The word
money
pushed Heidi’s worry button—about money, about Patrick, about everything—but she tried not to show it. She gave Erica another squeeze.
Erica tilted her chin up. “I’m not sorry I came, though.”
“I’m not, either.”
“Really?”
Heidi shook her head.
“That’s good, because I started to think it might have been bad of me to barge in on you. Like, what if you’d made other plans, or—”
“Had a life?” Heidi laughed. “I don’t. Still ... it might be a good idea to call first next time.”
By the time they left the kitchen area to return to the others, the concert had ended. Heidi dimmed the lights, and everyone settled in for the last Christmas movie in the marathon,
It’s a Wonderful Life,
the movie Heidi had never been able to resist. But now as she watched the blips of angels speaking in heaven, previewing the lifetime of worries and woes that were about to squeeze poor Jimmy Stewart like an almond in a nutcracker, she started to fidget. She knew what was coming, and a story about missing money was too close to home for her to enjoy as entertainment. The movie had a happy ending, but her money was gone for good.
Almost as a reflex, she retreated to the kitchen to make . . . something. Anything to keep busy. The cupboards were emptying out, as was the fridge. She peeked into the hydrator and saw a few lemons rolling around.
When life gives you lemons, make lemon bars.
The activity was soothing, even if it didn’t put the brakes on her angst. What had happened to Patrick and Marcus? The looks on their faces before they’d gone worried her. So tense. What had they been headed for when they’d left—a robbery, a murder? Every life-and-death cop show or TV news scenario played through her head. Most of the time at the café, Patrick and Marcus seemed so laid back, it was easy to forget that they worked a dangerous job, day in, day out.
It made losing a cash box seem fairly trivial.
After she slid the lemon squares in the oven, Heidi went back, pulled out a chair next to Mrs. Lamberti’s cat, and watched Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed dance into the swimming pool.
She must have nodded off, because the next thing she knew, Mrs. Lamberti was poking her shoulder. “Hon, your timer’s beeping.”
Heidi jumped up and pulled out the lemon squares just at the perfect moment, when the pastry was beginning to brown. She set them aside to cool. But by the time they had cooled enough to be dusted with powdered sugar, it would be two in the morning, and no longer Christmas. The world would be swinging into its post-Christmas sugar stupor and starting to contemplate the celery-and-treadmill days of January.
“Those look good,” a familiar voice behind her said.
She turned. It was Patrick.
She couldn’t help herself—she threw her arms around him. “You’re back!”
He laughed, but returned the hug. “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
“The way you guys ran out, and after what you said about last year ...”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, his low voice almost a caress, “I liked your greeting a lot.”
She crooked her head to look up at him. She should have stepped away, or he should have. But they remained just as they were, testing the closeness. “I guess the memorable stuff—shootings and mayhem—doesn’t happen every Christmas,” she said.
“Oh, I think I’ll remember this Christmas, too.” He looked into her eyes.
She felt as if the floor wobbled beneath her, and she had to move away from him.
He means because of the storm, not because of me.
Doesn’t he?
Her sweater was damp. “Your coat’s wet,” she said.
“The snow’s turned to drizzle. It’s a real mess out there now.” As if it hadn’t been before.
He unzipped his coat to take it off, and Heidi felt glad that he intended to stay awhile. She took his hat and coat and turned to hang them on the coatrack in the storage closet.
He followed her and, inside the doorway, after she’d hung up his things, she turned and collided with him. He took her arm, steadying her. “I didn’t think you’d be worried, Heidi. I mean, I didn’t really think you ...”
She looked up. “Patrick, what you saw yesterday afternoon—Sal and I were just horsing around.”
His expression turned momentarily sheepish. “I sort of figured that out today, when he wasn’t here. I guess I acted like a nut.”
“No—”
“I was jealous, seeing him with you.” He leaned closer to her. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to do forever, you know.”
Even if she’d needed to, she didn’t have time to ask what that something was. He pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her back. She leaned into him, her heart hammering, amazed at the way he could take his time pressing his lips to hers, tasting her slowly, savoring the moment. She felt the opposite—all hopped up inside—and had to hold herself back from slamming the door on the storage closet and letting him have his way with her against the all-purpose flour. Good thing that one of them had restraint.
“You taste like ginger,” he murmured, pulling her more tightly against him.
She moaned. “This is a bad time to start something, isn’t it?”
She’d meant that anyone could walk in on them, but he was thinking more long-term.
“No, it’s the best.” He kissed her temple and squeezed her in a tight embrace before she could step away. “It’ll make it easy for me to remember the date. Our first kiss—Christmas night, the year of the ice storm. Even when I’m old and gray and can’t remember my hair’s on top of my head, I’ll remember this.”
His words melted away the last of her reservations. Snowstorms might make strange bedfellows, but this didn’t feel like anything that would be remembered as madness once the last icicle thawed. For one thing, they weren’t hopping into bed, or onto the flour sacks. But even if they had, she couldn’t imagine second-guessing Patrick. Maybe her guy compass had found true north at last.
After a few more achingly sweet kisses, she stepped back and took his hand. He allowed himself to be tugged back to the others. Two chairs next to each other weren’t available, so they pulled a couple of blankets off the stack on one table and spread them next to the wall near the fireplace.
How long had it been since she’d slept? She was so tired, it was easy to lean against Patrick’s chest and close her eyes, just for a wink. Jimmy Stewart was running through Bedford Falls, horrified that in this new nightmare world, his wife had never married and had become a librarian. Heidi couldn’t help smiling, and then she thought again of Patrick kissing her and telling her she tasted like ginger.
“Hey,” she whispered drowsily.
He leaned close, nuzzling her temple. “What?”
“Who’s Ginger?”
The rumble of his laughter was the last thing she remembered before drifting off.
Chapter 11
Erica nibbled on a lemon bar and looked over the wreck that was the café. She had carried the dishes to the sink, but the tabletops were still littered with crumbs, old napkins, a stray glove, and other debris. She’d found a cell phone on a chair, a Hefty bag containing a Temper-pedic pillow, and someone’s gas bill, stamped and ready to mail, on the floor and covered with boot prints. Chairs faced every which way, some draped with the blankets Patrick and Marcus had brought.
The place needed tidying and sweeping, but she had promised not to wake Heidi, who was curled up on the floor next to the fireplace, sleeping soundly for probably the first time in two days. Marcello, on the other hand, quivered from restlessness even though Erica had taken him out.
It hadn’t been much of a walk, though—just up and down the sidewalk in front of the café. Erica hadn’t wanted to let the café door out of her sight, since she and Heidi were the only ones there and she didn’t have a key to lock it. Outside, the ice was melting, so that not only was there the constant drip of water coming off the trees, but occasionally there were chunks of ice dropping to the sidewalk or avalanching down from the eaves. At the corner of the block, when she looked down a larger street and spied skyscrapers in the distance, she’d become antsy to explore the city.
Maybe this feeling was where the expression “cabin fever” came from. If she had lived in pioneer days, they would have had to put her on Ritalin or something.
Eating sugary stuff probably wasn’t calming her impatience any. When she thought she saw Laura and Webb standing outside the café, peering around the street and then into the glass part of the door, she began to regret that last lemon bar she’d inhaled. Great—sugar hallucinations. Her brain was really bugging out.
Then, in a surreal moment, her hallucination rattled the door, opened it with a very real jangle of the bell, and in walked Webb followed by Laura, big as life.
At first, astonishment rooted Erica in place, but in the next moment, a rush of joy propelled her across the room. She threw herself into her aunt’s arms. “Laura!”
Laura wrapped her long arms around her in a tight hug. “Youngster!”
Marcello skittered over to the newcomers, letting out muttered
ruffs
as he sniffed Laura and Webb’s shoes.
Tears streaked down Erica’s cheeks. She hadn’t realized how much she missed Laura until the moment she buried her face in the old barn jacket her aunt was wearing, which smelled of old leaves, soil, and maybe a little of Milkshake. Home.
“I’m
so sorry,
” she said, snuffling.
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Laura said. “If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I’ve been a jackass as usual.”
“No you weren’t. You just weren’t feeling good.”
“You must have thought I didn’t want you around,” Laura continued, “or that you weren’t needed now that Hortense is on the way.”
“I felt lonely,” Erica admitted.
“I assumed you knew what you mean to me, Erica. That losing you would be like ...” Her voice cracked. “Well, it’s not going to happen, that’s all.”
Erica nodded, trying to pull herself together. It was just such a shock to see them here. She glanced over at Webb, looking so out of place here, but so welcome.
He winked at her. “How are you, E?”
Laura relinquished her hold and answered for her. “How do you think? All alone in this godforsaken place.” She inspected the café with narrowed eyes. “What kind of a joint is this?”
“It’s a café,” Erica explained. “She sells coffee, dessert, and sandwiches. Stuff like that.”
“And where is
she
? I might have known she’d get you up here to do all the work.”
Erica pointed to the sleeping form in the corner. Heidi flopped over, disturbed by the voices but not quite awake yet.
“Weird!” Laura tilted her head. “Does she always bed down on the restaurant floor?”
In a low tone, Erica explained what they’d been going through these past two days. This morning, when they’d found out that the power had come back on in the neighborhood, all the people had gathered their things and gone home. Heidi had slept through it, though. The last to leave had been Patrick. He’d said he would be back, and he’d instructed Erica to keep the restaurant sign flipped to CLOSED in the meantime and to let Heidi rest a little longer.
“Who is Patrick?” Webb asked her.
“He’s a cop.”
“The police here go in for mollycoddling, do they?” Laura grinned at them and then swaggered over to Heidi’s makeshift pallet. She toed Heidi’s foot. “Heidi-ho. Wake up!”
She kept hearing that voice—that voice from her past. Gravelly. No-nonsense. Terrifying. For several minutes she twitched into wakefulness, and then something kicked the bottom of her shoe. Heidi opened her eyes to the vision of Laura looming over her, arms akimbo, eyes glittering with amusement. About the only thing different about her was the bump jutting out incongruously from her midsection, which made her look like a Who from Whoville more than a mother-to-be.
She sounded just like the old Laura, however. “Do y’all actually serve food in this place, or should we take our business elsewhere?”
Heidi lurched to her feet, gave Laura and then Webb quick hugs, and attempted to shush Marcello as he circled them, barking. “Of course I’ll fix you something. I’m just so surprised. What are you doing here?” Although she knew. And the happy-mixed-with-sad expression on Erica’s face told her that she knew, too. They’d come to get her.
It was so disorienting, as though they’d dropped from the sky. One minute she’d been asleep, and then ...
She looked around. “What happened to everybody?”
“All the people left,” Erica explained. “The power’s on most everywhere in the neighborhood now—at least, according to Patrick and Marcus.”
Patrick!
Heidi flushed. Where had he gone?
Webb smiled at her. “Looks like we arrived just in time to miss all the fun.”
“All the chaos,” Heidi corrected.
“Good,” Laura said. “We decided to use Erica’s going AWOL as an excuse to take a little vacation.”
Erica gasped. “You mean, we’re going to stay in New York a while?”
“A few days,” Laura said. “Why not? We had a hell of a time getting here—my heart doesn’t yearn to head back to the airport, I can tell you that much.”
“Can we go and watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve?” Erica asked.
Laura’s face slackened in dread, and she and Webb exchanged glances. He seemed amused by the idea, but Laura looked so torn at not giving Erica her heart’s desire that Heidi took pity on her. Times Square on New Year’s was no place for the easily nauseated.
“We could probably find something more fun to do,” she told them, making her way back to the kitchen. “Now let’s see—breakfast. There’re all sorts of stuff left over ...” A peek under the cellophane-wrapped trays and cake covers told a different story, however. Except for a few lemon bars, most of the baked goods were gone. She eyed the fridge critically. “We’ve got a half a carton of eggs, is about all.”
“Just coffee for me,” Laura said, her lips pursed. “Decaf.”
While Heidi cooked the breakfast for everyone else, she got caught up on the news from the farm and Sweetgum, and then explained—or re-explained—what had been going on here.
Laura darted a skeptical glance at Heidi. “Let me get this straight. You lost a whole box of money, and so the next day you started giving out free food and coffee? Does that make sense?”
“Not really, but it felt good.”
“Does it feel good to be even more broke than ever?” Laura followed up.
Heidi arched a brow at her. “I hadn’t quite mulled that over yet. But thanks for reminding me.”
Webb leaned back in a chair, inspecting the tip jar by the register. “What about that money? Doesn’t it count?”
Heidi glanced at the jar for the first time that morning. Yesterday, she had noticed that some people had been putting change and even a few dollars into it. Now, though, it was crammed with bills.
“They passed around the jar last night,” Erica told her. “And this morning, when everybody was leaving, most of them left more.”
Heidi was amazed. “They shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t expect them to.”
“But I think they
wanted
to,” Erica said. “At least, that’s what Patrick said.”
“What happened to Patrick?” Heidi couldn’t help asking.
“He said he was going to call you later this morning. He figured you weren’t going to open the café today.”
“No—I think I’ll take a holiday.”
Seeing Laura and Webb here, looking so much themselves, but so out of place, buoyed her spirits. They got another lift when Erica counted out the money in the tip jar and discovered it contained nearly four hundred dollars. “Wow! What are you going to do with that?”
“Split it between you and Dinah,” she said.
Erica’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“You did
a lot
of work,” Heidi told her. “And maybe this way you’ll be able to pay off your dad faster.”
Erica jumped up and did a happy dance.
“Let me give you guys the grand tour of the neighborhood,” Heidi said. “We can go back to my place. I could use a shower.”
“Me, too!” Erica chimed in.
“And we can call around and see if we can find a hotel,” Webb said.
Heidi locked up the café and led them all down the street. Webb and Laura strolled side by side carrying two duffel bags, followed by Erica walking Marcello on a leash. Despite the slushy sidewalks, Heidi felt a bounce in her step. The sun was shining at last, they’d survived the storm, and good things had happened: Three hundred and eighty-six dollars in a tip jar. Patrick.
Her phone rang inside her satchel, and she dug it out. It was him.
“You’re up,” he said.
“Yes, we’re all headed over to my apartment.”
“All?”
“Webb and Laura are here, from Texas. They’re going to stay a couple of days. I was going to get cleaned up and then take them out to ...” She frowned and turned to call back to them. “What do you want to do today?”
“Empire State Building!” Erica said excitedly. “Can we? I want to go to the top, like in the movies.”
Laura turned a little green at the prospect, which made Heidi laugh. She nodded and spoke to Patrick again. “We’re going to the Empire State Building.”
“Do you need a guide? I’ve not only been there a zillion times, I’ve arrested someone there.”
“Excellent!”
“Give me forty-five minutes,” he said. “And Heidi?”
“Yes?”
“The only Ginger I’ve ever loved was on
Gilligan’s Island.
”
She smiled as the warm feeling from last night returned. “So you don’t mind hanging around?”
“Try and stop me.”
Heidi hung up and was feeling close to euphoric when they turned onto her street. As they approached her apartment, Webb and Laura both slowed down, their gazes drawn to the fully dressed Christmas tree lying on the sidewalk. The ice had mostly melted off of it, so that there was just a layer of gloppy snow crusting over it.
“What’s that?” Webb asked.
“That’s Heidi’s Christmas tree.” Erica looked up at Heidi. “If we shook the snow off and took it inside now, do you think the lights would work?”
Heidi frowned. “I’m not sure ...” Now that she took another look at it, it seemed huge. She wasn’t even sure where she could put it. And she’d have to take it down soon, anyway. That was always a bummer.
Laura, who had been inspecting the tree for the best way to extricate it from the snow and remaining ice, kicked something nearby. “What the heck?” She lifted a green metal box from the sidewalk and batted snow from it. “Is this what all the fuss was about?”
Heidi’s face fell.
The cash box.
It must have been there all this time—buried. When she’d picked up the shopping bag to go to the hospital, the box had probably slipped right through the soggy bottom into the snow.
She ran over to Laura, nearly skidding into her in her excitement. She threw her arms around her ex-stepsister and let out a squeal of glee ... much to Laura’s dismay. “Thank you!”
“You idiot,” Laura said. “Why thank me? It was right here all along.”
“But you found it for me!” Heidi exclaimed. “You’re my guardian angel and Santa Claus all rolled into one!”
Laura groaned and tried to bat her away.
“And now it’s my turn,” Heidi continued. “Anything you want, Laura. Your wish is my command. Ask and you shall receive.”