Lee felt as if he’d retreated somewhere deep within his own body, and Karol was so much farther away than right across the table. This was an unbridgeable gap. Lee had seen terrible things during his tour of duty—everyone over there had. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the specter of the POW camps in and around Hanoi.
I remind him of the war.
They sat in silence, simple and tense, the ticking of the clock and the little noises the food made in the oven the only sounds besides their breathing. Karol closed his eyes and let the tears spill over his cheeks. Lee held on to his hands and did not let go.
The back door burst open, and Bobbi skidded into the room in her borrowed moccasins, bringing herself up short at the sight of them holding hands at the kitchen table.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, clutching the door, “but the fertility arbor is kind of a little bit… on fire?”
Karol withdrew his hands and wiped at the tears glistening under his eyes. “Fire extinguisher’s under the sink,” he said, pushing back his stool. “I’ll help you.”
He dug out the extinguisher and handed it to her. Bobbi paused, hugging it to her chest, and gave Lee a look he could not interpret, then ran back out to the fire.
Lee stood up. “I should go. Do you need help? I should—I should go.”
“You should stay,” Karol contradicted, but Lee could tell it was the same as calling him “sweetheart” earlier—automatic affection, Karol’s knee-jerk welcoming instincts. Karol seemed to realize it too. His shoulders slumped a little farther and he wouldn’t look at Lee. “Rhiannon would want you to stay.”
After a moment, Karol added, “You’re wrong, you know.” He gazed out over the backyard, where evening was beginning to settle around the edges of the trees. “About you and Bobbi. You are her father. Blood doesn’t matter. Only love does.”
Lee didn’t know what to say to that.
“It was good to see you, Lee.” Karol smiled, but he was crying again, and Lee couldn’t tell if he meant the words. “Take care of yourself,” Karol said, and then he went outside, and Lee was alone.
LEE LEFT the Army cookbook on the kitchen table. Bobbi came back in as he was struggling into his coat. He saw her notice the book, and then she walked over and held the coat for him.
“I’m very tired,” he said, keeping tight control on his voice so it wouldn’t shake. “Could you drive us back?”
“We’re leaving?” Bobbi looked at his face. “Yeah, no, sure, give me the keys.”
They went out the front and no one stopped them, because everyone was out back getting into position for the ritual. Lee closed the door very carefully behind them. It had started to snow. Bobbi turned the key in the ignition and then turned it off again. “You loved him, didn’t you? You guys were in love.”
“I just want to go home.”
She started the car.
Lee closed his eyes and rested his head against the heated seat. He wished he could say it had been a terrible idea to come up here, but he couldn’t. Even if Karol wanted nothing to do with him, at least now he knew what had happened to him. Now he knew that Karol had made it out, that he had a full life and a loving family. His granddaughter was getting married—handfasted—today. Lee hoped he hadn’t messed that up too much.
If he’d searched harder when he got home in ’71, if he’d looked for Karol harder when he was still in Vietnam, was there any way he could have found him? Was there any way he could have saved him from three years in a camp and a lifetime with those memories? And if Karol had come home sooner, would he and Lee have—Bobbi slammed on the brakes.
Standing in the middle of the road was a small crowd of witches.
They were very organized witches. As Lee and Bobbi watched, the women formed a line across the road, planted their feet, and linked arms. Lee suspected they had perfected this technique at countless antiwar protests and Save the Rainforest rallies. Their hair was every shade from dyed turquoise and pink to brindled silver and black. Their cream and red and green robes shifted restlessly against their set bodies in the chill wind. Their faces, wrinkled and freckled, young and old, showed only focus and determination. These women were not going anywhere.
Lee broke the spell. “This can’t be the only road out of town. Back up and turn around—”
“There are witches behind the car too,” said Bobbi.
Lee got out of the car. Before he could say anything, one woman broke from the line and approached him. The line reformed behind her. It was Devra. She stopped a few feet away from him.
“We can’t let you leave,” she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the wind.
For a moment, some kind of Stephen King-esque, Misery-type situation—but with witches—flashed across Lee’s mind.
“I shouldn’t have come,” Lee said. “I’m sorry. I think it’s best if I go.”
“You think it was your decision to come here?” Devra scoffed. “You’ve been waiting fifty years to see Karol again. You think it was random chance that led you here? It’s not that hard to find someone these days. The Universe kept you apart until you were ready to be together, and then it sent you a sign.”
“I’m sorry,” Lee said again. “I don’t really believe in all that—”
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not. The sun goes up and comes down, the world turns without our belief. We’re just here to observe it all and be grateful. And sometimes, when another human makes a stupid-ass decision, we help the Universe out.
“Your love doesn’t belong to the past. If it did, you two would have been together from the moment my brother walked off that plane in ’73.” Devra pushed her thick silver-and-black hair out of her face and fixed him with a stern look. “The thought of you kept him alive. You saved his life as much as he saved yours back then, and I’ve listened to him talk about you, his brown-eyed boy, for years now. You were meant to find each other again when you were ready. And you’re ready now.”
“But I’m—but Karol—” Lee was afraid he might begin to cry in the middle of a state highway, confronted by a band of truth-telling witches. “I remind him of the war.”
“So do sweet potatoes,” said Devra briskly. “You see us hiding those today? Look, I didn’t say it was going to be easy. I may not know you very well, but I don’t think a man who’s searched and waited for fifty years is interested in easy.”
Lee looked around him, at the faces of Karol’s friends and family, solemn and steadfast; at Bobbi, standing by the car and shivering in her stylish coat. Bobbi, who had plucked the old cookbook out of the vastness of the internet; Bobbi, who insisted on coming with him and had stuck by him all through this strange day because she cared about him.
Sometimes… we help the Universe out.
Karol and his family believed that everything happened for a reason, the way the Universe intended. And Lee wanted, more than anything, to believe that too.
He turned back to Devra. “I love him. I’m not going to leave.”
“Atta boy!” Devra clapped him on the shoulder and then pulled him into a hearty hug as the chains of witches broke into cheers. “For a minute there, I thought I’d have to go get my Love Wins placards out again.”
THE WITCHES walked back to the farmhouse along the middle of the highway, a shifting crowd of white and green and red and gold, the Mercedes following slowly in their wake. They waited while Lee and Bobbi got out of the car, probably thinking Lee might bolt again if left to his own devices. Lee wasn’t sure that wasn’t a fair assessment.
The women hustled them into the house, down the dark halls to the kitchen, and streamed out into the backyard. Lee saw the cookbook, still lying on the table where he left it, and he touched Bobbi’s arm and hung back.
She looked up at him questioningly.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice deep and sincere. For once he didn’t have any trouble getting the words out. “For coming with me today. For staying. For your gift, and—for
everything, the past three years. You’re an amazing person, Bobbi, and I’m proud of you and—and very fond of you.”
Bobbi smiled and stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. Her glitter transferred to his dark coat. “I love you, too, old man. Now come on.” She tucked her arm through his and faced them toward the door. “We have a wedding to finish crashing.”
“It’s not a wedding,” Lee said with mock severity. “It is a handfasting.”
“Oh my God.” Bobbi laughed. “You’re one of them now.”
THE BACKYARD had been transformed. Lee had seen parts of it come together throughout the day, but the final effect was breathtaking. Strings of multicolored, hand-blown fairy lights hung between the trees, keeping away the dark, while five firepits placed around the space kept away the chill. The feast table stood ready under an avenue of trees, and in the center of the glen stood the circle of Karol’s family, waiting for Bobbi and Lee.
They joined the circle, taking each other’s hands and the hands of those standing next to them, until everyone stood in an unbroken chain. The ritual began. Karol led the chants and prayers. Rhiannon and Baldur stood in the center of the circle, looking at each other as if nothing existed in the Universe but the two of them.
They called the four corners of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and welcomed Spirit and the Goddess and the God. Bobbi gamely joined in; Lee mostly did not, afraid he would mess things up, but he felt the growing energy around him and a growing peace around his heart, every time he snuck a glance at Karol and found Karol looking back at him with warmth and not fear.
Before the handfasting ceremony began, Rhiannon turned to the circle and invited anyone who wanted to, to speak freely. About what? Lee wondered, but everyone around him seemed to know.
Devra spoke about the pagan lore for this season of the year, about battles and waiting and rebirth.
Aelfric talked about his cats.
Juniper made a partnership metaphor out of cooking and gardening. It made Baldur kiss Rhiannon’s hand at the end.
The circle fell quiet. Bobbi nudged Lee. Lee took a deep breath and hoped he wouldn’t pass out. It’s just like giving a speech at work, he thought. Except you haven’t prepared at all and it’s way more important.
“I want to say something,” Lee said, jumping at the sound of his own voice. “About love.”
Rhiannon graced him with her glowing smile. “Please, go ahead.”
“Someone told me today that love is the only thing that matters.” A ripple of laughter moved through the circle and everyone glanced at Karol. Lee guessed that was a familiar saying of his. “I think—I think they’re right. Love is what keeps us going, even through the hard parts of life. Love of friends, and family”—Bobbi squeezed his hand—“and love of a partner. Remembering love is wonderful. Love in the past is something to be treasured, something you can build on. But love doesn’t belong to the past. Love belongs to the future.”
Karol was looking at him and smiling and crying. Lee held his gaze and did not look away.
Rhiannon looked between the two of them. “After Baldur and I are done, Papa, do you two want to give it a try?”
The circle laughed and the witches cheered, Karol and Lee along with them.
LEE HAD been awake for forty hours straight by the time the first glow of dawn lit the eastern edge of the sky. Juniper had promised everyone that after the drum chant and a celebratory breakfast of sun cakes, the house was open to anyone who wanted to take a nap. Bobbi was already asleep, curled up in a pile of blankets and sleeping bags next to Lee’s chair under the spreading branches of the oak tree. All the children had gathered round her for story time at midnight, and Bobbi and a turquoise-haired person named Hathor took turns reading aloud from a thick blue book of pagan tales. Now, two little girls were snuggled up with Bobbi, like puppies in a nest of bedding.
Lee watched as Rhiannon and her new partner placed a drum in front of Devra, Juniper, and a few of the older witches, and passed out small percussion instruments to everyone else. A little boy ran up, threw a tiny pair of finger cymbals into Lee’s lap, and ran away again. The dawn grew stronger.
He didn’t know what the future was going to hold. He’d known for so long, measured his days in a comfortable, echoing monotony of work and numbers and necessary events. Now he wasn’t even sure what tomorrow was going to be like.
But he was excited to find out.
Karol claimed the chair beside Lee’s and let out a contented sigh. “I haven’t stayed up for a Solstice vigil in a long time,” he said. “Usually I’m like that—” He gestured at Bobbi and the kids and chuckled. “—as soon as the sun goes down.”
“Glad you did?” asked Lee, suddenly feeling shy.
Karol held his gaze. “I’m glad about everything that happened today.” He reached out and cupped Lee’s jaw, his hand warm despite the chilly air. Karol smiled, and if there was a trace of sadness in the smile, it was overpowered by affection and a contented peace. “My brown-eyed boy,” he murmured. A day’s worth of silver stubble was coming up on Lee’s face, but Karol didn’t seem to mind. He rasped his thumb along the line of Lee’s cheek, and then he leaned across the divide between them and pressed a kiss to his lips.
Lee closed his eyes and covered Karol’s hand with his own, giving himself up to the lovely floaty feelings of light-headedness and love. Karol tasted like cinnamon, and when he opened his eyes, Karol was looking at him with something like wonder.
“I’ve been waiting fifty years for you to kiss me,” said Lee.
Karol grinned. “Was it worth it?”
“Every minute,” said Lee, and he kissed him again as the snow fell and the witches chanted and the year turned.
L.A. MERRILL is a Kansas City native and author of more than six impossible things. She has worked as a tour guide, an assistant stage director, and spent one memorable summer as a camp counselor. Her work has appeared in Kansas City Voices magazine, on the YouTube series The Blank Scene, and online. An avid knitter, she has yet to follow a pattern and has made some interestingly shaped hats as a result. She lives in a tiny house filled with over five thousand books and an indeterminate number of dogs. Follow her on Twitter for feminism and fangirling @la_mer92, on Facebook @L.A.MerrillWrites, or check out her website, www.leahmerrillwrites.wordpress.com.
By L.A. Merrill
Don’t Let the Light Go Out
Finding Yuletide Karol
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
Starstruck Anthology
Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS
www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Published by
DREAMSPINNER PRESS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Finding Yuletide Karol
© 2019 L.A. Merrill
Cover Art
© 2019 Brooke Albrecht
http://brookealbrechstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www
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Digital ISBN: 978-1-64405-793-3
Digital eBook published December 2019
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
Finding Yuletide Karol Page 4