Engaging Father Christmas (2 page)

An older gentleman who had been sitting on the bench behind me stepped around to the side and said, “Pardon me.” He turned his cell phone away from his ear, and stepping closer he pointed at the open seat and said, “Were you waiting for a place to sit?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He tipped his cap and walked away.

“I’d better go.” Josh glanced to where his friends had congregated, waiting for him. “Listen, here’s my card. Call me if you want. Any time. I’d like to keep in touch.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you live here now?” Josh picked up his heavy bag and threw it over his shoulder. “In England, I mean.”

“No. Not yet. I hope to move here when . . . well, soon.”

“My e-mail is on the card too. Merry Christmas, and again, Miranda, I’m really glad you connected with your family. You needed that.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

I was watching Josh walk away when I heard another familiar male voice behind me. This voice was the one I heard in my dreams. All the good dreams that included a white wedding dress and a cottage in the glen.

My Scotsman had arrived.

“So, that’s how it is, is it?” Ian MacGregor stood there with his fists on his hips. “I ask you to wait on me for a quarter of an hour, and you take to giving out kisses to the first man in a ski cap who comes your way. What was he peddling? Mistletoe, was it?”

I turned to Ian slowly, enjoying the chance to play along with his teasing. “Those are the chances you take when you leave a woman waiting, you know.”

Ian’s eyes lit up at the sight of me. His light brown hair looked windblown, and his handsome face had a ruddy glow. I tumbled into his arms and gave him the kiss I’d been saving for seven weeks and three days. Then he gave me the kiss he had been saving for seven weeks and three days. It was the best Christmas gift exchange ever.

I think we might have kept kissing, except our train had arrived and passengers were boarding. As we drew apart from our tight embrace, my watch caught on the strap of the messenger bag Ian used in lieu of a briefcase. I pulled it off his arm.

In the fumble to untangle ourselves, the bag tipped open, spilling his car keys, cell phone, and an old-fashioned, ivory jewelry box just large enough for a diamond ring.

Ian knelt down to gather up the items, and I knelt right along with him, trying to unclasp my wristwatch. Our faces were inches apart as he hurriedly tucked the jewelry box in his coat pocket and turned with a shy expression as if to see if I’d noticed.

Of course I’d noticed. What should I say?

Without hesitation, the truest impulse on my heart strode right to the edge of my lips and did a lovely swan dive into the deep end as I said, “Yes?”

Ian gave me one of his fake growls. “I haven’t asked you yet, woman.”

“Asked me what?” I said, equal to his mock naiveté.

He kissed me soundly. “I believe you and I have a train to catch.”

Chapter Three

I
love the train ride to Carlton Heath. But I loved it more that afternoon because I was cozied up next to Ian, and both of us were smiling. I’m sure that to observers our grins were sophomoric and comical. I don’t know about Ian, but I couldn’t make my face behave seriously.

Neither of us spoke for the first little while as the train rolled out of the station. We sat close and settled in, remembering how it felt to have our arms linked and our fingers laced together. I leaned my head on Ian’s broad shoulder and released a contented sigh. He kissed the top of my head.

His cell phone rang. He let it go unanswered.

“I’m ready to hear your confession,” Ian mumbled in my ear.

“My confession?” I sat up and looked at him. “Do you mean you want to know who the mistletoe peddler was in the ski cap?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“That was Josh. My old boyfriend. I’ve told you about him.”

“And what was he doing at Paddington? He doesn’t live here, does he?”

“No. He was on a ski trip to Austria.”

“Is that it?”

“You mean is that all I have to say?”

“Yes. Is that it?”

“Yes. That’s it, Ian. If you had arrived a few minutes earlier, I would have introduced you to each other.”

“And if I had arrived a few minutes earlier, I would have —”

Before Ian could issue me a benediction of constant protection, his cell phone rang. Once again he ignored it. I had a feeling that was because his phone was in his coat pocket along with “the box.” He seemed intent on ignoring the box for the moment.

“Actually, I do have one more thing to say about seeing Josh.”

“So, there is more,” Ian said.

“Not much more. What I wanted to add is that, even though it was strange seeing Josh after all these years, I’m glad I did. It always felt as if that relationship needed the final dots connected.”

“And are they connected now?”

I smiled at him and nodded. “Yes.”

His phone rang a third time. Ian gingerly pulled it from his coat pocket without also extracting “the box” and looked at the screen. “It’s Katharine. I’ll put her to rest and let her know we’re on our way.”

Katharine, the tall, gentle-spirited woman who married Ian’s father, Andrew, two years ago, had been a kind friend to me on my first visit to Carlton Heath. She and Andrew ran a small place called the Tea Cosy. That’s where I first entered the circle of friends I now called my own.

“Hello, Katharine. I’m with Miranda now, and we’re on the train.”

As he listened to her response, Ian pulled away from our relaxed position and sat up straight.

“Katharine, your voice cut out for a moment. Did you say heart attack?”

He listened carefully and checked his watch. “My car is at the station, so we’ll go directly to hospital. Tell him we’re on our way.”

Ian closed his phone and turned to me with a stunned expression.

“Your dad?”

He nodded.

“What did Katharine say?”

“The doctor is referring to it as an ‘episode.’ They’ve run tests and are waiting for results.”

Ian rose and said, “Wait here.”

With determined strides he went to the automatic door that opened between the train cars and headed toward the front of the train. I knew that, if it were at all possible, he would convince the conductor to break a speed record in reaching Carlton Heath.

I felt my heart pounding as I checked my cell phone and saw that I had two missed calls from Katharine. My phone must have been temporarily out of range when she tried to reach us. She hadn’t left a message, so I didn’t have any further details. My first response was to try calling her back, but when I did, she didn’t pick up.

I sat with my phone in my lap, blinking and trying to sort out the implications of this unwanted news.
Please don’t take him, God. Not now. Not at Christmas. Not this Christmas. We need Andrew in this world.

I fixed my numbed gaze on a box held protectively in the lap of a woman the next aisle over. The picture on the box was of a nativity scene. All the key players were present: Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, three wise men, two shepherds, a lamb, and a donkey. The fully set stage reminded me of my mother, and instantly thoughts of her bombarded me.

My mother, who always referred to herself as “Eve Carson the Actress,” was big on curtain calls. She loved it when all the key players were on stage together, ready for their accolades. Her curtain call on life came far too soon, and there definitely was no applause at her passing. I was her only daughter, and she was my gypsy mother.

I remember exactly where I was sitting the moment one of the stagehands in Salinas came to tell me of her fall at the dress rehearsal for
The Merchant of Venice.
I was eleven years old, and my favorite place to make myself invisible was backstage in the wardrobe room. I could always find a trunk to use as a couch and an unused coat to fold into a pillow. My companion in that private boudoir was always a book.

Sometimes I’d fall asleep there. Other times the seamstress would slip me peppermints she had lifted from the supply set aside for the actors to help clear their throats before performances.

My mother knew where to find me, as did most of the others involved in the various theatrical performances. And I knew well enough to stay out of their way if I wanted to keep coming back to my hideaway.

On the afternoon of my mother’s accident, my perch wasn’t on a self-made sofa but on a folding director’s chair in the corner by the rack of dresses. Each costume held a pungent fragrance of perfume, lotion, stage makeup, and perspiration. When they were all gathered together on the rack in a colorful assortment, the scent was exotic and strangely intoxicating. I knew that a bit of my mother’s scent was mixed into that wild bouquet. So in my logically illogical preadolescent mind, I was somehow close to her.

I had settled in the director’s chair reading
A Wrinkle in Time
and was at the part where the starfish grows back one of its appendages.

A panicked stagehand, dressed all in black, burst into the wardrobe and motioned for me to come with him. He said only three words: “It’s your mother.”

I read the truth in his face. I could see it all right there between the deeply creased lines radiating from his pinched eyes. She who had been to me all I knew of my past, present, and future was about to be severed from my life. I remember thinking in that micromoment that I would never be able to grow another Eve Carson the Actress to replace her.

As the train chugged on toward Carlton Heath, my tears came like quiet rain, remembering my mother and staring at the nativity scene on the box. Christmas was about birth, new life, and celebrating Christ. Last year all of that had been true. This year . . . I blew my nose and prayed that today would not be the day Ian would experience the severing of Andrew MacGregor from his life.

Chapter Four

I
an returned to his seat on the train carrying two insulated cups of hot tea. I knew he had been as far as he could get to the engine room, but I let him think I believed he had only been as far as the snack car.

“Twelve minutes,” he said. “Twelve minutes before we arrive in Carlton Heath. My car is parked on the west end of the lot. We might have to put the top down to fit everything in. Is that your warmest coat?”

I nodded. It was the only coat I’d brought with me.

“The hospital is about ten kilometers from the station. Do you think you’ll be warm enough?”

“I’ll be fine. I have a scarf.”

“Good.” He sipped his tea. I could tell by his expression that it was too hot. Holding onto my cup, I waited for it to cool. A faintly cheering sense of familiarity came into view as I looked out the window and watched the red brick row houses with their slanted roofs and smoking chimney pots. I had looked forward to this day for so long. Never did I expect the ominous news that would run to meet us before we entered the village of Carlton Heath.

We didn’t talk the rest of the way, but we did make good use of our nonverbal communication skills. Being in a long distance relationship for the past year, Ian and I had learned a variety of ways to communicate our affection, even though we were thousands of miles apart. On the train it felt like a luxury to squeeze his arm and offer him a comforting look. I knew he was taking in all my unspoken messages.

I’m not so sure he was able to read my unspoken messages once we arrived at the train station though. Ian smashed my small suitcase into the nearly nonexistent trunk of his Austin-Healy sports car, and I drew in a sharp breath through my closed teeth. He was in his “make it happen” mode for good reason. I was in the “save the presents” mode for equally good reason. I chose not to use that moment to communicate anything either verbally or nonverbally.

Drawing in the crisp winter air, I looked up at the clear sky and watched my breath form airy snowballs that instantly evaporated. This, I remembered. This moist, chilled air. This feeble covering of the ancient trees. This shade of pale blue above with hints of green and earthy brown below. The beauty of this small corner of England at this time of year was the beauty of lacy frost on the windows at first light and of long, willowy shadows at dusk.

Even in the midst of everything that was happening, I felt privileged to be here.

Crawling into the sports car on what still felt like it should be the driver’s side, I buckled up before we took off for the hospital. I’d been with Ian before when he opened up on the country roads of Kent. We had gone for a picnic in the country last August when I was in England visiting him. I knew his “baby” could hum, and hum she did, all the way to the hospital. My ears froze, and my nose dripped from the cold, but my feet, tucked up under the heating vent, were nice and toasty.

Ian parked, pulled out my large suitcase, and quickly put the car’s top in place. He took off for the hospital entrance with my suitcase bumping along over the uneven pavement of the parking lot.

As I trotted to keep up, a beautiful thought broke through my concern for Andrew and my growing exasperation with Ian. If I were the one lying in the hospital bed, Ian would race to my side just as he was racing to his father’s side. Not since the loss of my mother did I have anyone in my life who would care and come for me in that way.

We found Andrew’s room, and tall, graceful Katharine met us with hugs.

“How is he?” Ian marched past Katharine and went to his father’s bedside.

“He’s sedated,” Katharine said in a soft voice. “The doctor should be around in a moment to talk with us about the test results.” She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m so glad you’re here, Miranda.”

“I’m glad too.” I squeezed her hand back.

“Dad, how are you feeling? Miranda and I are here now.”

The sleeping giant only gave a twitch of his mouth in response, causing his snowy white beard to move slightly.

I slipped my hand into Andrew’s where it rested on his great, barreled chest. I couldn’t imagine the world without this man.

You must heal, Andrew MacGregor. Do you hear me? Heal and mend. Get strong. You are so deeply loved by many. You can’t leave us now. You can’t. You have to stay with us.