A Boy's Christmas Wish

by Patricia Johns

  “I hoped that having me at home would help Dad cheer up,” Beth went on. “And a grandbaby—that would shake things up! But, it isn’t the same, is it?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Dan said. “Even if it isn’t Linda, he’ll find someone again.”

  Beth wiped her fingers on the napkin, then gave Dan a sad smile.

  “He will, and I’ll have to move out to give him that space. I’ll need the space, too, but it’ll be nice to have him close by, at least.”

  Dan glanced at his watch.

  “I don’t have too much time,” he admitted. “I’ve got to shop for Luke’s Christmas gift.”

  “What will you get him?” Beth asked, tidying the table.

  “I don’t know,” Dan said. “He’s at an awkward age. He’s still a kid, but trucks don’t cut it anymore.”

  All Luke had asked for Christmas this year was to have his mom back in some form, and that was too big a Christmas wish. If only they could go back to the years of shining eyes and dreams of monster trucks. At least that was doable. But if Luke was starting to wish for a mom, maybe it was time for Dan to start looking at what he needed in a relationship, too. Beth might be hard to get over, but he’d never manage it if he didn’t at least try.

  “You’ll figure him out,” Beth said, rising to her feet. “You’re his dad. It’s what you do.”

  “Yeah, it’s what I do.” He nodded, and Beth took the wrappers to the garbage can by the door. She hitched her purse up onto her shoulder and raised her hand.

  “Thank you for lunch, Danny. I’ll let you get back to shopping.”

  He noticed her bags beside the chair.

  “Beth, wait—” He scooped them up and met her at the door.

  “Thanks.” Her cheeks colored, and her hand lingered in his as she took the bags. Her perfume mingled with the bakery scents, and he wished with all his heart that this could be easier.

  “Merry Christmas, Beth,” he said softly.

  And she smiled as she headed back out onto the sidewalk. Danny stood there for a moment, watching her walk away.

  All Luke wanted for Christmas was his mother, and all Dan seemed to want was the beautiful blonde who smiled up into his eyes and called him “Danny.” He and Luke would both be out of luck. Lana wasn’t coming back, and that was for the best. She couldn’t be the mother that Luke imagined, or even needed. And Beth couldn’t be that mother, either.

  Ever since Beth had come back to town, a wish had started to grow in Dan’s heart, too—a mom for Luke who could finally fill that aching gap in his own heart, too. He and his son had the same longing for a woman who could be their everything. But Christmas wishes didn’t always come true.

  That was why there was New Year’s right after Christmas—to wash away that disappointment and to give everyone a fresh start. Every New Year’s Eve, Dan made the same resolution: to be a better dad. It was the only thing he seemed to be able to control.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHRISTMAS EVE WAS two days away, and Beth couldn’t believe how quickly the time was passing. She and her father had finished their breakfast, and they were sitting in the living room looking at the Christmas tree. So many ornaments from when Mom was alive...and a few still on the tree that Linda had chosen. Beth might not have appreciated her stepmother as a teen and young adult, but she had a new sympathy for her difficult position now. Rick sat on the couch, flicking through the TV channels.

  “Pick a channel, dear. You’ll give me a stroke,” Granny said quietly. She’d been lucid all morning.

  “Channel surfing doesn’t bring on strokes, Mom,” Rick said with a wry smile.

  “And wouldn’t you feel awful if you were wrong.” Granny shot him an arch look, and Beth chuckled.

  “It’s a seizure, Granny,” Beth said. “Strobe lights can cause them, that kind of thing.”

  “Even worse,” Granny retorted.

  Rick rolled his eyes at Beth. “You’re no help.”

  “Not trying to be,” Beth replied with exaggerated sweetness. “I want answers. What’s going on with you and Linda?”

  “Nothing is going on.” Her father sighed. “We had lunch. We talked. Not that it’s your business, Beth. We were married for twenty years, and that takes some time to unravel.”

  Not her business. She knew that, but she worried about her father all the same.

  “Do you miss her?” Beth asked.

  Her father gave her a long look, then asked, “Do you miss Dan?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I can admit that. I do.”

  “And do you want to talk about that?” her father asked pointedly.

  “No.” She gave him a small smile. “Not really.”

  He pointed at her with one finger. “Bingo, kiddo.”

  Fine. Her dad had always kept his relationship with Linda private, and maybe that was proper. What place did a young teen have in her father’s marriage anyway? He’d been the parent, and she’d been the child. That was how her father had always run their home. But she could see that living here as an adult with her father wouldn’t be easy.

  “Dad, I’m going to find my own place soon. I mean, I’ll probably wait until the baby arrives to make the move easier, but I think we could both use a bit more privacy.”

  “What?” Her father frowned. “No! You’re going to need a whole lot more support than you think.”

  The support she was missing was that of a husband, not her father’s. She knew she could count on her dad, but if she was going to move forward, she’d need to be on her own two feet.

  “Come on, Dad. I’m in your way, and you know it.”

  “This is your home, Beth.” Her father shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. “That doesn’t change. It never did! This has always been your home.”

  Rick stalked out of the room, and Beth leaned her head back against the couch. Her home...yes, it had been, but it had been a long time since she’d felt at peace here.

  “What’s going on with Linda?” she asked her grandmother.

  “I have no idea,” Granny said. “But he’s right, you know.”

  “About me minding my own business?” Beth asked with a low laugh.

  “About this being your home,” Granny replied. “You might have been angry as a teenager, but you knew where you belonged.”

  She had known where she belonged, but she’d also felt like she had to fight to keep her place. It had been a complicated time, and maybe that had been partly because of her age, and partly because she and Linda had never bonded...

  Beth pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to take a walk, Granny.”

  “All right, dear. Be careful on that ice.” Granny looked up with a smile. “If you see Grandpa, ask him what he wants for lunch.”

  Beth froze. The boundary line between lucidity and confusion tended to blur, and Beth never quite saw it coming. Her heart squeezed in sadness. It always felt like a goodbye somehow when Granny slipped back into the past.

  “Actually, he left something for you—hold on.” Beth went upstairs to where she’d put the old note that Danny had found in the desk at the store. She came back down with it and passed it to her grandmother.

  “A shopping list?” she asked with a short laugh, but then she saw the note at the bottom. “Oh, that charmer.” A smile spread over Granny’s face. “Thank you, dear.”

  Beth had been saving the note for a time like this, and it seemed to bring sincere happiness to her grandmother.

  But Beth needed to get out of the house. She needed some space to think and some air to breathe. Coming home had seemed like the solution when she was in Edmonton, trying to figure out how to raise a baby alone, but now that she was back, she could see that it wouldn’t be quite so simple. She was still the strong-willed daughter, and her fath
er was still...her father. They’d be adding an infant to the mix—that was all. She needed to think, and a walk would do her some good.

  “So you stay here and wait, okay, Granny?” Beth said. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

  “Of course, dear,” Granny said, as if the very thought of anything else were absurd. Beth chuckled and shook her head. She headed for the back door where her coat and boots were and put them on. When her daughter arrived, she knew she’d need help, but the two of them would also need their own space. If Beth was going to be a caregiver to her grandmother, she’d also need a home to retreat to, a place to rest and recharge. Boundaries were important, but sorting this out wasn’t going to be easy.

  As Beth walked, she wondered just how much had actually changed. Danny was still in town, and she could have dealt with that easily enough if their attraction had stayed in the past. Memories could be difficult, but as Danny pointed out, she’d be making new memories with her daughter. Except what they seemed to be feeling for each other wasn’t just left over from the past...that kiss had nothing to do with her old feelings for her ex-fiancé and everything to do with the stoic, sweet guy she’d been spending so much time with lately. That disturbed her. Was she developing feelings for Danny again?

  Beth paused at the corner and let out a pent-up breath. The crisp air was helping to clear her head, and her irritation started to dissipate. She looked down the street at the lampposts that were hung with evergreen wreaths, enjoying the festive scene. A little boy in a blue jacket stood in front of a shop window. She recognized the jacket but couldn’t quite couldn’t make out his face. Was that Luke?

  It couldn’t hurt to get a closer look. Whatever child was standing alone in the street on a weekday morning was supposed to be in school anyway. She started down the sidewalk, and the boy turned in her direction, then he froze.

  “Luke!” Beth picked up her pace. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Luke waited for her to catch up, and looked up at her with a benign smile. “Hi, Beth.”

  “Hi.” She looked around. “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  Luke looked down. “Yeah.”

  “So right about now, you’ve got a teacher frantically looking for you,” she said. “And they’ll call your dad, and he’ll be worried sick.”

  “Oh...” Luke suddenly looked less confident.

  “Luke, why are you here?” Beth asked. “What’s going on?”

  Luke sighed. “I just... I wanted to go home.”

  She could hear the lie in his tone. Kids weren’t as good at hiding their motives as they liked to think.

  “But you’re not at home,” she pointed out.

  “I was on my way.”

  “Great. I’ll walk with you,” she said. “Hold on. I’m going to call your dad so he won’t call the police or something. This is very serious, Luke. You can’t just leave the school grounds!”

  Beth pulled out her cell phone and dialed Danny’s number. It rang three times before he picked up.

  “Beth? That you?” Danny asked. He sounded out of breath.

  “That’s me,” she replied. “I’ve run into Luke downtown. He said he wanted to go home, so I said I’d bring him back to you.”

  “Oh, thank God!” he gasped. “I just got a call from the school. What the hell was he—”

  “I have no idea,” she said, interrupting whatever explosion was coming. “Where are you right now?”

  “At the store.”

  “Good. I’ll bring him there. Give us about ten minutes.”

  “Okay... Thanks, Beth.”

  As she hung up, she arched an eyebrow at Luke. “See what I mean? This was a whole situation, kiddo.”

  Luke didn’t answer, but he looked mildly stunned. Apparently, eight-year-olds didn’t appreciate how much mayhem was caused by a missing student at an elementary school.

  “Come on,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “Let’s get going.”

  They turned down a side street, and Beth reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Am I in trouble?” Luke asked miserably.

  “Probably,” she replied with a low laugh. “Oh, Luke. Only because your dad loves you and was worried. What happened?”

  “I wanted to get something special,” Luke said quietly. “For my mom. And I didn’t think Dad would bring me to shop for it.”

  “Oh...” Beth sighed. “You really miss her, don’t you?”

  Luke was silent, his boots clunking along the sidewalk next to her.

  “Do you remember her?” she asked.

  “I don’t have to remember her. I found her.”

  Beth darted a look in the boy’s direction. “What do you mean?”

  “Online. I think I found her.”

  “Whose computer did you use?”

  “My friend’s cell phone.”

  “Have you—” She swallowed. “Have you talked to her?”

  “No, but I saw her name—Lana Gibbons. And she lives in Vancouver. And I saw her face, and I think it’s her.”

  Beth’s heart sank. This had just gotten a whole lot more complicated. Did Danny have any idea that Luke had been searching for his mother this earnestly? She couldn’t blame Luke for looking. She’d have done the same thing as a kid, but he didn’t know the whole story. Danny was still trying to protect his son from the unvarnished truth.

  The corner store wasn’t far away now, and Luke’s steps slowed.

  “I wanted to buy her something special so that when I tell her I’m her kid, she’ll know I missed her.” Tears welled in Luke’s eyes, and he looked up at Beth pleadingly, as if her understanding mattered.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Beth said softly, stopping and bending down to his level. What could she tell him? “You have nothing to prove. You hear me? You don’t have to prove anything!”

  Luke didn’t answer, and when Beth looked up again, she saw Danny standing in the door of the shop. His expression was grim, and her heart went out to him.

  “Let’s go, Luke,” she said with a sigh.

  It had been the same for her—her mom had been irreplaceable. The stepfamily relationship could be a tough one to navigate, and Beth was convinced that it took more than a big heart and good intentions—it also took a lot of flexibility. There wasn’t just a marriage. It wasn’t just about the couple. Beth knew how complicated those relationships could be, especially when they went wrong.

  More importantly, Beth would have had to trust Danny to be the kind of man who could shoulder these challenges with her, and she didn’t. Five years ago, when he was a grown man of twenty-nine, he’d hidden crucial information because it wasn’t comfortable to talk about. That kind of evasiveness spoke volumes.

  Beth sighed. It didn’t matter. That was five years ago, and she was moving forward.

  * * *

  DAN WATCHED AS Beth and Luke walked up the street toward the shop. He’d gotten over the initial panic and then the rush of relief when he found out that Luke was safe. He’d called the school, told them what he knew and assured them that Luke would be back in class after lunch. But first, he needed to speak with his son.

  Dan crossed his arms, ignoring the bite of winter wind that swept around him as Luke clomped up the street toward him. Beth’s expression was stricken when she met his gaze, then she looked at Luke. Yeah, she knew something here, and Dan would get to the bottom of it.

  “Inside, son,” Dan barked, and Luke obediently picked up his pace. Dan stood back as Luke came inside, then he nodded to Beth. “You, too.”

  “Is that an order?” She shot him a wry smile. She had always hated it when he bossed her around, but this wasn’t an ordinary situation.

  “You know som
ething,” he retorted. “And I’m in no mood right now.”

  She sobered, and when she came into the shop, she shivered and stomped her boots on the mat. She glanced around the store—it had changed since she’d last been there. He’d painted, and he was assembling new shelves now. The remnants of the old corner store had been erased. Luke headed across the room, then sank into a chair.

  “What happened?” Dan asked Beth, keeping his tone low.

  “He said he was shopping for a gift for Lana.” Beth licked her lips.

  “Oh, great...” Dan heaved a sigh. It wasn’t going away, this preoccupation with his mother, was it?

  “There’s more,” Beth added quietly, and Dan’s gaze snapped back to her face.

  “What?” he asked warily.

  “He’s pretty sure he found her online.”

  “Where?” he demanded.

  Beth shrugged. “I have no idea. That’s all he said. He saw a picture of her and her name. Social media, I imagine. He’s serious about this, Danny.”

  Apparently so. Dan rubbed his hands over his face. “Okay. Thanks.” He sighed. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Beth nodded. “Of course.” She paused, then put a gloved hand on his arm. “Danny, he’s a good kid.”

  “I know that,” he snapped.

  “And he misses his mother.”

  “I know that, too!” He didn’t mean to snap at Beth. She hadn’t caused any of this, and he regretted his tone when he saw her expression.

  “Beth, I’m sorry,” he said, moderating his voice. “I’m upset. I was scared there. To get that kind of call from the school, especially with Luke’s interest in his mom lately, I thought—” He swallowed hard. He’d imagined the worst—Lana picking him up and driving off toward the mountains...