A Boy's Christmas Wish. Patricia Johns
SIXTEEN
BETH THOMAS’S FATHER, Rick, didn’t seem terribly concerned that Granny was missing. He looked up from a basket of laundry he’d been halfheartedly folding and shrugged.
“She’s probably wandered off again,” he said. He was a short man with a full head of iron gray hair and bushy black eyebrows, and he was staring down at the laundry as if he’d rather murder it. He was recently divorced from Beth’s stepmom, Linda, and the housework seemed to irritate him more than the divorce settlement. He was a moderately successful literary novelist, and Beth was still waiting for him to inject all this unprocessed emotion into a new manuscript. So far—nada.
“Does she wander off often?” Beth asked.
“From time to time...yes.”
Beth rubbed a hand over her expanding belly, and the baby wriggled inside her. She was eight months pregnant with sore feet, and Granny had been the buffer zone between Beth and her father since she’d arrived home for the holidays.
“Where does Granny go?” Beth pressed.
“The store.”
For the Thomas family, “the store” never referred to the grocery store or the hardware store. Rick raised his eyes to meet her gaze, and she could see the pain there. Before Linda left, Rick had declared bankruptcy, and the corner store that had belonged to the family for three generations had been put up for sale by the bank. So much for second mortgages.
“I’ll go check there,” she said.
“I can do it—” Rick dropped a T-shirt back into the basket. “You should probably put your feet up or something, kiddo.”
Kiddo. She was thirty-two.
“No, I’m fine, Dad. I’m supposed to get exercise anyway. I’ll go see if I can find her.”
Beth wanted out of the house, away from her father’s irritable household chores and the stuffy smells of toast and pine-scented air freshener. She’d come home because she didn’t have much choice. Her city job as a caregiver for an elderly lady had come to an end when the woman moved to a long-term care facility, and Beth was due to give birth within four short weeks. The baby’s father was out of the picture, hence her return home. But her dad’s divorce and bankruptcy meant that her arrival wasn’t terribly convenient for him, and she could feel his frustration. He needed space, and so did she.
Beth headed down the stairs, stepping carefully. She couldn’t see past her belly, and her center of gravity was off now that she was all tummy, but she made it down, shoved her feet into her boots and grabbed her cream woolen coat. It didn’t close properly, but she did up the top few buttons and wrapped a scarf around her neck. It would have to do. The corner store wasn’t far from her dad’s house, and she angled her steps in that direction, keeping her eyes peeled for Granny.
North Fork, Alberta, was a small community on the Canadian prairies with a downtown that consisted of about four crisscrossing streets and a park next to a towering brick church. All winter long, that park had trees decorated for Christmas—an intricate design of twinkling lights that encircled a running track that was flooded to make a skating rink. She’d grown up in this town, learned to skate on that outdoor rink, and she’d even gotten engaged one Christmas in the glow of those Christmas lights to a rugged guy named Danny Brockwood, who’d come to town for a job as a millwright.
But that had been five years ago, and that engagement had ended in heartbreak when she discovered he’d been lying to her the entire time—he had a child that he’d never told her about. So she packed up and went to the city, where she’d hoped for a fresh start. A degree in medieval studies qualified her for absolutely nothing in particular, and she’d gotten a job with a private company caring for the elderly in their homes. Sometimes, when she got home from work and flung herself on her couch, she’d look at the blank TV and wonder how Danny was doing. It was her own bad luck to have fallen in love with the wrong guy.
Beth stopped at an intersection and looked both ways, scanning for the familiar form of a slender old lady in a bright red jacket and clomping winter boots. Alberta was cold and dry this time of year, the snow swirling into banks on the sides of the street—not even needing salt to melt it off the asphalt. The wind blew in powerful gusts, stopped only by the low houses. The prairies had no other wind blocks, just section upon section of frozen farmland, bared to elements. However, for all the arctic winds, the sun shone bright and cheery. Beth had often wondered how people used to endure this kind of cold before electricity and water heaters.
Granny might run off, but apparently, she was with it enough to put on a coat and boots before she did. Perhaps that was why her dad didn’t worry quite so much. Besides, in a town the size of North Fork, everyone knew everyone, and someone was bound to bring her home again. Granny was a fixture around here—the lady from the corner store. What kid didn’t know her? And what adult hadn’t bought tiny paper bags of bulk candy from her in their own childhoods?
The corner store was just ahead, and Beth plodded toward it. It was closed down now, the windows papered over and the neon signs that used to flicker in the windows gone. Her heart constricted at the sight of it. That store had been her home just as much as the house, or the town; it had been her respite from her by-the-book stepmother.
Beth waited for a truck to pass, and she tugged her coat a little closer around her belly. The cold was seeping into her fingers and toes, and while pregnancy had left her generally overheated, a coat she couldn’t zip certainly took care of that. She crossed the road and stopped again, looking in all directions. No sign of Granny.
“Granny!” Shouting in the middle of the road didn’t seem to do much good, either, since the only response was the bark of a dog from a nearby yard.
Beth stopped in front of the store and looked up, her gaze focusing on the For Sale sign. Except it wasn’t for sale anymore...there was a big banner covering it stating Sold.
She sighed. It was to be expected, of course, but it still hurt. Someone had snapped it up, and soon enough that old store would be turned into something else. A Laundromat or a coffee shop. Whatever business ended up there, the Thomas family wouldn’t have the heart to frequent it.
The door was ajar, and Beth gave it a pull. It opened with that familiar jingle of the bell overhead, and she stepped inside. Nothing had changed. The old shelves were still in the same place, except most of the product was gone. There was one shelf that still held various odds and ends that looked fully stocked. She heaved a sigh.
“Hey.”
Beth startled as a man stood up from behind one of those shelves, his hands full of cardboard, and she caught her breath when she recognized him. He was tall and dark, as he always had been, but the last five years had solidified him. He stared at her in equal surprise, and he dropped the cardboard and brushed his hands off, then came around the shelf.
“Danny...” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”
She swallowed hard and tugged at her jacket again, as if by covering her belly she could protect herself from that barrage of emotion.
“What are you doing here?” he countered.
“I was looking for Granny. And I just wanted to stop in and see the old place before it—” She didn’t finish that thought. What was Danny Brockwood