Sal let out a sigh. “I hope this doesn’t get back to my girlfriend. She doesn’t trust me as it is.”
“I doubt she’d consider me much of a threat.”
Sal reflected on this and nodded. “Probably not.”
Heidi whacked him on the arm. “Wrong answer!”
He blushed and stammered, “Oh, hey, you know—”
“Yes, I know. I’m in my thirties. Old enough to be your grandmother.”
“I didn’t say that. Anyway, I always liked older—” She cut him off before he could do more damage. “It’s okay, Sal.” A glance at her watch told her it was almost six o’clock. “Let’s get out of here.” She went behind the counter and started filling a box with day-olds. “Here—I’ll give you some stuff to take home.”
“Thanks,” he said, taking the box from her. She expected him to breeze out the door as he usually did at the end of the day, but instead he swallowed and looked down at his feet. “Thanks for everything—for giving me the job, I mean. Taking a chance.”
“No thanks required,” she said, meaning it. “This place couldn’t get by without you.”
When he was gone, she turned her attention to Wilson. “Hey, Wil. You feel like going home?” He blasted a yell into her face. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She did a quick clean-up, wiping the tables, sweeping, and tossing all the pans in the dishwasher. Then she boxed up leftovers to lug back to her apartment. Christmas dinner. Of course, she might have to go root around in Janice’s apartment to find some real food—or real baby food—for Wilson. So far he’d been surviving on split pea soup and cookie dough. She wasn’t sure if that was a well-balanced diet or not for a little kid. She knew there were certain things they weren’t supposed to eat, like honey. And popcorn.
God, there were probably a million things. What was she going to do if Janice never came back? A disastrous string of headlines scrolled through her mind like the newsfeed at Times Square. What if Janice got kidnapped, or her plane went down over the Atlantic Ocean? Had she unwittingly signed on to a lifetime child-care commitment just by opening her front door this morning?
After a short struggle, she managed to get Wilson bundled up again. The kid could squirm away from a sleeve like nobody’s business. As she was turning to shut off the CD player, the café’s door opened, causing her to twist back as an overstuffed backpack dropped to the ground. Its owner let out a sigh that was half triumph, half exhaustion, as if she’d just summited Pike’s Peak.
“I made it!”
Heidi stared at the tall girl in black jeans, high-top sneakers, and a blue denim jacket. She knew who this was, but her mind stubbornly refused to accept the idea that Erica—daughter of her late friend, Rue—could possibly be standing in her café. In Brooklyn. It was all wrong. She blinked twice, certain the figure was only a person who looked like Erica.
“Well, aren’t you going to say something?” The Texas twang was undeniable.
“Erica?” Heidi’s voice came out as a squeak. “What are you doing here?”
“Surprised?”
Erica’s face broke into a hopeful expression that had so much Rue in it that tears sprang to Heidi’s eyes. She lurched forward and nearly squeezed Erica to death in a hug. It felt as if she’d grown half a foot in the past year and three months since Heidi had last seen her.
“Where did you come from?”
“Where do you think?” Erica asked, as if dropping in out of the blue was the most reasonable thing in the world. She extracted herself from Heidi’s death squeeze and stepped into the middle of the room, where she turned in a circle. “Wow!”
A picture in the corner caught Erica’s attention—a black-and-white photo of Rue, Laura, and Heidi as teenagers, sitting on the bench in front of the store in Sweetgum. Rue and Laura were leaning against each other, laughing, while Heidi sat apart, primly, with a lapful of schoolbooks—the odd girl out, stepsister, dweeb—her blond hair cut in bangs and sprouting from one side of her head in a poofy ponytail.
“That’s the Sweetgum store, isn’t it?” Erica asked. She didn’t wait for Heidi’s nod before adding, “Look at Mom! She was so pretty.”
The photo had been snapped the year before the car accident that had scarred Rue’s face. The accident had scarred Laura’s psyche, too, although in Heidi’s opinion, Laura had never been the poster girl for good mental health.
The café had other pictures from Sweetgum—including one of Erica and her horse, Milkshake, by the cash register—mixed in with eight-by-tens of movie stars. Erica walked around, taking it all in. Then she tilted her head, listening to Dean Martin singing “A Marshmallow World” on the CD player.
“Mom would have loved this place!”
Heidi swallowed. “That’s the best compliment anyone’s ever paid me.” She had conjured up the café as a sort of tribute to Rue, and the way she had taken Heidi into her own kitchen when Heidi had been at her low-water mark, morale-wise, before her ex-boyfriend Vinnie’s trial.
Erica sank down on a chair. “I was starting to believe that I was the only one who remembered Mom anymore.”
“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her,” Heidi said.
Erica sniffed. “I miss her so much. Laura never talks about her. Nobody does.”
The mention of Laura jolted Heidi a little.
Where was Laura?
Laura had been Heidi’s tormenter in her teen years, and the possibility of her being in New York, on her own home turf, didn’t exactly fill her with Christmas cheer. She returned to her original question. “Erica, what are you doing here?”
“Visiting you.”
Her brain attempted to digest those two words. “Who brought you?”
“No one.”
“You mean ... ?”
“You said you couldn’t come to Sweetgum,” Erica explained, “so I’ve come to spend Christmas with you!”
Though enthusiasm suffused Erica’s voice, Heidi could tell she was nervous about how that announcement would be received. A host of new doubts and worries swirled through Heidi’s brain, but she tried not to let them show.
Erica, however, wasn’t so good at hiding her surprise—and dismay—upon finally spotting Wilson. Which she didn’t do until Wilson chucked a tiny glove at her. “What’s
that
?”
“It’s Wilson.”
“A
baby
?”
“Toddler,” Heidi corrected, envisioning another ten minutes of struggle to get that glove back on. “He’s ... well, he’s sort of spending the holiday with me, too.”
Erica lowered herself into a chair with a groan. “There’s no escaping them, is there?”
“I didn’t really run away,” Erica said after devouring her second bowl of soup and her second turkey sandwich. “I just sort of took off.”
As she listened to the story of Erica’s journey, including the tricky way she’d gotten to the bus station, then the ride to the airport, and the many delays thereafter, Heidi wasn’t sure which was stronger—her awe for what a thirteen-year-old had managed on her own, or her sense of impending doom. Erica might not think of herself as a runaway, but Heidi was pretty sure her father wouldn’t see her Christmas journey as a big adventure.
“The most awful part was sitting on the runway for
hours.
” She frowned. “No, actually, the hardest part was when I got to the city, on account of the cabs were so expensive. I was almost out of money, so the guy dropped me at a subway and told me to go to the Carroll Street stop. It sounded easy when he said it, but I think I went the wrong way first. It took forever. But everybody was pretty nice, actually. After the way Laura always talked about this place, I was expecting to get mugged.”
“And Laura had no idea you were coming here?” Heidi asked.
“Gosh, no. She might be a little mad, actually,” Erica admitted. “I was supposed to spend Christmas on the farm with her and Webb.”
Oh. Oh. Oh.
Erica perceived her growing panic. “But she didn’t want me there—not really. I swear, all Laura does now is whine.”
“
Laura?
” One thing Heidi couldn’t associate with her ex-stepsister was whining. Laura was as tough as old boot leather.
“She’s got morning sickness.”
“Laura is
pregnant
?”
“Didn’t she tell you?”
“No!”
“Yeah, well, she’s sort of cranky these days.”
Heidi snorted. “
These
days?” Laura’s first reaction after slipping out of the womb had probably been a huff of irritation.
“Most of the time she’s vegged out in her recliner chair, moaning and thinking about the baby.” Erica eyed Wilson again. “Babies have taken over my world.”
Hearing that Laura was La-Z-Boy-bound did not soothe Heidi any. If anything, the idea of a sick Laura frightened her more than Laura in tip-top health. Sick, she became an even more unpredictable animal. The only thing certain was that she would freak when she discovered Erica missing. And when she discovered she had run away to spend the holiday with her once arch-nemesis, she’d be doubly pissed.
“We have to call her,” Heidi said, dreading it. “And your dad.”
Erica’s face fell. “Can’t we wait till tomorrow?” Heidi shook her head. “Now.”
“How about tonight?”
“Erica, when they figure out you’re missing they’re going to be frantic with worry. They might already have reported you missing to the police. There could be Amber Alerts and all sorts of searches going on!”
Erica laughed. “I left a note.”
Thank heavens for that, at least. “Where?”
“At the house.”
“Whose house?”
“Dad’s.”
Considering that she herself had forgotten to do as much for Janice, Heidi gave her points for clearheaded-ness. “Do Webb and Laura have a key to your dad’s house?”
Erica’s face collapsed, and Heidi had her answer.
“Oops.”
Chapter 8
Erica slipped and fell on her butt twice within two blocks before she got a clue and slowed down. High-top sneakers weren’t the best footwear for hockey rink sidewalks. And her denim jacket was a joke in twenty degrees. Not only her teeth but all of her bones were chattering with cold, even though Heidi had made her put on an extra old sweater she kept at the restaurant.
Still and all, it was sort of cool to be here. It would have stunk if she’d come all this way and everything had seemed exactly like Sweetgum. No way could anyone confuse the two places. The world here was so vertical, just block after block of three-story houses smooshed together. All the buildings seemed ancient—as old as or maybe even older than the courthouse in Carter’s Springs, a building from so far back that people sometimes drove hours just to take a picture of it. That kind of person would go crazy here. Except for the ice-encrusted vehicles that appeared more like larva than actual cars, the city around her looked like something out of another century.
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.