Patrick straightened, all business. “Right.”
Disappointment rose in Heidi’s throat, along with an edge of panic. What was an incident? “Wait!” She felt a moment of shock when her hand clasped around muscle—she hadn’t intended to reach out and stop him, but she hadn’t been able to help herself. “Will I see you again?”
Something sparked in his eyes. “I certainly hope so.”
She watched him go, wondering at the hollow in her stomach, the kind that couldn’t be cured by a cinnamon scone.
The lights kept flashing as the patrol car accelerated down the street, which made her uneasy. Last Christmas, Patrick had been shot. What if they had been called to another robbery? An incident. The grating sound of Janice on the phone in the background, chewing out desk clerks who had the audacity to work at hotels that had no vacancies, punctuated her thoughts. The whole café probably felt relieved when the woman finally found a friend on the Upper East Side who could give her a room for the night.
“They have power, naturally,” Janice said. “I never should have moved out to the boondocks.”
It was harder than Heidi would have imagined to see Wilson go, even when he started screaming at being bundled up again and realized he’d be leaving. “Mizzle-tooooooeed!” he shrieked through tears as Janice wheeled him out.
Later, it seemed that that was the moment when the natives had become restless. Or maybe it was just the moment when she became restless. Wilson dragged away shrieking, bankruptcy ahead, Patrick called away to heaven only knew what kind of crime ... all was not merry and bright. That others were suffering from flagging patience became clear when a fight exploded near the end of a viewing of In the Good Old Summertime.
“It’s not even a Christmas movie!” yelled a man who was lobbying for a switch to The Weather Channel.
“Yes it is,” said a woman, a relative newcomer near him. “It’s Christmas at the end of the movie, when Judy Garland discovers who Van Johnson really is. Just like The Shop Around the Corner.”
“Which we just saw!” A vein throbbed on the man’s forehead. “What’s the point in watching the exact same story twice in a row?”
“Well, what’s the point in watching the weather?” someone else said. “We know what the weather is—bad.”
“Look! ” Erica ran over to the door and pressed her face against the glass. “It’s snowing! Cool!”
Her enthusiasm wasn’t shared by the rest of the residents of the café.
“What is this?” grumbled the cranky guy. “They said it was supposed to warm up.”
“Really?” Heidi asked.
“Into the upper thirties!”
“It needs to be warmer than that to melt all this ice.”
The Judy Garland woman claimed that it all depended on the humidity. “Even above freezing, it might not be humid enough to melt ice.”
The first guy looked as though his head were going to start spinning. All Heidi’s efforts to soothe the world with soup, buttery baked goods, and hot beverages had gone down the toilet in a matter of minutes. “Are you an idiot?” he asked the woman.
“Wait a second,” Dinah said, leaping into the fray. “Don’t call people names, asshat!”
Clay tugged at her elbow. “Dinah ...”
“No,” she said. “If this guy is going to call people idiots, let him say it to a person who has a carafe of piping hot beverage aimed at his crotch.”
Heidi held her breath—it felt as if everyone in the café did—half expecting Dinah to make good on the threat. But instead of more insults, or a man screaming in agony as hot coffee made contact with his privates, the next sound she heard was a resonant, beautiful note from a violin. Everyone turned toward a heavyset man, one of the old-timers who’d been in the café since the night before. Closing his eyes, he began to play an achingly beautiful rendition of “Silent Night.”
The sound of a violin so close, so expertly played, brought goose bumps to Heidi’s flesh. Or maybe her reaction was due to the fact that music had halted the hostilities so abruptly. She scrambled to turn off the CD player and the television.
The next song he played was “We Three Kings.” Some people started singing along. When the impromptu concert and singalong continued for a third song, she began to relax again, and retreated to the kitchen, where she found Erica leaning against the fridge. Her eyes were glistening.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Erica asked in a low voice.
Heidi knew. Rue’s kitchen. Before Rue had died, Sassy Spinster Farm had taken in guests who wanted to experience living on a working farm. The house had always been full of music and movies and conversation. Sometimes bitter arguments had cartwheeled into laughter, or dancing.
She went and leaned against the fridge, too. “I love thinking about the summer I spent on the farm. Especially when things are rough here. I envy you having such a great place to call home. You’ve got roots.”
Erica swiped her eyes with her sleeve. “God, I’ve really screwed up.”
Heidi frowned. “Wasn’t your dad in a better mood today?”
“Yeah, he was—but I know he’ll never trust me again. And then, I called Aunt Laura and she wasn’t home, and she never called me back. I guess I really teed her off.”
“Of course you did.” Heidi nudged her with her shoulder. “Everything annoys Laura. Why should you be any different?”
Erica smiled grudgingly and sniffled. “She’s been better lately. She really has. Except for being sick—that’s made her sort of cranky.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I hope she’ll forgive me. I guess I haven’t shown much enthusiasm for Hortense—”
“Who? ”
“That’s what she calls the baby.”
“She would,” Heidi muttered. “Instead of a college fund, we should set up a therapy fund for that child.”
“But I really am glad for her,” Erica said. “I guess Hortense will seem a lot more interesting to me than Angelica. And Mom would have been so excited, don’t you think? Hortense would have been her niece. She’d want me to do something nice for her—or him, if Hortense turns out to be a he. I wish I’d learned to knit ...”
Heidi gave her a hug. “You can do better than knitting booties. When Hortense is bigger, you can give her rides on Milkshake. And when you’re sixteen and you get your license, you can take her to movies and stuff. It’ll give you a legit excuse to borrow your dad’s car.”
Erica grinned. “Or Laura’s truck.”
“Just think—it’s not that far away. Two years.”
“Two and a half,” Erica said. “I might even have all the money paid back by then.”
The word money pushed Heidi’s worry button—about money, about Patrick, about everything—but she tried not to show it. She gave Erica another squeeze.
Erica tilted her chin up. “I’m not sorry I came, though.”
“I’m not, either.”
“Really?”
Heidi shook her head.
“That’s good, because I started to think it might have been bad of me to barge in on you. Like, what if you’d made other plans, or—”
“Had a life?” Heidi laughed. “I don’t. Still ... it might be a good idea to call first next time.”
By the time they left the kitchen area to return to the others, the concert had ended. Heidi dimmed the lights, and everyone settled in for the last Christmas movie in the marathon, It’s a Wonderful Life, the movie Heidi had never been able to resist. But now as she watched the blips of angels speaking in heaven, previewing the lifetime of worries and woes that were about to squeeze poor Jimmy Stewart like an almond in a nutcracker, she started to fidget. She knew what was coming, and a story about missing money was too close to home for her to enjoy as entertainment. The movie had a happy ending, but her money was gone for good.
Almost as a reflex, she retreated to the kitchen to make . . . something. Anything to keep busy. The cupboards were emptying out, as was the fridge.
She peeked into the hydrator and saw a few lemons rolling around. When life gives you lemons, make lemon bars.
The activity was soothing, even if it didn’t put the brakes on her angst. What had happened to Patrick and Marcus? The looks on their faces before they’d gone worried her. So tense. What had they been headed for when they’d left—a robbery, a murder? Every life-and-death cop show or TV news scenario played through her head. Most of the time at the café, Patrick and Marcus seemed so laid back, it was easy to forget that they worked a dangerous job, day in, day out.
It made losing a cash box seem fairly trivial.
After she slid the lemon squares in the oven, Heidi went back, pulled out a chair next to Mrs. Lamberti’s cat, and watched Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dance into the swimming pool.
She must have nodded off, because the next thing she knew, Mrs. Lamberti was poking her shoulder. “Hon, your timer’s beeping.”
Heidi jumped up and pulled out the lemon squares just at the perfect moment, when the pastry was beginning to brown. She set them aside to cool. But by the time they had cooled enough to be dusted with powdered sugar, it would be two in the morning, and no longer Christmas. The world would be swinging into its post-Christmas sugar stupor and starting to contemplate the celery-and-treadmill days of January.
“Those look good,” a familiar voice behind her said.
She turned. It was Patrick.
She couldn’t help herself—she threw her arms around him. “You’re back!”
He laughed, but returned the hug. “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
“The way you guys ran out, and after what you said about last year ...”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, his low voice almost a caress, “I liked your greeting a lot.”
She crooked her head to look up at him. She should have stepped away, or he should have. But they remained just as they were, testing the closeness. “I guess the memorable stuff—shootings and mayhem—doesn’t happen every Christmas,” she said.
“Oh, I think I’ll remember this Christmas, too.” He looked into her eyes.
She felt as if the floor wobbled beneath her, and she had to move away from him. He means because of the storm, not because of me.
Doesn’t he?
Her sweater was damp. “Your coat’s wet,” she said.
“The snow’s turned to drizzle. It’s a real mess out there now.” As if it hadn’t been before.
He unzipped his coat to take it off, and Heidi felt glad that he intended to stay awhile. She took his hat and coat and turned to hang them on the coatrack in the storage closet.
He followed her and, inside the doorway, after she’d hung up his things, she turned and collided with him. He took her arm, steadying her. “I didn’t think you’d be worried, Heidi. I mean, I didn’t really think you ...”
She looked up. “Patrick, what you saw yesterday afternoon—Sal and I were just horsing around.”
His expression turned momentarily sheepish. “I sort of figured that out today, when he wasn’t here. I guess I acted like a nut.”
“No—”
“I was jealous, seeing him with you.” He leaned closer to her. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to do forever, you know.”
Even if she’d needed to, she didn’t have time to ask what that something was. He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her back. She leaned into him, her heart hammering, amazed at the way he could take his time pressing his lips to hers, tasting her slowly, savoring the moment. She felt the opposite—all hopped up inside—and had to hold herself back from slamming the door on the storage closet and letting him have his way with her against the all-purpose flour. Good thing that one of them had restraint.
“You taste like ginger,” he murmured, pulling her more tightly against him.
She moaned. “This is a bad time to start something, isn’t it?”
She’d meant that anyone could walk in on them, but he was thinking more long-term.
“No, it’s the best.” He kissed her temple and squeezed her in a tight embrace before she could step away. “It’ll make it easy for me to remember the date. Our first kiss—Christmas night, the year of the ice storm. Even when I’m old and gray and can’t remember my hair’s on top of my head, I’ll remember this.”
His words melted away the last of her reservations. Snowstorms might make strange bedfellows, but this didn’t feel like anything that would be remembered as madness once the last icicle thawed. For one thing, they weren’t hopping into bed, or onto the flour sacks. But even if they had, she couldn’t imagine second-guessing Patrick. Maybe her guy compass had found true north at last.
After a few more achingly sweet kisses, she stepped back and took his hand. He allowed himself to be tugged back to the others. Two chairs next to each other weren’t available, so they pulled a couple of blankets off the stack on one table and spread them next to the wall near the fireplace.
How long had it been since she’d slept? She was so tired, it was easy to lean against Patrick’s chest and close her eyes, just for a wink. Jimmy Stewart was running through Bedford Falls, horrified that in this new nightmare world, his wife had never married and had become a librarian. Heidi couldn’t help smiling, and then she thought again of Patrick kissing her and telling her she tasted like ginger.
“Hey,” she whispered drowsily.
He leaned close, nuzzling her temple. “What?”
“Who’s Ginger?”
The rumble of his laughter was the last thing she remembered before drifting off.
Chapter 11
Erica nibbled on a lemon bar and looked over the wreck that was the café. She had carried the dishes to the sink, but the tabletops were still littered with crumbs, old napkins, a stray glove, and other debris. She’d found a cell phone on a chair, a Hefty bag containing a Temper-pedic pillow, and someone’s gas bill, stamped and ready to mail, on the floor and covered with boot prints. Chairs faced every which way, some draped with the blankets Patrick and Marcus had brought.
The place needed tidying and sweeping, but she had promised not to wake Heidi, who was curled up on the floor next to the fireplace, sleeping soundly for probably the first time in two days. Marcello, on the other hand, quivered from restlessness even though Erica had taken him out.
It hadn’t been much of a walk, though—just up and down the sidewalk in front of the café. Erica hadn’t wanted to let the café door out of her sight, since she and Heidi were the only ones there and she didn’t have a key to lock it. Outside, the ice was melting, so that not only was there the constant drip of water coming off the trees, but occasionally there were chunks of ice dropping to the sidewalk or avalanching down from the eaves. At the corner of the block, when she looked down a larger street and spied skyscrapers in the distance, she’d become antsy to explore the city.
Maybe this feeling was where the expression “cabin fever” came from. If she had lived in pioneer days, they would have had to put her on Ritalin or something.
Eating sugary stuff probably wasn’t calming her impatience any. When she thought she saw Laura and Webb standing outside the café, peering around the street and then into the glass part of the door, she began to regret that last lemon bar she’d inhaled. Great—sugar hallucinations. Her brain was really bugging out.
Then, in a surreal moment, her hallucination rattled the door, opened it with a very real jangle of the bell, and in walked Webb followed by Laura, big as life.
At first, astonishment rooted Erica in place, but in the next moment, a rush of joy propelled her across the room. She threw herself into her aunt’s arms. “Laura!”
Laura wrapped her long arms around her in a tight hug. “Youngster!”
Marcello skittered over to the newcomers, letting out muttered ruffs as he sniffed Laura and Webb’s shoes.
Tears streaked down Erica’s cheeks. She hadn’t realized how much she missed Laura until the moment she buried her face in the old barn jacket her a
unt was wearing, which smelled of old leaves, soil, and maybe a little of Milkshake. Home.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, snuffling.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Laura said. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I’ve been a jackass as usual.”
“No you weren’t. You just weren’t feeling good.”
“You must have thought I didn’t want you around,” Laura continued, “or that you weren’t needed now that Hortense is on the way.”
“I felt lonely,” Erica admitted.
“I assumed you knew what you mean to me, Erica. That losing you would be like ...” Her voice cracked. “Well, it’s not going to happen, that’s all.”
Erica nodded, trying to pull herself together. It was just such a shock to see them here. She glanced over at Webb, looking so out of place here, but so welcome.
He winked at her. “How are you, E?”
Laura relinquished her hold and answered for her. “How do you think? All alone in this godforsaken place.” She inspected the café with narrowed eyes. “What kind of a joint is this?”
“It’s a café,” Erica explained. “She sells coffee, dessert, and sandwiches. Stuff like that.”
“And where is she? I might have known she’d get you up here to do all the work.”
Erica pointed to the sleeping form in the corner. Heidi flopped over, disturbed by the voices but not quite awake yet.
“Weird!” Laura tilted her head. “Does she always bed down on the restaurant floor?”
In a low tone, Erica explained what they’d been going through these past two days. This morning, when they’d found out that the power had come back on in the neighborhood, all the people had gathered their things and gone home. Heidi had slept through it, though. The last to leave had been Patrick. He’d said he would be back, and he’d instructed Erica to keep the restaurant sign flipped to CLOSED in the meantime and to let Heidi rest a little longer.
“Who is Patrick?” Webb asked her.
“He’s a cop.”
“The police here go in for mollycoddling, do they?” Laura grinned at them and then swaggered over to Heidi’s makeshift pallet. She toed Heidi’s foot. “Heidi-ho. Wake up!”
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