Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Text
About the Author
By L.A. Merrill
Visit Dreamspinner Press
Copyright
Finding Yuletide Karol
By L.A. Merrill
Fifty years ago, during the Vietnam War, Lee Elbridge fell in love with an Army cook nicknamed Yuletide Karol, but they haven’t seen each other since.
Now, led by a clue in an old cookbook, Lee sets off on a road trip to find his lost love. He arrives on Karol’s upstate New York farm to find preparations for a handfasting in full swing, and is mistaken for the wedding planner’s assistant. As Lee is roped into folding hemp napkin goats and mashing fresh sweet potatoes, he is welcomed by Karol’s large, eccentric family of witches and pagans. When Lee and Karol finally get a moment alone, Lee tells him the truth, but it will take more than a little Yuletide magick to bring them together again after almost a lifetime.
For all those who served in silence.
Acknowledgments
MANY THANKS to Mara Perry and L.C. McBride, the best beta ladies ever, and to The Fritz, for invaluable research help.
Author’s Note
KAROL’S SUN cakes are based on a recipe for sweet potato moon cakes found in The Book of Kitchen Witchery by Cerridwen Greenleaf (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2016).
OFFICE HOLIDAY parties belonged in a special circle of hell. The circle where everyone knows they’re in hell but has to pretend to be enjoying themselves anyway.
Lee knew he shouldn’t complain. As president of Union Financial’s New York division, his presence probably made everyone much more uncomfortable around him than he was around them. And he pitied whoever drew his name for the Secret Santa. Unless it was Will from the IT department again. Will from IT seemed to think it was funny to give your septuagenarian boss inappropriate gag gifts. Lee would rather have another boring silk tie than a candy dispenser shaped like a penis.
Having dutifully circulated, he armed himself with another champagne flute of sparkling grape juice and made a strategic retreat to the chair by the windows. He suspected Bobbi, his assistant, placed it there before the party. She knew how much he dreaded these events. He actually had an alarm set on his phone, marking the time past which it would not be rude for him to just leave.
The winter holidays, he reflected, looking out over the comfortingly bright and indifferent city, were the perfect time to think about your life and be grateful for the people who loved you. That really only worked, though, if you had people in your life who loved you.
He’d spent eighteen months in Vietnam and Cambodia watching his friends die around him, and then he’d come home and finished college and nursed his mother through ovarian cancer and watched her die too. He’d moved to the city and gone to grad school, started a career where he was closeted and a social life where he was not. He watched his friends die all over again, victims of an invisible war waged inside their own bodies. He survived, and he rose to the top of his profession. He had an apartment full of books and art on the Upper West Side, a seven-figure salary and a job he was intimidatingly good at. He knew, he knew he shouldn’t complain. And he never did—out loud. He was very lucky. And very, very lonely.
He thought of the chair underneath him, a carefully planned escape pod just for him. He scanned the executive conference room full of diamond-encrusted women and self-satisfied men. Bobbi stood by the bar, dwarfed by a man from Houlihan Lokey, who was probably explaining finance to her, despite the fact that Bobbi was in her last year of grad school and explained finance to other people on a weekly basis. She was wearing a bright orange long-sleeved mini dress and had dusted glitter through her baby ’fro. It sparkled in the light when she turned her head. Lee caught her eye and raised his glass in a salute of thanks. She smiled and sent him a little wave, and then went back to nodding and edging away from the bar. Bobbi cared about him. Of course, Bobbi was also unfailingly polite and good at her job, so perhaps he was reading too much into it.
Lee was about to abandon his good intentions and leave the party before his alarm went off when the new VP, Sam Walsh, called the room to order with an ostentatious clinking of fork against glass.
“I know you’re all itching to see what your Secret Santa got you,” Sam said, leering, and the room laughed on cue, “so I’ll keep this short. Union Financial is a company built on people and trust and integrity and all that good shit. Or at least that’s what we tell people, right?” More laughter. “We know the truth, though, don’t we? Union Financial is built around one principle—Greed. Is. Good!”
A few of the young male staffers whooped like frat boys. Walsh grinned. “And now, without further ado, the man himself, our own personal Ebenezer Scrooge, your president, Mr. Leon Elbridge!”
Asshole, thought Lee, and then he stood up and smiled, and advanced into the ranks of smiling, clapping party people.
The financial market had always been a cutthroat industry, and there were bastards in every business, but there was a level of integrity lacking in some of the new blood. Union Financial hired more and more people every month, and they seemed to grow younger every day. He tried to lead by example instead of directly calling people out, but that only curbed the exorbitant behavior of a few of them. Lee found himself fervently hoping the financial future contained more people like Bobbi and fewer people like Sam Walsh and his crass cronies.
His alarm went off halfway through his speech. He couldn’t pull out his phone to silence it in the middle of trying to set a better example for millennials and had to let it vibrate inside his jacket pocket for a full minute. The unpleasant sensation put him off his stride and he fumbled a few of the words. Walsh’s smile never shifted as he stood at Lee’s left, but Lee felt sure this moment was going in Walsh’s little file of passive-aggressive ammunition for the next board meeting. Walsh had been gunning for president since he was appointed VP, but he could damn well wait until Lee was ready to retire. He didn’t have anything else in his life besides this job, and he wasn’t about to hand it over to a man whose worst tendencies leached out in public after only two drinks.
He brought the speech round to the season of giving and closed with something heartfelt about the new year, and then—because, while it would look odd to leave early, it would look even odder to make a speech about teamwork and then flee—he spent half an hour shaking hands and congratulating people on their ability to make money.
And then he fled.
The expensively carpeted hallways were dim and empty, and Lee wished it were like this more often. The little gold sconces cast a soothing glow along the cappuccino-colored walls, and because of superior soundproofing technology, Lee could almost pretend there was no one left in the building but him. The illusion was ruined every time someone opened the conference room door, but Lee shut the door to his office and turned on his desk lamp and went back to pretending it was just him and lots and lots of numbers. Numbers were soothing. There was only ever one right answer, and they ran the world with a sturdy inexorability.
Sometime later there was a knock at his door. Lee checked his watch: eleven thirty. Two hours had gone by without his notice. “Come in,” he called. Bobbi stuck her head in, clocked the probably familiar sight of him sitting with fifty printouts spread over his desk and his gold-rimmed reading glasses halfway down his nose, and sidled the rest of the way in. She was holding a small package.
“Party still going on?” Lee asked, removing his glasses and leaning back.
“Oh yes. The alcohol saturation has reached critical mass. I thought I’d leave before someone decided to be a stereotype an
d snort cocaine with a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill.”
Lee felt privileged to be one of the few people at Union Financial who knew what a snarky lady Bobbi could be. It usually only slipped out when she was overcaffeinated or slightly drunk.
“You should head home,” he advised her. “It’s late.”
“Not that late. I have some work to catch up on.” She raised a brow. “Besides, I leave when you leave, remember?”
She headed for the door again, then seemed to remember she was holding something and turned back. “You cut out before the Secret Santa exchange,” she said, and laid the package on his desk. “I got you something.” She flashed him a smile and decamped to her desk in the outer office.
Lee put his glasses back on and examined the little package. It was neatly wrapped in holiday-neutral, snowflake-patterned craft paper, a testament to Bobbi’s unflagging efficiency. He slit the tape with his letter opener and pulled out a slim book. A note fluttered out. For your collection, it read. Thanks for being such an awesome boss. X, Bobbi Smollett.
It was a vintage spiral-bound cookbook. Lee was surprised she remembered he collected vintage cookbooks, and then he chided himself for doubting her. Bobbi remembered everything you ever told her. It was one of her most useful and frightening skills.
Cackleberries and Mystery Meat: Army Cooking 1950-1980. Lee flipped through it, laughing a little at some of the recipe names. He could remember eating stuff like this in Vietnam. It had always been hit-or-miss out there—sometimes you got a connoisseur of quantity cooking, and sometimes you found yourself in the mess tent of someone for whom opening a can of Spam seemed too taxing.
And then there was that one night, that one particular mess tent, on the border of South Vietnam and Cambodia. Christmas Eve, 1969.
There were so many things no one told you about war. No one told you you were going to spend hours, days, sometimes weeks, getting to know someone, and then never see them again, never know if they lived or died. And sometimes you met the love of your life when you were twenty-one years old, standing in a mess tent in the Dak Lak province, and there was nothing you could do about it.
Nobody warned you about that, either.
Lee pushed the memory away and shut the book. If he went down that road, he’d be here all night, lost in thought or running numbers to escape his thoughts, and he really did need to go home. If only so Bobbi would go home. He picked up her note and made to slide it inside the cookbook for safekeeping, but a recipe title caught his eye, and he paused, the book half-open in his hand.
“Yuletide Karol’s” Sweet Potato Sun Cakes.
Yuletide Karol. He hadn’t seen or heard that name in fifty years. And he’d been looking. He opened the book all the way and laid it flat on the desk. Distantly, he noticed his hands were shaking.
There was a short note before each recipe from the contributor. Above the recipe for sweet potato sun cakes it read: There’s nothing like sweet potato to ground a frazzled soul. These were always popular with the boys in ’Nam. One guy even told me my sun cakes saved his life. Goddess bless him, wherever he is now. Eat in good health!—“Yuletide Karol” Walenty, Kingston, New York.
Lee’s mind couldn’t decide what to freak out about first. He now knew Karol’s last name. Kingston was only ninety miles away from Manhattan. Karol might only be ninety miles away. Karol remembered him.
Lee was the guy who’d told Karol his sun cakes saved his life.
Karol remembered him.
Lee flipped to the front to see when the cookbook had been printed. 1991. So it was possible Karol didn’t live in Kingston anymore. It was possible Karol wasn’t even alive anymore.
But he’d been alive and remembering Lee and living in Kingston, New York, as of twenty-eight years ago, and that was more information than Lee had been able to glean in fifty years of searching for the man who saved his life one Christmas Eve in South Vietnam.
The man he’d been in love with for fifty lonely years.
Kingston was only ninety miles away.
Leon Elbridge, Divisional President, was not given to snap decisions. He was known company-wide as a thoughtful and methodical man. But inside Mr. Elbridge there was still just Lee, the boy who’d signed up for ’Nam before he was drafted, the young man who moved to New York City two days after his mother’s funeral because he couldn’t stand to be in his hometown for one more minute. Lee, the person who’d fallen in love in eight hours over sun cakes and kindness. And Lee, not Leon, was the one who decided to drive to Kingston, New York, at eleven forty-five on a December night, to see if the man he loved still remembered him.
Lee grabbed his phone and the cookbook, bundled himself into his coat and scarf, and rushed out the door before common sense could change his mind—and then he stopped, halted by the sight of Bobbi, snoring softly at her desk with her head pillowed on her arms.
He gently shook her shoulder, and she sat up fast. “I am awake,” she proclaimed, then squinted and looked around. “Wait, did you need something?”
“I’m going to walk you out, and we’re going to get you a cab, okay?” Lee retrieved her coat from the rack and helped her into it.
“An’ you’re going home?” Bobbi checked, leaning on his arm as they made their way to the elevators.
“Sure,” said Lee. The “I leave when you leave” policy came into being during Bobbi’s second week on the job, when she’d figured out that unless he was guilted into going home, he’d sleep in his office more often than his apartment.
“You are a terrible liar,” Bobbi chided. “Where’re you really going?”
“Home,” said Lee. “Actually, Kingston.”
“Jamaica?” Bobbi squinted up at him. “I didn’t know you were from Jamaica.”
Lee held back a smile. “Not Jamaica. Kingston, upstate. And I’m from Rhode Island. Bobbi,” he added, when she seemed to be drifting back to sleep on his sleeve. “Where did you get that cookbook?”
“Oh, um, Amazon?” She lifted her head. “Did you like it?”
“Very much. Thank you.”
“Y’r welcome.”
He flagged down a cab for her and helped her into the back seat, paid the driver in advance, and tipped him heavily to wait until the driver saw her go into her building. Then he waved her off and headed back inside to access the underground employee parking garage.
He hadn’t even made it to the elevator before the glass street door was flung open and Bobbi, somewhat sobered by panic, ran back inside, carrying her shoes.
“Why are you driving upstate at midnight?” she demanded. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Lee assured her. The security guard was watching them with the expression of a man whose nights did not usually hold this much excitement.
Bobbi planted her sturdy five-foot-two self in front of him. “Then what. Is going. On?”
“I’m going to meet an old friend. From the Army, from Vietnam. I didn’t—I haven’t known where he was for a very long time, but he contributed a recipe to this cookbook—” He pulled out Bobbi’s gift as Exhibit A. “—and it says he lives up in Kingston. I know it’s a long shot, probably a wild goose chase, but I—I really need to see him again.”
Bobbi narrowed her eyes. “Is Edgar driving you?”
“I gave Edgar the night off.”
“You can’t go by yourself! What if your friend is a serial killer?”
“I… highly doubt that.”
“Still. You can’t go by yourself. It’s late, and you’re—” Bobbi broke off, and Lee figured she’d stopped just shy of saying really old. “Anyway. I’m coming with you. You’re not driving yourself.”
“And you’re not driving at all. You’ve been drinking.”
“Then I’ll keep you company until I’m sober, and then I’ll drive.” She folded her arms and raised the end-of-discussion eyebrow. “I’m coming. With you.”
Lee sighed and gave in. “You’d better put your shoes back on,
then.”
IT TOOK an hour to get out of the metro area, with the increased holiday traffic and an impromptu stop at a convenience store in Yonkers to get Bobbi a couple of sixty-four-ounce bottles of water.
Lee did not normally drive himself anymore. Living so long in the city, he’d become accustomed to taxis and public transport. With the position of division president had come an open tab from Mercedes-Benz to purchase whatever he wanted, and the services of Edgar Ramirez, a driver. Edgar was competent and calm, and also very chatty. Lee found himself incredibly well-informed about Edgar’s three daughters’ lives without ever realizing it had happened. He knew when all their birthdays were; Bobbi sent cards.
He routinely gave Edgar the whole of Christmas week off, paid leave, to spend with his family. Lee usually spent Christmas week holed up in his apartment, reading or painting or trying, year after year, to learn how to cook. Every year he was unsuccessful. It did not seem to be in his genetic makeup. Last year’s attempts at crème brûlée had ended with another small fire and a plea from the FDNY to “stop the madness.”
His mother had never been much of a cook either, not that either of them minded. They muddled through. But Patrick, his college roommate, had been obsessed with flea markets, and Lee accompanied him almost every weekend, driving up 9 Highway along the Hudson River Valley, since he was the one with a driver’s license, stopping at every little town with an outdoor market spread out to entice the city folk. Late one Sunday afternoon, as they were heading back to school, they stopped at one last market, a dismal thing sinking into the mud outside Tarrytown. They’d felt sorry for the few determined sellers, sticking it out to make a few bucks, and Patrick pity-purchased a god-awful painting of owls on velvet and Lee picked a book at random out of a moldy box. It was a cookbook, he discovered in the car. Holiday Party Casseroles, a brightly illustrated little book from a small press in Mount Vernon. He became slightly obsessed with the book, reading the recipes over to himself late at night, when he was lonely or stressed about school. The calm recitation of ingredients and logical instructions for baking comforted him, and he began to look for more cookbooks when he and Patrick went shopping.
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