Abby's Christmas. Lynnette Kent
just…expected the usual powder.” He shrugged. “Not many people make hot chocolate from scratch.”
“I’m an old-fashioned girl, I guess.” She felt her cheeks heat up. Again. “So, how long have you been in town?”
Noah squinted at the clock over the counter. “Almost thirty minutes now.”
“You came here first? You haven’t seen your mom?”
“Not yet.”
Surprised in her turn, she raised an eyebrow. “She doesn’t know you’re coming, does she?” When he shook his head, she nodded. “I talked to her just yesterday, when I took her to the grocery store. No wonder she didn’t say anything.” Noah’s mother was not the kind of person to enjoy surprises. “Would you like to call her from here? Give her a little warning?”
Now he was the one with flushed cheeks, and a storm in his dark gaze. “You think she needs warning?”
“This will be a pretty big shock—you showing up after fifteen years away. And she’s been sick. Did you know that?”
“Uh, no.”
“She’s supposed to use her oxygen all the time.”
“I—”
“It’s not good for her to get upset.”
In a sudden hurry, Noah downed the last of his chocolate and stood up. “This was a bad idea, after all. I think I’ll just keep going. Don’t mention I was here.” His long strides quickly took him outside.
Abby rushed after him and found him standing beside a big Harley. “Noah, I didn’t mean… Noah!” She grabbed his arm as he jerked on a glove. “First of all, you owe me one-sixty for the hot chocolate.”
He shoved his bare hand into the pocket of his jeans.
“More important, you can’t run away like this.”
“Who says?” He crammed a couple of dollars into her fingers, still wrapped around his sleeve. The leather was cold, the bills warm from his body.
“You’ll hate yourself if you do.”
“So what’s new?” His mouth hardened into a straight line.
She squandered the only leverage she had left. “You can’t let your mother die without ever seeing her son again.”
He stared at her a long time. The resistance in his expression made her want to weep. “She’s…dying?”
“She’s got diabetes, heart and kidney problems. Her health has been precarious for several years now.”
They stood still, gazes locked, while the sharp wind whipped up dust in the gravel parking lot. A small, dirty dog trotted to the bike, sat by the rear wheel and lifted a paw to touch Noah’s leg.
“You’ve got a friend.” Abby let herself be diverted. “He wants a lift.”
“Yeah, I helped him out of some trouble back in South Carolina. Now he thinks he owns me.” Noah pulled out of her grasp. He bent to pick up the animal and stowed the dirty little guy in the backpack hanging from the bike’s seat.
“You brought him here with you?”
“Didn’t have much choice.” Swinging the backpack onto his shoulders, he threw his leg over the bike and pulled on the other glove. “If I’d left him, the kids would’ve shot him to death with BB guns.”
Abby shuddered. “Where are you going?”
He gave her a resigned look as he buckled his helmet. “Where do you think? One-fifty Boundary Street. I’ll ride slow, in case you want to call and announce me.”
She smiled, but before she could say anything, he revved the engine and left the parking lot with a spray of gravel. Abby watched as he waited for the traffic light at the corner to change, then saw him head up the hill across the highway, toward his mother’s house.
Her heart sang. Noah is home!
Back inside the diner, she punched in the familiar telephone number, then hung up before the first ring. Noah’s mother might need more than just a call to warn her. She’d been in the hospital last week with her insulin wildly out of control. Maybe somebody should be there when Noah got home in case something happened.
By the time she’d finished thinking things through, Abby had the diner doors locked, the Closed sign on the door and her keys in her hand. She would stay just long enough to be sure Mrs. Blake was all right, then rush back to her usual routine.
Come to think of it, though, with Noah Blake in town, her life might never be usual or routine again.
NOAH GLANCED ACROSS the street at New Skye High School as he waited through the traffic light over the intersection beside the Carolina Diner. Not much had changed since his time, except for a row of portable classrooms added along the side. Hard to believe he’d ever been confined inside those orange brick walls. With a shake of his head, he left the school behind, rolling through the intersection, accelerating up the hill toward Boundary Street.
The rough, run-down neighborhoods he passed through hadn’t changed all that much, either. Some of the beer joints bore different names, some were gone, and others had opened since his time. More of the advertisements in the store windows were in Spanish and most of the men loafing in the parking lots and on the street corners looked Latino.
Passing through a business district of bars, pawn-shops and gas stations, he caught a yellow light and rolled to a stop with time to spare before red. The driver in the truck behind him sat on the horn, but traffic stops threatened trouble. Noah preferred to avoid any unscheduled encounters with the police.
A glance to the right showed him a parking lot stretching down the side street, deserted but for a white Toyota parked next to an overflowing Dumpster. As Noah watched, a little kid stood up in the front passenger window, fingers curled through a space between the top of the glass panel and the door frame. The child put its face up to that crack of air.
In a second of relative quiet, Noah heard the kid’s cry. “Da-a-ade-e-e!”
He turned the bike down the side street and parked in the empty lot, a short distance from the car. With the Harley locked and the keys in his pocket, he approached the vehicle slowly, giving the child a chance to see him, hoping not to cause a panic.
But the little boy stopped crying as Noah got closer, and stared through the window with the tears still wet on his thin, dirty face. His hair was cut too short, his head practically shaved. He wore a cheap quilted vest, an orange T-shirt, jeans, mismatched socks, but no shoes. The afternoon was chilly, with a temperature somewhere in the fifties, but the windows of the car had steamed up, so the little guy probably wasn’t cold. Noah remembered how warm a car could get if you cried enough, jumped up and down on the seats, beat on the windows.
He tried the back door handle and swore when he found it unlocked. At least his dad had locked him in.
Noah poked his head inside. “Hi,” he said quietly. “My name’s Noah.”
The child hiccuped and sniffed but didn’t speak.
“What’s your name?” No answer. “Where’s your mommy?”
“Mama,” the little boy said, and shuffled sideways to lean against the back of the seat he stood on. “Mama.” His movement stirred up the air in the car, along with an aroma of sweat, onions and wet diaper. “Mama.” He smiled, showing new teeth.
“Are you here by yourself?” Noah didn’t expect an answer.
But the boy said, “Daddy. Da-a-ade-e-e.”
So maybe the dad was somewhere nearby. And maybe he should be punched for leaving his kid alone like this. Or maybe he could just suffer when he came back to the car and the kid wasn’t there. Then again, a kidnapping charge would spell disaster for Noah.