Winter Miracle Read online

  I’m waiting for the ‘So why did you stick around?’ but he moves on.

  He clears his throat. “I can see where you’re coming from, I can.”

  Andy’s starting to get restless, wriggling around in my arms. “But…” I offer.

  He holds his hands up. “There’s simply nothing I can do. My hands are tied.”

  His hands appear very much untied, but I keep my manners in check. “Of course, Mr. Pemberton, but is there really nothing that can be done? Please, I’m begging you.”

  His mouth twists like the mere mention of begging is a distasteful, disgusting concept to him. “I knew your folks, Haley. They were strong, dependable people. They never missed a single payment.”

  I want to tell him those were different times, but I hold my tongue and let him continue.

  “We’re part of a larger, national network of banks now. This isn’t a ‘mom and pop’ establishment any more. Do you understand? I simply can’t provide any leeway on these matters, not with the city boys breathing down my neck. If it was ten, twenty years ago? Maybe, but I can’t help you today, sorry.”

  Andy continues to fuss, starting to scream and carry on. He’s hungry, of course, in the world’s worst possible show of timing.

  I’m getting desperate, juggling Andy from arm to arm. “Please, Mr. Pemberton, for Andy’s sake.”

  The bank manager’s face turns stony, his hands settling on the desk defensively. “Look, as I said, it’s out of my hands.”

  I go to say something, but he stops me with a raised hand, my reflection caught in his spectacles. “And, might I add, I don’t appreciate you bringing your baby down here like she’s some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  I don’t correct him on the sex, tears pricking at the corner of my eyes. I could explain, try to make him understand, but I’m worried if I spend another second longer in here I’m going to lose it completely.

  I stand and swallow back my emotions. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Pemberton.”

  He nods once and watches as I head to the door.

  I storm out of the bank, Andy wailing against my shoulder. I’m hurt, deeply—hurt and angry and desperate.

  Is there not a single break to be found in this world?

  Light sleet starts on the way home. Andy screams louder, right in my ear. I’ve never been so frustrated, so angry in my entire life because I know this is the end. There’s no way I can stop this foreclosure, and what then? What will Andy and I do?

  I unlock the door and enter the house cold and wet.

  I look around, but I can’t see Dane.

  “Come on, little man,” I tell Andy. “Let’s get you fed, huh?”

  It turns out Dane’s in the kitchen, a plethora of jars and condiments before him, bread strewn across the countertop. It’s more or less everything I had in the fridge and pantry.

  I stop in the doorway. “What are you doing?” I snap, the sharpness in my tone uncharacteristic.

  Dane swallows down a mouthful of sandwich before speaking. “What does it look like? You don’t have a lot to eat around here, you know. A man could starve.”

  If my blood was boiling before it’s about to go into full-on nuclear meltdown. I try to restrain myself, but the mess, the food… It’s too much. “Sorry,” I mutter through gritted teeth, “I’m not accustomed to feeding two children.”

  Dane nods to Andy. “Come on. How much can a little guy like that really pack away?”

  I place Andy down on the living room carpet and turn to face Dane, my arms crossed in front of myself defensively. “Why do you have to be so, so,” I stutter, “arrogant? You’re the world’s worst house guest. Do you know that?”

  It’s an atypical outburst, one that clearly catches Dane off guard.

  He places down the sandwich, arms out wide. “Come on now. I’m not perfect, I get I made a bit of a mess here, but the world’s worst?” He smiles.

  I shake my head, my old self returning. “I’m sorry. It’s… been a rough day.” I rub my temples. “I’ll head out later and get some food, supplies. The ice is getting bad anyhow, creeping up from the southern end of town. We need to be prepared.”

  Dane places his hands on the counter, his rock-hard arms outlined in the tight tee he’s wearing, the hint of ink showing. “I agree. You know what they say about preparation.”

  I raise an eyebrow.

  “It’s a lot better than luck,” he smirks.

  But somehow I’m thinking Dane The-World-Belongs-To-Me Carr has had plenty of luck in his life.

  I move to the fridge and take out a pre-prepared bottle of formula. I don’t know why, but I can’t help the hot flush I feel whenever I’m in Dane’s immediate radius, even though he’s obnoxious and self-centered and completely oblivious to the plight of others. “I’m going upstairs to feed Andy and put him to bed. Can you at least clean up when you’re done, please?”

  I sound like his mother.

  He gives me a small salute, picking up his jam-packed sandwich.

  I suppose it does take a lot of fuel to keep a body like that in tip top condition, but he better get used to beans and bread if he’s going to eat me out of house and home.

  I scoop up Andy and can’t scrub Dane from my head as I make my way upstairs. He didn’t even ask why my day was rough. That’s how absorbed in himself he is.

  So why do you want to throw yourself into his arms?

  It’s a darn good question. Maybe I’m desperate, for attention, affection—anything but the dread and anxiety I’ve become accustomed to of late.

  Maybe you just need to get off again…

  Such dirty thoughts are alien to me, but then again there has never been anyone quite like Dane Carr in Merit. Perhaps it’s simply the novelty of him that appeals, the new ride at the fair everyone’s so keen to check out… only to ride it once and never again.

  I hand Andy his bottle and place him down in the middle of his cot, pressing his soft-toy elephants, which he calls his ‘Boys,’ into his sides. His eyelids flutter open and closed as he drinks, sucking down that formula like it’s the last bottle in the world.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about the big bad world out there,” I tell him. “Not for a few years yet. But you’re going to be better than your momma. You’re going to finish high school and go to college, become a doctor or a rocket scientist and get as far away from this town as you can. You’re going to be my little man who could.”

  I sit in the rocking chair in the corner slowly pushing it forwards and backwards. It’s an antique, older than the house itself. I remember my own mother sitting in it and reading me bedtime stories—Charlotte’s Web, Anne of Green Gables—a knitted quilt over her lap. Things were so perfect back then, before I grew up and realized there is no way out of Merit. It has a habit of trapping people and never letting them go. My parents lived and died here, as did their folks. From time to time someone will escape, but they always end up back here when the bigger world spits them back out.

  Dane represents that. He represents the outside world. He represents success. If I’m honest, that’s part of the attraction—I want to be part of his universe if only to feel the warmth of success and its rare embrace.

  Maybe that’s why I stay, too scared of failure, of being something more only to have it stripped away.

  And then there’s the question of why I want to leave. Do I really think things would be different somewhere else? They might be worse. Is it really that bad here? If you strip away the bad elements, Merit has a lot to offer, the kind of wholesomeness you won’t find in a bigger town or city. Merit has its merits, you might say. You’ve just got to look deeper to find them.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DANE

  I clean up the kitchen. I was going to anyhow. I’m an asshole, not a slob.

  I stand at the countertop putting it all together, looking upstairs to where Haley is putting down her son.

  It’s starting to add up: not much food in the house, a baby bu
t no father, a dead-end job cleaning motel rooms, which may or may not exist anymore. Clearly, Haley’s struggling to make ends meet and here I am, the city-slicker, barging in like I own the place.

  You’re a fucking dick is what you are.

  It’s a hard truth, but it is the truth.

  I exhale and push off the counter. I still want her, bad, but this Dane-first routine’s going to get me nowhere.

  I look upstairs again.

  Fuck this.

  “I’m heading out,” I call up.

  No response.

  I grab a coat Haley loaned me, her father’s. I saw the medals upstairs. He was a vet. From what I gather, he served, came back to Merit and never left. Given what I’ve seen, maybe I can understand why. War has a habit of making you wish for home that much more.

  Unless you don’t have one.

  I head out into the cold, surveying the streets.

  The phrase ‘winter wonderland’ comes to mind, just without the wonder…

  Everything’s frozen solid, and what’s not frozen is covered in a fresh deposit of snow. At this rate the streets will be completely impassable within a few days.

  This is why I like California. It’s as far away from this kind of weather as possible… and other things.

  I grew up in a mirror image of this town—same shitty conditions, buildings… everything. I never wanted to return to that kind of place again, where dreams go to die, but here I am, the world and its infinite wisdom keeping me locked down here for what? For punishment?

  I look up to the sky. “Well, consider me punished.”

  The sooner I can leave Merit-slash-fucking-Fargo and get back to actual sunshine, the better for everyone.

  I step into the sole grocery store in town, again a complete clone of the one I used to steal candy from back home when we were teens. Mr. McAdams, the poor bastard who owned it, hated our guts. Of all the people in that town, I’m pretty sure he was happiest to see me go.

  I select a cart and walk down the aisles aimlessly, the coat giving me the appearance of a well-to-do bum, not that we’re in Milan here.

  I either eat out or order in when I’m on the road, so I’ve really got no clue what to get. I grab a bit of everything, tossing it into the cart and moving on. I add a variety of meats, until I realize the freezer won’t work if the power goes out.

  Milk, cereal, juice… but things get a whole lot more complex when I hit the baby food section. It’s a nightmare of bright colors and smiling little faces, labels touting vitamins and fiber, alpha-this and omega-that. I’m way out of my depth. Show me a shelf of gins and I’ll select you a winner any day of the week, but this hell?

  Fuck it. I grab a bunch of different jars and add them to the groaning cart.

  At least we’re not going to starve, I think.

  I pick up a pack of condoms on the way to the cashier for good measure.

  I’m waiting in line to be checked out when I notice the woman behind me basically craning around my shoulder to get a look at my face.

  “Yes,” she says, pointing at me, “I thought I recognized you.”

  Here we go again.

  “You were in the air show, right?” she asks.

  “Something like that,” I reply, none too enthusiastically.

  “Guess you’re stuck here with everyone else, huh?”

  Someone give this woman a medal. “Guess I am.”

  “Where you staying?”

  I debate whether or not to tell her, but I don’t imagine any harm can come from it. “With Haley Walker.”

  The woman sighs knowingly. “Huh. Well, that’s about right.”

  I spin to face her. “What does that mean?”

  The woman waves it off. “Oh, nothing. A girl gets knocked up by her ‘boyfriend,’ if you could call him that, before he up and took off… You’d think she would have learnt from her mother’s mistakes, but that’s the way it goes, ain’t it?”

  What I should do is tell this bitty to STFU and mind her own business, but I don’t want to draw attention, to myself or Haley.

  I endure the small-town gossip, but I don’t acknowledge it by adding anything more than “Guess so” before turning to face the cashier, a spindly teenager who looks like she’d rather pull her own teeth out than be stuck behind that register.

  If anything, I’m getting the impression Merit doesn’t think very highly of Haley, which is a touch confusing given how hard she has it. Then again, these sorts of places are usually nothing but cesspools of judgement, people with too much time on their hands to do anything else but talk shit.

  As soon as the groceries are bagged, I hustle the fuck out of there. I don’t want to endure another second of that collective depression party.

  Fucking small towns. Everyone thinks they’re in this wholesome mash-up of ’50s TV Americana, but it’s everything I remember. Nothing changes.

  I almost feel sorry Haley has to live here.

  Almost.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HALEY

  It’s a Christmas miracle.

  When Dane showed up at the door with groceries in hand, I couldn’t believe it. When he said he was going out, I thought that was it, that he’d decided to get out of town any way possible. I wasn’t expecting… this.

  He smiles as he swings the grocery bags up onto the kitchen counter, Andy weaving through his legs and taking hold of his thigh to stand on Jell-o legs.

  The funny thing is, before I answered the door I was already cursing him, hadn’t even noticed he’d cleaned the kitchen. I was ready to go off at him, but now… Now I don’t know what to do.

  I feel like an ass. He’s not exactly shining yet, but maybe he is a knight after all.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t pay for these groceries, Dane.”

  And there’s that killer smile again as he starts to unpack. “Consider it payment for my lodging.”

  I pull the bag closest to me across the bench and join the unpacking. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  He stops and locks me with those oceanic eyes that have been my undoing. “It’s the least I can do. Hell, I would have bought more if I had a third arm.”

  I remember the size of him brushing up against me. You kind of do have a third leg, I muse.

  Dane holds up a tray of burger patties. “I got some meat, but I figure it’ll go bad if we lose power, so… burgers tonight?”

  He stops me again when I go to say something, putting his hand up. “I’ll cook. You sit back and relax.”

  “Relax?” I laugh. “I don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  He continues to unpack while he talks. “Maybe you haven’t been shown how.”

  I’m getting the impression we’re not talking about dinner anymore. I’m turned on and it’s crazy, absolutely bonkers I should feel this way at all. This guy is a genuine hustler, one of those natural born bar-hanging women magnets I despise. And yet I can’t stop thinking about him, cursing him, wanting him… He’s taken over my brain and I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

  We work as a team putting the groceries away, but my thoughts are drifting far from baby food and ketchup. Every time he comes close I smell him, the heady pull of his body. How can anyone have a jawline like that, hair that’s perfectly tousled, a body you could demo a house with it’s so hard? He’s straight out of glossy magazine.

  And he’s all yours.

  As if to drag me back to reality, I smell something else and peer down at Andy crawling towards me. I reach down and scoop him up. “Looks like you need to be cleaned up, Mr. Smelly.”

  Dane pops his head out from the pantry. “Did you just call me Mr. Smelly?” He sniffs his armpit. “Really?”

  I hold out Andy. “It was… never mind.” But I’m smiling as I take Andy over to the changing table. “Two men in the house,” I whisper. “What am I going to do?” His smile suggests ‘go for it, Momma.’

  I don’t exactly have anything to lose, do I? And Dane did make me feel good back at
the motel—more than good. I felt amazing with his fingers down there. God only knows what I’d feel if they were replaced by something else.

  You saw the size of that thing, right? He’d split you in two.

  Given how wet and eager I was, I doubt it would be an issue.

  The rest of the day Dane does his best to help out, pitching in with the laundry, helping pack up Andy’s toys, which only yesterday he regarded as medical waste, even making his bed. I’m not sure exactly, but today feels a little better than the day before. I can’t quite tell, but there has been a definite shift in Dane’s behavior and general attitude, however small and imperceptible at first.

  He’s, I search for the right way to put it, not as much of a… dick?

  I wonder if it’s because I was on his case earlier. Maybe something clicked.

  Or maybe’s he’s just looking to get laid.

  I ignore my inner skepticism. Where has it gotten me before?

  As the light starts to dim outside, Dane re-packs the fire, looking all the more mountain man in a checked flannel shirt I found for him. I feed Andy in the kitchen. I pause every so often to peek around the corner for a quick glimpse, cooing at Andy so as not to raise suspicion.

  Fed and sleepy, I put Andy down in his cot upstairs and, what do you know, he goes straight down with barely a whimper.

  I watch him, his hands out above his head. His skin is so soft, so perfect. I know it feels wrong to say it, but this is my favorite time of the day, the simple peace of it.

  The smell of sizzling meat lures me downstairs where I find Dane at the stove wearing one of Dad’s old aprons. He turns with a spatula in hand. My eyes drop to his chest. I read the printing on the apron. “Last time I cooked, hardly anyone got sick.”

  He looks down.

  “Is that true?” I ask, smiling.

  “I’m afraid my culinary skills don’t extend far past the grill.”

  He adds a slice of cheese to the top of a patty. It melts and bubbles around the edges, my stomach knotting in anticipation. It’s been too long since I’ve had a decent meal, always too busy and too tired to put even something as simple as homemade burgers together.