Christmas Steele (7 page)

“I’ve lost you again,” Tosh said.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m feeling a little
blue, I guess.”

“Me too. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but
this season is wearing me out. Where does the shepherd go when his
sheep are exhausting him?”

“To his friends,” Lacy said. Setting aside
their containers of food, she moved close and hugged Tosh. He
rested his head on hers and gave her a squeeze. “I know something
else that will make you feel better, Tosh. It’s in my bag.”

“Don’t tell me,” Tosh said, sounding
pained.

Lacy nodded. “You know what it’s time for.
Don’t pretend you don’t like it.”

“I’m not pretending,” he said.

She broke free of his grasp and retrieved her
bag from beside the couch. “C’mon, Tosh, I heard you singing along
a couple of weeks ago.”

“That’s because those songs worm their way
into your head like a virus. I can’t
not
sing them. Even
when I’m preaching a sermon, they pop into my head and it’s all I
can do not to start tap dancing across the platform.”

“Maybe you should,” she suggested, fishing
out her copy of
White Christmas
and holding it aloft. Tosh
groaned.

“How many times are you going to make me
watch this?”

“As many times as it takes,” Lacy replied.
She left the couch to put the movie in the player.

“As many times as it takes until what?”

“Until we’re both filled with the Christmas
spirit,” Lacy replied.

“You can’t get Christmas spirit from a movie.
Christmas spirit comes from the joy of…”

Lacy pressed her fingers to his lips. “Save
the sermon, Reverend Underhill. You know what I mean; it’s
impossible to watch this movie and not be cheered. Let’s just watch
and enjoy the mental break.”

“Okay,” Tosh agreed, settling back against
the couch so that his head rested on the bolster. He began humming
along as soon as the music started, and Lacy smiled, immersing
herself in one of her favorite movies.

The movie ended and Lacy felt the way she
always felt when she watched it—warm and nostalgic. She felt like
going home and staring at the Christmas tree, and then she
remembered they hadn’t put up the tree yet. It was in storage, and
Lacy had been meaning to ask Tosh to retrieve it so she wouldn’t
have to crawl into the spider-filled attic, but he had been so
busy, he hadn’t had the time. Now she turned to him, prepared to
ask, but he was asleep.

Lacy shook her head, still smiling as she
stood and retrieved a blanket from his room.
What is it about me
that puts men to sleep?
After tucking the blanket around Tosh
and swiping his hair out of his eyes, she bestowed a kiss on his
forehead and let herself out of his house, jogging home in the dark
for the second night in a row.

When she arrived home, she paused in the
living room, staring at the barren corner where the Christmas tree
should be. Maybe the lack of a tree was the cause of her missing
Christmas spirit.

We’ll put it up tomorrow,
she promised
herself,
Tosh or no Tosh, tomorrow is tree day.
Bypassing
the tree-less living room, she went to her bedroom and sat on the
edge of her bed, admiring the gold locket on her nightstand. She
picked up the box and brought it closer, taking in the details of
the intricate filigree. Tosh hadn’t sent it; that was one person
marked off her list of three possible candidates. Ruling out her
grandfather should be her next option, but she wasn’t sure how to
ask him. In the midst of so much emotional turmoil with her mother,
focusing on whether or not he sent her a locket seemed
self-centered in the extreme. But she was dying to know where it
came from.

Face it—you’re just dying to know if it came
from Jason.

Shaking her head at her traitorous inner
monologue, she set the box on the bed and lay down, staring at the
ceiling instead of falling asleep. What were Robert and Riley doing
now? No doubt they were at some fabulous event in the Hamptons. Had
Riley gone into debt to buy a Hampton-worthy wardrobe? Or had she
begged and borrowed from friends until she assembled something
appropriate? Like their biological grandmother, Riley had always
possessed the ability to make people give her things.

Lacy scowled at the ceiling, once again
trying to push away her unhealthy thoughts. Maybe Tosh was right;
maybe her anger at Riley had less to do with Robert and more to do
with old scars from her childhood. How often had her mother made
Lacy give up whatever Riley wanted, just to keep the peace? More
times than she could remember. And her grandmother had always been
a source of solace during those times, often secretly buying Lacy a
replacement toy and allowing her to keep it hidden at her house so
she didn’t have to give it to Riley.

As if to heap guilt on top of her already
miserable head, Lacy began to remember the good times with her
sister. True, she was occasionally selfish and demanding. But she
had also been fun. They had laughed and giggled their way through
every Christmas, inevitably winding up in trouble for staying up
too late. Riley had talked Lacy into some crazy stunts, like the
time they tried to climb onto the roof to wait for Santa.
Thankfully, their father had caught them when they were only
halfway up the ladder and before they made it onto the icy
roof.

I miss you, Riley,
she thought,
swiping impatiently at her tears and wondering if her sister missed
her in return. Was she happy with Robert? Did she feel even an iota
of guilt for what she had done? Or did she feel justified in taking
Robert, as their mother had justified the action by pointing out
that Robert and Riley were a better match.

Those words had a struck a blow, even if her
mother hadn’t intended them to. Handsome and charming, Lacy had
always secretly felt that Robert was out of her league. She who was
quiet and reserved, who enjoyed staying in to read a book on a
Saturday night as much as he had enjoyed going out. When they were
together, he had lovingly said it was their differences that made
them work. She had kept him steady, and he had kept her fun. He
hadn’t exactly said it in those terms—his words had been much
smoother and more honeyed—but the gist had been the same. Lacy had
credited herself for having so much substance that she had
attracted someone everyone else wanted. Robert had bypassed all the
pretty and fluffy blonds, zeroing in on her from her very first day
at their firm. And then her own sister had been his downfall. How
humiliating.

All her old insecurities rushed up to meet
her. With her red hair and hourglass figure, she was a throwback to
a different time. Men today wanted tall, stick-thin blonds, didn’t
they? She was too quiet and reserved with her emotions. She had
never been a game player, never mastered the art of flirting or
dating. Basically, she was all wrong.

She rolled to her side, feeling very sorry
for herself, when her eyes landed on the locket propped on her
bedside.
Someone, somewhere loves me,
she thought. Feeling
oddly comforted by the thought of her secret admirer, she finally
fell asleep.

Chapter 8

Due to Lacy’s pity-induced insomnia, she
slept late the following morning. Two notes were waiting for her on
the kitchen table. One was from her parents, informing her they
were spending the day with some high school friends. The other was
from her grandmother, telling her that she and her grandfather were
spending the day Christmas shopping.

“Alone again, naturally,” Lacy said, her
self-pity quickly rising to the surface once again. With effort,
she tamped it back down. She would not wallow today; she would not
spend the day on the couch, wearing her pajamas, eating prune cake
and Christmas cookies. “The tree,” she said out loud. If she forced
herself to go up in the attic and drag it down, then maybe the
family could decorate it together once everyone arrived home. Maybe
it would be a bonding experience for her mother and her
grandfather. And maybe magical elves might spring from the
fireplace and fill the stockings. No, she wouldn’t hope for the
impossible; she would simply concentrate on the practical. Bringing
the Christmas tree from the attic was definitely practical.

She shuddered as she ate her cereal and
stared at the attic opening. She had been afraid of her
grandmother’s attic ever since she was a little girl. Her
grandfather had always been the one to go up and retrieve anything
that was needed. Lacy had stood at the bottom of the ladder,
inhaling the scent of moth balls and mildew, shivering from the
cool blast of air that always accompanied a winter trek to the
storage space. Far from being curious about what might be up there,
she had instead always harbored a secret phobia that she would
somehow get locked inside. Since a ladder was needed to climb
inside, the fear wasn’t reasonable, but then little girl fears
never were.

Now she was a grown woman who realized there
was nothing to fear in the attic other than spiders, and she had
plenty of fear of those. But Christmas was almost here, and the
house was lonely without a tree. Today no spider could stop her,
not even the furry kind that looked like a baby tarantula.

After breakfast, she dressed in an old pair
of sweats and tied her hair back, tucking it in a bun so no spiders
could use it as a conveyance of getting to her body. She had
probably imbued spiders with more menace and intelligence than they
actually possessed, but just in case they were looking for ways to
get to her, she wasn’t going to give them any openings. In that
vein, she tucked her socks over her pants and pulled her sleeves
low so they covered half her hands.

She retrieved her grandfather’s ladder from
the garage with a pang of longing. Lacy had only been twelve when
he died, which wasn’t nearly enough time to get to know him
properly, but she had loved him nonetheless, and been as close to
him as she could be. Touching something that had once been his made
her feel closer to him. She tried to channel his courage as she
positioned the ladder and ascended, pushing hard on the heavy attic
door.

Unfortunately, straining against the door
caused the ladder to begin to buckle. Belatedly, Lacy realized she
hadn’t properly secured the hinges so it would stay open. The first
hint of instability had caused it to fold in on itself. Lacy began
to topple, leaping desperately toward the now-open attic. She
caught the edge of the attic doorframe with both hands, heaving
herself into the ceiling in a graceful move that was generally
beyond her skills. Maybe emergencies made her athletic. Whatever
the reason, she was thankful as she lay on the itchy insulation,
breathing hard and trying to calm her frantic heartbeat. Then she
remembered the spiders and jumped up again, almost landing between
the rafters. She caught the overhead rafter and pulled her foot
back, placing it on a beam instead of the thin plaster beneath the
insulation.

“Holy cow,” she exclaimed, standing still an
instant as she once again tried to regain her equilibrium. This was
why she had wanted Tosh to retrieve the tree for her, because there
was more danger involved than just the spiders. Belatedly all of
her father’s warnings about the attic came back to haunt her.

Ladders are dangerous, Lacy. I don’t want you
playing on them. The insulation isn’t good for you to breathe; you
have to watch where you step or you could come crashing through the
ceiling.

“Why couldn’t you have remembered all that
before you thought it was a good idea to come up here?” she
chastised herself. Scanning the small space, she saw the cardboard
box that contained the Christmas tree. It was resting on two
rafters, and it looked large and heavy. “Great,” she muttered. “How
am I ever going to get that down?”

Since she was trapped, she might as well make
her time worthwhile. She began picking her way across the room,
being careful to only step on the rafters. At last she reached the
tree and began arduously dragging it back toward the opening.

After what seemed like forever, she was
dusty, itchy, tired, and ready to be done with the attic. She had
at last dragged the cumbersome tree to the attic’s edge, and now
she faced the tricky problem of trying to get out. At least she had
her cell phone, something she had absently tucked in her pocket
before ascending the ladder. Now she pulled it out and crouched
toward the opening, hoping for a better signal.

Her grandparents didn’t have a cell phone, so
she tried her parents and reached their voicemail. Next she tried
Tosh, but there was no answer there, either. She left him a message
and tried her last resort. Jason, of course, picked up on the first
ring.

“Are you working?” she asked.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Why does something have to be wrong?” she
asked, peeved that his automatic assumption was that she was in a
bind, which she was.

“Because I know you and I can hear it in your
voice. What is it?”

“I’m stuck in the attic.”

“You’re…how did you…never mind. I’m just
getting off work. I’ll be over in a few. Is the door unlocked?”

“I don’t know; if it’s not then you can use
the key under the mat.”

He sighed. “Would it do any good if I once
again told you what a bad idea it is to keep a key under the
mat?”

“No,” she said.

“Didn’t think so. Hold tight….You’re not
literally holding tight, are you? Like dangling from a window sill
or something?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Okay. I’ll be there in a few.” They
disconnected and she perched on the edge of the attic opening, her
feet dangling through the hole. She didn’t hear Jason open the
door, but she knew when he had at last arrived because he felt the
need to stand underneath her and offer up commentary.