Heather Graham (6 page)

But she didn’t know that for certain.

“Mommy?”

She looked to the kitchen doorway. Laura stood there, a worn Teddy bear in her little fingers, her green eyes wide; Jimmy’s eyes, very big.

A huge tear rolled from one of them. She inhaled on a ragged little sob.

“Grandpa said we should just go ahead and eat—Daddy might not be coming home. He will come home, right?”

Would he? Yes! He had promised! Did he forget his promises? Yes. Someone at the office had probably given him a drink. Someone single, unattached. Someone ready to drink and laugh through the evening, someone not burdened with children and a pregnant wife. Someone who was not a prisoner.

“Mommy? Will Daddy come home?”

“Silly thing! Of course, he will!” Sharon said. “Run on back into the parlor and keep grumpy old Gramps company, huh? Daddy will come home.”

He had to. He had to…

She had to believe that.

Even if, at this point, she was reaching blindly for miracles.

Maggie St. Johns moved blindly along the street, trying to keep warm. She paused under a streetlamp, looking toward some of the fine homes on the street. Peering into the windows.

So many Christmas trees! So many children, so much laughter, so much light.

Once…

Once she’d been a child. Loved by two parents. So long ago. Her parents were gone now. No brothers, no sisters. She had cousins, surely, aunts and uncles. People who wanted to forget her, as the world had forgotten her.

Once…

Once she’d been beautiful.

She’d wanted to be a teacher. She could remember so very well. She had loved children. She’d been bright, cheerful, vivacious. Popular. Boys had loved her. The tall, handsome quarterback of the football team had been crazy about her. She’d married him right out of high school, forgetting about college and teaching because she was going to have a baby. She lost it. The tall, handsome quarterback became a crack-smoking lug. He beat her. She left him. She had so little talent and she was so young. She met a man, a rich man, and she fell in love, but he had a wife. The man convinced her to stay with him anyway, but he, too, became abusive, though he kept her because it was his right, he told her. And they fought. Then she was out on the streets.

Next, it was the customers who beat her. And as the years went by, only remnants remained of the beauty she had once had in such abundance. The customers who beat her forgot to pay her.

So she drifted.

And she dreamed…

And Christmas hurt, because she could still remember when she had been a beautiful child and the world had lain before her like an unopened present.

And someone had loved her.

She looked to the sky above her, smiled because she thought she saw a shooting star.

She didn’t blame God for her present situation. She didn’t blame anyone. She wondered if she could still dig her way out of her homeless and penniless situation. She touched her cheeks as she watched the star streak across the heavens, and she wondered if she could ever be beautiful again.

It didn’t matter.

She looked back into a window in which a Christmas tree glimmered.

“‘Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight!’” she whispered, “‘I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.’”

She hesitated. “Merry Christmas, Lord!” she whispered. Then she smiled, and alone, in the shadows, she was beautiful once again. “Christmas … I just wish for the miracle of Christmas, Lord. With people. With lights, with laughter.”

Maggie started walking once again. It was too cold to stand still for long. She wondered if she could find a place to weather out the night.

Or if she would freeze to death by morning.

“Where are we?” Cathy asked. The mist that had encircled her was receding. She could hear cars, horns, a deluge of traffic. Lights streamed around them.

“In a pile of cold and snow,” Don said, tromping on the ground to clear his shoes of some of the fine dusting of snow that had fallen.

Heavenly mist had become earthly snow.

“Boston!” Cathy said excitedly. “Look, there’s the Common. I always loved this city. Little Italy, Quincy Market, the Aquarium—”

“Cathy, we’re not on vacation,” he reminded her softly.

“Right,” she murmured dryly, “so don’t you think we ought to enjoy any place when we get the chance?”

“You’ve got a point. You’ve also got the list.”

“Ah!”

Cathy dug into her coat pocket, where she’d dropped the small book Gabriel had given her and the all-important ivory vellum list.

“Well?”

“We each have a miracle here, in Boston.”

“Go on.”

“You’re to find a man named James Michael O’Connor.”

“And?”

“And make him go home for Christmas Eve dinner.”

“What’s the catch?”

“He’s in the middle of a crisis—a drinker in denial, with a worried wife, two children, and one on the way. Dislikes his in-laws because they see what’s going on when his wife tries to cover for him. He loves his wife, but thinks no one understands him, believes he’s a guy and just has to do guy things.”

“‘A guy and he has to do guy things’?” Don repeated.

“Yes?”

“That’s on the list?” Don said incredulously, arching a brow.

Cathy nodded.

“He’s my miracle?” Don said.

“Right.”

“And yours?”

“I need to find a homeless lady named Maggie St. Johns and find her a home for Christmas.”

Don shook his head. “That’s easy, compared to dealing with a drunkard.”

“Oh, right! Get a family to open their door to a scruffy bag lady on Christmas Eve!”

“Gabriel likes you better.”

Cathy started to speak, decided she couldn’t argue that. Poor Don. His feelings were hurt.

Don threw up his hands. “This just can’t be real.”

“We’re in Boston, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We landed from a cloud, didn’t we?”

He offered her a grimace. “I still say your miracle is easier than mine.”

She smiled. “We’re in this together, remember.”

Don didn’t smile in return. “Only if we can manage these miracles!” he reminded her.

She squeezed his fingers. “Piece of cake.”

“Keg o’ beer!” Don countered. “I think I found where we’re supposed to start.”

A neon sign, garishly strewn with Christmas lights, advertised
MULLIGAN’S PUB & FINE DINING ESTABLISHMENT.

“Think he’s in there?”

“I imagine that’s why we’re on this corner.”

“Shall we, then?”

Don hesitated. The place looked downright seedy. “I’m not at all sure I should take you in there.”

“I always wanted to see the inside of a place like that.”

“What?”

“I’ve only seen joints like that in movies!” she said with a laugh. “I’m curious. Oh, Don, what could possibly happen to me? I’m already dead!” she reminded him.

“Yes, but…”

“I’m not going to strip and dance on a table or anything.”

“Promise?”

She elbowed him in the ribs. For a dead person, she had quite a punch.

“Let’s get on with your miracle,” she said firmly.

To Don’s distress, Cathy headed quickly for the doorway. He followed her, wanting to make sure that she didn’t enter the place alone.

He hated to admit it, but at one time, before he’d met Cathy, he had lived a slightly wild life.

He’d done a few of those “guy things” himself.

But he’d never been in a place like this one.

“Wait a minute,” he told Cathy.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe we should go in as invisible. Check that little book of yours and see how we do it.”

Cathy pulled out the book; flipped through the pages.

“How do we do it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Just
think
invisible.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

With a groan and a shake of his head, he
thought
invisible. People seemed to be walking by, not noticing them. He could still see Cathy, but he hoped they were supposed to be able to see one another.

With a shrug, he opened the door for her, then decided they must be invisible, because a man came along behind them, shivering, and closed the door more tightly once they had entered the small and crowded foyer. Don took her hand and led her past a small reception stand. She collided with his back as he stood dead still, staring.

It was a medium-sized place. Really something like a local pub. Except for a long bar with three little curved areas that jutted out around the tables. Each one of the curves sported a pole, and each pole was decorated by a woman in various stages of undress—who danced to the beat of the music that pulsated through the room.

“Not bad looking—the dancers—for a sleazy place like this.”

“You noticed?” Cathy said.

“It’s a ‘guy’ thing,” he told her. “There are some empty seats over there.”

“Which guy do you think is O’Connor?” Cathy asked as they moved across the room.

The question was answered for them as a heavy-set man suddenly called out, “Jimmy! Jimmy O’Connor! Merry Christmas, my man. Buy the boy a drink, Mercy!” he told the waitress. He slapped his hand against the back of a man just around a bar curve from Cathy and Don.

Jimmy O’Connor.

He was wearing a nice suit—one Gabriel might well approve, Don thought—but it was a little crumpled. O’Connor had loosened his tie, and his hair, which he wore a little long, hung around his face now. He was a handsome man, quick to smile.

A young man, still.

But the first signs of dissipation were beginning to appear. His cheeks were just beginning to sag a bit, and his flesh was acquiring a ruddy tinge. He needed a shave. He smiled at the fat man buying him a drink.

“Thanks, Harry,” O’Connor told the fat man.

“Whatcha doing out on Christmas Eve, a married fellow like you?” the fat man asked.

Jimmy shrugged. He lifted the shot glass of whiskey before him to salute the fat man, swallowed it down. “Just stopped by for a quick one. And to give Angela her Christmas tip.”

Angela was a dancer. Very busty …

“Limber,” Cathy commented to Don as Angela dipped the lower portion of her body toward Jimmy, who slipped a bill into the very thin strip of elastic still holding a feather in a strategic location.

Don lost what Jimmy was saying next because Cathy added, “She really is a very good dancer. I always wished I could do that.”

“Dance with a pole?”

She smiled. “Dance … sexily like that. Don’t you remember Jamie Lee Curtis in
True Lies
? She was spectacular. I didn’t want to have to dance with a pole for a living or anything—I would just have liked to have been that sexy for you.”

“You were sexy as sexy could be.”

“Not that sexy.”

“The sexiest.”

“Really? You’re not just saying that? I was your wife, you know,” Cathy said skeptically.

“To me, you were the sexiest creature alive.”

“We did have a good life, didn’t we?” Cathy asked.

“We did.” he said.
And I realized it far too late
, he thought, but he didn’t say so out loud.

“He’s heading for the John,” Cathy said suddenly.

“Who?”

“Jimmy O’Connor! Your miracle boy.”

“So what? You want me to follow him?”

“Of course. You have to keep an eye on him. Maybe you can help in there.”

“Help him what? Pee?” Don demanded.

She shook her head. “Power of suggestion. Go play on his mind.”

“Cathy—”

“Do you want me to go?” she demanded.

Don swore. Cathy kicked him. He stared at her, shaking his head. “I’m a dead man in a strip joint on Christmas Eve, and you want me to watch my language?”

“Just go!” she commanded.

W
ITH DON GONE, CATHY
drummed her fingers on the table. Christmas Eve, she thought, was slipping away. She drew out their list again and read about her own first “Christmas Miracle.” She needed to find a homeless woman named Maggie St. Johns.

Boston was a big city. And, unfortunately, there were far too many homeless people in it.

Lots of drunks, too, but they’d found Jimmy O’Connor easily enough. She drummed her fingers. She didn’t dare call on Gabriel for her first miracle. She drew out the little instruction book and turned to page one and read, “Always look for the obvious. Always make good use of coincidence; remember that the right set of coincidences can be miracles all on their own.”

Look to the obvious…

She glanced toward the men’s room, then slipped from her bar stool and hurried toward the front door of the pub. She thought she bumped into a man, but he didn’t notice; he walked right by. She bit into her lower lip, realizing that he had walked right through her.

She was dead. Really dead.

The thought made her want to cry; they’d had so much more left to do! It didn’t matter, she realized. She had tonight. Tonight to make sure that she and Don could stay together throughout eternity. How strange! She’d been so lucky; she’d always loved her husband. Now, when he was groping a bit to deal with this, she loved him all the more. She’d always been a fighter, and now she was fighting for all eternity.

She stood outside in the dusting snow, looking both ways, up and down the street. The night was growing quiet, but she thought she saw movement way down the street. She stood very still, watching. Someone bundled up in a threadbare coat was tentatively checking out the garbage behind a donut shop. There seemed to be nothing there.

The badly dressed woman started walking again. Very quickly, Cathy thought, as she started across the street. A huge moving van came trundling along, and Cathy stepped back before she remembered that there wasn’t much the truck could do to her anymore.

When she crossed over, the woman had nearly disappeared down the street. Cathy started to run after her.

Seconds later, she was amazed to discover how winded a fledgling angel could become. She gripped a streetlamp, inhaling, exhaling. She stared at the house in front of her and read the name on the very American red-white-and-blue eagle-shaped mailbox.

O’Connor.

Look to the obvious.