Seasons

Seasons

For my family.  Home is truly where your story begins.

Sunshine ………………………………………………………………... 6

The Elf and The Angel ………………………………………………… 31

Sunshine
 

    Rae screamed and kicked the front tire of her little black sports coupe.  She pulled first the little pink ribbon, and then the elastic band from her hair.  Shaking her head violently, she fought back tears.  She looked at her feet in their tiny pink tennis shoes and took a swipe at the loose gravel of the dirt road.

    “Why does this shit always happen to me?”  She leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window and silently cursed herself for being mechanically incompetent.

    That was when she noticed.  First, she saw her shiny silver cellular phone sitting on the passenger’s seat.  She next recognized the pink toe of a ballet slipper protruding from behind the steering column and came to the realization that her “Born to Dance” keychain was connected to her keys, which were in the ignition.  Lastly, as if in slow motion, her eyes traveled to the door panel just under where she rested her head.  There, a little red light blinked, telling her almost teasingly in its cheery little flash that her doors were locked and the alarm system was armed and ready.

    Rae screamed again.

    Now, not only was there a fine line of smoke drifting out from under her hood like the snake which tempted Eve, but her car keys were locked tightly in her car like the forbidden fruit itself.

    “Can I help you, missy?”

    Rae spun around at the sound of the older man’s voice.  He was standing a few feet behind her in the dust of the roadway.  An old-looking beagle sat patiently at his master’s feet.

    “I’m alright,” Rae began.  “It’s just that I’ve…”   

    She was cut off as her stalled car gave off an acrid smelling puff of black smoke.

    “If that’s what ya’ call alright…”  The man’s smile was warm and not altogether mocking.

    “I don’t know a thing about cars,” admitted a very sheepish Raelyn Summers.  “I assume there’s something wrong with the engine.  I couldn’t really tell you.   My phone and my keys are locked inside, so I can’t call a tow truck, or my parents to come and get me.”

    Not that they’d want to make the three hour round trip, she thought to herself.

    “I’ll make ya’ a deal,” the man said.  “Ya’ come back home with me, eat some of my wife’s apple pie, and my grandson will come take care of this car of yours.”

    “Oh, I couldn’t possibly…”

    “Sure you can.”  He smiled at her, his whole face seeming to light up.  “Come on.”   

    He hooked an arm through hers and started back down the country road.  He called back to the beagle, who trotted after them.

    “I can’t,” Rae protested.  She stopped, remembering all her mother had taught her about never going with strangers, but she didn’t want to seem rude.  So, she fabricated a weak excuse.  “My purse is in there.”

    “Ain’t nobody gonna take it, but so be it.”  The man nodded to her and kept walking slowly.  “Stay, Bruce.”

    The beagle sat promptly.   He panted a little and stared off after his retreating owner.

    “Now what’d he do that for?”  Rae thought herself quite silly for talking to herself, but Bruce yipped as if to answer her.

    “Well, aren’t you a good little puppy?”

    She turned and stared blankly at her car for a moment, racking her brain for some way to break into her vehicle without causing hundreds of dollars in damage.  Bruce trundled over and nosed her calf.  Rae crouched and patted his head.  He licked her palm companionably.  The rain started then.

    First, the droplets were small, a fine mist, but then they grew into the torrential downpour of her nightmares.

    “Why me?”  Rae slumped against the front tire, sliding down into the muck that was quickly forming from dust and rainwater.

    Bruce plopped down next to her, his white fur turning almost silver with the rain.  He scooted closer, attempting to share her body heat as the temperature dropped.  Rae stared up at the very gray sky and shook a figurative fist at Mother Nature.

    “Damn my stupid luck,” muttered Rae into the clouds.

    Having nothing better to do with her brain, she began a complex calculation in her head to determine the probability that, by chance, she could be in her current situation.

    Given that there is a 35% chance I would leave my keys in the ignition, the 50% chance I would forget my cell phone, the 30% chance my car would break down, and the 46% chance it had to rain today…

    The droning voice of her senior-year statistics teacher sounded in her ears.  She could see him pacing the length of the chalkboard, juggling a stub of white chalk in his right hand before playing with the pens in the breast pocket of his plaid dress shirt.

    “Good God!  What am I doing?”  Rae stopped mid-calculation and gave herself a shake.

    The droning noise was actually the engine of the old man’s battered pickup truck.  He rumbled along in the decrepit blue automobile toward where Rae was seated in the mud.  He pulled up alongside of her and stuck his head out of his window, a wet smile cresting his lips.

    “You doin’ alright now, missy?”  He waved for her to stand up.  “How about that apple pie?”

    “I’d love to…”  Rae rose and tried to brush the mud off of the back of her jeans fruitlessly.

    “Get in,” he urged.

    She jogged around the hood and hopped up into the cab, her legs heavy with the saturated denim.  Her little pink shoes squelched with the pools of water in the bottoms.  She swiped at her dripping hair, pushing it back from her face.  She pulled the heavy door closed after Bruce climbed in, only to wedge his wet body between the two humans on the bench seat of the truck.

    “I’m Lou, but call me ‘Pops’, missy.”  Lou drove the truck into a driveway and turned it around jerkily.

    They headed back along the way they’d come.  Rae cast a sad look at her car as they passed by, but forced herself not to think of her parents’ wrath or the mechanic’s bill to come.  She silently blessed the dear old man for coming to her rescue, and inwardly hoped that he didn’t turn out to be the next Ed Gein.

    “I’m Rae Summers,” she replied cautiously.

    “What if I just call ya’ ‘Sunshine’?”

    He chuckled, a warm sound that seemed as American as the pickup he drove and the apple pie he offered.  She knew in the back of her mind that everything for once just might work out.

    “Sounds nice.”  Rae smiled and patted Bruce’s damp head.

    The ride was not long.  Pops pulled into a tree-lined gravel drive shortly, which lead up to a beautiful whitewashed farmhouse.  As the trees opened up near the house, Rae noticed a newer-looking complex in a copse of trees off to one side.  Three garage doors spanned the front of the red-painted building.

    “Come on then,” Pops instructed, hopping down from the truck cab, Bruce hot on his heels.

    Rae was slower in climbing down to the running board.  She jogged after the man and dog across the yard and up onto the clean-swept front porch.  He swung open the screen door, ordered Bruce to his pillow there, and ushered Rae into the entry hall of his home.

    Rae was immediately struck by the warmth that came with entering the house.  She felt immediately soothed and comforted by the soft glow in the entry hall.  The smell of freshly brewed coffee and hot apple pie came to her as she stood in the doorway.

    The lampshades here were not sewn of human skin and sinew as she might have feared.  This was a family home, full of love and hope and the happiness that comes with life.  Pops was not Ed Gein.

    “Dottie!”  Pops called, hanging his jacket up on a peg by the door.  “Lookit what I found on the side of the road!”

    Dot Bailey was a shorter woman, all white hair and big smiles.  She neared the slim side of plump and walked cutely with a slight swivel of her hips.  She wiped her hands on a lavender gingham apron as she rounded the corner from the kitchen.

    “Lou, we ain’t got no more room for anymore of those things you find on the side of that road.”  She looked up, catching Rae’s eyes with a touch of shock. 

    “Although, this one sure is awful pretty.”

    “My name is Raelyn, ma’am,” Rae announced.  “Raelyn Summers.”

    “Naw, tain’t neither.  It’s Sunshine.”  Pops elbowed her in the ribs jovially.  “Her car broke down, so I figured you wouldn’t mind slipping her a bit of that apple pie you’re making; and the boy could fix that car.”

    “I’m sure he’d be glad to.  He’s out in the garage just now.  Why don’t you go out and get him, and I’ll get this skinny lil’ thing all fattened up.”

    Dot’s smile was warm and cheery.  She moved off into the kitchen, and Rae had no choice but to follow.

    Even though it was raining outside, the kitchen seemed bright and sunny.  There were yellow curtains over the window above the sink and over the fresh, white-painted French doors that led out to the rain-spattered yard with its tall oaks.  There were fresh-cut flowers in a white earthenware pitcher set at the center of the small, round kitchen table.  The pie sat on a cooling rack near the percolating coffee pot on the clean white countertop.

    “Have a seat, dearie,” Dot instructed.

    Rae looked ashamedly at the pretty patterned cushions on the white-painted chairs around the kitchen table and then at her soaking wet jeans and the puddle on the varnished hardwood floor at her feet.

    “My, my…” Dot clicked her tongue and scrunched up her wrinkled features.  “We must do something about those wet clothes, now mustn’t we?”

    Dot moved off again; all hustle, bustle, and business.  She sashayed down a short hall and up a flight of stairs.  Rae trudged after her, guiltily trailing water on the polished steps.  Disappearing into a bedroom at the end of a second hall, Dot didn’t bother to wait for Rae, assuming the young woman would follow; and Rae did obediently.

    Dot was rummaging through a closet when Rae entered the room.  The older woman attempted to lift a heavy-looking box down from the top shelf.  Rae rushed to help her, but the two females were both so short that the box came free unaided and plopped down between them, the lid popping off.  Inside this box, Rae didn’t see horrendously patterned tops or torn jeans, she saw memories.  Dot’s eyes were sad, and she knew the memories belonged to the white-haired woman before her.

    “These…” Dot knelt next to the box slowly.  “Were my daughter’s.”

    “Oh.”  Rae too knelt, knowing that a story was coming and also, strangely, that this mother needed someone to listen.

    “Mary.”  Dot picked up a paisley printed shirt and held it up sadly.  “She’s our only child.  Gave us our dear Gideon.  It was the first time she let him out of her sights.  Carl convinced her she needed a vacation, and they left Gideon here to stay with us.”

    Dot slowly folded the shirt and put it down beside her knees.  She sighed quietly and picked up a pair of pale denim jeans.  She handed them across the box, and Rae placed them carefully in her lap.

    “A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.  There wasn’t anything left.”  A silver tear trickled down the grieving mother’s cheek.  “But they left us Gideon.”

    There was a sparkle in her eyes at the mention of the boy’s name.  She brightened almost immediately and began again to shuffle through the box.  She moved aside what must have been a prom dress and a cheerleading uniform.  She eventually found an old screen-print tee-shirt from a concert in the summer of ’74.

    “Thank you so much.”  Rae put a hand under Dot’s arm and helped her to her feet.

    “That’s what we do here, dearie.”  The old woman flashed the girl a genuine smile.  “You change in here and come down to the kitchen and we’ll see about that pie.”

    Her white head popped back in as she started to close the door.

    “How about some homemade ice cream?”

    “Sounds lovely.”

    Rae felt awkward in Mary’s clothes.  The worn low-rise jeans fit her perfectly and the tee-shirt wasn’t anything she wouldn’t have purchased in a vintage shop, but there was something about wearing the clothes of someone who’d passed.  She looked at herself in the full-length mirror and wondered what Gideon’s mother looked like.  Maybe Mary had long brown waves, or even springy curls, and eyes the color of topaz.

    She sighed.  It was time to go downstairs and face the mother of a daughter who was never coming home to claim her son.

    Dot hummed in the kitchen.  Rae racked her brains to remember the lyrics to the old melody.  She could picture the singers in her head:  Sammy Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra.  The song was about friendship of a sort.  But what was it called?

    “‘Me and My Shadow’…” she murmured as she passed into the kitchen.

    Dot looked up from where she’d set two places at the table.  She froze where she stood, an odd look on her face.

    “Sure is,” she said.  “My my… If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were my girl coming back home.”

    This Dot said with a wistful smile, and not the sadness Rae had seen in the bedroom over the box of Mary’s old belongings.

    “Thank you.”  Somehow, she knew those words were a compliment hard won.

    “Have a seat and eat this up before those men get back in here and eat it for you.”

    Dot sat down next to the girl with a steaming mug of coffee.  Even the mug was cheery, with a pretty violet pattern painted on the rim.

    The ice cream and apple pie were delicious.  Rae nearly inhaled her slice, having skipped lunch in the hopes of making good time on her drive.  Dot simply watched her through the steam of her coffee, grey eyes peering over the lavender patterned rim.

    “That was magnificent.”  Rae put her fork down on the little porcelain plate and resisted the urge to lick it clean.

    “It was my momma’s recipe,” Dot revealed with a smile.  “A family tradition.”

    “Oh!  May I use the telephone to call my mother?”  Rae suddenly remembered that she didn’t have her phone, and her mother had probably called her five times already.

    “The phone’s out in Gideon’s garage,” replied Dot absently.  “Just be sure to grab an umbrella by the door before you go tromping around out in that rain.”

    Rae nodded and pushed herself away from the table.  Out of habit, she carried her plate and fork to the sink before walking out of the kitchen.  She passed down the hall and through the screen door, pulling an umbrella from the stand just outside the front door on the porch. 

    She did a rather ungainly dance across the front yard, hoisting the legs of the jeans high as she splashed through puddles and now marshy grass while holding the umbrella over her head.  She hurried through the garage door, letting loose her pant legs and shaking out the umbrella.

    She chuckled all to herself and then looked up.

    Pops was beaming at her.  He sat on a high metal stool near a cluttered workbench.  Rae noticed her car parked between a vehicle under a car cover and the old pickup.  Leaning under her hood was a pair of dirty jeans that could only be Gideon.

    “Gideon!”  Pops called.  “I want ya’ to meet Sunshine.”

    Gideon straightened up rapidly and slammed his head into the underside of her hood, cursing loudly.  Rae bit down on her lower lip to suppress a sly smile.  That is, only until the mechanic turned to face her, wiping his hands on a rag black with oil.  Then her jaw dropped.  He wore a blue handkerchief on his head; a stray brown curl dangled across his broad forehead and between a pair of dazzling eyes the color of dark, sweet honey.

He was much younger somehow than she’d expected him to be.  He was broad-shouldered and handsome.  He couldn’t have been any older than she was.  He looked like someone from the stories she scrawled on countless notebook pages during high school.

    “This your car?”

    Not the most romantic of greetings.  One of her characters would have said something more along the lines of “of all the garages in all the world… you had to walk into mine.”  But it would have to suffice.

    “Yeah.”  Rae shuffled her feet a bit feeling clumsy.  She moved over to where Pops sat and leaned against the tool bench. 

    “How do you drive this thing?”  He looked at her skeptically, leaning back much as she was on the front bumper of her car, looking entirely more comfortable than he felt.  The jeans she wore sat a little too low on her small hips to be completely modest.

    “Well,” Rae began like the clueless ditz he surely thought she was, measurably frustrated and flustered.  “I push down on the clutch, turn the key in the ignition, and push on the gas.”

    “I think I’m going to go nab myself some of your grandmama’s apple pie.”  Pops, sensing trouble, slipped out before the argument came.  But they didn’t argue.

    “Pops seems to think somethin’ a’ you,” Gideon said.  He slipped in a touch of the twang he knew she’d expect of a hick mechanic.

    “Your grandparents seem to be very sweet people,” Rae replied airily.

    “Sure are.  Nice shirt.”  Gideon turned back to tinker with something under the hood.

    “Uh,” Rae choked.  “It was your mother’s.”

    There was a heavy silence that Rae decided to fill with an awkward apology.

    “I never knew them.”  Gideon shrugged, forgetting his vocal charade.  “If you’re going to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for them.”

    He nodded toward the house.  As he did, Dot’s voice came screeching across the lawn from the front porch.

    “Gideon Reese Walker!  You be nice to that girl!  You hear me?”

    Gideon turned and caught the sparkle in Rae’s eye beneath mascaraed eyelashes and the subdued snicker under her breath.  He glared icily and called back to the lady on the porch.

    “I am, Gram! Don’t worry about her!”

    He turned back to the girl in his garage, the look in his eyes just daring her to say something.  She chewed on her lower lip and looked at the ground shyly, before making eye contact with him.  He nearly choked at the barely controlled amusement sparkling in her pale green eyes.

    “The guys call me ‘Duke’.”  With that admission, he began again to work on parts of the little black coupe that Rae didn’t even know existed.

    “Your grandmother sent me out here to use the phone…” Rae trailed off as Gideon pulled her tiny silver cell phone out of his back pocket and held it up to her without so much as looking her in the face.

    Rae took it from him rather reluctantly, being very careful not to touch him.  She didn’t think it was worth the risk.  She flipped the phone open and started to dial her home number, wondering how he’d broken into her car.

    “Who’s Angel?”

    She snapped the phone shut and stared at his broad, sturdy bent back; forgetting for a moment his locksmithing.

    “A friend,” Rae replied coolly.  Her eyes danced though, grey-green orbs skipping playfully.  She bit down cutely on the long nail of her index finger, even though he couldn’t see her.

    “He says ‘Hey, babe.’.”

    “You answered my phone?”  She let her hand drop and her eyes flash.

    “Actually,” Gideon corrected, speaking into the dark recesses under the hood.  “I was taking it out of your car, because I’m a nice person; and when it started that pretty little tune it plays, I dropped it.  When it popped open, I thought I’d tell the person you weren’t ignoring him.”

    “Oh.”

    Rae looked back down at her phone and hit speed dial “5” for “home” instead of poking out the digits.

    “Hey, bro,” she said quietly, still staring at Gideon’s back.  “Can I talk to Daddy?  No… no… I’ll just… don’t…”

    The mechanic’s attention was peaked.  He turned around to watch her, leaning back again on her bumper, his manner casual but interested.  His lips curved into a sly smile.

    “Hi, Mommy.”  Rae sounded strangled.  “No, I’m not there yet… No, I’m ok. I promise.  My car just broke down… I’m alright, really.  I’m having it fixed, don’t worry.”

    Gideon could hear the mother’s frantic voice shrieking through the tiny earpiece.  He chuckled lightly as the young woman in front of him tried desperately to calm the angry woman, her features contorting in frustration.  He stopped laughing as she clicked the phone shut.

    “How soon can you get me out of here?”

    Rae settled her gaze on him, a pleading look competing with and ice-queen stare.

    “I’ve still gotta wait for the engine to cool before I can do much.  Then, I have find out what’s wrong with this damned car of yours.”  He raised an eyebrow at her.

    “Sorry, she gets me so aggravated,” Rae ruffled her hair in a distracted gesture.  It was beginning to dry, curling recklessly away from her shoulders.  She bent over, flipping her locks over her face and smoothed it into a graceful ponytail.  Gideon found himself studying the small dimples in her back he could see on the swatch of skin between her tee shirt and her jeans.

    “I hear that.”  Gideon rapidly directed his attention to belts and fans and the engine.

    Rae hopped up onto the stool vacated by the mechanic’s grandfather, her legs dangling uselessly a foot or so off the ground, and listened to him tinkering with her engine.  They stayed like that, awkwardly silent for the better part of two hours: Gideon bent double under the hood and Rae swinging her small feet back and forth.

    Dot called the pair in for dinner from the porch.  Rae jumped down from the stool and picked up the umbrella she had leaned in a corner near the door.  Making up her mind, she stood in the doorway with the umbrella half open.  She waited for him to wipe down his greasy hands and pull off the blue handkerchief, letting his mop of brown curls fall loose.

    He would have been easier to hate if he were unattractive.  He sure wasn’t that.

    “What?”  He locked eyes with her for the quick lightening flash of a second.

    “I was going to let you under the umbrella, but I suppose I could just let you get wet.”

    Rae jogged out into the marshy front lawn, water splashing up onto the bell-shaped pant legs of the borrowed jeans.  Gideon sprinted past her and took a flying leap up the porch steps.  Dot slapped him on the back as he skidded through the open door and down the entry hall.

    “Track captain.”  Dot chuckled as Rae came much more delicately up the steps. 

“You may want to wash up after being in his shop,” the older woman warned as Rae passed her to get into the warm house.

The downstairs powder room was crowded once Dot nudged Rae in alongside her grandson.  The pair leaned over the white-porcelain pedestal sink, cold water spraying up onto both of them as they tried vainly to pretend that the other wasn’t there.  This did nothing more than accentuate how grossly uncomfortable they both were.

Dinner was a quiet affair, followed by a good helping, second for some, of home-baked apple pie and hand-cranked vanilla ice cream.  Dot and Lou Bailey chatted freely while Rae and Gideon ate in a subdued silence Dot decided to break mid-way through her slice of pie.

“Since you got your pony all fixed up, why don’t you take Sunshine here for a nice moonlit ride?”

“It’s a Mustang, Gram.”  Gideon nearly choked on pie crust.  “And she’d…”

“The rain’s stopped,” Pops observed.

“I’ve got to…” Rae backpedaled.  She hadn’t even realized it had gotten dark, and she had classes she needed to get to the next morning.

“Go now, you two.”  Dot virtually pushed Rae out the front door.  Gideon was not long after her.

“Would you like to go for a ride?”  He raised an eyebrow comically more like James Bond might than would Humphrey Bogart.

“What the heck.”

They trudged back across the yard and into the deserted garage.  Gideon walked past his grandfather’s dirty pickup and Rae’s little coupe to the vehicle disguised by gray canvas.  He pulled aside the car cover to reveal his pet project of the last three years.

“It’s a ‘76 Mustang.  I’ve done every bit of work on her myself.  Runs like new.”

He ran his hand over the hood, the bright yellow paint shining beneath his palm.  Rae could see the pride glimmering in his golden eyes.  The car was a beautiful piece of machinery, too.

“What’s her name?”

“What?”  He snapped back, as if from a trance.

“Anyone who puts that much love into an automobile must have named it.”  Rae smiled, some of his pride infecting her.

He mumbled something under his breath and scuffed his toe on the cement flooring.

“What was that, Duke?”

He looked up at the sound of his name on her tongue.  That one stubborn curl dangled between his gem-like eyes, which sparkled with a sudden, tempting shyness.

“Sunshine.”

Rae nearly coughed on the glut of air she inhaled.  She smiled at him weakly.

“Nice.”

“Hop in,” Gideon instructed with a grin.  “Let’s go.”

He slid into the driver’s seat like it was as easy as breathing, seeming to melt with the supple leather.  He stretched his feet out to the pedals and rested his hands on the steering wheel with an audible sigh.  He turned just his head to look at Rae who was standing with the passenger’s side door open.

“What’re you doing?”  He leaned over to get a better view just as she slid into the car.

He thought she looked natural in his car.  He had a sudden vision of Sandy and Danny and the urge to sing “Greased Lightening”.  She tucked her bare feet instantly up under her, showing him a flash of hot pink nail polish.

“I didn’t want to get mud on your carpet.”  She smiled at him then, sweetly.  “Let’s go.”

And they were gone.  Gideon took turns at 70 miles an hour and flew down old country back roads.  Rae reached belatedly for her seatbelt and clipped it in in a hurry.  She leaned back into her seat, closed her eyes, and enjoyed the ride.  She only dared open them when he began to slow and then stop.

“Wow,” she breathed.

“You like?”  He was casual in asking, turning slightly to lean up against the door panel as if the answer didn’t matter.

“Awful proud of her, aren’t you?”  Rae’s eyes glimmered, the adrenaline still pumping full speed through her veins.

“Sure am.”  He grinned like he’d just won some prize.

Something sparked inside the car.  There was heat, and it wasn’t coming from anything under the hood.

“She gets me the girls,” he bragged.

“Oh, really now?”  She looked at him out from under dark lashes.  “How many girls have seen the back seat of this baby?”

Before he realized what she was doing, she had her seatbelt off.  She had her shoulders already between the front seats, and her lower half was nearly through too, as she began to crawl into the small space that was the backseat.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Gideon grabbed the waistband at the back of Rae’s pants and pulled.  She came hurtling back into the front seat and plopped down onto the soft upholstery.  She glared at him.

“I was looking to see if there were any surprises back there!”

“The back seat’s by invitation only.”

“So, I’m not good enough for your back seat?”  Rae raised her eyebrows in a challenge.

She got in his face teasingly, leaning over so that she was nearly in his lap.  She pursed her lips like she’d tasted something tart and tilted her head so that her ponytail trailed over her shoulder.  Her eyes were steady, focusing on him with a dare in them that begged him to tell her she wasn’t good enough, just so that she might have an excuse to punch him.

He moved as if to say something cocky, pushing off of the door panel.  That moved him closer to her.  His eyes were taunting, less serious than Rae’s.  They were face-to-face; he having misjudged the distance between them, and she not expecting him to shift.

“Well?”  Rae nearly gagged, her voice high-pitched.

Before she could react, Gideon reached forward on instinct and cupped her chin between his thumb and first finger.  This way, he blocked any retreat.  Whether it was hers or his retreat that he hoped to stop, he wasn’t so sure.  He leaned forward and kissed her softly on the lips.  Then he backed up, pulled by the seatbelt, and turned toward the steering wheel, eyes cast off in the distance.  Rae stared at his profile as a deer might an oncoming truck.

The sudden silence was broken by a loud burst of “Stars and Stripes”.  Rae jumped nearly a foot.  Gideon didn’t even flinch.  She reached down into the pocket of her borrowed jeans for her cell phone almost guiltily.

“Hello, Mommy.”  Rae sunk back onto her side of the car, curling up against the door panel.  “No, Mommy, my car’s not fixed yet.  It will be…  Don’t worry.  It’s ok… I’ll be fine… Yes, Mommy… No, Mommy…”

Gideon started the engine and rocketed back toward the white farm house.

“I’ll probably have to find a place to stay the night…”

He heard a great outburst from the other end of the phone that began with “Raelyn Ivy Summers!”, and he snickered.

Rae glared at him testily before responding to her mother in a hushed murmur.

“I’ll call you when I know more.  I love you, Mommy.”

She closed the phone with her chin and rode the rest of the way in silence.  The pair unloaded at the garage, and Rae slipped back into her still damp shoes.  She hoisted herself this time onto his workbench, putting her feet up on the stool, and she watched him over her knees as he pulled the car cover back over his precious piece of machinery.

Maybe an hour or so after they’d ended their ride; Dot meandered out to the garage.  She broke the silence by suggesting Rae should spend the night.  Ignoring Rae’s protests that she needed to be somewhere in the morning, Dot insisted and amiably called Rae’s mother to assure the paranoid woman that everything would be taken care of.  She left the garage, still chatting with Rae’s mother about accommodations over Rae’s cell phone.

“So, where is it you gotta be tomorrow?”  Gideon asked snidely.  “A pep rally?”

Rae rolled her eyes.  He thinks I’m a dumb cheerleader, she mused.

“Nope,” she replied in a very false, chipper soprano.  “I left my pom poms in the back seat of my boyfriend’s Ferrari, and I need to pick them up before the big game!”

“How many back seats have you been in?”  His wrench clattered on something under the hood.

“Not as many as you have, I’m sure,” Rae retorted. 

“I am a mechanic.”  Gideon was bent over her engine again, refusing too look at her.

“Hope that gets you somewhere in life,” she muttered.

They were both thankful when Dot came back to take Rae to the room she’d been designated.  Rae left the garage quickly without a backward glance and found herself again in Mary’s old bedroom.  She smiled fondly as she noticed the folded nightgown that undoubtedly belonged to Dot herself stacked atop a second outfit and a fluffy towel.

“Bathroom’s across the hall if ya’ wanna freshen up,” Dot said before stepping through the doorway.  “See ya’ in the morning milk.”

Rae forewent the satiny nightgown and crawled into the bed in just the concert tee-shirt.  By habit, she woke up before even the sun.  She peered out of the door carefully and then tip-toed across the hallway in silence, clutching the towel to her chest.  A quick shower and a change of clothes prepared her for her day.  She moved quietly downstairs, only to find Dot already fixing breakfast in the homey kitchen.

“Your car’s all fixed up,” the older woman murmured over her shoulder.  “Gideon finished it late last night.”

“Oh!”  Rae beamed as Dot turned to hand her a plate of pancakes and bacon.

Breakfast was quite comfortable, Rae and the older couple ringing the small kitchen table.  Pops read the paper while Dot did the daily crossword puzzle.  Rae ate shyly and carried her empty plate to the sink.

Pops and Dot both rose as Rae readied herself to leave.  Pops wrapped her up in a large bear hug, a warm chuckle on his breath.

“You be good now, Sunshine.”

“Thank you so much,” said Rae as she turned to hug Dot. “If there’s anything I could do…”

Dot kissed the girl on the cheek and held her by the shoulders.

“In a few weeks, I’ll be planting my daffodil bulbs.  You come back and help me do the digging and we’ll be square.”

“I sure will.”  Rae moved out the door and across the yard to the red garage.  She climbed gratefully into the leather interior of her repaired car.  She started the engine, casting a glance at the mound under the car cover.  She left the car idling in neutral and walked over to Gideon’s workbench to drop a pair of twenties next to a greasy rag.

Her car moved smoothly under her careful attention.  The last half of her drive came easily.  She pulled onto campus with the cool of a second term senior, though she was but a first term freshman.  She rushed up to her dorm room, deposited the small amount she’d brought with her after move-ins, before jogging across campus to the first class of her college career.

The writing professor assigned the stereotypical paper that Rae was sure she had one hundred copies of at home somewhere: “What did you do over the summer and how did it affect you?”.  She spent the week ignoring that paper.  It was Sunday night before she even contemplated writing it.  Her mind had been swimming with complex language rules and tricky speeches; but if she was going to turn in a final draft the next morning, she needed to write one.

She had a paper to turn in come Monday morning.  She wasn’t very confident in its surprising content, and she spent the remainder of her second week at college in a sheer panic over her essay grade.  When Monday morning rolled around again, Rae was dreading the moment her professor would hand back the essays.

The young female professor approached the seat Rae had taken at the front near the door and laid the typewritten paper down on the tabletop.  As Rae moved to slide the paper toward, the professor pressed her palm down on the page, causing Rae to look up.

“Would you mind reading your opening and closing paragraphs for peer review?”  The professor’s eyes focused on her student’s terrified face.

“I suppose not,” Rae wavered.

Nodding in approval, the woman moved off, handing out her remaining essays.  She returned to the high stool behind her podium and addressed the class from that vantage point.

“When I was reading through your essays, I came across two papers that struck me.  I’ve asked the two individuals to read you their introductions and conclusions.  I’d like for the two of you to stand and read each sentence line by line.”

Rae stood up as she was instructed and began to read, never taking her eyes off of the white printer paper.

“You know how you think things just can’t get worse?”

She swallowed hard, her voice echoing in the silent lecture hall; until the second voice broke in.

“There was this girl.”

“I was rain soaked, broken down, and seventy-five miles from home.”

“My grandfather found her broken down on the side of the road.”

“This lovely old man came to my rescue, but there was a problem: his grandson.”

“She blew in like a bombshell.”

“He was all axel grease, carburetors, and brake dust.”

“I could tell she was all about pom poms, short skirts, and boys.”

Rae turned slowly over her left shoulder.  Gideon Walker looked back at her, his eyes full of the same shock that stunned Rae.  The looked at each other like that for a little bit before turning these blank stares upon their professor, who chuckled.

“Now, if you would please, read your final sentences.  Raelyn, you first.”

“As I watched the farm house dwindle in my rearview mirror, I knew that fundamentally I’d been wrong about him.”

“The cloud of dust that little coupe kicked up as she drove away blocked my view, but I knew in the back of my mind that I’d been wrong about her.”

The class discussion to follow was colorful and didn’t really include the two writers, who were still so shocked they didn’t have much to say.  Rae bolted for the door at the end of class and was nearly halfway down the corridor before Gideon caught up with her.

“Duke.”  Rae acknowledged his presence with a curt nod of her head, and she quickened her already brisk walking pace.

“So, obviously your pom poms weren’t that important to you.”  He smiled, hoping to break the ice.

“I haven’t owned a pair of pom poms in six years.”

Rae tried to brush him off as she slipped out a closing door.  Gideon sprinted down the stairs into the courtyard after her.  He reached out and grabbed her by the arm.

“We’ve both admitted that we were wrong,” growled Gideon.  “Why can’t we start over?”

“I…” Rae couldn’t think of a reason fast enough.

Gideon leaned forward and kissed her less gently than before.  Rae, flabbergasted, looked self-consciously around the courtyard to see if anyone had noticed.  When she realized no one had, she wound up and smacked him hard in the gut with the notebook she carried.

“A new start means you’ve got to quit that.  I never kiss on the first date.”

Rae flipped her ponytail and walked away with a coy smile.  Gideon stood, rubbing his sore abs, before calling across the courtyard after her.

“You got a deal, Sunshine.”

The Elf

and

The Angel

    Gabe was stringing a multi-colored strand of blinking Christmas lights on the massive evergreen in his family’s living room, trying vainly to ignore the crooning voice pumping out of the stereo as the man mourned an off-color Christmas without his love.  He boasted six feet tall, and yet, he had to stand on the arm of his family’s overstuffed couch in order to reach the upper section of the tree.  He tossed the end of the light strand at the back of the tree and jumped down onto the plush carpet.  The tree shook with the house as his bulk impacted the floor, the ornaments jingling like the silver bells in the previous carol.

    “Gabe honey,” his mother called, bustling into the living room, her graying brown curls falling into her face from the clip she had used in an unsuccessful attempt at restraining the lively springs.  She carried a small, rectangular white box in her arms like a long lost treasure. 

    “I found this in the attic!  She must have been your grandmother’s.  I thought maybe we might put her up in place of the angel this year.”

    Gabe put the angel he held back into her cardboard abode and took the smaller parcel from his mother.  Peering out at him, from a bed of pure white cotton, were the eyes of the truest green he had yet encountered, set into a porcelain face the color of warm sugar cookies.  A little pointed green hat sat nestled atop a head of golden-brown waves and high curved eyebrows.  The little elf, dressed in all green, clung tightly to her tiny knees.

    “Alright, mom,” Gabe agreed despondently. “But I hate to break tradition.”

    Gabe climbed back up onto the arm of the couch, the miniature imp clamped in a big fist.  He leaned precariously over the spiny branches of the tapered treetop.  With giant but gentle hands and a great effort, he looped the elf’s arms around the uppermost branch of the tree so that she appeared to peek mischievously around the branch, as if she knew secrets she wanted to tell.  Her green eyes unnerved him, following him around the room as he went about helping his mother, father, and younger sister Cheri with the hanging of ornaments that spanned from paper snowflakes and baby pictures to porcelain cherubs and glass bulbs.

    After tucking four-year-old Cheri into bed and kissing her goodnight, Gabe walked slowly into his own room down the hall and shut the door behind him.  He plopped down on his bed, turning on the television with the remote left on his pillow.  Not much had changed here since he had left.  A Christmas special started, one that played every year and he had seen at least one hundred times before, and his attention slid from the program playing on the screen where a group of cartoon children went about picking out a Christmas tree from an array of gaudy tin cones and impressive pines.

    He pulled a box from where it had been hidden beneath his pillow shortly before the ornament boxes were packed up and taken out to the garage.  The Christmas tree angel was produced from tissue paper wrappings.  Her straight blond locks had gotten tangled around her golden halo.  Gabe fumbled with his big fingers as he tried to delicately unwind the strands.

    He was looking down into the face of sweet Sara Matthews; his best friend from younger years, when girls were still “icky” and had “cooties”.  But they had definitely outgrown that stage.  Sara had morning-sky-after-a-midnight-snowstorm blue eyes, blond hair, and a thin sprinkle of freckles adorning her nose.  He smiled fondly, running a large thumb across a rosy pink porcelain cheek.

    But Sara was gone now, and all he held in his hands was a treetop angel.  She had died in a car crash five years before.  Her parents had survived, but the other car had come hurtling into her car door killing her on impact.  Gabe could remember his parents trying to explain what had happened, why someone so young was not coming back.  Anger overtook him at first, before he really understood, and then the sadness swallowed him. 

    This was his memory, his little piece of Sara.  Sara had loved Christmas more than anyone.  She had loved to decorate, never satisfied with the amount of red and green; she had loved to bake cookies, filling the kitchen of her home with snowmen, Christmas trees, and gingerbread couples; but most of all, she had loved giving gifts.  She had simply loved watching others open presents, tearing at the paper to get at the surprise within.  That’s what his angel had been, a gift from Sara.  He could remember just how proud she’d been when he’d opened it, her eyes sparkling with delight.  That’s how he liked to remember her.  The accident had occurred as her family returned home that night from their annual gift exchange with the Angelinos.

    Gabe was forced to stuff his angel down along the side of his bed, as a knock sounded on his closed door.

    “Come in,” he choked.  Even now, the memory made him tear up.

    “Honey, I just wanted to…”  His mother paused, looking at her son apologetically.  “…to tell you I was leaving.”

    She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of his bed, taking the remote from him and turning off the show just as a little boy wrapped his baby blanket around the base of a pathetically spindly looking tree to perk it up.  She leaned toward his pillow and put a consoling arm around his shoulders.

    “I know you miss her,” she said pleasantly.  She kissed his forehead and pulled him close to her.  “But it’s only a week until Christmas, and you’re home for such a short time.  Please be happy.  Enjoy the holidays and your break from school.  Sara would never forgive you if she knew you’d spent the last four Christmases moping.”

    “I’ll try, mom,” Gabe said, knowing she was right.  “Have a boring night at work.”

    “I hope so.”  Gabe’s mother kissed his head again, smiling to herself at the familiarity of the old joke, and ruffled his brown locks with a slender hand.  The vibrant woman looked very serious in her starched paramedic’s uniform.  Her brown curls had finally been chemically tamed, plastered back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.  She rose slowly from the bed, and walked from the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

    Gabe lay awake for quite a while.  He stared up at the blank, white ceiling of his room, thinking about Sara.  Late into the night, or early in the morning (Gabe was unaware of the passing of time), his father leaned in and shut off his light, assuming he was asleep, and left the door cracked just enough so that the flickering Christmas lights could filter in onto his floor from down the hall.

    Near four thirty, Gabe heard his mom come home.  There was quiet conversation in his parents’ bedroom down and across the hall, which was normal as far as he knew.  What he did not think was normal, was the sound of his father getting out of bed, and the pair of them returning to the living room, past his door where they momentarily blocked the dancing lights.  The two of them whispered quietly, pacing the length of the hallway from bedroom to living room.

    The next morning, Gabe woke to the smell of pancakes.  It had been ages since his mother had gotten up to make a big breakfast, not that Gabe blamed her one bit.  The night shift left her totally drained.  She would return to the day shift when Cheri went to school.  Gabe was not sure that it would be soon enough for his mother.

    He laid in bed, enjoying the scents and sounds coming from the kitchen, the things he missed in his dorm at college, until he heard his mother tell Cheri to wake him.  He clamped his eyes shut playfully and pretended to be asleep.  He could hear Cheri giggling all the way down the hall.  She threw his door open and came tearing into his room, leaping up onto the bed and consequentially Gabe.

    “Waked up, Gabe!  Waked up!” she cried excitedly.  “Mommy bwought us a sup’wise!”

    “Go away,” he moaned teasingly, burying his face in the pillow.  “I want to go back to sleep.”

    “But it’s ‘de ‘f’!” Cheri punched him in the chest with a minute fist.

    “What?”  Gabe opened one eye and looked at her curiously.

    “Come see!  S’e’s pwetty.  You like her.  Come see!”  Cheri jumped down and scampered out the door and away from her very bewildered big brother.

    Gabe grudgingly threw back the covers and rolled lazily out of bed.  He ran a hand through his hair, most of it already standing on end.  He padded down the hall in his bare feet.  He turned the corner into the kitchen, the cold linoleum freezing his toes and making him wish he had put on his slippers.  He yawned and mussed his hair again.

    “Cheri said there was a surp...” Gabe stopped, his words suddenly stuck in his throat.

    There, sitting at his kitchen table next to his little sister, was a girl.  Long brown waves flowed down over her shoulders and across the middle of the back that was turned to him.  She had on a green shirt that looked oddly like one his mother owned and a pair of pants he definitely knew had a matching scrubs top somewhere in his mother’s closet.  The pants were decorated brightly in red and green and read “Merry Christmas” all over. 

    She turned her head just slightly over one slim shoulder to peer at him, and he had the fleeting thought that Cheri had been right.  She was pretty.

    The girl had perfectly colored skin, like cookies freshly from the oven.  High cheekbones accentuated an ovaline face.  High, curved eyebrows gave her a meddlesome look.  Set behind very long, dark lashes was a pair of incredible eyes.  He had an instant sensation of déjà vu as he looked directly into pure green.

    He suddenly felt very nervous and very insecure.  He could feel his cheeks reddening as soon as he realized that he was standing there like an idiot in a pair of boxers claiming “Don’t open until Christmas” and a ratty old tee-shirt from high school football.  Gabe had never yet been a self-conscious guy, but there was a first time for everything.  He played football and was the captain of the college wrestling team, but suddenly he felt completely inadequate.  His good physique and past confidence forgotten, he felt extremely modest and fantastically embarrassed.

    “Why don’t you sit down, honey” His mother made no attempts to introduce the young lady, but she put down a plate at a spot across from the guest, smiling to herself.

    Reluctantly, Gabe did not flee and sat down, beginning to pick at his breakfast.  His constant appetite had mysteriously disappeared. The girl was likewise pushing a fluffy golden pancake around on her plate, all the while keeping her head tilted down and away so that he only glimpsed the small portions of her face not buried beneath the curtain of brunette tresses.  Cheri chattered non-stop, telling the girl all about the family in her fractured toddler’s English.

    “ ‘dat’s Gabe.  He’s siwwy.  He pays foo’ball an’ dey all go ‘boom’!  An’ e’body runs in’oo e’body. Is funny.”  Here, she broke into a fit of laughter, nearly falling out of her chair and managing to upset the entire pitcher of orange juice.

    “Cheri!”  Gabe yelped, moments too late, jumping to his feet to stop the flood of juice with his napkin.  He looked up to see that the girl had evidently done the very same thing, as she clutched a juice-soaked paper napkin in one hand.  He locked eyes with her for but an instant, again the cold déjà vu feeling attacking his senses.  As quickly as it came, it disappeared, and he was left staring at the top of her dark head as she looked back at the table shyly.

    “Pumpkin, will you take our guest out and show her the Christmas tree,” Gabe’s mother coaxed, while beginning to fold the table cloth to keep the juice off of the floor.

    Cheri grabbed the unsuspecting girl by the hand, one tiny fist locking onto two long slender fingers, and drug her off into the living room.  Meanwhile, Gabe and his mother struggled to keep the spill in check and the damage to a minimum.  Gabe took the now juice-doused plates to the sink, even as his mother finished folding up the orange-tinted table cloth.

    “So, Mom, who is she?”  Gabe directed his question nonchalantly, keeping his voice disinterested, as he knocked soggy pancakes off of sticky plates into the trash.

    “A girl,” she replied coolly, giving him a look only a mother could perfect.

    Wetting a dishrag and ringing it out in the slowly filling sink, Gabe countered, “I can plainly see that.  Really now, Mom…”

    “A patient,” she replied.

    “Is that all you’re going to give me?”  Gabe walked over to the kitchen table with the dishrag.

    “I would like you to see if you can get her to tell you her story.  She won’t talk to any of us; maybe she’ll talk to a peer.  Be gentle with her, she’s faced a big loss.” 

    Callie Angelino brushed a stray curl off of her forehead before taking the rag from her son and wiping the stickiness from the tabletop.

    Gabe sighed heavily.  He knew that his mother always became attached to her patients, especially the young ones, but this was a bit much.  Bringing one home?  He wondered how she had even gotten the girl out of the hospital after the ambulances had brought her in.  She had to be walking a legal tightrope of next-of-kin and professional boundaries.

    Looking sideways at the patient from the kitchen doorway, he noticed things he had earlier neglected.  He could see a large gash in her side, revealed as she reached up to replace an ornament Cheri had dislodged.  Her extension also revealed a height he had earlier been unaware of.  She stood barely three feet taller than his little sister, looking tiny against the towering evergreen.  He could just make out several lacerations and a bruise on the right side of her back as she moved around the tree to secure another tumbling glass bulb.

    He wondered what she had been through, what she had lost last night.  He decided, though, that he would put on some clothes before asking her any questions.

    He walked past the pair of girls and down the hall to his room.  He pulled on jeans and a grey sweater.  Running a wet comb through his hair, he brushed his teeth and washed his face, before returning to the living room, where the young woman was alone now, sitting silently on the couch with her legs tucked up under her Indian-style.  She was turning a pine needle around in her fingers, but she looked up at his approach.

    When he had examined her earlier that morning, he had somehow missed a few striking elements of her features.  He had overlooked the cut that arced from her eyebrow to her hairline, boasting several festive green stitches, and the darkness on her cheek, indicating a bruise and bleeding below the surface of her golden skin.  Her eye, beneath the slice and above the bruise, was swollen and nearly closed.  Beyond the wounds, Gabe caught a glimpse of a unique attractiveness. 

    She let him study her for a time, before she looked down again at her pine needle as if it could take her away.  And it did for a few seconds until Gabe found his voice.

    “I’m Gabe, if you didn’t understand what Cheri was going on about earlier.  I never understand what she says.”  He smiled and shrugged, flopping down on the couch next to her and bouncing a bit on the springs beneath the cushion which virtually swallowed him.

    She did not respond to his comment, and the air hung heavily between them.  She looked up for a second, but that was all the reaction he got from her.  He sighed quietly, realizing that this was going to be harder than he had originally thought.  How difficult could it be to get her name?

    “What’s your name?”  Direct questioning seemed even less effective.  She did not even bother to look at him this time.

    He noticed that she had split the pine needle into three incredibly thin strips and had braided them tightly together.  He was not at first struck by the amazing intricacy of the work.  Instead, he was irritated by the fact that she seemed to be completely ignoring him.

    Gabe flipped on the television across from the couch as an ice breaker.  He groaned disappointedly as a white and black cartoon dog bounded across the screen; the same holiday special as the night before.  He scrolled up a few channels only to be faced with another cartoon, this time an oversized animated snowman marched down a city sidewalk sporting a black top hat and carrying a broom.

    “Good Lord,” Gabe huffed in frustration, tossing the remote down on the small end table next to the couch.  When he brought his hand back to his side, it landed on hers where she had dropped it to the cushion having finished with her pine needle.

    There was a sudden shiver that went through him.  It started where his hand covered hers and radiated up through his body as if the blood in his veins had suddenly been turned to ice water.  He jerked his hand away, and the warmth returned, the cold draining slowly as if someone had turned on a tap.  He was left feeling inexplicably empty.

    Gabe looked at the girl next to him, wondering if she had felt anything at all.  She stared down into her lap at the holiday message on the scrubs.  She chewed her bottom lip, which consequently broke open and trickled fresh blood down her chin.  Without thinking about it, Gabe reached over and, cupping her bruised right cheek in his large hand, he ran his thumb over her lip.  Her cheek was icy cold, but her lip was warm.  He could not take his eyes off of her, or move his hand away, when she locked gazes with him.  He was mysteriously paralyzed, frozen to the spot where he sat, his blood again like ice.

    “I…”  Callie had impeccable timing.  She always managed to catch her son at his most vulnerable moments, when he felt least like his twenty one years.  She beamed at them both, oddly comfortable with the scene before her.

    Gabe let his hand drop from the girl’s face leadenly, resting it heavily in his lap.  He felt relieved that his mother had walked into the room in time to stop him from doing just what his hormones were telling him to.  He wondered why he had been romantically unaffected by girls for five years now and had not felt the need to get tangled up with one; and yet, all his mind was suddenly concocting as he shook off the entrancing effect of her green orbs were ways of tangling: tangling his fingers in her hair, tangling his lips with hers.

    “Oh dear!” Callie exclaimed.  “You’re bleeding, sweetheart.  You come with me, and I’ll get you cleaned up.”

    She shuffled the teenage girl down the hall toward the bathroom, fussing at her all the way.  Gabe could still hear her voice after the door shut behind them. He leaned his head over the back of the couch, eyes closed to the colorful Christmas decorations and cheery seasonal atmosphere intruding upon his scrambled brain.

    ‘That was weird,’ he thought.  He shook his head to release the image of her eyes tempting him and stood up quickly.  He called to his mother down the hall.

    “I’m going into town.  Do you need anything?”

    “Just be home by dinnertime!  It’s your turn to do dishes,” she replied, her voice bouncing down the hallway from behind the muffling bathroom door.

    Gabe grabbed the key ring from the kitchen counter.  He pulled his black leather jacket from the closet next to the front door and tossed it over his broad shoulders.  He marched determinedly out into the cold, gray afternoon.  He hopped up into the family car, a large white SUV, hauling the heavy door closed.  The engine roared to life as he turned the key in the ignition.  He backed carefully out of the driveway and sped down the street.

    It only took five minutes for him to reach his destination.  He stopped at the four-way stop, rolled through the intersection, pulled over to the side of the road, and cut the engine.  He looked down at the steering wheel for quite a while as if afraid to leave the cab.  Eventually, he removed the keys from the ignition and climbed down to the running board before jumping to the ground.

    “You need somethin’?”  The older man kneeling on the grass had completely escaped Gabe’s vision.

    “What are you doing?” Gabe snapped.  His breath caught.

    “I’m jus’ finishin’ up.”  The man stood up, brushing his hands off on his jeans and eyeing Gabe warily.

    Gabe glanced at the ground where the man had just been.  Three white crosses donated by a local church lined the edge of the road between the pavement and a stand of trees.  Gabe was only accustomed to seeing one.

    “Lost a couple las’ night,” the man said solemnly.  “A mother and a father gone; hate to see it.  But their girl survived.  They said she didn’t have anyone to take her in, no next of kin or whatnot.  Really is a shame, this close to Christmas and all.”

    Gabe turned around without saying anything back to the church volunteer, his head reeling, and walked back to the SUV.  He was just not sure how he felt about what was going on.  He was not sure he wanted Sara to have to share her memorial.

    “What are the dates on those crosses?”  Gabe turned before opening the driver’s door.  The man bent over and peered carefully at the three small roadside memorials.

    “Huh… All the eighteenth of December,” the man answered.  “But this one’s from…”

    “Five years ago…” Gabe finished the sentence.

    “How’d you know that?”  The man began to ask, but Gabe was already behind the wheel of the SUV with the engine started.

    The drive home took half the usual time.  He squealed into his driveway, jammed the SUV into park, and tore into the house.  The slamming of the front door reverberated through the walls.  Gabe pushed past his mother and rounded on the teenage girl sitting silently on the end of the living room couch. 

    “Gabriel Michael!” Callie yelled.

    “They’re your parents!”  Gabe ignored his mother completely, his eyes locked on green orbs more brilliant than any Christmas bulb.  She peered up at him over knees pulled close to her like a shield.  “They’re the two crosses.  Aren’t they?  Out there with Sara’s?”

    Gabe, knowing he was not about to get any kind of answer out of the girl, stormed down the hall, shutting the door to his bedroom behind his hasty retreat.  He did not see the pained and confused look reflected in those magnificent eyes.  He did not see the quiver in her cracked lower lip nor her tiny clenched fists.  He did not see the single tear slide down her cheek.

    No one witnessed the pain.  No one noticed the abated anger.  No one saw the first tear she shed in the aftermath of losing her parents the night before, at the very same intersection Sara’s parents had lost their little girl exactly five years prior.

    Gabe did not come out of his room for dinner that night.  He refused even the food his mother brought to him.  His appetite had pulled another disappearing act.  But he was not the only one to go without dinner that evening.  The silent girl did not desert her place on the end of the Angelino couch.  She sat there still in subdued silence when Callie left for work.

    When the paramedic returned, tired and worn, the young woman had fallen asleep, hunched against the arm of the couch.  Mrs. Angelino drew a blanket up over the girl’s shoulders with a sad smile.  She placed the stack of brightly wrapped gifts she carried under the boughs of the massive tree and beamed at the generosity of the staff in making a nice Christmas for the orphaned young lady now curled on the couch.

    The next morning dawned a silver gray, promising snow.  The cold light filtered into Gabe’s room, falling across the foot of his bed in pale shafts.  Gabe sat up slowly, a yawn escaping his lips.  He peered sleepily out the window into the gray light, his gaze catching on a patch of frost in the lower right corner closest to him.  He rubbed his eyes and focused on the beautiful work of natural art.  He’d always liked the subtle patterns frost made, but this pattern was unique.  Glistening among the spiky spindles of frost, a familiar seasonal word glittered in the early morning glow.  Gabe reached out to touch the glass behind the letters only to find that they were on the inside of the pane.  As frost was commonly a fixture on the exterior, Gabe was shocked.

    He pulled his hand back in surprise, rubbing his fingers together to rid himself of the chill.  He glanced back at the design where his middle finger had removed the “o” in “Noel”.  He wondered how the intricate artwork had arrived on his window.  He stared at it closely, looking for some hint of a stencil or pen, but found nothing.

    “It was ‘de ‘f’!” Gabe had not even heard Cheri come in, let alone teeter up beside where he was kneeling on the end of his bed.  “She went pfffff and it go poof!”

    Cheri blew hard on the image, spit flying.  The pattern melted instantly under the onslaught of the toddler’s warm breath and saliva.  She looked horror stricken, her mouth open and her eyes bulging.

    “I sowwy Gabe!  I sowwy!”  A few tears started to trickle down her cheeks.  “I mess up her pwesent.”

    “It’s ok, Cheri.”  Gabe wrapped his little sister up in his arms, knowing that an all-out crying fit would wake his mother.  He looked down into her big brown doe eyes set into her chubby cherub-like face as they swam in tears.  “I already messed it up when I poked it.”

    “You not mad at me like mommy and ‘de ‘f’?”

    Gabe had almost forgotten his outburst the day before in his curiosity over the frost.  He had been regretting it since he slammed the bedroom door afterwards.  His stomach, which was already planning mutiny for lack of food, took a dive of shame low in his gut.  Shame had been what had kept him shut up in his room and away from the dinner table.  He had been so sick of himself, he did not feel much like eating the food his mother had brought in.

    “Can I eat ‘de canny cane?”  Cheri asked, looking up at him expectantly, obviously recovered from the scare over the melted frost.  The red and white candy cane sitting on his windowsill had escaped his notice.

    “Where’d that come from?”

    “’de ‘f’,” the toddler responded matter-of-factly, as if he should have known all along.  She snatched up the candy cane in a fit of mischievousness and took off down the hallway with it clenched in her chubby little fist.

    Gabe sighed and started after her.  He stopped in his doorway, remembering exactly how much clothing he lacked.  Not wanting a repeat of the embarrassing morning appearance 24 hours before, he grabbed a handful of clothes and headed across the hall into the bathroom instead of into the living room. 

    After his shower, Gabe felt much better.  He combed his hair, threw on his clothes, and made his way down the hall to apologize to the young woman in the living room.

    She sat on the couch almost as he had left her the afternoon before.  He wondered if she had even moved.  Maybe she slept like that.  Maybe she didn’t sleep.  He shrugged off the thought and approached her cautiously.  He opened his mouth to say something, but he closed it again without uttering a sound but for the click of his teeth.  Instead of looking at her immediately, he turned his head to fix his eyes on the Christmas tree.  His gaze was drawn to the uppermost branch which, any other year, would have held Sara’s white-clad angel.  The troublesome elf on the top of the tree seemed to laugh at him.  The blinking lights made its green eyes dance in the most peculiar manner; its pure almond-shaped green eyes.

    Gabe suddenly understood what “f” meant.  Realization dawned brightly on the horizon of his consciousness.  The girl on the couch, her knees tucked up under her chin was the spitting image of the devious imp peeking out from behind the treetop.  Cheri had made a connection from the beginning that Gabe had quite simply missed.  Gabe smiled to himself at the quirky resemblance, but then frowned again bracing himself for the apology he planned to make.

    He wondered what to call her.  He couldn’t very well go around calling her the “elf”.  That would probably just make her angry, as if she did not already have enough reason to hate him.  “You” was no better a candidate.  It didn’t get much more impersonal than that.  Most nicknames verged on pet names: sweetheart, honey, babe.  Corny was not really in his taste.  One word reverberated between his ears and echoed in his mind.  He did not put much stock in coincidence.

    “Noel?” He addressed her timidly in something close to a whisper.

    Her head shot up.  Interest glittered in those almandine green eyes for the first time since their disastrous breakfast meeting.  Her lips parted, but no words passed through the gap.  She was waiting.

    ‘Well, you know my name,’ her eyes seemed to be challenging.  ‘What other tricks do you do?’

    “I just wanted… I wanted to…”  The hundred times he had practiced earlier in the shower were tripped up by her slim half-smile.  He stumbled clumsily over his carefully chosen words under the scrutiny of a taunting gaze.

    “Yes?”  Those eyes were still defying him.  They were urging him on, tempting him to speak, to tell his story, to prove himself.

    “I’m so sorry,” Gabe finally blurted out.  “I never should have said what I did.  It’s just that… I just…”

    The young man had to pause to take a deep, unsteady breath.  He sat down next to her, his head falling forward into his hands.  Her eyes followed him.  And then came the story of Sara.  Gabe began to tell Noel everything.  He didn’t talk about Sara, about the accident.  It hurt too much, yet the one thing no one knew he spilled out to Noel.

    Gabe illustrated to Noel the tremendous noise, the violent jolt, the acrid smells of burning rubber and gasoline, and the flashing lights.  He admitted to an almost stranger that he had been at the wheel of the car that drove Sara to her death.  He confessed to the brunette house guest that he had watched Sara breathe her last.  He confessed to the little elf that he had convinced himself for months that it had never happened.  He explained to the green-eyed girl just how empty he had been after the crash, how incredibly lonely.  He told the one girl who might know how he felt how much it hurt to lose Sara, the girl he thought he would be with for the rest of his life. 

    Noel had sat quietly, listening attentively to Sara’s story, sharing in Gabe’s pain.  She had patted his hand tenderly and gently wiped away tears.  Now that he was finished talking, she pulled him into her arms.  She held him close to her, letting him cry into her shoulder.  She clutched him tightly in the warmth only someone who truly understood could provide.

    Gabe had been so intent on telling his story, and Noel so intent upon listening, that neither had noticed Mrs. Callie Angelino standing in the shadow of the hall.  She was smiling through tears, one arm wrapped around her torso, the telephone dangling uselessly from her fingers, and the other rested perpendicular to it.  Her right hand lay splayed on her chest just below her throat as if to stop silent sobs.

    Gabe suddenly realized that he was crying.  Over twenty, he should be over bawling like a baby by now.  He realized that the silent girl, whose wounds were the freshest, was comforting him.  The most shocking realization of all was that he was comforted.  He felt a weight lifted, feeling warm and comfortable on her shoulder.

    Now that his story had been told, every painful detail divulged, Gabe wanted to hear hers.  He brought his head up so that he was level with her eyes; but when he opened his mouth to speak, she looked down at her lap and shook her head.

    The next morning, Gabe awoke to find Cheri already sitting on the end of his bed looking at the window pane.  She had one finger stretched out toward the glass, a directional beacon, about to destroy the crystalline artwork on his window.

    “Don’t move,” he ordered.  Cheri froze exactly where she was, her tiny hand dangling in midair, the stubby little finger not even a centimeter away from the frosty design.

    “Let me guess…” Gabe drew out the ‘s’ as if thinking very, very hard. “The elf, I presume?”

    “Uh-huh!” Cheri nodded enthusiastically. “An’ see’s makin’ bweakfast, too!”

    Little Cheri hopped off the end of the bed and scampered out of the room.  Gabe was left to crawl slowly to the post deserted by the three year old and to peer with no less curiosity and wonder at the intricate frost design on display on the window.

    A jolly, winking elf mocked him from his window pane, shimmering in the early morning sunshine.

    As he pulled on clothes before heading down to the magnificent breakfast Noel had created.  Little was he to know that he was to be taunted the next two mornings by cocky images of mistletoe and gaily wrapped gifts.  Little was he to know that he would be pacified by fresh-baked sugar cookies and steaming mugs of hot cocoa.  Little was he to know that it would only take a few days, a silent cooking lesson, and quiet evenings on the couch to change his perspective on permanent bachelorhood.

    He was lying awake, staring up at the ceiling.  It was Friday night, and the next day was Christmas Eve.  For the first time in years, Gabe was actually excited.  He grinned at the image of her as she had been on Wednesday morning, serving he and his little sister French toast with mounds of snowy powdered sugar.  He chuckled softly as he pictured her as she was on Thursday: flour on the tip of her nose and even on the tip of one of her impishly pointed ears.  Yet, his favorite image of her came with the thought of her curled in the corner of the couch, cuddling a mug of hot cocoa in both hands, her smile faint through the steam.

    They’d had fun on those days.  That day, he had driven himself to the mall and shopped all day long.  He’d fought long lines and a dwindling selection to find the perfect gift, the perfect gift for Noel.  He’d finally found it, or at least hoped he had.  He’d found a scarf and hat accompanied by a delicate pair of gloves that he hoped would fit her tiny hands.  The poem about Jack Frost and the snowflakes on them were just added bonuses.

    He woke Christmas Eve morning not to the common little corner design, but to a window entirely covered by frost.  He immediately recognized “The Night Before Christmas.”  Looking at the glimmering border, he saw the scenes described in the familiar poem depicted all around the outside edges of his window.  A row of stockings lined the mantle over a fireplace containing a roaring fire.  Santa Clause was shadowed against a full moon, while a man watched from a window.

    Gabe smiled.  If this was truly Noel’s work, she’d really outdone herself this time.  Each picture was perfect to the finest detail.  He wanted to touch the images, but he knew that they’d melt under even the most reverent of caresses.  He still wasn’t convinced that the intricate designs were made by Noel, no matter what Cheri said she’d seen.  He definitely was not about to believe that the tree-top elf had put the pictures on the window.  And yet, there they were, those beautiful designs and delicate pictures.

    After his morning shower, Gabe got dressed rapidly and wrapped Noel’s gifts as prettily as he could manage.  He’d never been good with ribbons and shiny paper.  He slipped the gifts under the lowest boughs of the oversized tree before proceeding into the kitchen.  His breakfast was already laid out on the table.  Cheri was just finishing up hers, and she carried the plate to Noel who was standing near the sink.  Noel, smiling, took the plate and patted Cheri on the top of the head. 

    Gabe ate his breakfast watching Noel clean up the kitchen.  When he had finished, and she had washed his dirty dishes, they retired as a couple into the living room.  Together they watched “It’s Christmas Charlie Brown” in its entirety for the first time that Christmas season.

    After lunch, Gabe went back to his bedroom to complete the wrapping of a few last minute gifts for his family members.  Several hours later, arms stacked high with ribbon-bedecked gifts, Gabe made his way back toward the living room.  He stopped dead in his tracks, nearly dropping the presents on the ground at his feet.

    “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,” a melodious voice was reading the very poem that was still clinging frostily to his window. “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

    He knew the woman’s voice just as well as he knew the poem she was reading.  There were years when she had read the poem to a much younger version of himself as he sat on the floor beside Sara.  He could remember begging Mrs. Matthews to read to him again and again, postponing the time that the Matthews would take Sara home and his parents would put him to bed.  He continued down the hall and jumped in on the next line when he stepped into the living room.

    “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.”

    “In hopes that Saint Nickolas soon would be there.”

    Sara’s mother put down the book she was reading to Cheri and stood up to hug Gabe.      “Oh, Gabe!  How are you, dear?”

    “Just fine.  How are you?”

    “Just fine, just fine.”  The glow in the older woman’s cheeks told Gabe that she wasn’t lying. 

    He tried to conjure up a memory of the woman who had treated him as a second child after her first had died.  He only vaguely recalled a darkness to her eyes and face that first Christmas after the accident, but the memory was hard to bring up.  He’d been too wrapped in himself to notice the others’ pain.  But, he looked at her now and realized that whatever darkness he remembered had faded.

    Sara’s parents stayed for dinner, which Noel had helped put together without having to say anything.  Noel fit into the folds of family Christmas like she’d sat at that table in years past. After the cheery meal, the Matthews presented the two Angelino children with their annual Christmas surprises.  There was even a present for Noel, who smiled broadly at the couple and even hugged them.  She pulled the white sweater with its sparkling silver snowflakes on over her head.

    To Gabe she looked suddenly more beautiful than ever.  The pure white sweater made her skin glow golden, and the happy glitter in her green eyes made her face virtually shine.  When the couple left, Gabe thanked them not only for himself but also for Noel, who had only visibly shown her gratitude.

    “W’ead me a sto’wy, N’el,” Cheri pleaded.

    Noel was sitting quietly on the couch as usual.  Her fingers played idly with the edge of her sweater, but they stopped when Cheri pushed the book into her lap.  Noel ran her hand over the glossy cover slowly.

    “Cheri…” Gabe admonished, wishing his little sister would leave poor Noel alone.

    Noel patted her lap, and Cheri crawled up into it.  The older girl slowly opened the book across the toddlers pudgey thighs and flicked to the first page.  Gabe caught her eyes and could have sworn that her green eyes had really sparkled on their own.  Noel swallowed hard and let her breath out on a sigh that tickled Cheri’s neck.

    “’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

    Gabe couldn’t take his eyes off of her.  She ran her fingers sweetly through his little sister’s curls, drawing strands between her palms to weave them in twin braids.  Her eyes hadn’t even flickered to the page in front of her.  She smiled playfully at Gabe over his little sister’s head, breathing the story.

    “The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.”

    Gabe was drawn in by her voice, soft and low.  It flowed from word to word, a winter breeze.  The story came from somewhere beyond memory.  He could see it playing across her face.

    “And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof.”

    The almost cliché Christmas tale took on a completely new feeling once it passed through her lips.  Gabe found he was holding his breathe in time with her sultry tone, waiting to meet Santa for himself.

    “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

    The story was all for him.  Cheri had fallen soundly asleep against Noel’s chest, a tiny fist wrapped tightly in the girl’s brown hair.  Noel slid the book from between them, smoothed the pages, and laid it aside on the couch cushion.  She stood slowly, and carried the little girl to her room.  Gabe followed them down the hallway and leaned on the doorjamb to watch Noel tuck Cheri into bed.

    “Don’t look at me like that,” Noel teased, taking his hand as she passed him in the doorway.  He stared at her hand, dwarfed in his, and marveled at how cold her soft skin felt against his.  She stepped outside, pulling him into the cold.

    On the stoop, Noel turned to face Gabe with a smile that reminded him that he didn’t know what to expect from her.

    “I love snow,” Noel whispered into the still night. 

    She glared at the sky for a moment. 

    “It’s just not Christmas without snow.”

As if on cue, fat snowflakes began to fall from the blackness.  She nodded, satisfied, and then cocked her head to look at Gabe again.  The flakes landed on her hair, her eyelashes, and her cheeks.  They clung to her skin and glittered in the white lights strung from the eaves.

    He moved his hand up to her cheek to brush the flakes away from her skin only to find that they had formed frost there.  She turned her head a little so that he could watch the patterns twinkle in the nighttime.

    “Shh,” breathed Noel.  Her breath didn’t even make steam in the cold, but rather caused the chilly frost to cling to his cheeks.  He felt the icy layer crack as he gasped.  Her green eyes virtually glowed.  She rose up on her tiptoes so that she was closer to eye level, thoush she couldn’t really close the foot high gap.

    Gabe couldn’t help but lean over toward her.  He wrapped her up in his arms and tilted her chin back.  The snow flakes fluttered lazily down between them.  Another force of nature lowered Gabe’s lips to Noel’s.  The ice that flowed through his veins at the touch of her skin couldn’t compare to the hot cocoa feeling that flooded him from head to toe at the touch of her lips.  When he finally set her back on her heels, they were both smiling, but he didn’t let go of her smooth, cold cheek.

    “You wouldn’t tell me your name, but you’d recite ‘The Night Before Christmas’ for Cheri?”

    Gabe refused to release her face or her gaze for fear that she just might return to the terrified girl he’d met a week ago.  She looked past him calmly, following the drifting snow.

    “You didn’t need me to talk,” Noel said softly, laying a cold palm to the back of his hand on her cheek.  “You needed me to listen.”

    Noel let the truth of it sink in for a moment, her smile genuine, but the quirk of her eyebrows gave away her ploy. 

    “I suppose you’re right.”

    The infectious way she smiled at him had the heat in his cheeks melting the frost.

    “You’re not gonna run now that I’ve finally got you talking,” he asked, only half amused.

    “I’d do some real talking if you’d let me get a word in, angel.”  Noel chewed on her lopsided grin mischievously.

    “I’ll be around until I go back to school in January,” she said.  “Besides, Santa won’t need me again until next year.”

    Gabe eyed her, unsure if she was kidding.  There wasn’t the hint of humor that lingered in the corner of her eyes.

    “Mr. Matthews is helping me get my parents’ estate under control,” she continued.  “I have to stick close.”

    Noel winked up at him sweetly and spun in his arms so that her back tucked against his chest.  She tilted her head back until she could see his face.

    “If you’re ok with that, of course.”

    “It wouldn’t be Christmas without an elf,” Gabe replied, kissing the tip of her nose.