The Gift (20 page)

R
APHIE WATCHED THE
T
URKEY
B
OY
’
S
reaction as he heard the last of the story. He was silent for a moment.

“How do you know all of this?”

“We’ve been piecing it all together today. Talking to the family and to his colleagues.”

“Did you talk to Gabe?”

“Briefly, earlier. We’ve been waiting for him to come back to the station, but we can’t seem to find him.”

“And you called to Lou’s house this morning?”

“We did.”

“And Lou wasn’t there.”

“Nowhere to be seen. Sheets still warm from where he’d lain.”

“Are you making this up?”

“Not a word of it.”

“Do you expect me to believe this?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then what was the point?”

“People tell stories, and it’s up to those who listen whether to believe them or not.”

“Shouldn’t the storyteller believe it?”

“The storyteller should tell it.” He winked.

“Do you believe it?”

Raphie looked around the room to make sure nobody had sneaked in without his noticing. He shrugged awkwardly, moving his head at the same time. “One man’s lesson is another man’s tale, but often, a man’s tale can be another’s lesson.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Raphie avoided the question by taking a slug of coffee.

“You said there was a lesson—what was the lesson?”

“If I have to tell you that, boy…” Raphie rolled his eyes.

“Ah, come on.”

“Appreciating your loved ones,” Raphie said, a little embarrassed at first. “Acknowledging all the special people in your life. Concentrating on what’s important.” He cleared his throat and looked away, not comfortable with preaching.

The Turkey Boy rolled his eyes and faked a yawn.

Raphie tossed his embarrassment to the side, giving himself one more opportunity to get through to the teen before he gave up altogether. He should have been at home, already on his second helping of Christmas dinner, instead of being here with this frustrating boy.

He leaned forward. “Gabe gave Lou a gift, son, a very
special gift. I’m not going to bother asking you what that was, I’m going to tell you, and you’d better listen up, because right after this I’m leaving you, and you’ll be alone to think about what you did. If you don’t pay attention, then you’ll go back out to the world an angry young man who’ll feel angry for the rest of his life.”

“Okay,” the boy said defensively, sitting up in his seat as though being told off by the headmaster.

“Gabe gave Lou the gift of
time
, son.”

The Turkey Boy wrinkled up his nose.

“Oh, you’re fourteen years old and you think you’ve all the time in the world, but you don’t. None of us have. We’re spending it with all the might and indifference of January sales shoppers. A week from now they’ll be crowding the streets, swarming the shops with open wallets, just throwing all their cash away.” Raphie seemed to crawl into the shell on his back for a moment, his eyes tucked under his gray, bushy eyebrows.

The boy smirked at Raphie, amused by the man’s sudden emotion. “But you can earn more money, so who cares?”

Raphie snapped out of his trance and looked up as though seeing the Turkey Boy in the room for the first time. “So that makes time more precious, doesn’t it? More precious than money, more precious than anything. You can never earn more time. Once an hour goes by, a week, a month, a year, you’ll never get them back. Lou Suffern was running out of time, and Gabe gave him more, to help tie things up, to finish things
properly. That’s the gift.” Raphie’s heart beat wildly in his chest. He looked down at his coffee and pushed it away, feeling his heart cramp again. “So we should fix things before…”

He ran out of breath and waited for the cramping to fade.

“Do you think it’s too late to, you know”—the Turkey Boy twisted the string of his hoodie around his finger, speaking self-consciously—“fix things with my, you know…”

“With your dad?”

The boy shrugged and looked away, not wanting to admit it.

“It’s never too late—” Raphie stopped abruptly, nodded to himself as though registering a thought, nodded again with an air of agreement and finality, and then pushed back his chair, the legs screeching against the floor, and stood.

“Hold on, where are you going?”

“To fix things, boy. To fix some things. And I suggest you do the same when your mother comes.”

The young teenager’s blue eyes blinked back at him, innocence still there, though lost somewhere in the mist of his confusion and anger.

Raphie left the room and made his way down the hall, loosening his tie. He heard his voice being called but continued walking anyway. He pushed his way out of the staff quarters, into the public entrance room that was empty on this Christmas Day.

“Raphie,” Jessica called, chasing after him.

“Yes,” he said, turning around.

“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is it your heart? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he nodded. “Everything’s fine. What’s up?”

Jessica narrowed her eyes and studied him, knowing he was lying. “Is that boy giving you trouble?”

“No, he’s fine, purring like a pussy cat now. Everything’s fine.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Eh?” He looked toward the door, trying to think of another lie, another untruth to tell somebody for the tenth year running. But he sighed—a long sigh that had been held in for many years—and he gave up, the truth finally sounding odd yet comfortable as it fell from his tongue.

“I want to go home,” he said, suddenly appearing very old. “I want today to be over so that I can go home to my wife. And my daughter.”

“You have a daughter?” she asked with surprise.

“Yes,” he said, a simple word filled with emotion. “I do. She lives up there on Howth Summit. That’s why I’m there in the car every evening. I just like to keep an eye on her. Even if she doesn’t know it.”

They stared at each other for a while, knowing that something strange had overcome them that morning, something strange that had changed them forever.

“I had a husband,” she said suddenly. “Car crash. I was there. Holding his hand. Just like this morning.” She
swallowed and lowered her voice. “I always said I’d have done anything to give him at least a few more hours.” There, she’d said it. “I gave Lou a pill, Raphie,” she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye now. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave him a pill. I don’t know if all that stuff about the pills is true or not—but if I helped Lou have a few more hours with his family, I’m glad, and I’d do it again, if anyone asks.”

Raphie simply nodded, acknowledging her two confessions. He’d put it in their statement, but he didn’t need to tell her that; she knew.

They just looked at each other, staring but not seeing. Their minds were elsewhere, thinking about the times gone by, the lost time that could never return.

“Where’s my son?” A woman’s urgent voice broke their silence. As she had opened the door, a burst of cold air filled the station. Snowflakes were trapped in the woman’s hair and clothes and fell from her boots as she stamped them on the ground. “He’s only a boy.” She swallowed. “A fourteen-year-old boy.” Her voice shook. “I sent him out to get gravy granules. And the turkey’s missing now.” She spoke as though delirious.

“I’ll take care of this.” Jessica nodded at Raphie. “You go home now.”

And so he did.

O
NE THING OF GREAT IMPORTANCE
can affect a small number of people. Equally so, a thing of little importance
can affect a multitude. Either way, a happening—big or small—can affect an entire string of people. Occurrences can join us all together. You see, we’re all made up of the same stuff. When something happens, it triggers something inside us that connects us to a situation, connects us to other people, lighting us up and linking us like little lights on a Christmas tree, twisted and turned but still connected on a wire. Some go out, others flicker, others burn strong and bright, yet we’re all on the same line.

I said at the beginning of this story that this was about people who find out who they are. About people who are unraveled and whose cores are revealed to all who count. And that all that count are revealed to them. You thought I was talking about Lou Suffern and the Turkey Boy, about Raphie, Jessica, and Ruth, didn’t you? Wrong. I was talking about each of us.

A lesson finds the common denominator and links us all together, like a chain. At the end of that chain dangles a clock, and on the face of the clock registers the passing of time. We see it and we hear it, the hushed
tick-tock
, but often we don’t feel it. Each second makes its mark on every single person’s life—comes and then goes, quietly disappearing without fanfare, evaporating into air like steam from a piping hot Christmas pudding. Enough time leaves us warm; when our time is gone, it leaves us cold. Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time of which we do not have enough; it is time that causes the war
within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely. Time cannot be packaged and ribboned and left under trees for Christmas morning.

Time can’t be given. But it can be shared.

A
LL MY LOVE TO MY
family for your friendship, encouragement, and love; Mim, Dad, Georgina, Nicky, Rocco, and Jay. David, thank you. Thanks, Ahoy McCoy, for sharing your boating knowledge. Thank you to the HarperCollins team for your support and belief. Thank you, Jonathan Burnham, Michael Morrison, Kathy Schneider, Katherine Beitner, and Maya Ziv. Special thanks to my wonderful editor, Sally Kim. Thank you, Marianne Gunn O’Connor, for being You. Thank you, Pat Lynch and Vicki Satlow. Thank you to all who read my books, I’m eternally grateful for your support and for allowing me to fulfill my absolute passion.