Do Not Open 'Til Christmas
Page 22
A long, ululating meow from the box let her know just how much Hemingway appreciated her efforts.
It wasn’t even full daylight when, at a little before seven, a minivan pulled into the lot. It felt like a ransom drop, or a drug deal.
A woman and a little girl—not a boy—got out of the minivan, met by Kate. It hadn’t warmed up since last night; she had to be literally freezing in her Pine ’n’ Dine uniform, since her coat didn’t cover her legs. By contrast, the little girl was barely visible under her hooded coat, snow boots, and what looked like ski pants. Mom had bundled her up well.
Chloe got out as the three of them approached the passenger side of her car, where the box waited. The mother, a pretty blond woman with a slightly frazzled expression, had an actual wire mesh cat carrier in hand. Transferring the cat could be tricky. Maybe they should just hand over the box. Except . . .
Chloe said, “Maybe you’d better take a look and make sure it’s the right cat?”
The girl’s gray eyes got bigger. The thought apparently hadn’t occurred to her. Chloe felt ashamed of her fleeting hope that they might have the wrong animal.
Hemingway rasped out a meow, a little less theatrically now that the car wasn’t moving, and the box shook.
“It’s him!” the girl exclaimed.
“Sophie,” her mother cautioned. “Let’s just be sure.”
Carefully, holding down the box flaps, Chloe used a key to slice through the packing tape. The flaps came up, and she seized Hemingway before he could make a break for it. His claws instantly planted themselves in the front of her coat as he dug in, trying to climb over her shoulder. Chloe crouched to the little girl’s level, and Sophie came forward to pet the cat.
“Careful, honey,” her mother said. “When kitties get scared sometimes they bite or scratch. Or try to run away.”
“Easy, buddy.” Chloe pried the cat’s claws out of the shoulder of her coat and lowered him so they could see his face. His hugely dilated pupils had replaced the irises almost completely.
“It’s Garfield.” Sophie’s voice was tremulous as she launched into a hug that included both Chloe and the cat. A lump swelled in Chloe’s throat.
“Garfield?” Chloe’s voice faltered. “Like the cartoon cat?”
“He was more of an orange color when he was a kitten,” the mother explained. “Thank you for taking care of him. Sophie’s been beside herself for days.”
For over a week, Chloe thought guiltily, as Kate politely refused the mother’s attempts to offer a reward. Meanwhile, Sophie’s shining eyes remained fixed on her pet.
Sophie wanted to hold Garfield, but they convinced her that wasn’t a good idea. With some difficulty, the little girl’s mother helped Chloe stuff him into the cat carrier. Inside his new wire mesh prison, the cat resumed his raspy song.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Chloe said thickly to No-Longer-Hemingway. “You’re going home.”
She knew the cat was where he belonged, and Sophie’s smile soothed her heart. But it still gave her a sharp pang to see him go.
After the cat’s owners drove away, Kate gave her a hug, which told Chloe she must be in really bad shape.
“Look at it this way,” Kate said over her shoulder. “He was shallow, disloyal. There are lots of other cats in the sea.”
Chloe laughed and sniffled. “I hope not. That’d be pretty bad for the cats.”
“Okay, how’s this: there’s a cat out there for you somewhere and you’ll know it when the right one comes along.”
“Good enough.” Chloe blinked hard, sniffed once more, and pulled back.
She was pretty sure these analogies were happenstance, that Kate didn’t know Chloe had a lot more on her mind and heart than just a cat. Then again . . .
“Thanks,” Chloe said. “Now you need to get to work and so do I.”
* * *
When she got to the office, the black Mustang wasn’t in the parking lot yet. Chloe took another box out of the trunk of her car and, in short order, took down the Christmas decorations on her desk. Yes, it was depressing. More than a little. And maybe she shouldn’t give up her decorations on someone else’s account. But everything she’d done after Bret kissed her the first time had only made things worse. Well, she was finished with making things worse.
She started the coffee. Heaven knew she needed it.
When Bret came in a few minutes later, she made sure she was hard at work at her computer. He hung his coat and walked by, pausing briefly at the sight of her stripped-down desk.
Chloe made the mistake of looking up. As Bret’s glance flicked from her desk to her face, his eyes barely showed recognition. It scraped her insides raw. She kept her hands on the keys and returned her eyes to the screen. And Bret went to his office.
She knew there was more underneath that stony gaze. A lot more. She’d felt it when he kissed her. But he was good at hiding it, and it still hurt.
* * *
Half an hour later, Bret stared at the piece that had just landed in his in-box. It was easily the most sentimental thing Chloe had ever written.
This morning, I gave my first Christmas present of the season. Or, to be honest, I gave something back.
And on it went, about the lost cat Chloe and her roommates had returned to a little girl and her mother. It talked about loving and letting go and what a pet could mean to a child. Unabashed schmaltz, and somehow it worked. It worked on Bret, at any rate.
Only Chloe would name a cat Hemingway.
Emphatically, it wasn’t news. It was a first-person column, not the kind of thing they usually ran in the Gazette, and Bret found it impossible to read it with any kind of objectivity. The piece was a slice of emotion laced with quirky humor, especially the part about the loud drive in the car to deliver the cat. And the payoff with the little girl’s reaction . . .
Okay, it got him. But it wasn’t news.
Chloe had obviously dashed off the piece this morning, and Bret had never seen her produce anything so quickly. It was clearly written from the heart; he doubted she was capable of writing any other way. But what to do with it?
Bret looked through his closed glass door at Chloe’s desk, bereft of its little tree. He’d done that. Which shouldn’t factor into his decision.
What would McCrea do? He might give her some fatherly advice about keeping emotion out of journalism.
Or he might run it.
It was Christmastime, after all. A time when sentiment could be pretty forgivable.
Bret set it aside until that afternoon, when it was time to work out the layout of tomorrow’s edition. At last he decided to run it in the editorial section, giving it a nice side column on page three.
Merry Christmas, Chloe Davenport.
He wished he had something more to give her.
Chapter 18
“Okay, guys.” Bret stood in his customary stance, arms folded, half leaning against the desk that he never came out to write at anymore. “It’s D-day. As in Day Before Christmas. Let’s do our best to make it a short one. We’ve got two papers to fill—tomorrow and the day after—so let’s take a look at what we’ve got.”
Chloe bit her lip. She’d been way off her stride the past few days, unable to sandbag any interviews to work ahead on. The silent tension between her and Bret was taking its toll, and so was the fatigue of the past several weeks.
While Bret turned his attention to Chuck, Chloe slid her notepad in front of her and hurriedly started jotting ideas for generic filler articles. The tradition of Boxing Day. The town’s program for curbside recycling of Christmas trees. Coptic Christmas, which was celebrated in January . . .
“Chloe.” Bret turned from Chuck, speaking in the tone of someone greeting a barely remembered junior high acquaintance.
She met his eyes, or tried to, because he was looking at an invisible person standing just beside her left ear.
“I had an e-mail from a family in Mount Douglas,” Bret said. “Their boy’s constructed a pre
tty impressive village of snowmen in their front yard. Can you go up, get a photo and an interview?”
“Mount Douglas?” Chloe stared at him. “Why’d they contact us?”
“Apparently their local paper had bigger fish to fry. But it sounds pretty unique.”
Mount Douglas was nearly an hour away, and definitely outside their usual coverage area. Which Bret knew full well. He had something in mind here.
She tried, “Wouldn’t a phone interview—”
“The boy’s eight. I have a feeling he’d be a lot easier to work with in person. Plus, they e-mailed a picture, but it’s pretty lousy. And you get great results on your phone camera.”
And you wouldn’t want to tie up a real photographer for the whole morning. You might need him for something important.
“The day before Christmas,” Chloe said. She became aware of Chuck shifting around at the desk in front of hers, making an effort to be very busy at . . . something.
“It’ll make a good front-page centerpiece for Christmas,” Bret said. “Plus, there’s snow in the forecast for tonight, so that snowman village won’t be around after today.”
In the time it would take her to get to Mount Douglas, do the interview, and come back, she could knock out . . . well, three news briefs, anyway. This assignment wasn’t a great use of manpower, but clearly, that wasn’t what it was about today.
Bret’s eyes actually met hers, and she saw a silent appeal there. “Once you get back here and write that one up, you can be done for the day.”
That was what this was about.
He was sending her out to cover the puff piece of the year, in another town, just to get her out of the office so he didn’t have to deal with their awkward situation.
There was nothing else to say. “Okay,” she said. “Forward me the e-mail.”
In front of her, she thought she heard Chuck exhale.
Chloe called the family and set up the interview. They couldn’t see her before eleven o’clock, but she left early and made a detour to her apartment to pick up her laptop. Maybe she could find a place to stop and write up the story before she drove back. That would get her out of the office that much quicker.
* * *
He was a heel.
After Chloe left, Bret sat in his office to bang out stories to fill the paper for the next two days. But it was hard to focus beyond his circling thoughts.
Of course Chloe saw through the pretext of the Mount Douglas story. Tomorrow was Christmas and he’d sent her out the door like an idiot. As if that would help matters.
It didn’t help. It made it worse. He hadn’t been trying to hurt her. Just push her away. Even if that amounted to the same thing.
When this was over, he decided, he was changing his middle name to I-shouldn’t-have-done-that.
When this was over.
What was this, and when was it over?
After his father died? A pretty bleak thing to put your life on hold for. After that, there’d be more guilt, more reasons to keep people at bay.
Sending Chloe out of the office the day before Christmas did nothing to alter the fact that he still had to deal with her on December twenty-sixth. And for the next month, until McCrea came back. The fact that being near her, and trying to act like nothing other than business had happened between them, felt like dining on a steady diet of ground glass.
His cell phone rang, and he answered without glancing at the caller ID. “This is Bret.”
“Bret?” His sister’s voice cut through the miles between here and Cincinnati. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
He gave a weary chuckle. “You got all that from ‘This is Bret’?”
“You don’t sound like yourself.”
Bret rested his head on the back of McCrea’s chair and closed his eyes. “Busy day. How are you, Rosalyn?”
“Good. Except for the part where I’m helping Cindy with her college applications.”
“College?” Bret did the math, as if Rosalyn wouldn’t know how old her daughter was. Ten going on eleven when his mother died, fourteen when he and his father had visited that summer . . . okay, it added up.
“You should see the essays she’s been doing. You’d be proud.”
“I already am.” Not that he could take any of the credit, but the girl was smart as a whip. Last time he saw her she’d been reading The Picture of Dorian Gray. During the summer. For fun. It had done his heart good.
“How’s Dad?” Rosalyn asked. “Is he doing any better?”
“Not really.” Bret pinched the bridge of his nose. “I kind of hoped this last hospital trip would be a wake-up call, but he keeps hitting the snooze button.”
“I’m sorry, Bret.” This was the unfortunate thing about Rosalyn’s annual Christmas call. Sooner or later, she got to the guilt. “You’ve taken on so much.”
“Rosalyn,” he said gently, “I understand.” Bret eyed the open door of his office, but Chuck was typing away at the far end of the room, out of earshot. “By the time Mom got sick, you were already settled on the other side of the country. You had your job, Dennis’s job, you were bringing up Cindy . . . it’s okay.”
“It’s not, though. It isn’t fair. You’re not responsible for the world turning on its axis. Dad . . . needs to take some personal responsibility.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose again. “Yeah, well, we’re not going to solve the world’s problems this morning. Do I still get a ‘Merry Christmas’ from you?”
“Sure, Bret. Merry Christmas.”
“Love you.”
After they hung up, Bret checked the forecast, called the art department, and asked them to work up a WHITE CHRISTMAS banner to have on standby for tomorrow’s front page. They already had the MERRY CHRISTMAS banner they used every year ready to go; they could make a quick switch if the snow arrived on schedule tonight.
Bret tapped the mouse alongside his keyboard. Knocked out a piece on the town’s annual New Year’s Eve square dance. And looked at the time. Ten after eleven.
Chloe would be in Mount Douglas by now, finding the right notes of personal interest in the piece of fluff he’d sent her off to write about. Granted, she’d make a great story out of it. They’d even gotten a few dozen e-mails in response to her piece about the cat. From a little column on page three of the editorial section.
Chloe had away of making the most of things. She’d even tried to do that for him, despite his repeated efforts to brush her away. She’d probably given up for good by this time, and maybe that was the best thing for her.
Or maybe, just maybe, he could change that.
* * *
Chloe left the Marsden family’s house shortly after noon. As she pulled out of the driveway, she took one more look at the snowman community, glittering like gems in the early afternoon sun. Big drifts of snow surrounded the little display; there was still plenty of raw material to spare. But at a population of fifteen, the snowman town included a policeman, with a navy cap and a toy sheriff’s star; a doctor, complete with white coat and stethoscope; and a baker, with apron and rolling pin. Oh, and a cat. With adorable pine-needle whiskers.
Chloe had rightly deduced that one eight-year-old couldn’t have built all this in less than a week, even on Christmas break. Under gentle questioning, he and his family had come clean with the details.
No, Joshua hadn’t worked alone, but the village had started out as his vision. When the neighbors saw him shoving snow around for hours, people of all ages had stepped in to help. To Chloe, the team effort made the story that much more magical. That, and the fact that so much work and ambition had gone into something that, by its very nature, couldn’t last.
Bret might have assigned her the story just to get her out of the office, but she looked forward to writing it.
She started down Mount Douglas’s main drag. Compared to Tall Pine, the place was a minor metropolis, but Main Street was still a two-lane road. And unlike Evergreen Lane, Main Street boasted chain restaurants with dr
ive-through windows. Chloe kept an eye out for a quick lunch, and her eyes lit on a Starbucks at the next corner.
Starbucks had Wi-Fi. Because Mount Douglas actually had decent cell phone and Internet reception.
Maybe she didn’t need to go back to the office at all.
She stopped in and wrote the story over a panini sandwich, then prepared to e-mail it to Bret. She bit her lip as she started to compose the note to accompany the story. She kept her tone as professional and neutral as possible.
* * *
Bret arrived at his father’s house with a large bag of groceries and a smaller bag of chicken from the Pine ’n’ Dine. Grilled, rather than their legendary, decadent fried chicken.
“Bret,” his father said when he answered the door. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know.” Arms full, Bret moved past David to the kitchen table, where he set down the bags. “I brought lunch.”
But first, he started unloading groceries. He started by setting up a bowl of fruit in the middle of the kitchen table. Not that he hadn’t tried this before.
His father joined him at the table. “Aren’t you awfully busy at the paper?”
“Extremely. But my brain wasn’t working too well, so I took a break. With a purpose.” He unloaded a fresh batch of produce into the refrigerator and closed the door. With the added space between himself and his father, he took a deep breath. “We need to talk.”
“You sound like your mother when you say that.” With a faint smile, David Radner sat down at the kitchen table. If he was trying to look frail, he was doing a pretty good job.
“Maybe she and I have a lot in common.” Like looking after you. Bret thought it, but he couldn’t say it. Confrontation wasn’t the idea here.
Plates. That was something to keep him busy moving. But knowing Sherry . . . “Are there plates in that bag?”
David peered inside. “Right here.” He fished the plates and napkins out of the white bag, and the tantalizing scent of chicken wafted out. It might not be fried, but it still smelled darned good.
“Okay,” Bret said. “So, what this is about . . .” A part of him wanted to remain standing, to retain the height advantage. And hold on to his nerve. But he sat, dishing chicken and rolls onto the sturdy paper plates. He sat back, brushed hair from his forehead. “Dad, I know you’ve heard this before. I love you and you mean a lot to me. And I don’t mind helping you out. But—you need to help me out. I can’t do it for you.”