Remembering Christmas (27 page)

She came out of the store and looked up at him. “What?” she said.

“What?” he said back.

“You’re smiling now,” she said. “You looked so upset before.” She turned and relocked the door.

“Just had a funny thought,” he said.

“Care to tell me?” She climbed the steps. “Think I could use a smile about now.”

I would love to tell you, he thought, but he knew if he did, she’d run for the hills. “It’s nothing. Want to take my car?”

“Of course,” she said, giving her car a disparaging look.

They got in. Andrea set the McDonald’s bag on her lap and Rick drove off. “Got an extra one in there for you, if you want it.”

“I’m starving. Sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. Ate mine on the way.”

“There’s three of them in here.”

“One for you, one for JD, and an extra one for Taylor.”

“That was sweet, Rick.”

Rick pulled out onto the road. “I hope we find him. You’re going to have to tell me where to stop.”

It took about twenty-five minutes to make all their stops. Once again, no luck. And the worst part, no one had seen JD for the last few days.

“Where could he be?” Andrea said as they headed back to the store.

“Maybe I scared him off for good,” said Rick. “Maybe he decided to call it quits and head south.”

“Maybe, but didn’t you tell him he could start coming back when Art got better?”

“Yeah . . . while I was yelling at him to get lost.” He wished he’d known then what he knew now. Or better yet, that he hadn’t been such a jerk in the first place.

“Say, Rick, something just popped into my head. Remember when the store got robbed and you went out looking for JD? Didn’t you find him in the park, the one near the river?”

“Yes.” Rick quickly pulled into the right-hand lane and turned at the next intersection. “Certainly worth a try.”

It wasn’t far, less than a mile. He pulled into the same parking area as before, but there weren’t any other cars. They got out, and Rick looked around. He didn’t see anyone.

“Want me to bring this?” Andrea asked, holding the bag of food.

“I don’t know. Might as well, but it doesn’t look too promising.”

He walked first to the area where he’d spotted JD before: the cement wall that ran along the river. Then over by the playground, then by the fountain. No luck.

“I don’t know, Andrea,” he said, sighing heavily. “Think this is a lost cause.”

“Wait a minute,” she said. She put her hands on either side of her mouth and yelled. “JD! Are you here?”

Wow, could she make some noise.

“JD!” she yelled again. “It’s Andrea . . . from the Book Nook. Are you here? I want to talk to you!”

Rick turned around. Behind him, deep within a thick cluster of trees and scrub palms, he heard a crackling sound.

Andrea heard it too. “JD . . . is that you? It’s Andrea.”

“Taylor, you hear that?”

“I did. You’re being summoned.”

“What’s that even mean?”

The voice called out again. “JD . . . is that you? It’s Andrea.”

“It’s Andrea,” JD said. “From the bookstore. What day is it?”

“It’s Saturday,” Taylor said. “I think we overslept. I told you we might if we stayed here. The sun can’t even get through all these trees. I’ll bet we missed breakfast.”

“But it’s Andrea, from the Book Nook. That’s right, she works on Saturdays. She’s almost as nice as Art. But what’s she doing here, in this place?”

“JD,” she called again. “Got something for you.”

“Why don’t you go find out?” Taylor said.

JD took a few steps toward her voice. “You coming?” he said, turning to Taylor.

“I don’t recall hearing my name. Go see what she wants. Like you said, she’s a nice person. When a nice person calls your name, saying they have something for you, it’s usually something nice.”

JD took a few more steps, wrapped his blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. “Andrea?” he yelled back. “I’m in here, in these woods.”

“I’m guessing you haven’t had breakfast yet,” she said. “Brought you some.”

Okay, JD thought, Taylor was right. “I’m coming.” He carefully stepped through the wet leaves and broken branches, pushed aside the palm fronds, tried to keep them from slapping him in the face. Finally, he got through it all.

“Hi, JD,” Andrea said, smiling. “Here.” She held up a familiar white bag.

Wait a minute, JD thought. She wasn’t alone. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. “Aahh!” he screamed and ran back into the woods. He tripped over a big root, fell flat on his face. It was that young man who’d been working at the store, the one who hated him. Taylor was wrong. She wasn’t nice, she’d tricked him.

“Wait, JD, it’s okay,” she yelled. “Please come back, Rick is sorry!”

JD pushed himself up but slipped again, his feet all tripped up in the blanket.

“JD, it’s me, Rick. Please come back. Please!” the guy shouted. “I was wrong to treat you the way I did. I wanna make it up to you. Please come back.”

JD stopped and thought a moment. If he wasn’t mistaken, the guy sounded sincere. Maybe it wasn’t a trick.

“Rick really is sorry, JD,” Andrea said. “If you trust me at all, please come back. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“Please, JD . . . Please,” said the man with her.

It was that Rick fellow. He sounded different, nicer. JD got up and turned around. “Okay, then, I’ll come out.” He rewrapped his blanket around him, then made his way back to the wood’s edge. Andrea was standing there holding the McDonald’s bag in one hand. The other was wrapped around the shoulder of the young man, Rick.

“I’m here,” he said.

Rick looked up. He wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve. There was his father, looking just as bad as he ever did, maybe worse. But all Rick felt in his heart was compassion now. That and sadness. But he set the sadness aside. He had to get control of himself, didn’t want to scare him off again. He walked slowly toward JD.

“Here, Rick.” Andrea handed him the white bag.

Rick held it out as JD got closer. “Egg McMuffins, JD. Just the way you like ’em. And hash browns too.”

“Hash browns?” JD said, a smile now appearing.

“And there’s an extra one in there for Taylor.”

JD took the bag. He stunk something awful.

“For Taylor too?”

Dad . . . Rick thought, looking into JD’s eyes. Don’t you know who I am? He wanted so bad to tell him, to understand what had happened to him. But he forced these thoughts away. Now was not the time.

“Thank you,” JD said, then turned back toward the woods.

“Before you go,” Rick said, “I want to tell you something. If you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you with you looking right at me.”

JD turned around, a nervous look on his face. He looked at Rick, then away. Rick waited a few moments, didn’t say anything. JD looked at him again.

“I am so sorry for how I treated you, JD. From the first moment we met till now. You are someone Art cares about a lot, and that should have been enough for me. It’s not your fault that it wasn’t. It’s mine. You can come back to the store.”

“I can?”

“Today, in fact.”

“I’d sure like to be back there,” he said. “Way more than these woods.”

“Well, you come back then. You’re Art’s honored guest. That’s how you’ll be treated from now on by everyone at the Book Nook, including me.”

“Art gonna be okay?”

“Looks that way. He’s healing up pretty good. From what I’ve heard, you’re the one who saved his life.”

“Me?”

“That’s what I heard. So you come back to us, okay?”

JD looked down at the ground. “Okay then.”

“When you get all set up, you come knock on the door at the store. I’ll come out with a fresh cup of coffee.”

“Well, okay then.” JD held out his hand. His dirty, grimy hand.

Rick felt like he was about to lose it completely. He choked back the tears, reached out, and shook it.
God
, he prayed silently as JD headed back for the woods,
please show us how to help him
.
There’s got to be something we can do
.

“It’s all finished, Mr. Rick. Wanna see it?”

Rick smiled, looking down at Amy sitting on the sofa, her homemade Christmas catalog spread out on the coffee table. Andrea had to pick her up at lunch; the babysitter had a Christmas party to attend that afternoon, somewhere out of town. “Don’t you think you better cover Annabelle’s eyes first?” he said, pointing to her doll. “She’s looking right at it.”

Amy quickly closed the catalog, then shoved a pillow over Annabelle’s face. Rick laughed. Good thing Annabelle didn’t need to breathe.

“Okay, now come look at it.”

Rick pushed the start button on the coffeemaker and sat next to Amy. “All right, let’s see what you got here.” He picked up the catalog and started slowly turning the pages. Amy scooted closer to him, pointing at each toy on the page, filling him in on the most important details. She had a lot to say, and Rick realized he enjoyed hearing every bit.

He didn’t know if he and Amy’s mom had any chance of a future together, but he realized just then that he desperately hoped they might. He’d love to be involved in this little girl’s life somehow. The fear of what that meant had vanished. But it wasn’t because of anything he had done. It was Amy. Her attitude toward him had been so kind and accepting, so completely the opposite from how he’d treated Art when he’d first come into Rick’s life.

“So what do you think?” she said, looking up at him with her beautiful bright blue eyes.

“I think someday Mr. J.C. Penney should hire you to do catalogs for him.”

“Really?”

“It’s very good, Amy. How old are you again?”

“Six.”

“It’s way too good for a six-year-old. You’ve got to be at least eleven or twelve.”

“No, silly, I’m just six.”

“Okay, if you say so. But you know what?”

“What?”

“I didn’t see any check marks or stars next to any of the toys. How do you know which ones Annabelle wants most for Christmas?”