One Snowy Night Before Christmas

One Snowy Night Before Christmas

Published by Pamela Fryer

Copyright 2011 Pamela Fryer

All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction and may
not be reproduced, resold, posted online or redistributed in any format or in
any manner without exclusive permission from the author.

Contains sexual content; this story is not intended for
readers under the age of 18.

Length: 35,000 words (approximately 100 pages)

December 22nd

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”

Jessie ground her teeth as Dean Martin crooned his famous
song. She snapped off the tow truck’s crackling radio. It was the most horrible
time of the year.

The CD player was broken and the local station played
nothing but sappy holiday music. It was just as well—she was nearly to the
mountain pass and there wouldn’t be anything but snow on the radio anyway, just
like the howling, whirling mass erasing the road in front of her.

Christmas was two days and two hours away. She sighed,
though it was more of a grumble as she peered through the white eddy. The
holidays always made her cranky. All those whimpering, whining children, their
parents hauling around armloads of shopping bags stuffed with gifts to spoil
them rotten. But mostly, it was the memories of the Christmases she hadn’t had
that made her turn green and furry, Welcome’s very own resident Grinch.

The only good things about the holidays were the extra
people on the road…and all the extra people broken down on the
side
of
the road.

She wrenched the wheel to avoid a snowdrift spilling into
the lane. Fear prickled her scalp at the near miss. That was all she needed, to
plant her truck in the snow and get stuck out here. She drove the biggest rig
in town and there wasn’t anyone who could pull her out.

“Why do I ask for ‘Holiday Duty’ every year?” she said loud
enough to hear herself over the rumble of the engine. She glanced at the clock.
Nearly eleven. By midnight, highway patrol would close the roads and she could
go home.

At noon the temperature had plummeted to twenty-eight degrees
and brought with it another two feet of snow to the already choked town of
Welcome, Oregon.

All the happy, celebrating families would have a white
Christmas. They’d be outside Christmas day, building snowmen and having
snowball fights. She sighed again. Her partner Elmer—with his five kids, two
sisters, three brothers and an unknown number of nieces and nephews—was always
too happy to stick her with “Holiday Duty.”

Jessie squinted into the ghostly beams her headlights
created as they cut through the driving snow. Each time she rounded a corner,
her glaring light hitting the high drifts ahead sent her judgment reeling.

I can handle it
. After all, this wasn’t her first
holiday run. In the six years she’d been partners with Elmer’s Tow and Cradle,
she’d taken the holiday run every year but one. Last year. What a mistake that
had been.

Still, this year seemed different. Maybe it was the growing
intensity of the blizzard, or the unusually bright moon occasionally peeking
through the clouds that turned the snowy mountainside into a mystical
dreamscape, but it just
felt
different.

The snow was coming down so hard now it more resembled
sleet. The plow had been across the highway only an hour before, but already
the blacktop and its orange lines had all but vanished under a slippery crust
of snow.

The radio on the dash barked. Snippets of Hazel’s voice
crackled through. In her mind’s eye Jessie could almost see the silver-haired
woman sitting in her den in front of her fireplace, sipping hot cocoa as she
monitored the radio.

Not only did Hazel answer the phone at any hour for Elmer’s
Towing, she assisted every trucker to pass through Welcome, affectionately
called “Hazel Nut, the Welcome welcome wagon.”

Jessie grimaced as she picked up the microphone. She didn’t
want to have to turn down another piteous invitation to Christmas dinner. Why
couldn’t people accept that she just wanted to be alone, to shut the whole
rotten holiday out of her mind and drift through it as though it didn’t exist?

She slowed the truck to fifteen miles an hour as she rounded
a sharp curve. She could hardly see five feet in front of the hood.

“Bla’…‘urt…duck,” Hazel’s voice rattled across. “…‘ohman’s
‘eek. Jessie you there? …in.”

“I’m here,” Jessie responded. “You got a sitting duck?”
She’d just passed the fork in the road marking Horseshoe Lane and Blackwood,
and should be coming up on Lohman’s Creek any minute.

“Two-eight…supreme, two… Can you…over.”

Ahead on the road, orange flashers beat out an eerie SOS
through the murk.

“I’m there. I’ll fish them out. Over and out.” Jessie
glanced at the glowing green digits of the dashboard clock. Five minutes to
eleven.

Christmas had one benefit, she thought wryly. The worse the
weather and the later the hour, the bigger the tips.

* * *

Tom Dunham looked at the useless mobile phone in his lap.
He’d tried twice more, unsuccessfully, to reconnect to the tow agency but now
he couldn’t even get a signal. He hoped the woman at the office had gotten
enough information before their call was cut off.

Outside the wind howled fiercely, buffeting the car and
sending the falling snow whipping sideways. The storm had seized the vehicle
the minute the engine died, robbing it of its heat. If the tow truck didn’t
come, they were doomed.

He glanced at the little girl sitting next to him in the
front seat. His daughter, but a virtual stranger nonetheless. She stared out
the window, dwarfed under his leather coat. He didn’t even have a blanket to
offer her if, God forbid, they were stuck here all night.

“You warm enough, pumpkin?”

She glanced at him, her wide, sad eyes possessing the
intelligence of a child twice her age. “Don’t call me that.” Her voice revealed
the fatigue she was too grown up to admit to. Six years old, going on sixteen.

“Sorry.” Tom cringed. He couldn’t win. “I’ve got a candy bar
in my pocket. Are you hungry?”

She turned her attention back out the passenger window.
“Uh-uh.”

A long, uncomfortable silence stretched. Amy was smart, but
still too young to understand her mother’s years of drug use had finally caught
up with her. All she knew was she had been taken from her home and spent two
months with her grandmother before being relocated yet again to him. Now, two
days before Christmas, she was being shuffled to a new home by a father she had
never met until today.

He gave up trying to be casual as he stared at the little
girl’s profile. She’d inherited her gleaming strawberry blond hair from her
mother, but her pixie’s profile was the spitting image of his sister when she
was that age.
God, Hannah. How could you do this to your child?
Tom
shook his head.
Our child.
He was as much, if not more so, to blame.
Legally he would still have to pay child support to Amy’s grandmother for her
care, but Hannah had not wanted him to know she’d been arrested for fear he’d
sue for custody.

Damn right
, he vowed silently. He looked at the small
person in the seat next to him trying so hard to be a big girl. He knew
absolutely nothing about his own daughter. What was her favorite color? Did she
have a favorite toy? Was she allergic to any foods or medicines?

“You looking for Santa Claus?” he finally asked.

She leaned her head back against the seat without looking at
him. “Mmm-hmm.”

Headlights appeared in the rear-view mirror.
Thank Saint
Nick
. He poised his hand on the door handle, prepared to jump out and flag
down the car. He sighed with relief when the vehicle veered onto the shoulder
behind him, slowed, then pulled around in front of his dead car.

Bright gold, old fashioned letters spelled out “Elmer’s Tow
and Cradle” on the side of the gigantic red truck. Thank goodness that sweet
dispatcher had gotten his location before the phone cut out. They weren’t going
to freeze to death, after all.

“Look, the tow truck is here. We’ll be home in time for
Christmas.” He tried to sound cheerful, but failed miserably.

“It doesn’t matter. Santa won’t know where to find me.”

Amy’s sad expression turned worse.
She’s just tired
,
he told himself.
After a good night’s sleep, when she wakes up on Christmas
morning to find Santa had indeed found her, she’ll be a new kid
. He made a
mental note to thank his secretary for the last minute shopping.

“Stay here, okay sweetie?” He jumped out quickly and slammed
the door as the frigid air rushed in. He’d dressed professionally for the
custody hearing in Sacramento, and in slacks and loafers, he was unprepared for
the biting cold that immediately seized him. His sweater vest hadn’t been
enough in Sacramento—out here it was laughable.

The fogged tow truck’s driver’s window slowly rolled down.

“I tried to pull off when the engine died, and we slid into
the bank,” Tom yelled over the howling winds. He stopped, stunned, when he saw
a pretty face framed by red curls peering back from the hood of a fur-lined
polar jacket.

“Um, it’s stuck pretty good. Do you think you can get it
out?”

She frowned as though he’d insulted her. “No problem. I’m
going to need you up here. Are you alone?”

“I’ve got my daughter with me,” he told her.

“Well I hope she was smart enough to wear her coat.”

Tom ran back to the car to get Amy. As he came to the
passenger door he slipped and went down, planting both knees and his right hand
in the snow.

By now his face was so frozen he could hardly form words.
“Come on, Amy. We’ve got to ride up front in the truck,” he said through
chattering teeth. He tasted blood, having bitten his tongue on “ride.”

He gathered Amy up and made another mad dash to the gigantic
tow truck. It was the kind used to pull big rigs, and he could hardly believe
that dewy-faced girl could drive it, let alone hook up a broken-down car and
drag it out of a snow bank.

“Do you need any help?” he asked the figure coming towards
him. She looked like an abominable snow monster in her red foul-weather suit.
He’d seen enough catalogs to know her fur-topped boots were referred to as
“negative degrees” protection. He wished he had known well enough to buy
himself a pair.

“Yeah,” she shouted above the wind. “I need you to get in my
cab and get yourself warm. Pour the kid some hot chocolate from my thermos.”

Even through the howling storm the sarcasm in her voice
carried across, loud and clear.

The gigantic cab was warm and toasty, its heater blowing
full force. He held his frozen hands in front of a blower and rubbed them
together. Delicious, prickly heat flowed over them.

“This is better, isn’t it?” As usual, he got no answer. “Do
you want some hot chocolate? That sounds great, doesn’t it?”

He lifted a thermal picnic sac from the passenger side floor
and unzipped it. Before he could stop himself, he’d digested the note taped on
the front of the thermos: “I know you’re tired of my saying this, so I’ll write
it. I won’t let you stay home alone on Christmas again. The invitation to
dinner still stands. –Hazel.”

A hydraulic motor whirred to life on the back of the truck.
He thought of the pretty young woman out there in the cold. Most people were on
their way to visit relatives for the holidays, and this woman wasn’t out here
because someone else called in sick. Before he could convince himself it was
smarter not to wonder, he was thinking about
why
she would rather be
alone during the happiest time of the year.

Tom poured the hot chocolate into the plastic top and
replaced the thermos’s stopper. He offered it to Amy. She took a small sip
before handing it back.

“That’s better, hmm?” He took a mouthful himself. The little
girl barely nodded, but he knew the sweet, chocolaty warmth felt as good in her
stomach as in his.

The rig shuddered as it took the weight of his car.
Something clanged, and the whirring sound grew louder. Tom glanced out the back
window to see the hood of his Cutlass slowly rising.

The hydraulic motor shut off and a moment later the door to
the cab opened, letting in a chilling rush of snowy air. The girl hopped in and
slammed the door. “You really planted that front end.”

She pulled off her hood, revealing an unruly mop of gorgeous
red hair. It was like molten copper, and it made him warmer just looking at it.
Vivid green eyes the color of Douglas fir twinkled as she smiled. Maybe she had
forgiven his chauvinistic comment.

“The power to the brakes and the steering went out when the
engine quit. I wasn’t ready for it.”

“That must have been some ride.” She glanced past him at
Amy. “I’ll bet it rattled your teeth.”