Abby's Christmas

by Lynnette Kent

  The man sure as hell knew what he was talking about.

  THE NEWS THAT NOAH HAD quit his job came to Abby through a phone call from Valerie Warren. Abby checked with Kate, who said she hadn’t seen the Harley parked out by the garage since early morning. A call to Mrs. Blake produced a fifteen-minute indictment of just about everybody in town, but no real news.

  Noah had vanished. For good?

  By only the fiercest of struggles did Abby resist the temptation to drive to his apartment and wait there until he returned home. She’d chased him and pursued him and seduced him. The next step had to be his.

  Every minute of Wednesday night seemed to last an hour. The hours were days. She’d never been so glad to hear her alarm at five-thirty, so she could get up, get moving and stop thinking.

  She left the house before her dad, and arrived at the diner in the cold dark of night. But the streetlights showed her a vehicle already parked next to the front door. Noah’s Harley.

  He came around the corner of the building as she got out of her car. “It’s me, Abby. Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not sure those two statements don’t contradict each other.” Keys in hand, she marched to the back entrance and unlocked the door. She palmed the switches on the wall, and the fluorescent lights in the kitchen flickered to life, harsh and painful to her eyes. Noah followed her inside and closed the door behind him.

  He caught her arm as she started out into the dining room and turned her to face him. “Wait a minute.”

  Abby couldn’t meet his gaze with her own. “What? What’s there to say?”

  “I love you.”

  Her heart stopped, then pounded in her throat like a freight-train engine. “Good try. Too late.”

  “And I want you to come with me.”

  Finally, she looked up at him. “Come where?”

  “Atlanta, first. I have to go back to meet the parole requirements. But after that, we’re free. We can go anywhere in the world. Just the two of us.”

  She could practically feel the wind in her face. A knock on the back door announced Billie’s arrival. Abby pretended not to hear. “Say the first part again.”

  His mouth lifted into the smile she adored. “I love you.”

  “Hey, there,” Billie yelled through the door. “Let me in.” She pounded on the heavy panel.

  “Go sit out front.” Abby pushed Noah toward the dining room door. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Once he’d left the kitchen, she let Billie in. “Took you long enough,” the cook grumbled. “What do you think you’re doing, making me stand out in the cold that way? My arthritis is acting up bad enough as it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Billie. I—”

  “I saw that devil machine out front. I know exactly what you were doing.” Her face set in lines of anger, Billie walked straight past Abby and pulled out the bowl she used for making biscuits. “I’m about ready to get me another job. Too much work here, no consideration…” She continued to mumble as she sifted flour into the bowl.

  Whipped by guilt, Abby went to join Noah in the dining room. He hadn’t turned on any lights, but the glow of the street lamps in the parking lot shone through the windows, creating a black-and-white image of the room. Noah sat in a booth, hands folded on the table as he waited.

  She sat down across from him. “What’s going on?”

  He stared at her for a few seconds, his face unreadable. “You probably know I quit my job.” When she nodded, he continued. “I don’t want to destroy Rob’s business. And my mother doesn’t want me in her life.”

  “Noah—”

  “No, it’s okay. She has a right to the way she feels. But I don’t have to stick around being punished because she made bad choices.”

  “That’s true.”

  “So it’s better if I go back to Georgia and finish the parole there.” He reached across the table to fold his hands over hers. “And I want you to come with me. I’ve made my own mistakes. I don’t have to punish myself, though, by leaving you behind. We could be happy together, Abigail.” He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I love you.”

  Abby blinked back tears. “I almost believe you.” She heard Charlie’s voice in the kitchen, responding to Billie. No time, she thought. No time.

  “How can I convince you?” Noah’s fingers on her cheek wiped up tears. “What will it take?”

  Charlie strode into the space behind the counter. “Abby?” The lights came on with a glare that felt like a cymbal clash. “Abby, what the hell are you doing?” He limped up and down the galley, inspecting his territory. “No coffee made, the door locked…and what’s he doing here? Why are you sitting in the dark? What in the name of God is going on?”

  “Dad, I—”

  “You think I can run this place by myself? Billie’s talking about quitting and you’re sitting out here holding hands with…him.”

  The first of the breakfast crowd knocked on the front door. “Hey, Charlie, we’re starved. Let us in.”

  Her dad headed for the door. “I might as well have a heart attack and we’ll just close the place down altogether. Will that make you happy?”

  She couldn’t look at Noah. Pulling her hands away, she stared at the vinyl top of the table. She could leave all of this. With one word to Noah, she could have the life she’d dreamed about for fifteen years.

  The change of tone in her dad’s voice caught her attention. “What are you talking about?” Arms folded over his broad chest, Charlie stood across the room with the two older men who had just come in. “That’s ridiculous.”

  One of them held up a newspaper. “Says here he didn’t really murder the guy at all.”

  Noah turned his head sharply, focusing on the conversation across the room. He must be getting paranoid. Surely he hadn’t heard…

  Charlie Brannon stood for a minute with the paper in front of his face. When he lowered his hand to his side, he looked straight at Noah and started walking their way.

  He stopped at the end of the table, stiff and accusing in his drill-sergeant stance. “Is this some kind of novel? Some tale you made up thinking folks in town would take you back?” The other two guys—the ones who had caused the problem to begin with—crowded at Charlie’s back.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He was aware of Abby’s complete confusion. If he reached for her hand, though, her dad would probably punch him out.

  Charlie held up the newspaper. “This is what I’m talking about.”

  Below the fold on the front page, the headline read Portrait of a Hometown Hero. His picture—the one on his driver’s license—filled part of the first column.

  “Dad?” Abby took the paper and flattened it on the table top. Noah couldn’t read upside down, but Abby saved him the trouble by reading aloud.

  “When a local man rescued a waitress at the Carolina Diner last Friday night, it wasn’t the first time he’d stepped forward to play the hero.

  “Noah Blake, 33, interrupted a robbery in progress. Joe Cates, 26, took waitress Abby Brannon hostage, holding a gun to her throat. Blake distracted the thief and then knocked him unconscious, ending the standoff without serious injury to Brannon or Cates’s two-year-old son, Tyler, who was also on the premises.”

  Abby glanced in his direction, then cleared her throat.

  “Blake, a former student at New Skye High School, returned to town several weeks ago. He was recently paroled by the state of Georgia after serving two and a half years of a seven-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter. The incident that landed him in prison is, oddly enough, further proof of his heroism.

  “On the night of April 20, 2000, Blake was having dinner with a woman named in an Atlanta apartment complex. Wanda Harrison’s estranged husband, Hubert “Bull” Harrison, ignored a restraining order and broke into the apartment, threatening Wanda, the Harrisons’ two-year old son Mac and Blake.

  “Bull assaulted Wanda and inflicted multiple injuries, including
a broken arm. He had just turned on his child when Blake hit Bull. During the ensuing fight, Bull fell and hit his head on an iron radiator, dying instantly.”

  Noah felt as if his face was on fire. Across the table, Abby stared at him with the biggest, roundest eyes he’d ever seen. “I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew it.”

  When he looked around, he saw that other people had entered the diner. Many of them carried newspapers. Billie stood behind the counter, her arms crossed at her waist. Nobody said a word.

  “Former New Skye H.S. students report that Blake was a difficult student during his years there. ‘He was a wild one,’ said Wade Hayes of the New Skye police force, now Blake’s parole officer. Hayes alleges that Blake set a fire at New Skye H.S. in May 1989, destroying the senior class’s school records. Blake was a suspect in the incident, but there was insufficient evidence to lay charges. The case remains unsolved.

  “Not all of Blake’s former classmates agree with Hayes. ‘I never believed Noah was guilty,’ says Brannon, the woman he saved at the Carolina Diner. ‘I thought he was treated unfairly by most of the teachers and by Principal Floyd.’

  “She added that Blake’s background—an alcoholic father who abandoned Blake’s mother, leaving the family with only a marginal income—spurred him to struggle against authority. ‘He needed guidance, not guilt. Someone to listen to him and to understand. He didn’t run away. He was driven off.’”

  To the heat in his face, Noah added a deeper burn in his gut. His whole life laid out in the newspaper—his dad’s flaws, his mother’s failings. He sounded like a charity case, a sob story practically begging for pity.

  Thanks to Abby.

  More customers came in as Charlie finished the article.

  “Several other former classmates share Brannon’s opinion of Blake. One of them, Robert Warren of Warren Security Systems, recently hired Blake to install home alarms. Warren says that some customers have been worried about having an ex-con in their homes, but Warren is not concerned. ‘I trust Noah completely,’ he says. ‘I would put my life in his hands.’

  “‘I trusted Noah to take care of me, and he did,’ Brannon says, echoing Warren’s words. ‘Isn’t that the definition of a hero?’”

  Charlie looked up from the newspaper. “Hell, son, why didn’t you explain? We wouldn’t have given you such a hard time.”

  The men and women standing around them nodded. Somebody said, “Sounds to me like that guy—Bull Harrison—deserved what he got. You did a good thing, taking him off the planet.”

  Other voices agreed. “I’ll buy your breakfast, Noah,” somebody else said.

  “The coffee’s on me,” came from someone else. “For everybody.”

  The folks moved to their tables, though some made sure they clapped him on the shoulder first. Sunshine had started to creep in through the windows, and the diner finally settled down into a new day.

  Noah started to slide out of the booth, but Abby caught him by the hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  He sat back down to avoid drawing more attention. “Atlanta,” he said.

  “But—” He couldn’t look at her, so he didn’t know what her face revealed. “But this article makes such a difference.”

  “Does it?”

  “People know the truth now, Noah. They understand that you didn’t just kill a man—you rescued a woman and a child from a cruel, miserable excuse for a human being.”

  “It’s a good story, I’ll give you that.” He twisted his hand in her hold until she let go. “A good story that doesn’t mention I was drinking that night, or that I worked for Bull, and we had fought a couple of rounds in the past, just for the hell of it. I think that’s what the politicians call ‘spin.’”

  “You can’t turn this into something sordid. You are a hero, a man who makes sacrifices for other people.”

  “What I am,” he said, finally meeting her gaze, “is everybody’s latest trick pony. That article was a seasonal fluff piece, designed to make everybody feel good about human nature so they’ll go out and spend more money.”

  “That’s not true. Sam’s a good reporter and she thought your truth should be told. She did you a favor.”

  “With your help.” He shook his head. “Damn, Abby—did you think I wanted all of that in the paper? Did you think the town needed to be reminded about my dad the drunk, my mom the bitch? How’s she going to feel? You practically blamed all my sins on her.”

  “I did not say that.”

  Noah leaned forward over the table. “You might as well have. But nothing could be further from the truth. Yeah, I had it rough as a kid. My dad had reasons to resent me, and so did my mom. She had some reasons of her own to hate her life. But I’m the one who made my destiny. I take full responsibility for the man I am. I don’t make apologies or excuses. And if you think I need them, then…” He struggled to get the words out. “Then what was between us isn’t worth fighting for.”

  This time he stood up and headed for the door. He stepped out into a cold wind, with Abby following.

  “You’re going back to Atlanta?” She stood beside the bike as he got on, wrapping her arms around her body for warmth.

  “That’s right.”

  “Alone?”

  Noah closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

  Kicking the engine to life, he eased past Abby, turned sharply by the diner’s front door and rumbled out of the parking lot, into the rest of his life.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Diary of Abby Brannon

  January 24, 1989

  Dear Diary,

  Today was my mom’s funeral. All my friends came, and really just about everybody in town who ever ate at the diner. Dad was strong. He went straight to his room once they all left.

  They were all nice and said the right things. Doesn’t help, but they tried. Noah came to the service, and then he came to the back door for a minute during the reception. When I went outside with him, he didn’t speak, just folded his arms around me. Then he kissed the top of my head, walked me back to the kitchen door and went away again.

  I wonder if he loves his mother as much as I loved mine.

  THE LAST MEETING OF the dance committee took place Thursday night. No one had seen Noah since he’d left the diner that morning. He was, however, the first topic of discussion.

  “I’m not surprised by Sam’s article in the least,” Kate said. “The bad-boy image was just that. An image.”

  Dixon shook his head. “You’re being a little optimistic, there, sweetheart. I remember some of the rougher times in high school. Noah wasn’t acting. He was serious about making trouble.”

  “Sometimes,” Rob countered. Dixon lifted an eyebrow. “Okay, a lot of the time,” he said with a smile. “But he’s always had his good side.”

  Phoebe looked in Abby’s direction. “Will he be here tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” He could be back in Atlanta by now. Or in Washington, D.C. Or right here in town. The distance between them was insurmountable, wherever he’d gone.

  “Has everybody got their panels finished?” Kate picked up a piece of paper covered with her neat handwriting. “A couple of teams have dropped out, but I think we still have enough panels for a lovely backdrop.”

  The couples who had volunteered confirmed that their panels were completed. “I don’t know,” Abby said again, when asked.

  “It’s finished,” Dixon confirmed. “Noah got it done Tuesday night. Looks terrific.”

  They went through the rest of the agenda, talking about food and drink and tickets and balloons.

  “I’ve got gag gifts as awards for the painters,” Phoebe announced. “Adam volunteered to present them with appropriate humor.”

  “I did?” He grinned when his wife frowned at him. “I don’t do jokes. I’m the one who st-st-stutters, remember?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I don’t.” Phoebe had been Adam’s speech therapist, before the
mayoral campaign. These days, Adam rarely hesitated over his words, and few of his constituents remembered that he ever had.

  Abby had thought tonight’s meeting might last forever, but Kate proved her wrong and pronounced them ready for the dance at a few minutes after nine. Cleaning up involved only coffee cups—Abby hadn’t had the energy to put together treats for the crowd.

  Valerie helped her load the dishwasher. “What happened? Where is he?” After Abby’s brief explanation, she shook her head. “Men—you gotta love them. I guess you hurt his manly pride.”

  “How sad.” Throwing a sponge in the sink just didn’t release enough tension, so she tried again with a plastic bowl. Better. “Chasing after him, waiting on him, dragging him out of his splendid isolation didn’t have any effect on my pride, of course.” Deciding crockery would be best, she picked up a ceramic bowl. “Move back.”

  “Abby—” But the protest came too late. The bowl hit the stainless-steel sink with a satisfying crash.

  “Now I’m going home.” She locked the back door, dragged on her coat and went to the front. “Rob left you here? Do you need a ride?”

  “We came in separate cars—I had to work late.”

  That got her attention. “You haven’t had dinner, have you?” Her best friend shook her head. “Why didn’t you say something? I could have fed you. Damn it, I can’t do anything right these days.” For the first time all day, tears threatened to escape her control.

  Valerie folded her into a hug. “I’m not going to starve,” she promised. “Rob said he’d rustle up some macaroni and cheese. He does a great job.”

  Abby rested her head on Valerie’s shoulder for a second, letting herself be loved. She didn’t often experience a woman’s touch. In the beginning, she’d hoped that Noah’s mother could fill the void her own mother’s death had left. That maybe, once Noah left, they could help each other. But Mrs. Blake’s personal wounds were too serious for that kind of effort.

  Loving Noah—being loved by him—had filled the emptiness. But only for a moment. Now she was alone again.