Abby's Christmas. Lynnette Kent
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on her hips, Abby glared at her dad. “I live there, too. And I’ll put my dog on the sunporch with a blanket and a bowl of water and some food.”
“It’s not your dog, it’s Noah Blake’s dog.”
“I’m keeping it.” She’d had no intention of doing any such thing when she took the dog home, of course.
Charlie pinned her with his drill-sergeant glare. “Abigail Ann Brannon, I will not—”
Out front, the bell on the door jingled once, and again, and yet again. The dinner rush was starting.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he promised, and left the kitchen. Abby heard his brusque voice out in the dining room, greeting familiar customers. She stood still for a few seconds longer, recovering from the argument with her dad. When was the last time she and Charlie had seriously disagreed?
Never, was the first answer that came to mind. Sure, they argued a lot. And he could be hard to get along with sometimes. But she hadn’t seriously defied her dad since she was fifteen and wanted to attend a summer camp in Wyoming. Her parents had said no—they needed her to work in the diner. She’d given them the silent treatment and sulked through the entire summer until she went back to school and saw Noah again. They hadn’t talked much, except when she passed him a few sheets of paper if he needed them, or a pen when he didn’t have one. Just seeing him had always made a major improvement in her day.
And she hadn’t seen him in fifteen years.
“Fried chicken, stew and meat loaf,” Charlie announced as he came into the kitchen. “Hamburger, cheeseburger, tuna sub, grilled cheese and soup. Two more stews.”
Abby shook herself from head to toe. Time to get to work. “Right. I’ve got the grill. Two burgers and a grilled cheese, coming up.”
NOAH FOUND IT AMAZING that his mother still watched the same roulette-wheel spelling show and supply-the-question quiz program after dinner as she had when he’d been in high school. The sitcoms that came afterward had changed actors, if not story lines, but after half an hour of watching, he felt sick to his stomach. Or maybe that was the hamburger.
“I’m gonna go see a couple of people,” he told his mother during a commercial break. “I still have my key, unless you changed the locks.”
She stared up at him for a long minute. “No, I didn’t change the locks.” As he crossed to the front door, she said, “Do you want breakfast?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “Sure.” He hadn’t been given the choice for years. “That’d be good.”
“You better show up in the kitchen at eight, then.”
“I’ll be there. ’Night.” If she responded, he didn’t hear her.
Standing outside the chain-link fence, he stopped to take a deep breath of cold, dry air. He hadn’t remembered the house being so small, so…so tight. On the other hand, he must have had some reason for running away, right? Besides knowing that if he stayed, his life would be over before it began.
With the Harley rumbling underneath him, Noah admitted to himself that he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Most of the guys he’d hung with in high school were probably in jail. Even if they weren’t in the joint right now, they surely had been, and seeing them could constitute a violation of his parole. Not a smart move for his first week of freedom.
The nightly rituals in the neighborhoods south of Boundary Street hadn’t changed in fifteen years, either. And they differed not at all from the usual agenda on the “bad” side of most towns he’d ever been in. The bars did a booming business. Working girls lingered on street corners and beside alleys. He fielded a couple of waves as he waited at a stoplight, remembered how long it had been since the last time, and gave the possibility a second’s consideration—until Abby’s sweet face appeared in his mind’s eye.
Suddenly, a hooker in black leather and chains didn’t seem to be what he needed. With a shake of his head and a lift of his hand, Noah rolled on down the hill, to another light and through an intersection, then into the gravel parking lot of the Carolina Diner.
The lights were still on and half a dozen cars sat in the parking lot. He’d be safe enough going in for a cup of coffee, maybe a piece of pie. He remembered liking Charlie Brannon’s chocolate pie.
As the door shut behind him, he realized he’d made a mistake. Every table in the room was empty except for a few square ones pushed together in the center, where people sat with papers spread out in front of them, working.
Working, that is, until they all stopped and turned to stare at him. Noah felt his cheeks heat up at the same time as he started to recognize the faces. The names popped into his head a second or two later.
Abby got out of her chair and came toward him, one hand extended. “Noah! It’s good to see you again.” Before he could back out, she caught his wrist in her cool fingertips. “I’m sure you’ll remember almost everybody here.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt….”
“You’re not.” The tall, brown-haired guy at the end of the table got to his feet, offering a handshake and a grin. “Welcome back, Noah.”
“Dixon.” Noah gripped Dixon Bell’s hand. “Thanks.”
Dixon turned to the woman in the chair next to him, who was standing as well. “You remember Kate Bowdrey? She’s now Kate Bell.”
“I remember she was the smartest person in the class.” He smiled at the slender and beautiful Mrs. Bell. “How are you?”
“Glad to see you again.” To his surprise, she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You’ve been gone too long.”
All of a sudden, he was surrounded by people he’d gone to high school with, returning handshakes and hugs, trying to catch up with a lot of changes very fast. Kate’s sister Mary Rose, as blond as her sister was dark, had married Pete Mitchell. Adam DeVries, who didn’t seem to stutter anymore, was the mayor of New Skye and married to a woman named Phoebe. Jacquie Lennon was now Jacquie Lewellyn and shoeing horses for a living, which meant she must still be horse crazy.
And Abby was still Abby. “What can I get you to drink?” With her hands on his shoulders, she leaned forward as he sat in the chair she’d just left. “More hot chocolate? Iced tea? Coffee?”
“I came for coffee. And—” He glanced around the table to see that most of the others had enjoyed some kind of dessert. “And some chocolate pie?”
“You got it.” Her hands tightened for a second before she let go. Noah noted a sudden hollow in his chest where his breath used to be. He turned to Adam, on his right. “Looks like there’s some serious planning going on tonight.”
“We’re the committee for the big Christmas Dance. Or maybe it’s called the Reunion Dance.”
“Holiday Reunion Dance,” Jacquie put in from across the table. “Our fifteen-year high school class reunion is gonna be a holiday bash.”
“Fifteen years?” Noah said. “Hard to believe it’s been so long.”
“Or that we’re so old.” Abby set a mug down by his left hand. “I still feel eighteen.”
“I usually feel like I’m eighteen when I get up in the morning,” Pete said with a grin. “But by the time I get home, it’s a lot closer to thirty-three.”
After more than two years in prison, Noah felt as if he was closer to fifty. “Uh…sounds like a good time. Do you expect a big crowd?”
The question did what he’d hoped, which was to get all of them talking, explaining the plans for the dance, the guest list, the decorations and music. All he had to do was nod and listen and try to make sense of this unfamiliar world he’d stumbled into.
Abby