Season of Wonder

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “It’s very nice,” Ruben said.

  “Here, kiddo. Let’s get your hat.” Dani helped Mia put on the matching purple-and-pink beanie a friend back in Boston had knitted for her.

  “I think we’re ready now,” Dani said after Silver joined them and Dani had the chance to put on her own coat.

  “Great.” He mustered a smile that again didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  What had happened?

  “I’ve got tonight’s gift in the truck already. It should be easy this time. The first few deliveries, the family won’t be expecting you. After about the third night, they’ll be on the lookout. Once, we delivered Secret Santa to a family that had six kids. They staked out the yard one night, trying to catch Mateo making the delivery. Fortunately he was a star on the track team and they could never see him.”

  “Silver is superfast, too,” Mia said. “You should see how fast she runs. I can’t even keep up with her. Neither can Mama.”

  “That’s good.” Ruben’s smile seemed a little more genuine.

  “You sure you’re ready?” he asked Silver.

  “As I’ll ever be,” she answered. To Dani’s relief, she actually did look excited—from the anonymous gift-giving or from the risk involved, Dani didn’t know but she supposed it didn’t really matter.

  “We’ll use my pickup tonight since it’s dark and unobtrusive,” Ruben said. “But after a few days, we may want to switch things up, just to keep them guessing, in case somebody notices a strange vehicle in the neighborhood.”

  “Good heavens,” Dani exclaimed. “I never realized this was more complicated than making a ransom drop.”

  “It can be, but the Morales family has had lots of experience, so you’re in good hands.”

  The shiver rippling down her spine was due to the falling snow as they walked outside, not because her imagination was suddenly busy going off in all kinds of inappropriate directions.

  After the previous unseasonably mild weekend, a storm system had moved in. Though it had only dropped a few inches, the snow was falling steadily, the kind of storm that could lay down a heavy blanket in only a few hours.

  “Look how pretty the snow is, Mama.” Mia lifted her face to the snow as she always did and held her tongue out to catch a snowflake.

  “You’re such a goon,” Silver said, though it was said with more affection than malice.

  “You are,” Mia retorted.

  “You both are. Get in Ruben’s truck and let’s do this,” Dani said.

  The girls climbed into the back row of his king cab again and Dani slid into the front seat. The vehicle smelled of him, that indefinable woodsy, sexy, masculine smell that did such ridiculous things to her insides and made her want to lean her head against the leather and inhale for a few hours.

  “I guess you know where the Larkin girls live,” Ruben said as he backed out of the driveway.

  “I’ve been there a few times,” Silver said.

  Something had happened between Silver and the girls. Until a few weeks ago, the twins, Emma and Ella, had been among Silver’s small circle of friends in town. Now whenever their names were mentioned, Silver behaved oddly, with a fine-edged tension Dani couldn’t quite understand.

  Ruben didn’t appear to notice anything unusual. “Great. I’ll drop you off at the end of their street and then pull down the road a little bit, where I’m out of view from their house. All you have to do is knock on the door or ring the doorbell—your choice—then hide around the side of their house or behind their shrubs until they answer. After they pick up the gift and go back inside, you can slip away and make your way around the corner to find us. You good with that?”

  “I think I can handle it,” she said drily.

  “I have no doubt at all. I really appreciate your help with this. I’m getting a little too old to be hiding in the bushes and, as you put it, skulking around the neighborhood. If they’re not home, by the way, just leave it.”

  His headlights illuminated the snow falling thickly as he drove to his destination. The street was quiet. Everyone with any sense was tucked in at home by the fire, safe from the increasing intensity of the weather.

  Through the windows, she could see Christmas trees glowing through the winter night and several houses had lights outlining their windows and following their rooflines.

  Inside, she could see shadows moving behind closed curtains and blinds. She wasn’t a Peeping Tom but she did like to see houses all closed up against the night. It made her wonder about the people who lived inside. What they cooked for dinner, what they were watching on television, if they were laughing or having a party or playing video games.

  When Silver was small, after Tommy went upstate the first time, Dani had left her with a babysitter in the evenings so she could go to night school after caring for her all day. She used to take the city bus to campus and back through a few quiet suburban neighborhoods.

  She remembered coming home from class completely exhausted but with just enough energy to gaze at those houses and those closed curtains and the filtered blue light from the television screens. As she imagined people in their safe little cocoons, she would vow that she and Tommy would give their little Silvia a better childhood than their tiny fifth-floor walk-up apartment where they shared a bathroom with the apartment next door.

  Through hard work and sacrifice and plenty of help along the way, she had come further than she’d ever dreamed. She was a veterinarian. They lived in a three-bedroom house on a beautiful mountain lake, something she couldn’t even have imagined back then, when she had never been quite sure if she would have enough to feed her little girl.

  Things weren’t perfect. She would be the first one to admit that. She could be abrupt with the girls, more impatient than she wanted to be. But they knew, above all else, that their mother loved them.

  She remembered hearing once that a person had two chances to be part of a good parent-child relationship, once when they were children and once when they were parents. She had missed out on the first chance for a big portion of her childhood after her mother died, but she was doing her very best to make sure the second phase was filled with joy.

  An important element of that was teaching her daughters to care about others, and participating in this little Christmas tradition with Ruben would help in that department.

  “Here we are.” He pulled to the side of the road in front of a vacant lot in a place where his pickup would not attract undue attention. From the console, he pulled out a small, neatly wrapped box and handed it to Silver in the back seat.

  “Cute. Did you wrap it yourself?” she asked, with only a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “My mom did this one, actually. She’s done most of the prep work of buying and wrapping the gifts, since she knows her sons probably won’t get to it.”

  Silver paused there, her glove on the door handle.

  She was nervous, Dani realized.

  “Nothing to worry about.” Ruben gave a reassuring smile, picking up on Silver’s apprehension, too. “Just go to the door, set the present down, ring the bell and run like he—, um, heck.”

  “Got it.” Silver pushed open the door and stepped out into the snow.

  Bundled in her dark coat, hat and the tightly wrapped scarf Dani had handed her before they left the house, Silver was all but unrecognizable, a blob of wool and down and GoreTex as she trudged to the corner and then out of sight.

  “She’s a good kid,” Ruben said, watching after her.

  His words warmed her far more than the heater of his pickup could. People couldn’t always see past Silver’s purple hair and attitude.

  “She is,” Dani murmured.

  “I wish I could go with her.” Mia’s sigh from the back seat was deep and heartfelt.

  Ruben turned around to smile at her. “Another night, okay? We’ll make it happen for
you.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes. Now, I’m going to turn off the engine and the lights so we don’t look so suspicious sitting here. Are you okay with that?” he asked Dani. “It’s only for a moment.”

  “We’ll be fine, won’t we, Mia?”

  “I’m not cold one bit,” she declared.

  Ruben turned the key, plunging them into darkness and quiet. Outside, the snow fluttered down onto the landscape.

  “This is fun,” Mia said.

  Ruben didn’t answer and Dani frowned as he gazed out the windshield at the snow that began to pile up quickly.

  “What’s wrong?” she murmured softly. Something about the intimacy of the cab here in the dark gave her the courage to ask him. She didn’t want anything that might tighten the growing bond between them, but she couldn’t bear that he was obviously upset about something.

  “What makes you think something is wrong?”

  Though she felt stupid for presuming she knew the man, she wanted to think she had gained a little insight into him, especially over the last week or so.

  “Instinct, I guess. You seem very different right now than you were at lunch. You’re upset about something.”

  Did you find out about my ex-husband and what he did?

  The words hovered on her tongue but she didn’t dare ask him.

  He was quiet for a long moment, so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he gave her a searching look across the width of the pickup truck, then sighed.

  “Let’s just say it’s been a long afternoon. This time of year can be tough on some people.”

  “And tough on those charged with looking after us,” she answered.

  “Unfortunately, that can be true.” He was quiet again, listening to Mia humming Christmas songs softly in the back seat, always happy to entertain herself.

  “I don’t imagine you were all that thrilled about coming with us,” he said after a moment. “But I’m selfishly glad you did. I needed this tonight.”

  “To sit in a cold pickup truck in the dark, waiting for my daughter to finish a knock-and-run?”

  He smiled a little, and she wanted to think it was slightly more genuine. “That, yes, plus to have the chance to sit for a moment and think about some of the good things the holidays bring. The little kindnesses and the family time and the peace of a Lake Haven December night.” He paused. “Too many people find this time of year lonely and sad. It breaks my heart sometimes.”

  Her own heart seemed to break a little and she wished that she could be the sort of woman who had the courage to hold him close and take away some of his pain, as he’d done for her the other night.

  Gloria’s words seemed to ring in her ears. Ruben was a good, caring man who deserved far better than somebody with her kind of baggage.

  “I’m sorry your afternoon was hard.” She didn’t have any other words that seemed adequate.

  “Nothing like a Chihuahua with diarrhea.”

  “Ew. Gross. You said diarrhea,” Mia piped up from the back seat, making both of them smile.

  That intimacy swirled around them again, that sense that they were alone here in the dark.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little sad to find out you have to deal with rough things over the holidays. I’d like to believe a place like this is immune to that kind of thing.”

  “Believe me, Lake Haven County has its troubles, just like anywhere else. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a job.”

  “I suppose that’s true. It doesn’t make it any less sad.”

  Before he could answer, the back door opened and Silver jumped in. “Okay, that was fun!”

  Ruben chuckled. “Did you get caught?”

  “Almost. All the lights were on inside and I could tell they were home, but I was like a freaking ninja. You should have seen me. I crawled up the front porch steps and stayed low so they couldn’t see me, then put the thingy down, rang the doorbell and took off as fast as I could around the side of the house. I thought for sure they were going to come looking for me, but then a minute later I heard the door close. After another minute or two, I peeked around the house and they had gone back inside.”

  “Did they take the gift?” Dani asked, struck by how long it had been since she had seen this kind of enthusiasm and excitement from her daughter.

  She wanted to lean across the pickup truck cab and plant a great big smooch on Ruben Morales’s cheek for giving her this little glimpse of the Silver she remembered from a few years earlier.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t there anymore, at least. I waited a few more moments to make sure no one was going to come back out, then I sneaked away and hurried back here.”

  “That sounds so fun!” Mia exclaimed. “I want to do it.”

  “Maybe we could both go tomorrow night,” Silver said. “If I’m there with you, I can show you where to hide and wait for me while I go up to the door. You have to be fast.”

  “I can be. I promise. I’ll run as fast as I can.”

  “That sounds like a plan.” Ruben started up his pickup truck, turned the lights on and slowly drove back toward their houses. “From here on out, you’ll have to be more careful. They’ll be watching.”

  “Maybe we should mix up the time we go, just so they’re not expecting us, watching for us.”

  “I was going to suggest exactly that,” he said. “Let’s go about seven thirty tomorrow, if that’s not too late.”

  “Works for me,” Silver said.

  “The way this snow is coming down, you may have to run in boots.”

  “No problem for me. I went to school in Boston. You don’t know snow until you’ve seen what we used to get.”

  By the time they reached Dani’s house, another inch had fallen atop the two or three from earlier.

  Ruben let them out and walked them up to the house. “Where’s your snow shovel? I can clear some of this away. We’re supposed to get a few more inches so you’ll need to clear it again in the morning but I can at least start things off and take care of what’s here now.”

  “That’s totally not necessary. Silver and I can do it.”

  “I know you can, but you’ll be doing me a favor. After my afternoon, I could use some kind of physical outlet.”

  She again wondered what had happened and wished she could ask him. If he could find a little release by clearing her driveway, she didn’t see how she could refuse.

  “The shovel is in the garage. Silver, will you show Ruben where it is while I get Mia to bed? You can leave it on the porch when you’re done. And thank you. That’s one more way I’m in your debt.”

  She was busy for the next twenty minutes with Mia’s bath and bedtime routine. By the time her lights were out and Silver was in the shower, Dani figured Ruben would have been long gone. When she looked out the window, however, she spotted him leaning on her shovel handle, gazing out at the lake and the mountains that gleamed in the pale moonlight filtering through the storm clouds.

  He looked so very desolate. On impulse, she grabbed a mug from the cupboard, heated some water in the microwave and mixed in some of her favorite gourmet hot cocoa, threw on her coat and boots, and walked out into the night.

  He looked over when she approached him and the anguish in his eyes tore at her heart. He quickly schooled his expression.

  “What’s this?”

  “Cocoa. It’s not much, but you look like a man who could use something sweet.”

  She felt the chill from his ungloved hands as he took it from her. “Thanks. That’s very thoughtful of you, Doc.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She thought about slipping back into the house but he had been extraordinarily kind to her the other night and she didn’t see how she could walk away and leave him to his distress.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened after yo
u left the clinic? Just so you know, I’m tougher than I look. I’ve probably heard worse.”

  He gazed at her for a long moment, the steam from the cocoa curling between them. Finally he sighed. “I got a call about ten minutes after I left your clinic. I was there all afternoon and into the evening. A murder-suicide north of Shelter Springs.”

  “Oh, no,” she murmured.

  “It was an elderly couple in their eighties, both with health trouble. She had Alzheimer’s and he was in heart failure.”

  “Did you know them?”

  “Not really. They used to bring their little dogs to the clinic when I was a kid and I remembered seeing them. My folks would know them better than I did. That didn’t make it any easier. They had a daughter and she’s the one who found them.”

  “Oh, poor thing.”

  “Right. I guess Al was getting sicker and could no longer take care of his wife’s needs. He knew he was dying and he didn’t want to leave her alone to go into a nursing home when something happened to him. That was all written in a note to his daughter. He shot his bride of more than sixty years, then laid down beside her, grabbed her hand and killed himself. I was first on the scene after the daughter called 911. It was...rough.”

  She ached at the raw, ragged edge to his voice.

  “Oh, Ruben. I’m so sorry.”

  She reached a hand out to touch his arm through the soft down of his jacket. Before she even made contact, he set the mug of cocoa on the ground and wrapped his arms tightly around her. He needed this, the comfort of human contact. It was a small thing she could do. She hugged him close, wishing she could absorb all the cold of his skin and return it with heat.

  He shuddered a little against her, not from the cold, she realized, but from being able to lean on someone else for a moment.

  Some part of her had always considered law enforcement the enemy. Dani knew that probably traced back to her childhood, to the time when her mother died and the authorities came to take her away. A police officer enlisted by child welfare had dragged her away from her apartment, screaming for her mother. From then on, she had equated the police with loss and pain and unfeeling bureaucracy.