Silent Night: A Spenser Holiday Novel (13 page)

I
WENT TO SUSAN’S BEDROOM
to wake her. For a moment I just watched her from the doorway. Even in repose, the sight of her always struck me like electricity. In all our years together, that had never changed.

She stirred.

“Where are our guests?”

I told her about the basketball, and the snowball fight, and gave her the score of the game.

“And Pearl?”

“Pearl’s watching Hawk, in case he starts rooting for the Lakers,” I said.

She smiled and sat up. She was still wearing her red Christmas dress. I sat down next to her on the bed.

“Have you come to unwrap your present?”

“I have,” I said. “And perhaps ignite some holiday fireworks.”

Susan pursed her lips.

“Fireworks sounds more like New Year’s,” she said. “I was contemplating something more reverent and sacred.”

“‘O Holy Night’?” I said.

Susan smiled.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. She leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. Then she pulled back slightly and met my gaze. A playful smile was on her face, and her eyes were brightly shining.

There are people in your life, if you are very fortunate, who bring along with them untold gifts of laughter, love, and wisdom. Joan and Bob Parker entered my life in 1978, when they came to my New York office (then in my apartment because I couldn’t afford a real office) to audition me to become, if I passed muster, Bob’s literary agent. That day we formed a three-way friendship that gave me those gifts and much more.

Very soon after Bob’s death, Joan and I were talking on the phone, trying to maintain our avoidance of anything approaching sentimentality or the maudlin, still suffering from shock at the suddenness of Bob’s departure and our shared and separate grief, and Joan brought up that the morning he died he had been working on the Christmas Spenser. “I wonder what will happen to it now?”

Without thinking, I heard myself say, “Maybe I should try to finish it. Could I? Should I? What do you think?”

“I can’t think of a reason not to try. Bob would want you to,” Joan said. “Go for it!”

And I did.