Lakeshore Christmas (15 page)

Eddie never said anything to them about Santa. He knew they didn’t believe and wouldn’t approve. The lack of gifts under the tree—not that there was a tree—merely proved their point.

“Sorry to have to disappoint you,” he told his mother on the phone, “but I’m stuck here in Avalon, same as I am every Christmas, working on the pageant.”

A pause. “Surely by now you’ve fulfilled your community service.”

“Still at it,” he said. What nobody knew, what he kept from everybody, was that his community service sentence had been fulfilled a long time ago. He kept coming back, year after year, because in spite of everything, he stupidly wanted to believe in Christmas.

“My goodness. You’ve done more than your share. I can’t imagine what that judge was thinking.”

Eddie and his mother had, more or less, the same conversation, year in and year out. She wanted him to spend Christmas with them, while he would resort to anything—including a lie—to get out of it. The reason he worked on the pageant year after year was simple. It saved him from having to deal with something he liked even less.

He offered the same line he always gave her. “I’ll come down for a visit after.”

“The Sheltons will be so disappointed. They specifically said how much they were looking forward to seeing you.”

He felt his jaw tighten. Did she think, after all this time, that he would change his mind? That he would
suddenly want to make merry with the people who had ruined the holiday for him? “Tell them I’m sorry to miss them, too,” he said. “Tell them I had to go abroad.”

A beat of silence tripped by. “Well. That
is
disappointing. We’ll miss you,” she said. “Christmas just isn’t the same without you, son.”

“I’ll miss you too, Barb,” he said. “Tell Larry I said hi.”

He set down his phone, wishing he could dive under the covers and go back to the angel again. He couldn’t, though. He was haunted by echoes of the wistful note in his mother’s voice as he dressed for the day and headed to the station. He didn’t like to disappoint her, hell no. But he could not fathom a way to survive Christmas Eve, complete with a screening of
Caper
and—good God—a musical slide show, all accompanied by the requisite cocktails and spiked eggnog. He was confident in his sobriety, but if anything could drive him back to drinking, it would be a night like that.

Later that day, Eddie pulled into the gym parking lot and headed for the handball court. Athletics weren’t really his bag, but he liked the game well enough, and he was meeting his friend Bo Crutcher here. A major league pitcher, Bo had a strict winter training regimen which he stuck to with the devotion of a fanatic. For Eddie, a handball game with a baseball pitcher was kind of a mismatch, but it was a good workout.

He found Bo in the weight room. “Ready to get your ass kicked?” Eddie asked him.

“Yeah, I’m shaking.”

“Let’s get going, then. I got a lot I have to do later. Christmas pageant stuff,” he added. “With my new boss, Maureen Davenport.”

“Maureen Davenport.” Bo tried out the name. “What’s she like?”

An interesting question and one Eddie had been contemplating a lot lately. What was she like? “Bossy,” he said. “A take-charge kind of woman.”

“She single?” asked Bo. Up until recently, Crutcher had been the womanizer of the group. These days he was a happily married man, so he transferred his flirtatious ways to his unattached friends.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t ask,” he said.
I didn’t have to.

“Bet she is. So what’s she like?” Bo persisted.

“She’s a librarian, okay? She’s like…a librarian.”

“What’s a librarian like?” Crutcher asked.

“You know, all smart and stuff. Know-it-all attitude, hair pulled back with chopsticks or knitting needles sticking through it, glasses.” A couple of times during auditions, he had glanced at Maureen and caught a glimpse of an attractive woman. When she smiled, when she listened to music, she looked incredibly pretty. And—he couldn’t be sure because he didn’t want to be rude—he thought maybe under the sweater, she might have a figure. Not that it should matter, but he looked for things like that in a woman.

Bo wiggled his eyebrows. “Sounds like just your type.”

“I’m working on the Christmas program with her. And helping her put on a big fund-raiser for the library.”

“You’re going to a lot of trouble for a chick you don’t even like,” said Bo.

“I didn’t say I don’t like her,” Eddie pointed out. “I do like her. Just not, you know, in that way.”

“What way?” Bo asked, playing dumb. He did that a lot.

“You know what way,” Eddie said.

“The way I don’t like
that
chick?” Bo paused in his workout to indicate a statuesque redhead coming toward them as though on a catwalk. She was drop-dead gorgeous in a tight yoga top and formfitting pants folded down to reveal a glimpse of skin and a belly button ring.

She aimed a cool glance at Bo, her gaze heating up as it progressed from his head to his feet and back again. Then with unhurried leisure, she went to him and planted a lingering kiss on his mouth.

Eddie wasn’t shocked or surprised, just envious. The redhead was Bo’s wife, Kimberly.

“Sure,” he said under his breath, “that way. That’s the way I don’t like Maureen Davenport.”

“Hi, Eddie,” said Kim. “Did you say something?”

“Yeah, I got roped into helping organize a library fund-raiser.”

“Good for you. Count on us for a donation. A big one. Everybody loves the library.”

“So I hear. But do we love it enough to hand over a wad of cash the size of Poughkeepsie? Hey, maybe you guys have that wad of cash. A major league player? You could save me a lot of trouble—”

“How much?” asked Bo.

Eddie dug a pledge form out of his gym bag and indicated the target amount at the top. “I’m not
that
major,” Bo said. “Dang, that is a wad. I don’t have that kind of money. The ink’s barely dry on my contract.”

“I thought baseball players were loaded,” Eddie pointed out.

“Like movie stars,” Bo countered.

“We should both be swimming in dough,” Eddie said.
But neither was swimming in anything. Bo’s career in the majors was too new, and Eddie’s in the movies too old.

“That’s the reason for the fund-raiser,” he said. “One person can’t get it done. But if everybody contributes, we can pull it off.”

Kim’s expression lit with a bright smile. “We’ll do what we can. Just tell us where and when.”

“Thanks. As soon as there’s a plan, I’ll let you know. I’ll announce it on the radio, too.”

“You’re doing a lot for a woman you don’t like in
that
way,” Bo said.

Maureen was busy helping a group of volunteers and children decorate the library’s Christmas tree. Each year, a tall noble fir was donated by Gail and Adam Wright, owners of a plant nursery on the Lakeshore Road. A team of off-duty firefighters had helped stand the twenty-foot tree in the central atrium of the library, a big airy space illuminated by a white winter glow through the skylight two stories above.

Renée was there with her three kids. Daisy Bellamy managed to keep tabs on little Charlie as she snapped picture after picture. After the lights were strung, each child present created a hand-made ornament to hang on the tree. Volunteers on ladders adorned the upper branches while the little ones looked on in wonder.

Gail Wright had three school-age kids. The youngest was George, who went by the nickname Bear. His ornament was a crude angel made of a toilet-paper tube, with wings constructed of Popsicle sticks. “I made this for my dad,” he told Maureen. “He’s on deployment. He won’t be home for Christmas.”

“Let’s get a picture of you with it,” Maureen said,
taking him by the hand. “Then you can send him the picture, all right?”

He glowered at her, not fooled for an instant. His father was gone, and just having a picture wasn’t the same. Her heart ached for the little boy, his mother and siblings. Adam Wright had joined the state’s National Guard in order to supplement the farm’s income during the lean years. He’d expected to be called to help his community during floods or forest fires, or to be in the first line of defense in domestic disasters. Instead, he found himself amid a frontline fighting force in a dangerous foreign land.

“You don’t have to smile,” Daisy said, squatting down to Bear’s level. “Your dad’ll understand. I’ve got a friend in the military, and he understands when I feel scared for him.”

“My dad says I got the best smile,” Bear said.

“You want to give it a try, then?” asked Daisy.

The little boy’s attempt was a sad trembling of the chin, a grimace of his lips, but Maureen knew the photo would be precious to his father, checking his e-mail from some remote outpost.

The Christmas tree grew steadily more beautiful as more ornaments were added. “It’s time for the treetop angel,” said Maureen’s niece, Wendy. “Who’s gonna put up the angel?”

“Maureen should do it,” said Daisy, ready with her camera.

Maureen recoiled. “No, I couldn’t—”

“We insist,” said Mr. Shannon, the president of the board. He took the elaborate ornament, made of silk and blown glass, from its box. “You should do the honor of placing the angel on the treetop. I assure you, the ladder is quite sturdy.” What he didn’t say, what he didn’t have
to say, was that this could well be the last time for the library’s tree.

“Here,” said Renée. “I’ll hold the ladder steady while you climb up.”

Maureen was too proud to admit she was afraid of heights. She took the angel and climbed the first few steps of the ladder. About halfway up, she made the mistake of glancing at the floor, which suddenly appeared distant and forbiddingly hard. Yikes. She needed to hang on with both hands. She grabbed the angel’s hanging loop in her teeth, which probably didn’t look very attractive, but it was better than turning back. As she climbed each level of the tree, she tried to distract herself from her fear of heights by focusing on all the beautiful homemade ornaments. They had been created by children through the years, with such love and hope. Some depicted smiling faces superimposed on books. Others had brief, scrawled messages: I
the library. Reading is fun.
There were even a couple of portraits of Maureen herself. Seen through children’s eyes, she was all heavy-rimmed glasses and a giant hair bun, yet they always drew her smiling, so that was something. Nearly there, she recognized an ancient ornament, one she herself had made as a schoolgirl. It was a small ceramic reindeer with
Christmas is Magic
written on the side. It was the runaway reindeer from Eddie’s movie. Even then, she thought.

She reached the upper steps of the ladder without incident, and was now close enough to place the angel on the treetop. The trouble was, she’d made the mistake of looking down and was now too scared to let go of the ladder.

Renée said something, but Maureen wasn’t listening. Everything was drowned out by the whir of panic in her ears. Vertigo made the world seem to tilt.

“Everything all right up there?”

The sound of the familiar voice made her stomach drop.
Eddie Haven.
When had he shown up? With the angel still dangling by its loop in her teeth, she dared to glance down again—and immediately wished she hadn’t. Eddie stood at the base of the ladder where Renée had been. He appeared to be staring straight up her skirt.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. How many people, she wondered, insisted they were fine a split second before disaster struck? She tried to console herself that her skirt was long enough, her tights dark enough, to preserve her modesty. Now she was frozen, not just with fear but with embarrassment.

“Need some help?” he asked.

She could swear she heard laughter in his voice. “I’ve got it,” she said. Her fear of heights was easily overpowered by the embarrassment of having Eddie Haven at the base of the ladder, looking up her skirt. She reached out and set the cone-shaped angel on the topmost point of the tree.

The trouble with a just-cut noble fir was that its slender limbs tended to be too flexible. The top branch nodded under the weight of the angel. It instantly tumbled downward, bouncing off the lower branches and then smashing on the marble and black tile floor of the foyer.

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Wendy stated, “You broke the angel.”

A ripple swept through the children present: “Miss Davenport broke the angel.” One of the girls started to cry, and that set off a chain reaction—murmurs of dismay, calls for a broom and dustpan, admonitions to kids not to touch the broken glass. Maureen—the klutz, the breaker of angels—climbed down the ladder in defeat.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she said to her sister.

“It was an accident,” Renée said loyally. According to family legend, this was the sister whose first words uttered were “I’m telling.” Now she merely shooed her kids away from the glass and patted Maureen on the arm.

“We need another angel, stat,” said Eddie. He was speaking to Bear, who still hadn’t placed his ornament on the tree. “Mind if I borrow yours?”