Christmas Magic

by Andrea Edwards

  “Then you move on and look for the one who will love you.”

  Tiffany made a face. “But I don’t want to.”

  “You’ll have no choice. You can’t hold on to a man who doesn’t love you.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Exactly.”

  Casey stopped outside the diner. This was where Mike had taken her for her birthday and where he seemed to eat often. She had no idea where he was eating tonight, but did she want to take the chance?

  Definitely not. She retraced her steps and went into the Beijing Palace. Chinese would be great.

  The restaurant was dark and more crowded than she’d expected. She looked around but couldn’t see any empty tables. It was three days before Christmas. Why wasn’t everybody at Christmas parties?

  “Just one?” an elderly Asian man asked her. “You mind sharing?”

  “No, not all,” she said, and followed him around to a table in the back. It might even be a good idea. She could meet someone new and impress him with her high spirits. Word would have to get out that she was fine. Not pining away at all. That—

  The host had stopped at a table where a man was sitting. Mike.

  “Here you go,” the waiter was saying as he pulled out the chair for her and put a menu into her hands. “Specials are on the back. Enjoy.”

  She sat before her brain told her not to, but then she’d never been able to make any kind of scene. “I’ll go,” she told Mike. “I had no idea you were here.”

  “That’s silly,” he said. “There’s no reason why we can’t share a meal here. Besides, if you go now, it’ll give the whole town something to talk about.”

  “Something more, you mean.”

  He nodded and went back to studying his menu. She tried to do the same, but her eyes kept straying. He looked tired. New lines seemed to have formed around his eyes since last night. Part of her wanted to smooth them away, to take him in her arms and hold him until the tensions faded. But then part of her wanted to kick his butt down to the state line and back. Giving up Gus, indeed! She buried her face in the menu.

  But once they’d ordered, there were no menus to hide behind. They sipped at their tea, nibbled at their fried wontons and tried to avoid each other’s gaze. In one of her idle glances around the restaurant, Casey realized almost every eye on the place was on them. This was ridiculous. She might as well make use of the time.

  “I’ve been thinking about Gus,” she said, leaning forward slightly. “I would love to have him if you don’t want him anymore.”

  Annoyance flashed through Mike’s eyes. “I never said I didn’t want him.”

  “That wasn’t you the other night talking about finding a farm for him to live on?”

  “Well, yeah, but that wasn’t because I didn’t want him.”

  “No, it must have been because you wanted him so much.” She tried to keep her voice low, though anger was pushing the volume switch up. She took a deep breath as Mike looked away for a moment.

  “I thought he might be better off on a farm than cooped up in an apartment,” he whispered harshly. “Assuming I can find one that allows pets.”

  “It’s not impossible, you know.”

  “But it might not be the best for him.”

  “For him or for you?”

  Their dinner came then, brought over by a smiling waitress who was too perky for words. Casey wanted to throw something at her. No, she wanted to throw something at Mike. This was the Christmas season. People were supposed to be cheery and happy; he was the one spoiling it for everyone. She dug into her Mongolian beef.

  “Why are you trying to make me out as the villain?” he asked once the waitress left. “I’m only trying to do what’ll make Gus happy.”

  “He’d be happiest with you rather than dumped someplace.”

  “I wasn’t going to dump him,” he whispered back.

  “Sure, that’s what you say now, but when the time comes and he’s too much of a bother…” Damn. She was getting all teary. She blinked away the wetness, or tried to, as she bent over her food. She’d be damned if she was going to wipe her eyes for everyone to see.

  His hand was suddenly on hers. “Aw, Casey,” he said. “Don’t get so upset.”

  She jerked her hand away. “I’m not upset,” she said, her voice breaking slightly to prove her wrong. “But I suppose you don’t think this is anything to be upset about. Have one dog, dump one dog. No big deal.”

  “Why are you blowing this all out of proportion?” he hissed, angry again himself. “I’m trying to figure out what’s best for my dog, and you keep making this into some crime of the century.”

  “You don’t understand.” She pushed her plate away, unable to eat.

  “You’re right. I don’t. Not at all.”

  “And that’s the whole problem right there in a nutshell.” She looked around. “Where is our waitress? I need to go.”

  “I’ll take care of the bill,” he said. “Go on home.”

  She wanted to refuse, wanted to tell him to take his money and…But she couldn’t just sit here and cry. “Thank you,” she said stiffly, and got to her feet. “I’ll see you later.”

  He just nodded, and she hurried outside into the cold evening air. It was either stop crying or have little frozen tears on her cheeks. She stopped, but wasn’t ready to go home yet, so wandered toward the grocery store.

  Two more days, that was all she had here. Forty-eight hours. She could be civil for that long. She could refrain from crying that long. Then she’d go home and pretend that everything was absolutely, positively perfect. Simple.

  The grocery store looked warm and inviting, and deserted, so Casey went inside. She could use some more cat treats, and Gus should have some doggie treats. She roamed down the pet aisle, mulling over whether Gus would prefer beef- or liver-flavored cookies.

  “Cherry pie,” someone said next to her.

  Casey turned to find an elderly woman at her side. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Cherry pie,” she repeated. “Brings a man to his senses in nothing flat.” The woman stuck her hand out. “I’m Moira McLaren, honey. I live across the street from you two.”

  You two? Casey and Mike weren’t a twosome. They had been friends but had never been a twosome. “Nice to meet you,” she replied.

  “I’m talking about Mike, you know,” the old woman said. “He’s being such a ninny. Not sure if he deserves cherry pie, but it’d do the trick.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, ma’am.”

  “You do that, honey.” The elderly woman patted her arm. “You be sure and do that.”

  Casey waited until she saw Mrs. McLaren leave the store, then hurried up to the checkout counter.

  “Gus is getting a little treat, eh?” the woman there said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Randall,” she said to Dubber’s mother. “I didn’t recognize you at first.”

  “Not being surrounded by five kids tends to be a disguise,” she said with a laugh. “Sure this is all you want?”

  Casey just stared at her few items.

  “We got some new perfumes in aisle ten,” the other woman said with a wink. “Some real sexy ones.”

  “That’s all right,” Casey said.

  “Guaranteed to get Mike off his duff and toeing the line.”

  “Don’t want him off his duff too much,” Casey said, forcing a laugh. “I’m leaving in a few days.”

  The other woman frowned. “Yeah, but that’s just for the holidays, right? Aren’t you coming back?”

  “No reason to,” Casey said brightly. “My work here is just about done.”

  “Oh.”

  Casey nodded toward the few items on the counter. “So I’ll just take those.”

  “Sure, honey.”

  Mrs. Randall rang the items up and Casey paid her, escaping outside with relief. Maybe if she was really lucky, she could walk the entire four blocks to Mike’s house without meeting someone else with the solution to all her problems. Tr
ouble was, she wasn’t the one with the problem. Mike was.

  She made it three blocks before a voice rang out “Casey. Casey, honey.”

  Casey was tempted to ignore the voice and walk on, but that would have been rude. And she had this genetic defect that wouldn’t allow her to even hint at rudeness.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kinder. How are you?”

  But her neighbor just enveloped her in a bear hug. “You poor dear.” She released Casey and stepped back. “That’s such a lovely old home. It’s just made for a family. I don’t understand that man, not at all.”

  It was obvious that the whole town knew that Mike had turned down his aunt’s offer of the house. And the people probably knew to the penny how much money Mrs. Jamison had been going to give him to refurbish the place. It suddenly dawned on Casey that they probably also knew how many times she and Mike had made love. It definitely was time for her to leave.

  “Mike has a lot of things to think about,” Casey said. “He has to—”

  “Oh, baloney. His problem is that he’s just like Simon.”

  “Simon?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Kinder snapped. “You straighten out Simon and Mike’ll fall into place, too. You’ll see.”

  Good heavens. Not only did the women in the town want her to bring Mike to his senses, now Casey was supposed to straighten out a ghost while she was at it. She really needed to leave soon. If she stayed around here much longer she’d become as nutty as everyone else.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mike pitched the miniature basketball down the snowy driveway toward the garage. “Go ahead, boy. Go get it.”

  It was Gus’s favorite toy, but the big dog remained sitting on the drive, gazing contemplatively toward the ball.

  Mike squatted down and patted him on the head. “Getting a little tired of this game?”

  The dog’s tail wagged once.

  “Yeah, I guess anything can get tiresome if you do it long enough.” Suddenly unbidden images of Casey popped into Mike’s consciousness. Vivid color pictures of the two of them making love. “Well,” he murmured. “Almost everything.”

  They sat there, man and dog, staring at a stupid little brown ball, thinking about the rest of the day that stretched out before them.

  “So,” Mike said, his voice brimming with holiday cheer, full of chocolate-covered pickles and red-nosed reindeer. “What do you want to do now, big fella?”

  Gus didn’t say a word in reply. He didn’t even twitch an ear. Mike sighed. Every chance Gus got, he was off with Casey. On the rare occasions that Gus came around, he made Mike feel like a noncustodial divorced dad trying to come up with something new and exciting to keep his kid happy to see him. And failing.

  “Casey’s a mighty fine woman,” Mike said. “Maybe I ought to let you go live with her. She’s cheerful, likes animals and would never let you go hungry.”

  Gus thumped his tail once, then a second time.

  “I’m going to have to get me an apartment someplace, big fella. And it’s not going to be like here, where Dubber or his mother takes care of you when I’m gone. You’d be home all alone. A big dog like you would go out of his mind being cooped up in a little bitty place the whole damn day.” Mike glanced away for a moment. “Besides, Casey needs someone to look after her and I can’t think of anybody better for the job than you.”

  Gus lay down and dropped his head on his front paws.

  “And I’ll come visit.”

  Gus sighed. Yeah, Mike agreed. It might be the best solution, but it sure stank. But sometimes that was all you had to choose from—lousy and lousier.

  “Hey, Mike.”

  Mike started at the sound of Dubber’s voice and looked up. “Hey, Dubber.”

  The boy walked on over. “Sure is cold,” he said.

  “Sure is.”

  “Pop says that’s what happens to weather in the winter.”

  “Your father’s a smart man,” Mike said. “You’ll do good listening to him.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mike nodded and reflected on how nice it was to talk to another male. They’d acknowledged each other’s existence, brought up the subject of weather and covered it thoroughly and now they were relaxing in each other’s company.

  Had Dubber been a woman things wouldn’t be anywhere near that comfortable for either of them. Right about now the woman would have been asking him about his feelings toward cold and what the weather really meant to him. Asking him why he’d said a person should listen to his father. Had he not listened to his own father at some point in time and was now regretting it?

  “Whatcha doing?” Dubber asked.

  Mike stiffened up for a moment, but the boy’s question wasn’t all that bad. It was actually something any young fella might ask.

  “Gus and I are playing ball,” Mike replied.

  From the corner of his eye, Mike could see Dubber look toward the brown ball near the garage’s double doors, then back at him and his dog.

  “Uh, what kind of a ball game are you guys playing?”

  Nuts. Mike had been afraid that Dubber would want to go deeper. “We’re playing a mind game,” he replied. “You know what mind games are?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Dubber shifted from one foot to the other. “I guess.”

  “Gus and I are using mind waves. We’re each trying to make the ball roll toward ourself and away from the other.”

  Dubber looked from them to the ball again. Mike knew that he was being rotten, but he really didn’t want any company right now. He was hoping that poor Dubber would get confused enough to go home and leave him and Gus alone.

  “How come the ball’s not moving?” Dubber asked.

  “It’s because we’re evenly matched,” Mike said. “We’re at what you could call a standstill.”

  The boy grew silent again, just looking around the neighborhood. “Casey’s got her apartment fixed up real nice.”

  “I guess.” So much for hoping for solitude.

  Dubber sat down next to him and Gus and picked up a wad of snow, pounding it and shaping it into a ball. “Tiffany said you’re supposed to go after Casey. That when Cinderella ran away, the prince went after her.”

  That remark, coming out of left field the way it did, set Mike’s nerves on edge. But hell, none of this was the kid’s fault. By now every woman in town was probably talking about how bad Mike had treated Casey, and there was little he could do about that, except maybe give Dubber a few of the facts. Set him straight so that he wouldn’t go blundering through life with misconceptions about how things really were between men and women.

  “That’s a fairy tale, Dubber. If that happened in real life, the woman would be calling the police to say some nutcase was stalking her, and the prince would get put in jail or shot. In real life, you’ve got to let the woman run the show. Do things the way she wants to.” When Mike looked up, he thought the boy looked worried. “Anything wrong?”

  “I was gonna go over to Tiffany’s house after dinner.” He shrugged. “You know, just walk over without asking ahead of time, but maybe I’d better call first.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I don’t want to get shot.”

  With Tiffany, it was more likely to be a kick in the shins, but Mike said nothing. It was getting awfully cold. His knees were starting to stiffen up from squatting all this time, and Gus probably wanted to go in. Mike pushed himself to his feet, noting that Dubber was still looking worried. Life could seem pretty complex when you were eleven.

  “Love is actually pretty simple,” Mike said.

  “It is?”

  Mike couldn’t help smiling while he put an arm around Dubber’s shoulders. “Yeah, it is,” he said softly. “First of all, it isn’t just sex. That’s selfishly using someone else for your own pleasure. And it isn’t chasing the woman to the ends of the earth. That’s just wanting to own her like she was some kind of prize palomino mare.”

  “You just gave me a bunch of ain’ts, Mike. Aren’t there any is
’s?”

  Mike stared at the garage for a long moment before nodding. “Just one, Dubber. Just one single thing.” Mike paused a moment to swallow. “You have to be willing to do anything and everything to make the other person happy.”

  “Anything?”

  “And everything. No ifs, ands or buts. No qualifications. No holding anything back. Just total, one-hundred-percent giving.”

  They stood there and watched some flurries whip in from the lake. Watched some cardinals flit among the evergreens in back. Listened to Gus sigh. And Mike pondered on how making the other person happy was darn near impossible in real life.

  “Well, I gotta be gettin’ on home,” Dubber announced. “Mom wants me to clean my room.”

  “Best be gettin’ then.”

  As Dubber was about to turn toward home, he hesitated, then put his hand out.

  Mike looked at it a moment before reaching out himself. They silently shook, then Dubber turned and headed for home, leaving Mike to stare at the winter scene around him. Leaving him with a bitter realization.

  It wasn’t Darcy he loved at all, but Casey. And he loved her so much that he was making sure she was happy. She would never have a single night of worry, never have another day of fearing every time the phone rang. Myrna had sent her to Mike for protection and that’s just what he was doing—protecting her from all that hurt that would come from loving him. Funny how these things worked out.

  After sighing deeply and swallowing the lump in his throat, Mike took Gus to the garage and let him in. If Casey was watching, she’d be waiting at the top of the stairs; if she wasn’t, Gus would scratch at the door. In either case, his dog would be let into a comfortable room filled with warmth and love.

  Mike felt a sharp pinching in his eyes and rubbed at them. Damn. He couldn’t believe how bad his life was turning out. It was worse than a country song. There a woman got the man’s money and truck, but never his dog.

  “Just what I needed,” Casey muttered, and pushed the newspaper printout away. It was an article about Stella’s death. Casey had known she had died in early December, 1907, of influenza, but when she’d first learned that it hadn’t meant anything. But over the past few weeks these people had become real to her, and reading about her death hurt. Casey needed to be done with this project and gone from here.