find the sweet spot, and let out a heavy sigh when the lock finally released. He yanked on the knob with both hands to pull it open and sneezed. “Nice shampoo.”
“Could be my shampoo. Could be the dust. This place needs a major cleaning and work.”
“Might be mold, to be honest.” He sneezed again as they walked inside, catching a few of the light switches against the back wall to keep them from tripping on anything one of the stagehands or actors might’ve left where it didn’t belong. The crew was a lot of things, but organized wasn’t one of them, not that he could judge. He was pretty bad about putting things away too. It was something his parents hoped the Army would train out of him, but so far it didn’t seem to have made a difference. As long as it wasn’t on the floor for long seemed good enough for Troy. “If the grant comes through, we can get a contractor in here who knows what he’s doing. Unlike our ever-oh-so-helpful set designers.”
“That’s the idea.” Camille followed Troy as he wove his way through the warren toward the auditorium, avoiding the stage itself. It was covered in planks of plywood, two-by-fours, and power tools waiting for the volunteers to arrive. Rehearsals would take place in the lobby until the sets were ready. It was not a good setup, but the city frowned on them doing construction in the parking area.
“Snark? It’s too early for snark. I haven’t had enough coffee.”
“We do what we can. Don’t forget I’m the only person who gets paid to work here.”
“Trust me. I’d never forget that. Thank God for my savings and the GI Bill.” He held one of the wide lobby doors open for her and followed her in. Bright sunlight cut through the gaps in the old curtains, and dust motes danced through the air, giving it a golden pixie dust look. There was a huge Christmas tree on the corner festooned with ornaments representing year-round holidays. Troy thought it was the best way not to offend anyone, so there were hearts for Valentine’s Day, flags for the Fourth of July, and pumpkins for Halloween plus some weird stuff he had no idea about.
“Yep, only half a dozen more years, and you can be an engineer!” she said with a Scottish accent that went well with her curly dyed-red hair. “The engines won’t take it, Captain!”
“They’ll take it.” Troy left Camille to gather the morning mail from where it’d been shoved through a slot along the side of the door and made his way behind the snack counter. It was early in the day, and he wasn’t limping too much, but that’d change as the day went on. “Let’s see if the garbage got taken out last night. The place smells like old popcorn.”
“It’s a theater. That’s part of its charm.”
“Not when it’s mixed with mold and Christmas tree.”
“If we get the grant, I want to hire a couple of kids to help out too. It’d be nice if it wasn’t just the two of us, which is a vast improvement to when it was just me. But still….”
“It’s a good idea. We might be able to rent out the stage for other events too besides your productions. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. As long as you don’t make a profit, you should be fine.”
“Somehow I do not think that’ll be a problem.” She flipped through the mail, a frown creasing her face as she muttered. “Bill, bill, bill, menu for a new Chinese place. One out of four is something we might want. It’s a good day, Troy. And… shit.”
“Shit? Shit that’s not for the bills?” he asked as he shoved the empty trash can where it belonged and grabbed a bottle of window cleaner and old newspaper to work on the snack case. It was an old trick. Nothing cleaned glass like newspaper.
“No, it’s for the card I sent Steve and Peter. I forgot to put a stamp on it.” She looked like she was about to cry, quivering lip and all. “I feel like such scum. I didn’t call because it felt weird, and I didn’t feel right to only send a card.”
“I thought about going to the house, but….” He couldn’t find the words. Steve Browning had been his best friend. They’d been stuck in class after class together most of their lives because their names were close together in the alphabet. It started in elementary school and on through high school. They were nerds together. Jocks together.
They’d shared their first kiss, had a serious make-out session in the locker room after the rest of the football team had gone home. Neither one of them cared if they got caught. They were fearless. It didn’t hurt they were both big guys, and most of the rest of the team didn’t care what they did in their free time as long as they kept up the defense. They’d lost their virginity with each other too, but that wasn’t on the school grounds.
Everything was great until the spring break when Steve’s dad got killed. Steve had nearly dropped out of school, missing day after day to take care of his mom. No one blamed him, but Troy didn’t know what to do. He tried to be there, but Steve was too worried about his mom to let himself feel anything—at least that’s how it looked to Troy.
“I think we should go back to just being friends” was the single most horrible sentence Troy’d ever heard. They tried through the end of the school year, but by the time summer came around, Troy got tired of trying to pull Steve back into the light of day, and he had his own future to worry about. A future that included going into the Army to help pay for college, or if he ended up liking it, he might have stuck it out for a few years and made a career out of it. But then he’d gotten hurt. It wasn’t too bad, most of the time, but it’d been enough to get a discharge and shipped home to SLO.
“I’ve been nagging at you to visit,” Camille pointed out, making him wince.
He’d been back for six months, and he felt like a complete jackass for not going to see Steve or his mom the entire time. The guilt over that was tripled now that Steve’s mom had passed on. There didn’t seem to be any way to fix what one death had broken. “I am aware, Cam. I am an asshole, but then so is Steve. I’m not the only one who stopped being friends.”
“I know. It just sucks. I had such a crush on him.
”
“I remember. You had little hearts all over your notebooks with your initials.”
“Yeppers, and then you ruined that for me, didn’t you?”
She wasn’t angry—not anymore—but she’d been livid when she found out who was kissing the boy of her dreams. Troy arched his eyebrows toward his hairline. “You had your revenge. I can’t believe you put peanut butter on my favorite clothes and locked the dog in my room!”
“We’re lucky she didn’t die! Your clothes were filthy.”
“I was a teenager!” Troy aimed the spray bottle in her direction after twisting it to stream. “I was in the Army, sister. I have been trained to kill.”
“Oh, right. Let me go to the stage. There might be a barn door on it you that you can’t hit.”
“Am I interrupting something?” asked a deep voice from the auditorium door.
And there he was, the object of the Baxter twins’ affections. Troy wondered if Camille admired the way Steve’s jeans fit as much as he still did. “Nope, same shit, different day,” they said at the same time.
Three
ON HIS way to the theater, Steve stopped at the local veterans’ thrift shop and left them with boxes of books, small kitchen appliances, DVDs, and a few knickknacks that they could sell to support their cause. It was your pretty standard thrift shop: cluttered, smelling slightly of dust, and it reminded him a lot of the house, if he was being honest. His mom was a packrat, which happened when you didn’t move for a long time, and while the house wasn’t the first one they’d lived in in San Luis Obispo, they’d been there since he was heading for junior high. That was a long time for stuff to end up in the attic and in all the closets. Hopefully they could make some money on it.
With half the bed of the truck cleared out, Steve finally made his way down the alley to the parking lot behind the theater. He knew he was putting it off. It was painfully obvious when he stopped at Starbucks along the way to grab a grande mocha and a slice of banana bread. If he was asked, he would say he’d pissed around to give Pete more time to clean the house, but the truth was he was a little bit afraid of what he would do if Troy was there with Camille.