Christmas Ghosts - Fiction River (15 page)

“Sorry, I was just thinking. I really need to clean up my place.”

“Oh, planning on dragging me back to your den?”

He laughed. He could really get to like this woman. “The thought crossed my mind last night a time or two, but no. It’s clean enough. But the condo’s still filled with my parents’ stuff. I’d be glad to oblige you, by the way.”

“Oblige me with what?”

“Dragging you off.”

Her sad smile indicated that the answer was “not so much.” He hadn’t expected more, didn’t really know what he was expecting. He’d simply wanted to see more of her, she was also the only other person alone at Christmas he knew in Portland. So he’d come to the garden at sunrise and settled in to watch the day awaken.

“You must be an early riser.” He hadn’t had to wait very long.

She settled at the far end of the bench, well clear of where his arm draped over the wooden back.

***

Willow listened. Did they know? Would they understand? Stories were like roots, they slide deep under the soil, reaching out and seeking for connection. Willow could feel Amy’s heart and how it hurt. Different than Amelia and Hiroshi, but still, hurt. Willow’s old roots lay deep under the bench, a whisper beneath the soil.

***

“Still filled with your parents’ stuff? Where are they?” Even as she asked, Amy knew.

That grim look clouded Dusty’s features, the same as moments before.

She knew the answer and wished she’d never asked, wished she hadn’t come this morning. But her mother’s ashes were still in her backpack. She hadn’t scattered them yesterday because the willow tree was gone. Last night Amy hadn’t slept a wink, knowing even if the tree were gone, that spot in the garden was where her mother belonged.

“Mid-Atlantic Ridge, I guess.”

Amy squinted at him, but he just shrugged.

“They died in a crash, Icelandic volcano. At least it was quick and they were together which I guess was good for them. I was just thinking that I’ve never cleaned out their stuff at the condo, because it never mattered. That’s just not where they are any more. They’re now part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a place where the earth’s crust is born.”

Amy watched his brows knit together as he looked somewhere far beyond the Portland Rose Garden. She’d had trouble throwing out the last napkin her mother had used, and here he hadn’t cleaned house after three years. She had to be out of the apartment by year-end. How in hell was she supposed to do that?

Her mother had hidden her disease from Amy until almost too late. They’d had three days together, most of it spent with her mother in drugged sleep, the rest with Amy reading aloud about Amelia and Hiroshi’s yearly meetings at the old willow tree.

It had become a Patterson tradition. Each year since before Amy could remember, they’d come to the rose garden and left small presents at the foot of the old willow on Christmas Eve. As a child, Amy had made colored drawings for the tree. Once she’d covered its trunk with little gold and silver star stickers. In later years she’d often purchased a special Christmas ornament each year to dangle among the bare branches, or scattered a little vial of soil she’d brought back from her travels.

Reading the diary to her mother, they’d finally discovered the origin of the yearly visit tradition. Amy hadn’t bought a gift for the tree this year, and with it cut down and gone, she didn’t know if she should.

“Sorry,” Dusty shook his head like a wet dog. “My mind has gone walkabout.”

“I lost my mom five days ago.” Again, words she’d never intended to speak had slipped out into the world as if someone had given them a nudge.

Dusty sat bolt upright and turned to her. No longer relaxed back on the bench, his whole attention was on her.

She waited for it, for the words she’d so come to hate. But he didn’t speak. He didn’t stare at her, though he was looking at her. Finally she couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Say it!”

“No. I remember how angry I was at every person who said how sorry they were. It was so empty. Why would I go out of my way to make you angry at me?”

Amy shifted on the cold bench, wishing she’d worn another layer against the chill of the day.

“Who are you?”

His grin was easy. “I guess that’s a step up from yesterday’s ‘What are you?’ ”

Had she really been so rude? Well, yes, she had.

“Master Sergeant of the 160th SOAR at your service.”

“Which battalion?”

That stopped him. Now he really was staring at her.

“The fifth.” His voice was now careful.

Amy knew why. SOAR was very secretive. A civilian knowing about the fifth battalion must be unnerving him a bit. She decided to keep her own military background to herself a little longer. She couldn’t resist seeing if she could make him squirm. After all, he had stalked her this morning, sort of.

“What do you fly in?”

“DAP.” He bit the word off. The Direct Action Penetrator, the nastiest and most powerful rotorcraft in the world.

“Beale or Henderson?”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“Master Sergeant Amelia Patterson, I flew with Emily Beale in the 101st when she was still a Screaming Eagle. I just finished my prerequisite of five years in the service before I could apply to SOAR. I report for testing next week.” She held out her hand.

When he didn’t respond, she reached out and took his nerveless hand and shook it. Slowly his fingers came to life and curled about hers.

Despite the layers of both of their gloves, she easily remembered the feel of his warm strong fingers covering hers.

He didn’t release his hold as they talked.

She didn’t try to make him let go though the sun moved far across the sky.

***

Willow listened. It was harder, took more effort. No leaves, no branches, no trunk left. All that now remained of Willow ranged deep beneath the soil. The recent bite of the saw, the tearing of the stump both too painful to recall. But Willow still heard, still felt. He asked the ground to give up its heat and Amy and Dusty talked long through the cold day. It was warm only around that one lone bench in the rose garden.

***

“A friendly face, thank god!” Dusty was deep in packing boxes when Amy dropped by.

“How’s it going?”

He surveyed the damage. Bags of clothes for Goodwill lined one side of the living room. Bags of garbage lined the other. Boxes of books to take down to the used counter at Powell’s bookstore blocked the couch. He’d kept his father’s gardening books and the travel-picture books his mother had collected.

“Okay, I guess. I’m pretty much done, anything that’s too hard I figure that I’m just not ready to let go of yet. Thankfully, this place is really small, so there aren’t too many of those decisions.” There’d been hundreds, though it felt like thousands of them, but the passing three years had given him some time to deal with the pain of loss. He’d make sure to offer to help Amy, so that she didn’t have to face her mother’s past alone while the wound of loss still bled.

“I’ve sworn that I’m going to sleep in the big bed tonight, but now I don’t know.”

He watched Amy as she hung her winter coat on a bronze hook by the door and moved to inspect the progress he’d made. She moved as if this were a military inspection, he followed two steps behind. He could see by her nods that she approved of what he’d kept. Some things she inspected more carefully, those that fit stories he’d told yesterday, others that fit stories not yet told. It was a finely honed and much appreciated assessment. He felt better with each considered nod. Hell, he felt better every single minute they were together.

The master bedroom had a pair of walnut dressers, a small desk, and a queen-size bed with fresh flannel sheets and a faded quilt. Two of his mother’s oil paintings of the Rose Garden and a small collection of roses his father had pressed in glass hung on the otherwise bare walls.

She continued her silent inspection and led them into his old bedroom. He’d purged the kid crap long ago. Now it was mostly books and part of his old comic book collection. Some drawings he’d made that his mother had liked enough that he’d pinned them to the wall half a lifetime ago. They weren’t half bad, considering.

“Here.” She picked up the couple of dinged-up Frisbees he’d kept from his days of playing Ultimate and handed them to him. She also took the two pillows and added those to what he was holding. She moved about the room picking up odds and ends and piling them in his arms.

Then she moved to unpin the art.

“Hey!”

“Shh. It’s all right.” He wasn’t quite sure how it would be all right, but he subsided and watched as she gently took them down.

She gathered the art carefully. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Where?” Dusty was feeling a bit dense.

She nodded her head toward the short hall then led him back into his parents’ bedroom.

He stood there with his arms full of his old belongings.

“What am I supposed to do?”

She set the art on the foot of the bed. Then she took his parents’ pillows and tossed them out into the hall.

“Your pillows go there. The rest is up to you to figure out.”

She turned back to his old drawings, spread them out across the quilt and then inspected the room’s walls.

He started with the pillows. Set some comic books on an empty bookshelf. He dropped his sketch books and drawing pencils on the small desk. He glanced at Amy and then flipped the sketchbook open to a page he’d worked on while unable to sleep most of last night and set it back on the desk.

When he was done, she told him to go get his bathroom stuff and move it into the tiny bath off the master bedroom.

After he’d finished, he leaned against the doorjamb and watched Amy.

She’d worn jeans and a tight turtleneck that made her a pleasure to watch as she reached to pin each piece of art onto the wall.

He couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed this woman. Not her beauty or elegance. Okay, not just her beauty and elegance; she truly had turned his head and his heart completely around. Things he’d avoided for years simply made sense in her presence.

He looked about the room, and for the first time in three years it felt right. His mother’s art now mixed with his own. Bits of his collection of science fiction and thrillers now leaned against his dad’s gardening books.

Amy simply swept him away. The woman was impossible to resist.

Nor did he torture himself by doing so.

He slipped up behind her as she noticed the open sketchbook.

He wrapped his hands around her waist in time to feel the shock of an indrawn breath. He laid a kiss on her neck between her turtleneck and soft hair.

“Is that me?” she whispered.

He nuzzled her neck again and ran his teeth over her earlobe where it just peeked out of her hair. Then he looked down over her shoulder at the charcoal sketch. Her face wasn’t drawn from the front. He’d drawn her looking off to the side, as if only just noticing the artist. Her expression reflected a mixture of sadness and the very first hint of a smile. He’d set out to capture her beautiful features, and instead captured her shifting mood. He could still see a woman who had cried at the loss of a tree, but also the woman whose natural state was a quiet joy.

“Best I could do anyway.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“It’s a start.” He hadn’t had as much fun as trying to draw her face in a long time. “You know, I can think of one more thing to help make this room mine.”

She turned in his arms and didn’t argue as he lay her upon the quilt and began making love to her.

***

Willow rested a little deeper into the dark soil, old roots slowly turning back into the earth itself. But Willow was aware of the bench where Amelia and Hiroshi had kissed and cried each year. And Willow had watched as Amy and Dusty sat, kissing and laughing, the sound trickling into the soil and healing the old pains.

***

Amy had left his bed reluctantly this morning and returned to her own apartment to face cleaning out her mother’s life. Knowing she was dying, her mother had dealt with most of it, but what remained was still too much. Amy had never felt so helpless.

Half an hour later Dusty had arrived bearing a dozen red roses under one arm, and boxes and garbage bags under the other. He didn’t go until all that remained was the cleaning and deciding where to store her own meager belongings. They were all hers now. Maybe she’d ship them to Fort Campbell for lack of anywhere better.

That evening, Amy knocked on Dusty’s door and waited, ignoring the pleasant tingle running up and down her nerves.

Dusty’s invitation hadn’t been a casual, “Hey, want to come over for dinner?”

Instead, as he left, he’d slipped a card among the roses. The note had read: “Master Sergeant Dustin James hopes that Master Sergeant Amelia Patterson will join him for a casual Christmas Eve dinner this evening at six.” Dustin? Odd that she felt so close to him, had slept with him, and hadn’t even known his full name.