I'll Be Home for Christmas Read online

“Me, too,” Peter said, clomping along behind her.

  “You look good in yellow,” Andi giggled.

  “My favorite color,” Peter quipped.

  “That’s what my mother said when she presented my father with those boots. The second thing she said was they’ll never wear out. My dad wore them proudly. How’s your grandmother today?”

  “Better. I promised to stop by this evening with Hannah’s ashes. My grandmother is a very strong woman. She started King Cosmetics in her kitchen years ago after my grandfather died. I’d like you to meet her.”

  “I’d like that. Do you want to drive or shall I?”

  “I’ll drive. Sleds in the back,” he said, tossing in both Flexible Flyers.

  An hour later they were hurtling down the hill, whooping and hollering, their laughter ringing in the swirling snow.

  On the second trek up the hill, Peter said, “Have you noticed we’re practically the only two people here except for those three kids who are using pieces of cardboard to slide down the hill?”

  “That’s because we’re crazy. Cardboard’s good, so is a shower curtain. You can really get some speed with a shower curtain. A bunch of us used to do that in Minnesota.”

  Peter clenched his fists tightly as he felt a wave of jealousy river through him. He wanted Andi to slide down a hill on a shower curtain with him, not some other guy, and he knew it had been a guy on the shower curtain next to Andi. He asked.

  “Yeah.” He waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.

  “Hey, mister, do you want to trade?”

  Peter looked at Andi, and she looked at him. “The cardboard is big enough for both of us to sit on. Wanna give it a shot?” he asked.

  “Sure. You sit in the front, though, in case we hit a tree.”

  “Okay, kid.” He accepted their offer, then turned to Andi. “Did you notice they waited till we dragged these sleds to the top of the hill?” Peter hissed.

  “I don’t blame them. I think this is my last run. My legs feel numb.”

  “Sissy,” Peter teased. “Cardboard’s easy to drag. We’ve only been here two hours.”

  “It seems like forever,” Andi said. “I can’t feel my feet anymore. How about you?”

  “Hey, mister, Where’d you get them yellow boots?” one of the kids asked.

  “Macy’s. Neat, huh?”

  “They look shitty,” the kid said.

  “That, too. You kids go first and we’ll follow.”

  “Nah, you go first. You might fall off and we’ll stop and pick you up. You might break a leg or something. You’re old.”

  Peter settled himself on the slice of cardboard that said Charmin Tissue. “Hang on, Andi, and sit up straight.”

  They were off. Andi shrieked and Peter bellowed as they sailed down the steep hill. Midway down, the cardboard slid out from under them. They toppled into the snow, rolling the rest of the way down the hill. The kids on the sleds passed them, waving and shouting wildly. Andi rolled up against Peter, breathless, her entire body covered in snow.

  “Now that was an experience,” Peter gasped as he reached for Andi’s arm to make sure she was all right.

  “I feel like I’m dead. Are we?”

  “No. Those little shits are taking off with our sleds!” Peter gasped again.

  “Who cares. I couldn’t chase them if my life depended on it. Every kid needs a sled. Let them have them.”

  “Okay. Are you all right?”

  “No. I hurt. This wasn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. God, I must be getting old. My eyebrows are frozen to my head. They crunch. Do yours?”

  “Yep. C’mon, let’s get in the truck and go home. The first run was fun. We should have quit after that.” He was on his feet, his hand outstretched to pull Andi to her feet. “Ah, I bet if I kissed your eyebrows they’d melt.”

  “Never mind my damn eyebrows, kiss my mouth, it’s frozen.”

  “Hmmmnn. Aaahhh, oh, yes,” Andi said later.

  “Was that sweet? I have a kiss that’s a real wake-up call.”

  “Oh, no, that one…sizzled. Let’s try it out,” Andi said.

  “Oh, look, they’re kissing. Yuk. Here’s your sleds, mister.”

  “I thought you stole those sleds. Your timing is incredible. Go away, you can have the sleds.”

  “My mother ain’t never gonna believe you gave us these sleds. You gotta write us a note and sign your name.”

  “Do what he says.” Andi giggled as she headed for the truck, and Peter hastily penned a note.

  “Guess you’re gonna have to wait for my wake-up call,” he said when he caught up to her.

  “How long?”

  Peter threw his hands up in the air. “I have all the time in the world. You just let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay. That sounds good. I had a good time today, Peter, I really did. I felt like a kid for a little while. Thanks. Time to get back to reality and the business at hand.”

  “How about if I drop you off, go pick up Hannah’s ashes, take them to my grandmother and come back. We can have dinner together. I can pick up some steaks and stuff. I want to get those carbon monoxide units for you, too.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “It’s a date, then?”

  “Yep, it’s a date.”

  “I’ll see you around seven-thirty.”

  Inside the kennel the animals greeted their owner with sharp barks and soft whines, each vying for her attention. She sat down on the floor and did her best to fondle each one of them. “I smell worse than you guys when you get wet,” she said, shrugging out of her wet clothes. “Supper’s coming up!”

  With the door closed to the outside waiting room, Andi paid no mind to the excessive barking and whining from the animals; her thoughts were on Peter King and spending the night with him. She had at least two hours, once the animals were fed, to shower and change into something a little more romantic.

  Outside, Helen Palmer watched the dinner preparations through the front window. When she was certain no one else was in attendance, her eyes narrowed. She walked back to the office, a manila folder in hand, the detective’s report on one Dr. Andrea Evans that she’d taken from Peter King’s car when she’d backtracked from Roosevelt Park where she’d spied on her old lover.

  She eyed the messy desk with the pile of bills. On tiptoe, she walked around the back of the desk to stare down at the piles of bills. With one long, polished nail, she moved the contract to the side so she could see it better. Three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars! For this dump! She tiptoed back to the door and let herself out. Miss Girl Next Door would know there was no manila envelope on the desk. Better to drop it outside where Peter’s car had been parked. “She’ll think it fell out when he got out of the car. Perfect!” she muttered.

  Her feet numb with cold, Helen walked out of the driveway to her car parked on the shoulder of the road in snow up to her ankles. She’d probably get pneumonia and all of this would be for naught. One way or another she was going to get Peter King for herself.

  Inside the house, Andi climbed the stairs to the second floor to run a bath. She poured lavishly from a plastic bag filled with gardenia bath salts. It was the only thing she consistently splurged on. She tried to relax, but the dogs’ incessant barking set her nerves on edge. What in the world was wrong with them today? Maybe they were picking up on her own tenseness in regard to Peter King. And she was tense.

  “I hardly know the man and here I sit, speculating on what it would be like to go to bed with him.” The bathtub was the perfect milieu for talking to herself. She loved this time of day when she went over her problems, asked questions of herself aloud and then answered them in the same manner. She wondered aloud about what kind of bed partner he would make. “Shy? No way. Lusty? To a degree. Wild and passionate? I can only hope. Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am? Not in a million years. A man with slow hands like the Pointer Sisters sang about. Oh, yeahhhhh.”

  Puckered, h
yped and red-skinned, Andi climbed from the tub, towel dried and dressed. She fluffed out her hair, added makeup sparingly. The gardenia scent stayed with her.

  Andi eyed the bed. When was the last time she changed the sheets? She couldn’t remember. She had the bed stripped and changed inside of eight minutes. “Just in case.”

  Downstairs, the dogs milled around inside the house, running back and forth to the waiting room and her tiny office area. Susy, a long-haired, fat, black cat, hissed and snarled by the door, her claws gouging at the wood. “Okay, okay, I get the message, something’s wrong. Let’s do one spin around the parking lot. When I blow this whistle, everyone lines up and comes indoors. Allow me to demonstrate.” She blew three short blasts. “Everybody line up! That’s the drill. If you don’t follow my instructions, you’re out for the night. Let’s go!” She stood to the side as the dogs and cats stampeded past her. She’d done this before, and it always worked because Beggin Strips were the reward when everyone was indoors. She waited ten minutes, time for everyone to lift their leg or squat, depending on gender. The floodlights blazed down in the parking lot, creating shimmering crystals on the piled-high snow. Now it was speckled with yellow spots in every direction.

  Andi blew three sharp blasts on the whistle as she stepped aside. One by one, the animals fell into a neat line and marched to the door. “C’mon Annabelle, you can do it!” Andi called encouragingly. “You can’t sit down in the middle of the parking lot. All right, all right, I’ll carry you. Move it, Bizzy,” she said to a cat with two tails. The cat strolled past her disdainfully. Andi gave one last blast on the whistle for any stragglers. Satisfied that all the animals were indoors, she walked over to Annabelle to pick her up. She noticed the folder then and picked it up. She stuck it under her arm as she bent to pick up the beagle. “I swear, Annabelle, you weigh a ton.”

  Inside, she did one last head count before she doled out the treats, the folder still under her arm. “My time now!”

  Andi did her best not to look at the clock as she set the table and layered tinfoil on the ancient broiler. Candles? No, that would be too much. Wineglasses? She looked with disgust at the dust on the crystal. How was it possible that she’d been here almost a year and a half and hadn’t used the glasses, much less washed them? That was going to change now. The wineglasses were special, and there were only two of them. She remembered the day her father had presented the Tiffany glasses to her mother and said, “When we have something special to celebrate we’ll use these glasses.” To her knowledge, nothing special had ever occurred. Well, tonight was special. She liked the way they sparkled under the domed kitchen light. Peter probably used glasses like this to gargle with every day.

  He was late. Again. Her insides started to jump around. What should she do now to kill time? What if he didn’t show up? “Oh, shit,” she muttered. No point in letting him think she was sitting here biting her nails waiting for him. Only desperate women did things like that. In the blink of an eye she had the dishes back in the cabinet and the wineglasses in their felt sacks with the gold drawstrings. She refolded the tablecloth and stuck it in the drawer. She eyed the manila folder as she slid the drawer closed. It must have fallen out of Peter’s car because it wasn’t hers and no one else had been at the kennel today.

  Eight o’clock.

  Andi moved the folder. She moved it a second time, then a third time. She watched it teeter on the edge of the kitchen counter. She brushed by it and it slid to the floor. Now she’d have to pick up the papers and put them back in the folder. When she saw her name in heavy black letters on the first page, she sucked in her breath. Her heart started to pound in her chest as she gathered up the seven-page report. Twenty minutes later, after reading the report three times, Andi stacked the papers neatly in the folder. From the kitchen drawer she ripped off a long piece of gray electrical tape. She taped it to the folder and plastered it on the door of the clinic. She locked the doors and slid the dead bolt into place. She turned off all the lights from the top of the steps. Only a dim hall light glowed in the house.

  She made her way to the attic. The small window under the eaves was the perfect place to watch the parking lot. Sneaky bastard. The report chronicled her life, right down to her bank balance, her student aid, her credit report, and her relationships with men. Her cheeks flamed when she remembered one incident where her landlady said Tyler Mitchel arrived early in the evening and didn’t leave for three days. The line in bold letters that said “The lady uses a diaphragm” was what sent her flying to the attic. That could only mean someone had been here in her house going through her things. Unless Tyler or Jack or maybe Stan volunteered the information.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Headlights arched into the driveway. Andi’s eyes narrowed. Down below, the animals went into their howling, snarling routine.

  Andi nibbled on her thumbnail as she watched Peter walk back to his car, the folder in his hand. Her phone rang on the second floor. She knew it was Peter calling on his car phone. She sat down on the window seat and cried. The phone continued to ring. Like she cared. “Go to hell, Mr. Lipstick!”

  When there were no more tears, Andi wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt. She had things to do. Empty cartons beckoned. She worked industriously until past midnight, packing and sorting, refusing to go to the window. Tears dripped down her cheeks from time to time. At one-thirty she crept downstairs for a soda. She carried it back to the attic and gulped at it from her perch on the window seat. He was still there. He was still there at four in the morning when she called a halt to her activities.

  Andi curled herself into a ball on top of the bed with a comforter where she cried herself to sleep. She woke at seven and raced to the window. “We’ll see about that!”

  With shaking hands, Andi dialed the police, identified herself and said in a cold, angry voice, “I want you to send someone here right now and remove a…person from my parking lot. He’s been sitting there all night. You tell him he’s not to dare set foot on my property until January. If I have to sign something, I’ll come down to the police station. Right now. I want you to come here right now. My animals are going crazy. I have a gun and a license to use it,” she said dramatically. “Thank you.”

  Her heart thundering in her chest, Andi raced back to the attic. She knew the dirt and grime on the window prevented Peter from seeing her. She clenched her teeth when she saw the patrol car careen into her driveway, the red and blue lights flashing ominously. She just knew he was going to give the officers a box of Raspberry Cheese Louise lipsticks for their wives.

  Five minutes later the Mercedes backed out of her parking lot. It didn’t look like any lipstick had changed hands. “He’s probably going to mail them,” she snorted as she raced down the steps to answer the door, the din behind her so loud she could barely hear the officer’s voice.

  “Do you want to file a complaint?”

  “You’re damn right I do,” Andi screamed.

  “All right, come down to the station this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Andi closed the door and locked it. She tended to the animals, showered and ate some cornflakes before she resumed her packing. “You are dead in the water, Mr. Lipstick,” she sniveled as she started to clean out her closet and dresser drawers.

  At ten o’clock she called the Finnerans. “You really and truly found something in Freehold!…I can move in on Sunday? That’s Christmas Eve!…Move-in condition! Fifteen acres! A heated barn for the animals. God must be watching over me. How much is fenced in?…Great. That’s a fair price…. The owners are in California…. I knew you could do it…. Okay. I’ll drive down this afternoon and look at it…. The last of their things will be out by Saturday. I’m very grateful, Tom.” She copied down directions. Her sigh of relief was so loud and long she had trouble taking a deep breath.

  Andi’s second call was to her friend Mickey. “Can you bring the bus by today? Thanks, Mickey. I owe you one.”

&
nbsp; Her third call was to her attorney, who admonished her up one side and down the other for signing the contract before he had a chance to go over it. “You’re lucky everything is in order. Congratulations. I’m going to set up a payout structure you’ll be able to live with.” Andi listened, made notes, gave the attorney her new address and told him to check with information for her new phone number.

  The phone started to ring the moment she hung up from the attorney. The answering machine clicked on. If it was a patient she’d pick up. A hang up. Mr. Lipstick. “Invade my privacy, my life, ha! Only low-life scum do things like that. Well, you got your property, so you don’t have to continue with this charade. It doesn’t say much for me that I was starting to fall for your charms.” Her eyes started to burn again. She cuddled a gray cat close to her chest, the dogs circling her feet. “So I made a mistake. We can live with it. We’ll laugh all the way to the bank. The new rule is, we don’t trust any man, ever again.”

  

  The elaborate silver service on the mahogany table gleamed as Sadie King poured coffee. “You look like you slept in a barn, Peter. Calm down; stop that frantic pacing and tell me what happened. You’ve never had a problem being articulate before. So far all I have been able to gather is someone stepped on your toes. Was it Dr. Evans? I’m a very good listener, Peter.”

  “Yesterday was so perfect it scared me. She felt it, too, I could tell. Somehow, that goddamn investigative report fell out of my car and she found it. When I went back later for dinner, after I left you, she had it taped to the door. Obviously she read it. I called on the car phone, I banged on the door, but she didn’t want any part of me. I sat in her parking lot all night long. This morning the police came and ran me off her property. Their advice was to write her a letter and not to go back or they’d run me off. I think I’m in love with her, Sadie. I was going to tell her that last night. I think…thought she was starting to feel the same way. My stomach tightens up when she laughs and her laughter shines in her eyes. She gave me her father’s boots that were bright yellow, and his gloves. She’s so down to earth, so real. I even started to wonder how our kids would look. What should I do? How can I make her understand?”