The Kid Who Stole Christmas (27 page)
The television people recognized an unfolding drama when they saw it. One camera followed Angela, while another stayed on Rick and the newswoman. An engineer who used to work on a soap switched deftly between the two.
“Is there trouble in Arnie-land, Rick?” Sue asked.
“There was. But it’s about over,” he replied.
Angela laughed. “That’s what you think!”
“You see, Angela Bayer had me arrested the other day,” Rick continued. “For the serious offense of talking to my own daughter, Chelsea.”
“You can’t mean Chelsea Bayer?” Sue asked.
“No, Chelsea
Hastings,
” he corrected. “My lawyer recently informed me that Angela had my daughter’s name illegally changed, using falsified documents.”
Sue was so excited, she was practically jumping up and down. “My! What a tangled web we have here! Is this true, Mrs. Bayer?”
“You want truth? I’ll give you truth!” Angela returned. She faced the camera again, going on the attack. “Do you want me to tell them the real story, Rick? I will, you know!”
Nathan, who had been standing off to one side, suddenly reached out and tried to restrain his wife. She jerked away, but the camera caught every move. A few key members of the crowd shifted, as well, and he found himself thrust into the spotlight beside her.
“Nathan Bayer!” Sue crowed. “What an unexpected surprise.”
He smiled uncomfortably. “Hello, Sue. I’d just like to say that my wife has been under a lot of strain lately and—”
“Shut up, Nathan!” Angela interrupted.
The crowd roared with laughter. Sue was loving every minute of it. This was working out even better than it had sounded when Hastings and his unusual little group had pitched it to her. She was certain there was a talk-show contract in her future.
“Just what is the real story, Mrs. Bayer?” she asked.
“I did have him arrested the other day. For violating a restraining order I got to protect my child and myself from his vicious wrath! This man, this so-called toy maker you’re all fawning over, is a wife beater! When I told him I was divorcing him to marry Nathan Bayer, he became so enraged that he beat me up and blackened my eye!”
The crowd gasped. All eyes turned to Rick for a rebuttal. To their amazement, he was smiling. “Is that a fact?” he asked.
“I testified to it in a court of law, didn’t I?”
He nodded. “Yes, you did. And that makes you guilty of forgery
and
perjury, Angela. Because it was a lie.”
“That’s absurd!” Nathan exclaimed.
“Is it?” Rick asked. With the camera following every move, he reached behind him and knocked on the wall of the dollhouse. “Come on out, Emilio.”
A silence fell over the crowd as they watched a raven-haired man emerge from the dollhouse, where he had been hiding for the past few minutes. He looked at Rick, nodded and then turned to face Nathan and Angela, who were both visibly shaken. They tried to move away from the camera, but the crowd wouldn’t let them. Publicity, his enemy for so long, was now working to Rick’s advantage.
“Who are you?” Sue asked, again with flawlessly feigned innocence. Why stop at a talk show? Maybe an acting career!
“My name is Emilio. Up until last night, when I was abruptly terminated,” he said, his dark eyes shooting daggers at Angela, “I was the Bayers’ chauffeur. I also performed...other duties for them on occasion.”
Nathan pushed his way toward the dollhouse. “This man is a deviant and not to be believed!” he exclaimed.
“Shut up, Nathan!” Angela said. She tried another tack. “Emilio, please. We don’t have to air this in public. Come home with me and we’ll work something out. I’m sorry for the way I behaved last night.”
Sue was thinking major network now. “What do you think, ladies and gentlemen?” she asked, winking at the camera. “Did this man drive her car, or what?”
They laughed. But Emilio kept his somber demeanor and the crowd quieted down quickly. “I am not your puppet, Angela,” he told her. “And before you threaten me again, Mr. Bayer, let me assure you that I am prepared to take what comes my way for my part in this. Unlike you, I am a man of honor.”
The veins in Nathan’s neck bulged. “Why you—”
“I hit Angela Bayer,” Emilio announced. “Because she paid me to do it.”
With her razor-sharp nails, Angela was more successful in moving people out of her way. But she no longer cared about Emilio. As she approached Rick, however, she got the surprise of her life.
“Lionman to the rescue!” Leo cried. He was standing on top of the dollhouse, a big tub in his hands. With some effort, he managed to dump the contents right onto Angela’s head. “Take that, you evil spy!”
It took a moment for anyone to realize what had happened, including Angela. But then she felt the first Arnie wiggle its way onto the bare skin displayed by her low-cut sweater. She pulled on it, but it wouldn’t budge. The hot lights had raised her skin to just the right temperature.
As Angela began screaming, Sue’s eyes went as wide as the camera lenses that were now focused on her. “Oops! I think we’d better go to a commercial break now, folks.”
Epilogue
T
raditionally, Lyon’s closed at noon the day before Christmas and had a party for all the employees, at which Pop gave out their Christmas bonuses. Although the sales for the day had yet to be figured, Friday’s Arnie receipts had already ensured that those bonuses would be the largest in the store’s history. Between that, profit sharing and the incredible publicity garnered by Angela Bayer’s nervous breakdown on live television, they were a very merry bunch.
As Shannon was closing down her department, she suddenly noticed that she was not alone. She looked curiously at the young girl standing in front of her register.
“Why, hello, Chelsea.”
“Hello, Ms. O’Shaughnessy,” she said.
“Please, call me Shannon. But I’m afraid you just missed your father. He had some errands to run before all the stores close. Would you like to wait for him?” Shannon asked.
Chelsea frowned. “I don’t know. I mean, I actually came to see you.” She looked around uncertainly. “Could we have that hot chocolate now?”
It took a moment for Shannon to remember what the girl was referring to. But then she smiled and held out her hand. “Certainly. Let’s go up to the cafeteria. They’ll be closing, but I’m sure we can manage to scare up some cocoa for the two of us. Does your mother know you’re here?”
“Nathan does. I’m not sure about Momma. She’s still freaked out.” Chelsea blushed slightly. “I mean, she isn’t feeling well.”
Shannon laughed. “Freaked out is a perfectly acceptable term. And it’s understandable, after what happened. You know that Leo is very, very sorry for what he did, don’t you?”
Chelsea nodded. “Nathan said he apologized.”
“He’s also up in the mountains right now, helping to clean a certain white Berber carpet,” Shannon told her. “Is Nathan mad?”
“It’s always hard for me to tell what Nathan is,” the girl told her. “He’s...I don’t know. Cold. Not like Daddy used to be.”
They arrived at the cafeteria and Shannon made them some hot chocolate, waving off the help of the staff so they could go about their business.
Shannon watched as Chelsea just stirred her cocoa without tasting it. “Is that why you’re here, Chelsea? Do you need someone to talk to about your father?” she asked softly.
Chelsea nodded. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do love him.”
She looked up at Shannon, her brown eyes so much like Rick’s that Shannon felt her heart skip a beat. Shannon could tell there was more the child wanted to say.
“Go on,” she prompted.
“But I love my momma, too. I know she’s told some lies about him. She...she isn’t always so nice to me, either. I don’t want to be just like her and she keeps trying to make me that way. I get mad at her. It doesn’t feel right.”
Shannon reached over and stroked the girl’s silken blond hair, reassuring her. “It’s okay to be mad at your parents, Chelsea. Just because people make us mad, that doesn’t mean we don’t love them.” She had recently learned that firsthand.
Chelsea fixed her with an appraising gaze. “You love my daddy too, don’t you?”
The question took Shannon by surprise. But the answer wasn’t hard to come by. “Yes, Chelsea. I do.”
“Are you going to marry him?”
That one was a bit harder. “Well, for one thing, he hasn’t asked me yet. And for another, there are some things we have to resolve first.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you ask?”
Chelsea sighed deeply. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I didn’t live with Momma and Nathan anymore. If she just visited me when she wanted to. It’s not as if she’s around all the time, anyway.”
Shannon took her hand and squeezed it. “I know how that feels, Chelsea. My mother was that way.”
“Shannon?”
“Yes, Chelsea?”
The girl looked down at her hot chocolate, and her voice was very soft when she spoke. “You’d make a good mother.”
Shannon could feel the tears well up in her eyes. She knew exactly what the child was hinting at, and didn’t have the slightest idea how to respond.
“Why, thank you, Chelsea. Someday, maybe, I...I think I might like to try again.”
“Again?” Chelsea asked, looking up at her.
“I had a little girl once. She passed away when she was very small.”
“I’m sorry. That must have hurt.”
Shannon nodded. “It did. But I’m better now.”
“Good,” Chelsea said. She took a sip of her cocoa. “Would you mind if I ask my daddy?”
“Ask him what, sweetheart?”
“If I could come live with him and you someday.”
“No, honey. I wouldn’t mind at all.” She stood up abruptly. “Would you excuse me just a second?”
Shannon managed to get to the hallway before her tears started flowing in earnest. She sobbed quietly in the silence, everyone on this floor having long since gone to the party.
Or so she thought. A man cleared his throat, and she turned around, an excuse forming on her lips.
But Rick kissed it away. She clung to him until her tears began to subside. “I’m sorry,” she told him with a sigh. “What a way to behave on Christmas Eve.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve spent a few that way,” he told her. “What on earth caused this?”
Shannon put a finger to her lips, then motioned for him to look through one of the round windows in the cafeteria doors. His eyes went wide.
“Chelsea!”
“She came to see me, but now, I think she’d like to talk to you, as well,” Shannon told him.
Rick suddenly looked as nervous as a cat. “What about?”
“Lots of things, I imagine,” she replied. She took his hand and held it against her cheek. “But she has a couple of tough questions I think I’d better prepare you for. And answer in advance. It’s yes, both times.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m ready to get married again, Rick. And I’m ready to have more children. If it’s just Leo and Chelsea, then I’ll consider myself the luckiest woman alive. But it would be nice to have some of our own.” She tugged on his hand and opened the swinging cafeteria doors. “Now come say hello to your daughter.”
Chelsea saw him and got up from her chair. She moved hesitantly toward him. Rick released Shannon’s hand and got down on one knee, his arms spread wide. “Chelsea, honey! I’m so happy to see you!”
“Daddy!”
Chelsea ran into his arms and they hugged, while Shannon watched. She had changed her mind. Crying was just fine on Christmas Eve, as long they were tears of joy, and you shared them with the ones you loved.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-8363-3
The Kid Who Stole Christmas
Copyright © 1994 by Steven and Melinda Hamilton
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