Making Spirits Bright Read online

  Heidi, who was ahead of her, pulling the stroller, stopped outside a row house identical to every other one surrounding it. “This is it.”

  Thank God. Erica shivered and stared at the long lump under the ice by her knees. “What’s that?”

  “My Christmas tree, sort of.”

  Erica frowned. Now that she looked more closely, she could make out shadows of color under the ice. “Why’s it out in the snow?”

  “It’s a long story. We had an accident here last night.” She gestured for Erica to follow her. She didn’t head for the porch thing that led up to the building’s entrance, though. Instead, she went toward a recess under it, where there were some steps down from ground level and then a smaller, less impressive doorway.

  “Was the accident the reason you ended up with Wilson?” Erica asked.

  “No, that’s another story.” Heidi had to take off her glove to fish her key from her coat pocket. Through the door, a dog barked at them.

  “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “I’m just taking care of him for a while.” She made an attempt to open the door with a flourish. “Ta-da! Cave, sweet cave.”

  Erica slid down the steps to the door, knocked some of the ice off of herself, and followed Heidi inside. Immediately, the little dog circled her, barking as if she were an intruder. It didn’t seem any friendlier to Heidi, she noticed.

  “Marcello, calm down!” Heidi said, ineffectively. Marcello continued to yap. Then he peed on the floor. “Damn,” Heidi muttered. She sent an apologetic glance Erica’s way as she clicked on some lights. “I think Marcello has a bladder control problem.”

  Erica was too distracted by Heidi’s apartment to think about the dog. On TV, New York apartments didn’t look like this.

  “Wow ... it’s ...” Erica frowned. The long narrow room had wide, chipped wood floors and brick walls that made it seem like a cellar. From somewhere in the back—which had been converted into a makeshift kitchen—a faucet dripped. There were no holiday decorations, if you didn’t count the Christmas card Erica had sent Heidi weeks ago, which she’d propped on a plastic stacking shelf unit next to an old-fashioned, boxy television.

  “I know it’s not the Plaza,” Heidi said, scrambling toward the kitchen area to grab some paper towels to clean up the floor. “But the size is fantastic. That’s why Brooklyn is so great—you get so much more space.”

  Apparently she didn’t realize Erica had been sucking in her breath ever since walking through the door. “Where’s the bedroom?”

  Heidi gestured to the futon couch. “There.”

  Okey-doke. Erica reached back to her mom’s training from when she was four and was going to her first birthday party. Her mom had told her that when you went into someone’s home, even if it was a dump, you were supposed to pick out something to compliment, something that made it special.

  “This is incredible,” Erica said. “I’ve never been in a place so, so”—she spun around—“so totally without closets.”

  Maybe that wasn’t a good compliment, but she must have gotten the tone right, because Heidi smiled. “I don’t need one. That’s what the wardrobe is for.” She gestured to a banged-up wooden cabinet hulking in one corner. The doors hung crookedly, so that they overlapped where they met and didn’t quite close properly. Heidi had fixed this problem by connecting the door pulls with a rubber band.

  The Laura in Erica shook her head, but her mother’s training kept the smile pasted on. “That’s a big ... thing.”

  “Isn’t it impressive?” Heidi said. “It came with the place. Really sold me on it, actually.”

  “You own this?” Erica asked, horrified.

  “No such luck. I just rent.”

  Erica deposited her stuff on the futon and asked if she could take a shower. She felt grimy from her trip. Also, a hot shower might help her thaw out. The temperature in the apartment wasn’t that much of an improvement over the weather outside.

  Luckily, though the shower was an icky contraption with painted metal walls and pebbled flooring—the sort of thing you’d expect at a public pool, not in someone’s house—the hot water worked fine. Erica stood under the spray, the warm water at first making her cold skin prickle in protest, and wondered what she was doing here. For the past day and a half, her sole aim had been to get to New York. Now she’d arrived, and it seemed weird. Heidi’s apartment wasn’t any more Christmassy than the farm had been. Plus, there was the little kid and the yappy, house-training-challenged dog. Worst of all, it suddenly struck her that Laura and Webb might be hurt that she had abandoned them for the holidays.

  And then she was going to have to explain to her dad about Leanne’s Visa card ...

  When Erica came out of the shower, Heidi was bustling around the kitchen. Wilson, still in his snowsuit, sat on the floor with Marcello, who didn’t seem to know what to make of him. At least he’d stopped barking. He was actually cute, although she was so used to the big dogs at the farm, he seemed more like a rabbit. She wadded up a Kleenex, threw it, and watched him skitter across the floor to race after it.

  Definitely a dog. Marcello’s goofiness cheered her up a little.

  Steam poured out of a kettle on the ancient stove. “How about some hot chocolate?” Heidi asked. “I found this mix last night.” She whacked a stiff white envelope on the counter. “It’s perfectly good.”

  “Sure,” Erica said. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll have it all ready after you call Laura,” Heidi added pointedly.

  Erica groaned.

  “Or your dad,” Heidi said. “Whichever you feel up to tackling first.”

  Easy decision. She decided to call her aunt.

  When Laura answered the phone, she sounded relieved. “Where’ve you been?” she asked. “I’ve called your house three times. Has the wicked stepmother revoked your phone privileges?”

  No, but that’s probably coming.

  Erica swallowed. “There’s sort of been a change in plans.”

  A pause came over the line. “What happened?”

  Here goes nothing. “Well, see, Leanne’s sister was in the hospital, so she and Dad had to go to Houston ...”

  “When was this?”

  Erica swallowed. “Yesterday.” Had it really just been yesterday? It seemed like weeks ago, actually.

  “Yesterday! You should have called us. Are you staying with a friend?”

  “Yeah.” Erica darted an anxious glance at Heidi. “A friend.”

  “Where? We’ll come pick you up.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m with Heidi.”

  “Heidi who?”

  “Heidi Bogue. You know—Heidi. That person who used to be your stepsister.”

  The silence that crackled over the line made Erica nervous. But what came next proved worse. She had to hold the phone away from her ear and cover the receiver with her hand to muffle the tinny sounds of Laura’s hollering.

  Heidi crossed the kitchen in two steps. “Here—let me talk to her,” she said, taking the phone.

  Erica handed it over gladly and listened as Heidi tried to smooth things over.

  “Laura, she’s here. She’s safe. Everything’s fine.” More angry bleats emanated from the receiver before Heidi continued, “I didn’t lure her over here. Believe me, I was as surprised as you are now. The only difference was, for me, it’s a nice surprise.” She smiled at Erica. “No, I don’t know how she did it ... just got on an airplane, I guess.... No, I don’t know where she got the money.” She held her hand over the receiver and asked Erica, “Where did you get the money?”

  “I charged it over the Internet, on Leanne’s Visa card.”

  Heidi’s brows shot up. “Laura, she used Leanne’s Visa card.... Yeah, I think she’s worried about how it’s all going to go over.” She listened to Laura’s response, nodded, and looked up at Erica. “Laura says your days are numbered.”

  Erica took the phone back.
“I’m sorry, Laura. I didn’t mean to upset y’all.”

  “I’m still too stunned to be upset,” Laura replied, conveniently ignoring the fact that she’d just spent five minutes yelling. “Though I guess you couldn’t have been looking forward to our holiday together very much. Not if you’d steal from your stepmother and brave a blizzard to fly all the way out to see Heidi instead.”

  Erica cringed, but then felt an answering indignation billow up. “You two didn’t seem like you were all that into Christmas, anyway. You didn’t even bother to put up a tree!”

  “And what’s Heidi got in her place—eleven lords a-leaping?”

  Erica gave the apartment an uncomfortable second glance. “Her café is really incredible. There’s a huge tree there, and stockings hanging, and garland. And it’s got pictures of you and Mom when you were young, and the farm and everything.”

  Laura snorted. “I bet that pulls in the customers.”

  “I thought it was neat,” Erica said defensively. “I like remembering Mom.”

  A heavy pause followed this last statement, and she could almost hear the tension as Laura struggled over how to respond. “Look, Erica,” she said in a more measured tone. “Someone’s going to have to break the news to your dad that you’ve flown the coop—with the help of Leanne’s credit card. I figure that someone might as well be me. He already hates me.”

  Erica suddenly felt bad for getting huffy. Her aunt had always been on her side, and probably always would be, even through this. “Could you?”

  “Sure, but you’d better prepare for some serious blowback.”

  “I know. At first he’ll tell me that he’s been worried sick about me, but I’ll bet he never even knew I was gone. And then he’ll yell at me about the money and probably ground me for life.”

  “Well ... maybe the storm won’t be so bad if I call him first. I’ll be your barrier island.”

  After Erica had stepped through the door at the Sweetgum Café, a mild hysteria had taken hold of Heidi. A dog, a toddler, an unexpected guest—all hope of a holiday of relaxation and solitude evaporated. Now, not only did she have to worry about the missing money and Wilson’s mom never showing up, she had to figure out what to do with a runaway teenager.

  But Erica’s arrival turned out to be a godsend. She might profess that she didn’t like little kids, but she actually knew something about taking care of them. Watching Erica playing with Wilson, handling him, bossing him, brought home to Heidi how clueless she herself was. For instance, when Wilson had gone nuts, running around red in the face, screeching in unintelligible toddler-speak, Erica pinpointed the problem immediately. “He needs a change.” She grabbed him and sniffed. “Wilson, when was the last time you had a bath?”

  Heidi felt embarrassed. Martine had left her with a perfectly clean kid twelve hours ago, and now she’d let him get dirty. “I don’t really have a bathtub,” Heidi said.

  “I noticed.” Erica surveyed the kitchen. “We could use the sink.”

  “Should I run some water?”

  Erica seemed to have sussed out Heidi’s child-care incompetence already. “You’d better let me. It can’t be too hot.”

  After Erica had been set up with baby supplies and was working her magic with Wilson, Heidi went outside and attempted to chip the tree free from the ice. Giving Erica a few Christmas trappings, including a Christmas tree, would repay her efforts to some extent. But the only tools at Heidi’s disposal—a broom handle and a half-empty container of Morton’s salt—failed to break through the two inches of ice over several inches of snow that encased the tree.

  She trudged back inside, wondering what else she owned that was Christmassy. From her feeble bag of wrapping supplies, she found a red ribbon left over from last year, which she tied around the rabbit ears on her television. Also, she pulled out a Santa hat. She put it on and set about making some tea. In the kitchen, which was filled with Wilson’s chatter and Erica’s laughter, she changed the radio to a local station that was playing Christmas tunes. Jackson Browne sang “The Rebel Jesus” as Erica stuffed her newly scrubbed charge into jeans and a flannel shirt.

  “I can’t wait till Angelica is a little older,” Erica said. “Wilson’s a lot easier to deal with than my sister. And smarter.”

  “He is?” Heidi found him baffling.

  “Sure—he already knows my name. Don’t you, Wil?”

  Wilson smiled. “Ca!”

  She looked over at Heidi. “See?”

  “Does he know my name?”

  Erica asked him. “Wilson, who’s that?”

  “Mizzletoed!”

  Heidi laughed.

  Erica was trying to get him to say Heidi’s name when the phone rang. It was William, Erica’s father. Heidi recognized his voice right away and did her best as “advance man” to smooth things over. “Erica’s doing great—it’s so fun to see her. Can you believe she made it here all on her own? That was amazing. You must be so—”

  “I’d like to speak to her,” William grumbled.

  “And she’s being so helpful,” Heidi said. “I don’t know what I would have done without her this afternoon. I—”

  William interrupted in a spiky, impatient voice. “Can you put her on the phone, please?”

  Reluctantly, Heidi handed the phone over to Erica, who took it with a look of dread.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  A full two minutes passed before she got another chance to speak. Heidi turned away, pretending not to listen, but shutting out the conversation in such a small space was impossible.

  “But what does it matter?” Erica lifted her arm in an impatient shrug, as if her father could actually see her. “I got here okay, didn’t I? I’d think you’d be relieved!”

  That angle, apparently, didn’t go over well.

  “But nothing did happen.” Erica listened for another long stretch, then said, “I’ll pay Leanne back. I swear. You can hold back my allowance for two years, and the debt will all be paid off. I promise.”

  When Erica finally hung up, she looked depressed. Her dad must have agreed to her terms. “Well, looks like I’m broke for the forseeable future.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Heidi said.

  While they ate a small dinner of leftover soup and saltines, Heidi filled Erica in on all the things that had happened in the past day before she showed up.

  “What are you going to do if you never find the money?” Erica asked.

  “I’m assuming at this point that I never will.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  Strangely, it felt good to have someone say that. Someone to commiserate with.

  “So when’s Wilson’s mom going to come home?” Erica asked.

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t responded to any of the messages I left for her in Africa, or on the number of her phone I have listed for her here, or the e-mail I sent her at the address Martine gave me. If she doesn’t show up tonight, I guess I should leave a note on her door telling her I’ve got Wilson down here, in case she comes back in the middle of the night and freaks out that he’s gone.”

  They cleaned up the dishes and deliberated on what to do for the rest of the evening. “It’s Christmas Eve,” Heidi said. “You’ve come all this way to New York. We should do something special. We could go to a caroling service at one of the big churches.”

  Erica’s nose wrinkled. “I have to go to church at home. Plus, what would we do with Wilson? He’d get fussy in a church, I’ll bet.”

  “Oh, right.” That thought hadn’t occurred to her.

  “What did you have planned?” Erica asked her. “I mean, maybe you have parties or something to go to.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But you must have had something in mind for the holiday.”

  It was time to fess up.

  “Have you ever seen Avatar?”

  “That movie that came out years ago? About the blue people?”

  Heidi explained that she’d been too busy with the rest
aurant to completely catch up with her Netflix queue. Then a troubling thought occurred to her and she hurried over to check the box. “I better check to make sure it’s not R. I wouldn’t want your father to be mad ...”

  Erica laughed. “After I’ve run away from home and stolen six hundred twenty-eight dollars? I don’t think he’s going to worry about me seeing a movie that’s not PG-13.” Erica scurried to her backpack and rummaged around until she came up with a gigantic chocolate bar. “I brought you this. I’m saving your big present for tomorrow, but we can have some of this with the movie.”

  The bar was big enough that she would be munching on it during movies for weeks, but Heidi adhered to the philosophy that a person could never have too much chocolate. She accepted the present with a hug, then a worried frown. “I mailed your present to East Texas. You probably didn’t get it yet.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll have something to open when I get home. I’ll probably need something to cheer me up.”

  They prepped for the movie. First, they got Wilson ready for bed. Once he was in his jammies, they plopped him down in the center of the futon, where he promptly fell asleep. God knows the day had probably been more stressful for him than it had been for them. They wrapped themselves in blankets and sat on either side of him.

  The moment he heard the chocolate bar being opened, Marcello jumped up to join them.

  “Dogs can’t have chocolate,” Erica warned Heidi.

  “Right,” Heidi said. “I knew that.”

  But would she have remembered it if Erica hadn’t been here?

  She punched PLAY on the DVD player and they settled back for an evening’s entertainment. This was good. She’d planned to be alone, relaxing, but it was nice to have Erica here. Heck, it would have been nice with just Marcello for company. Another warm body, even a dog body, made the place seem homier.