Sunrise (22 page)

Only then did Ashley spot the white-haired man in the wheelchair. He sat near the back of the cozy dining area. He was dressed in a pale blue sweater, one that hung slightly askew on his shoulders. He was alone, and as they finished the song, he wasn’t crying quiet tears. He was sobbing.

Landon gently elbowed her and nodded toward the older man. She told Landon with her eyes that she’d seen the same thing. For the next thirty minutes as they sang, Ashley couldn’t take her eyes off the old guy. What was his story? Why was he so affected by their songs, their presence? Maybe he had regrets or family who never visited. Ashley had no idea, but she was determined to find out.

When they finished singing, they went into the second phase of their visit. The residents of Knollwood couldn’t accept cookies. But they could take a hug or a handshake.

As Connor played the final notes of “Frosty the Snowman,” the group fanned out into the dining room and made sure each resident received some personal time. Cole, Maddie, Hayley, and Jessie were wonderful, making the rounds and talking to everyone in the room.

After visiting with a few ladies at the closest table, Ashley passed Devin to her father and took Landon’s hand. Together they worked their way to the back of the room, where the frail-looking man in the pale blue sweater sat alone, still sobbing in a silent, gut-wrenching way.

Ashley reached him first. She pulled up a chair beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hi. I’m Ashley.” She looked at Landon. “This is my husband, Landon.”

The man seemed suddenly self-conscious about his tears and the way his nose was running. He fumbled around the table in front of him until he had hold of a napkin. Then he wiped at his tears and blew his nose. “I’m Eddie. Eddie Buckley.” He held out a shaky hand and greeted each of them. Then he pointed to his belt buckle.

Ashley wasn’t sure if the man was confused or maybe delusional, but she and Landon both looked at the buckle. Engraved on it was an insignia Ashley didn’t recognize.

Landon figured it out first. “You’re a fireman!” He patted the man’s shoulder. “Right? Is that it?”

Ashley loved how the man’s face lit up. “Yes. A fireman.” He put his hand over his chest. “I’m a fireman.”

Landon pulled up a chair on the other side of Eddie. “Bloomington Fire Department? On Fourth Street?”

“Yes, sir. Hired in 1932.”

“I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of changes.”

Eddie tried to speak. He opened his mouth, but his eyes welled up again.

Ashley changed the subject. “How long have you lived at Knollwood, Eddie?”

A concerned look filled his face. He looked around the room. “You know where I live? Where the roses are? On that street with the roses?”

Ashley and Landon exchanged a look. Ashley knew how to handle a situation like this. It was exactly the sort of thing she’d done at Sunset Hills. “Yes, Eddie.” She patted his hand. “I know that place. Is that where you live?”

“Yes.” His features relaxed. “On Fourth Street. Where the roses are.”

Landon mouthed to Ashley, “The fire station.”

And then she understood too. Eddie thought he lived at the fire station. Ashley noticed that the rest of the group was still visiting with the residents. She was glad. She wasn’t ready to leave Eddie Buckley just yet.

“Yeah, I know that place, Eddie. Tell me about the fires.” Landon leaned in close, and it was clear that he didn’t want to miss a word.

“First big one was a blaze at the Indiana Theater. Spread to the jewelers and the sporting goods store.” Eddie was more composed now. “Lots of damage, but we saved the building. Did a good job.”

“I heard about that.”

“And then February 6, 1935.” His words were slow and not altogether clear. But the memory of these fires was clearly vivid. “Big fire at the Monroe County Jail.” He narrowed his eyes. “You heard of that one?”

“The roof collapsed.” Landon knew his history.

Ashley sat mesmerized. Except for the decades that separated them, Landon and Eddie could’ve been colleagues. Brothers from the same fraternity, anchored at the same fire department.

“Roof fell and five of us ran for our lives.” Eddie shook at the memory. “Wicked fire. I was one of the five who got out. Saved our lives but lost the building that time.”

Landon’s tone grew softer. “So . . . you remember the Greyhound wreck . . . 1950, I think.”

Eddie lowered his brow, and gradually his mouth hung open and he started crying again. Deep, silent sobs shook him, and he held up his hand toward Landon as if he desperately wanted to say something.

Ashley considered changing the subject, but the man seemed so determined to speak.

Finally Eddie swallowed a few times and found his voice. “August 10 . . . 1949. Bus crashed and caught fire. I was there and . . .” His nose began to run again, and he fumbled for his napkin. “I had one foot inside the bus . . . one foot.” He squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed a few more times. When he opened his eyes, it was as if he were seeing the fire happening before his eyes once more. “I heard the girl . . . crying, screaming for help. I couldn’t reach her . . . couldn’t get through the flames.”

Landon helped Eddie use the napkin on his wet face. “Sixteen people died.”

“Sixteen.” Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, clearly devastated. “I can . . . I can still hear her screaming.”

Again Ashley was amazed. The man didn’t know where he lived, but he could recount with vivid detail the events and dates of fires that had happened half a century ago. In her experience, this was always true. Whatever had made up the days of a person’s life stayed with them in their final season. She was grateful for Landon’s interest in the man, touched by the way he took time to listen and validate the old guy’s heroics, his worth. Because that was all Eddie lived for now.

The stories and the belt buckle.

And of course, when people were passionate about their work—the way firefighters were—they were bound to spend their days reliving each call. Fighting fires wasn’t a job so much as it was a calling, and Ashley could picture Landon like this far, far down the road when he was ninety-five—recounting the apartment fire where he’d saved the life of a little boy but nearly died in the process or the clean-up efforts at Ground Zero, where he’d spent three months looking for the body of his buddy Jalen.

Ashley could only pray that when that day came, she’d be sitting beside Landon, holding his hand. That when Cole and Devin were grown with families of their own and time had stolen enough from her that she needed a place like Knollwood or Sunset Hills, Landon would be with her. And at Christmastime, when carolers came with little children, she and Landon would watch through teary eyes as they sang “Silent Night,” and Landon might share his fire stories with a young gun the way Eddie had.

If so, Ashley was sure of one thing. She would be hanging on every word. Because these were the years they would remember.

As the group left Knollwood for a series of caroling and cookie stops at the homes of their various friends, she thanked God that when it mattered most, she and Landon were passionate about things that would stay with them forever.

Their faith, their family . . . and for Landon, the fires.

All his life Dayne had dreamed of a Christmas like this one. He had worked on films with a Christmas theme and pretended to be part of a family with a wife and children and a Christmas tree. But he’d never experienced it firsthand. Never had a Christmas tree except the artificial one he put up each year in the living room of his Malibu beach home, never gone caroling, and never attended a Christmas Eve service. He certainly never imagined sharing Christmas dinner with the family he’d seen walking across the hospital parking lot that long-ago summer day, back when even finding these people seemed impossible.

He and Katy walked into the Bloomington Community Church Christmas Eve service, part of a group of almost twenty members of his family, and Dayne was completely captured. First the caroling last night and now this. Pew after pew of families entered the church—all together to celebrate the birth of Christ.

The way it should be celebrated.

Dayne kept his head low as they walked in. He’d been to church with Katy every Sunday since the one after Thanksgiving, and they always found a quiet spot near the back. He’d gotten a few double takes from people, but no one had stopped him or talked to him about his celebrity. He’d had no requests for autographs.

“I could get used to this,” he whispered to Katy. “I feel almost normal.”

Katy grinned at him. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Dayne had his arm around her, and as they filed into a pew near the middle of the building, he could feel his heart practically bursting inside him—to be surrounded by his sisters and brother and their families, by a father who had loved him all his life without his ever knowing it.

As they sat down, as the soft refrains of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” played and the candles across the front of the church flickered in reverent wonder, Dayne remembered one Christmas in particular. He had been fourteen years old, too old to take part in the annual Christmas pageant at the Indonesian missionary boarding school and too young to attend the teenage Christmas party on the first floor of the west dorm wing. Neither his parents nor Bob Asher’s parents made it home that Christmas weekend.

He and Bob were the same age, and that year—feeling like they didn’t fit in anywhere—they’d found a couple of old chairs outside the cafeteria and spent Christmas Eve looking at the starry sky and dreaming about what Christmas might be like.

“I picture lots of red and green,” Bob had said. “With a candlelit Christmas Eve service, the kind in the movies.”

“Yeah.” Dayne had watched a shooting star. “I picture family. Mom, Dad, and a bunch of kids around a Christmas tree. There’re presents and music and homemade cookies, but none of that matters as much as the people.” He turned to Bob. “Know what I mean?”

“A whole family. Sisters and brothers and aunts and stuff.”

Dayne had smiled. “It’ll never happen. But it’s the Christmas I like to imagine.”

The memory faded, and Dayne wove his fingers between Katy’s. “I dreamed about this once.”

Katy slid a little closer to him. “Recently?”

“When I was fourteen.” How could he ever have known back then that one day the dream would come true? Back when he had no connection with any family other than the two parents who only sometimes made it back from the jungle at Christmastime?

Being here made Dayne wonder how he’d ever go back to Hollywood.

Beside him, Katy whispered, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

He studied her, and he saw the blonde small-town children’s theater director standing in the middle of a group of kids, the concern on her face as she walked with him around Lake Monroe and warned him about Kabbalah, and the tenderness in her eyes the first time they kissed. He could see her in the occasional flash of lightning, with the electricity out at the Flanigans’ house, and lying beneath a dusty old Christmas tree prop on the stage at the Bloomington theater, minutes before he proposed. And here, in the glow of soft candles and Christmas wreaths surrounded by the Baxter family.

“Yes.” He smiled at her. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

At the crack of dawn, the Flanigan boys scampered up the stairs to Katy’s apartment and knocked on the door. “Wake up, Katy! Merry Christmas!”

She’d lived with them long enough to know the routine. Without so much as a look in the mirror, she found her bathrobe and slippers and met the boys in the stairwell. “Let’s go! Where’re Bailey and Connor?”

Ricky looked disgusted. “We woke ’em up, but they said, ‘Five more minutes! Go get Katy first!’” He glanced at his brothers. “On Christmas morning? Who wants sleep?”

The five of them hurried downstairs, through the family room, and up another set of stairs to Bailey’s room. “Merry Christmas! Time to get up!”

Katy smiled at the older kids’ reaction. All six of them had slept in sleeping bags on the floor of Bailey’s room on Christmas Eve. Last night, in keeping with the other part of the tradition, they’d stayed up talking and listening to music until the early morning hours.

Now it was barely seven o’clock; no wonder Bailey and Connor were having trouble waking up. Even so, they sat up and stretched.

“Merry Christmas!” Bailey grinned at them through bleary eyes.

“I keep waiting for you to turn off lights at midnight on Christmas Eve.” Katy sat on the edge of Bailey’s bed. “Silly heads, staying up all night and getting a couple hours of sleep.”

Connor was up now, and in a few minutes he was as hyper and animated as his brothers.

When Bailey was on her feet, she motioned for the others to follow. “Time for the story. Come on.”

Katy loved this part most of all. The fact that these six children—knowing they had presents waiting for them downstairs—would enjoy the idea of heading to their parents’ room first. Because that’s where Jim would read them the Christmas story from the Bible. Jim and Jenny stayed up late every Christmas Eve assembling an air hockey table or bicycle or some other toy and wrapping presents. As per tradition, they slept in sweatpants and T-shirts so they’d be ready whenever the kids woke up in the morning.

The kids picked up speed as they traipsed down the hallway, and they barreled into the room with a chorus of “Merry Christmas!” and “Wake up!”

Katy watched as the kids sprang up and landed on every available spot on their parents’ king-size bed. Ricky nestled in between Jim and Jenny, and the other kids sat on the edge of the mattress or in the middle on their knees.

Jim wasn’t completely awake, but he waved his hand at the crowd of kids. “A herd of elephants! We’re being attacked by a herd of elephants!”

“Save me!” Jenny opened one eye, then pulled the covers over her head.

Ricky snatched the sheets and touched his nose to his mother’s. “Merry Christmas, Mom!”

“Yeah.” Justin tickled her toes. “Time to get up!”

A sharp squeal came from Jenny, and she kicked her feet free of further attack. She sat up and squinted at her kids. “Isn’t it still the middle of the night?”

“Nope!” BJ leaned his head back and raised both fists in the air. “It’s Christmas morning! The best day of all.”

Jim sat up next. “I thought for sure you were a herd of elephants.” He reached for Shawn, sitting closest to him, and rubbed his knuckles against the top of his head, while the boy laughed, delighted. “I was ready to take you on!”

“I’d just take you on back.” Shawn wrapped his arms around Jim’s waist and tried to push him back to the bed.

“No wrestling.” Bailey gave her dad and brother a warning look. “Christmas morning shouldn’t have wrestling.”

“Until after the presents are opened!” Ricky giggled. “Right, Dad?”

Jim winked at his youngest boy. “Postpresent wrestling is definitely allowed.” He sat up again and pretended to dust himself off. “Okay, who has the Bible?”

Bailey found it on the nightstand and handed it to Jim.

“Katy, come join us.” Jim nodded to the padded bench at the end of the bed. “We have to all be together for the story.”

Suddenly Justin gasped. “Cody! We forgot about Cody!”

An avalanche of children tumbled from the bed and landed on their feet, racing down the stairs toward Cody’s room. Katy stayed with Jenny and Jim, laughing as they heard the pounding feet headed for Cody’s bedroom door, directly beneath Jim and Jenny’s room.

“Merry Christmas!” the kids shouted. The sound was so loud that Katy wished she would’ve made the trip downstairs just to see Cody’s reaction. In seconds, they heard the kids marching up the stairs, and as they entered the room again, BJ was dragging a half-awake Cody.

“Ugh . . . is it really morning?”

“Come on, Coleman!” Jim laughed. “We let you sleep in.”

Cody sat in the chair near the fireplace, and when the chatter and excitement died down, Jim opened the Bible and turned until he found what he was looking for. “Every year we do this,” he told the kids. His eyes shone. “And every year we always will.” He looked at the open Bible page. “I’m reading from chapter 2 of the book of Luke.” He took a breath. “‘In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. . . .’”

Katy watched the faces of the Flanigan kids. Even Cody Coleman’s. Despite a few yawns, their eyes were bright and alert, engaged in the story. And it was an amazing story, really. A young pregnant girl with visions of angels in her head and her frightened, confused betrothed heading by donkey on an arduous journey to register for the census.

Had the people at the inn known that the King of kings was about to be born? that though they turned away the young pregnant girl, the child she bore would turn away no one?

“‘Today in the town of David,’” Jim was saying, “‘a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. . . .’”

Katy couldn’t help but silently thank God for the scene playing out before her. Would that every family across the nation might pause on Christmas morning and first remember the reason for the celebration. She wished Dayne could be here, but she would tell him about the Flanigans’ tradition later. He was having breakfast with John this morning, and then he would join her.

Jim was finishing the story. “‘But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.’” He closed the Bible and met the eyes of each of his kids. “What are you pondering in your heart this Christmas morning?”

Katy smiled. She loved this part, too. Every year since she’d lived with the Flanigans, Jim ended the story with that verse and then turned the question to the kids. Sometimes their answers were sweet and poignant. Other times they said things that the family would laugh about for days to come.

“I’m pondering how come Mary wore a long dress if she was riding a donkey all that way.” Justin made a face. “I mean, a long dress? Wouldn’t pants and a sweater’ve been more practical?”

“That’s what they wore back then. Men and women wore garments with sashes at the waist.” Jenny had her arms around Ricky and BJ. “But that’s a good ponder.”

“I’m pondering if baby Jesus got splinters laying in a wooden box.” BJ flashed an anxious look. “That would hurt a baby a lot.”

Jim’s eyes grew more tender than before. “Jesus was a man who understood the pain of wooden splinters in His back. Both as a baby and later on . . . at the cross.”

They all thought about that for a few seconds. Then Shawn pondered whether the animals would’ve known that the baby was actually God, the Creator who made them, and Ricky wondered why people gave presents to each other when it was Jesus’ birthday.

“Jesus set the example.” Jenny rubbed her son’s shoulder. “He gave us the greatest gift of all when He came to earth as a baby. Now we give gifts so we can remember what sort of God we serve.”

Bailey seemed distracted when she gave her answer. “I’m pondering what that star must’ve looked like over Bethlehem.” She gave them a dreamy look. “And whether it was anything like the stars over Bloomington.”

“Um . . . something bigger, I’m guessing.” Jim made a face at her, and everyone laughed.

Katy studied Bailey a minute longer, even after the attention was off her. The comment probably had something to do with her fascination over Bryan Smythe. The guy was always talking to her about how the stars didn’t compare to her eyes. That kind of thing. If he turned out to be genuine, then fine. Bailey was certainly entitled to be starry-eyed this Christmas morning. But Katy had doubts. She would talk to Bailey later for a report.