Three Nights before Christmas (2 page)

Of all the aspects of life outside she’d taken for granted, control over who got to see her naked was one of the greatest.

When the guard was satisfied Lacey hadn’t squirreled anything away, she handed her a package with the distinctive logo of the catalog the inmates and their families were allowed to order from. It had been opened. “Congratulations. Someone really likes you. Got you the good stuff.”

Blood rushed to Lacey’s cheeks as she pulled a heap of new clothes from the package. Her old clothes were probably a size or two too small, so she’d needed release-day clothes. In here, it never paid to have the best of anything. She’d had to tell Sawyer long ago to cut down on the number of care packages he sent, since other women were becoming jealous—or even despondent from the fact their own husbands hadn’t visited, much less ordered them luxuries like candy and comfortable clothes.

But Sawyer hadn’t bought her these clothes. Jenna, her lawyer, had. And Jenna had awesome taste. Black jeans, faded and distressed in places that would draw attention away from the fifteen pounds Lacey had packed on through years of carb overload and little activity. A hunter-green Henley that would match Lacey’s eyes. And an oatmeal-colored winter sweater that felt snuggly warm without being bulky. None of it matched Jenna’s impeccable style; these clothes could’ve belonged to the old Lacey, the one who repaired faulty freight train engines instead of clogged prison toilets. The outdoorsy young woman who barreled through the northern states at a hundred miles an hour, not the pallid woman whose every step seemed to take tortoise-like determination.

Lacey had just bent over to step into the plain cotton underwear when the shriek of an alarm split the air and a red light strobed across the room. Surprise flashed on the guard’s face as she laid her hand on her gun and rushed to the door. “Don’t move,” she shouted at Lacey on her way. “Not a single muscle, understand?”

Jaw practically unhinged, Lacey watched the door slam and heard the click of the deadbolt as she was left alone—doubled over with only her ankle decently covered by the underwear. “God,” she muttered, “if you’re up there, this isn’t funny.”

By the time the guard returned, Lacey’s back had seized up. She’d given up on staying completely still, but she hadn’t wanted to risk ticking the guard off so she’d sat down naked on the metal bench bolted to the wall, using her new clothes as padding because she didn’t want to think about how many other nekkid butts had sat on this bench. When the guard came back in, she made an exasperated noise that sounded like it cleared a hell of a lot of gunk from the back of her smoker’s throat. “Gone two hours and you couldn’t even bother to get dressed? Get your lazy ass moving. I don’t have all day.”

Lacey nearly choked, holding back her response.
Freedom. So close. Don’t screw it up.

Once Lacey was dressed, the procedure for securing her freedom whizzed past in a blur of paperwork. She was given a check for $327.32, told to call her parole officer within twenty-four hours, escorted through a series of gates, and wished the best of luck.

“Someone coming to pick you up or you need a ride to the bus station?” the guard asked.

“My lawyer’s coming.”

The guard nodded and slammed the final gate closed behind Lacey with a threatening clang that made her jump.
Don’t ever come back
, its echo across the snowy parking lot seemed to say.

I won’t
.

“Lacey!”

Her head jerked around at the sound of her lawyer’s voice coming from a distant end of the parking lot. Jenna Macintosh waved as she slammed the door of her SUV closed and strode toward her, looking savvy and oh-so-cute in her pointy glasses and feminine suit with her breath frosting the air. It took Lacey a second to remember she was actually allowed to cross the lot herself, but then her feet were moving, taking her first steps in the journey toward home. Before she knew it, she was engulfed in her second hug of the day. The unexpected contact froze her for a second until she could coax her arms to return it.

“Hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” she said. “There was a situation in one of the pods and it slowed everything down.”

“I got some work done, no problems.” Jenna’s tremendous smile lit up the grayness of the sky, the asphalt, the prison walls. Lacey hadn’t seen anyone smile like that—so genuinely, so openly—in a hell of a long time. Not unless they were planning something violent. Weird strands of discomfort slithered through her.

“You want to grab something to eat? Maybe some real coffee? There’s a Starbucks nearby.”

Oh, my God, I can go to Starbucks. Starfreakingbucks!
Lacey slowly let her own smile break free. “Is it too early for a pumpkin spice latte?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been mainlining those puppies for weeks. Come on.”

Jenna led her to the car, where Lacey tossed her bag of old clothes on the back seat. “Thanks for the new clothes. I really appreciate you ordering them for me.”

“You’ve got clothes and things at your brother’s place, right?” Jenna reversed out of the parking space.

Lacey’s attention snagged on the prison walls, growing more distant as they pulled out of the lot. How strange that they looked the same on both sides but filled her with entirely different emotions. “Yeah. I think so. I didn’t think to ask.” Sawyer had packed up her apartment after she’d been convicted, so she figured her stuff was probably in his attic. She glanced down at herself. “I hope my winter coats still fit. I porked up a bit. Then again, maybe the extra layer of fat will keep me warm.”

“Are there places you can pick up gear locally in Marietta, or should we try to find you a coat before we head down there?” Jenna asked, neatly avoiding commenting on Lacey’s weight.

“Marietta’s not exactly a one-horse town,” Lacey replied, relaxing a little as the conversation slipped toward inconsequential things. “We have electricity and running water and all the mod cons.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve just never been there. It could be one of those places with nothing but feed stores and flannel shirts and men who chew tobacco and whittle.”

Lacey’s smile grew. “Careful, city girl. That hole you’re digging just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

They hit a Starbucks not far from the prison, and Jenna bought Lacey a venti pumpkin spice latte, since they hadn’t passed a bank where Lacey could cash her megabucks prison earnings. Lacey cradled the to-go cup in both hands, letting its warmth seep through her cold fingers. How in the world would she rebuild her life on just over $300? A hundred of that was a parting gift from the state so she wouldn’t be utterly destitute—only partly destitute. The rest was the sum total of her earnings working as a mechanic for the janitorial office for nearly three years. She’d earned sixty cents an hour; the prison had taken most of that back to recoup what they spent on her “room and board.” They’d put some in an account for her to spend through the prison catalog. The last few cents an hour went into this release-day check.

Good thing Jenna had taken on her case pro bono.

When they made it to the outskirts of Billings, Jenna grabbed her phone from the center console and handed it over. “Feel free to call your brother or anyone else if you like.”

Lacey stared at the phone. She’d faced Sawyer and his silent disappointment in the visitors’ room plenty of times. Today would be different. She didn’t want to forge their new relationship over the phone. She wanted to be able to judge his facial ticks, to get and give a hug. To meet him on equal footing.

She slid the phone back into the console. “Thanks, but we’ll be there soon enough.”

The drive to Marietta lasted a few hours, and Lacey pressed her face against the window for every second of it, drinking in the passing trees and snowdrifts. Feeling the brush of warm air from the Volvo SUV’s heater against her cheek. Sinking in to the luxurious seats, so much more comfortable than the hard plastic chairs at the prison. Listening to the familiar chants of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” over the radio.

Once upon a time, it would’ve ticked her off to hear Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Now it lightened her spirit.

No more frozen meat patties. No more instant potatoes. No more taking on the worst jobs because someone else is too lazy to. No more guards on power trips.

If that wasn’t enough to make someone ding-dong merrily on high, she didn’t know what was.

“So, did they give you the contact details for your parole officer?”

Damn. There went her nascent holiday high. “Yeah, and they told me to get in touch with him in the next twenty-four hours.”

“I’d do it as soon as you get home, since tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. You don’t want to risk your freedom just because he’s out of the office and forgot to turn on his voicemail.”

Lacey’s heart leapt to her throat. “They can be that petty?”

“Depends who you get.”

Lacey fished the business card out of her jeans pocket. “Uh…Chester Robinson.”

“Ah, he’s ace. Ex-Marine so he doesn’t take any shit, but he’s also pretty good at figuring out what’s important and what’s not. Still, call him when you get home and see if he needs anything from you. He’ll probably just go over the rules with you. You know them already?”

“No alcohol. No firearms. Check in on whatever schedule he gives me. Call him immediately if I ever have a run-in with anyone in law enforcement. And no associating with other ex-cons.”

Ex-con. I’m an ex-con.
She’d never said the word out loud before. No matter how many times she rolled it around in her head, it didn’t feel real, as if it belonged to someone on TV instead of a label she could own.

She hoped it never felt real.

By the time they drove through Marietta and made it to the farm a few miles past the town’s outskirts, Lacey’s stomach had knotted so hard it could’ve been tied by a sailor. Every piece of familiarity seemed to underlie how very different she was than the teenager who’d left home with the prospect of a big career and a chance to make her own way in the world. They passed the weathered sign she’d helped her dad make about two decades ago,
Gallagher’s Christmas Tree Farm
freshly painted in red with an arrow pointing left down the side road. Jenna slowed as the paved road turned into gravel, and even the sound of it hitting the SUV’s undercarriage took Lacey back to the nights she’d broken curfew to hang out with Dave, inching her mom’s car carefully over the drive in the hopes she wouldn’t wake her parents. If she had, they’d never confronted her about her tardiness. Sawyer, on the other hand, always seemed to know where she’d been, and after a couple of years he hadn’t even needed to voice his thoughts; she’d heard the criticism of her boyfriend enough to know how Sawyer rated him. Loser. Waste of time. Not good enough.

Damn it, but she
still
hated how right he’d been.

The gravel ended at a parking lot next to the log cabin she’d grown up in, the one her grandparents had built and her parents had extended. The outside was decorated for Christmas, something she knew Sawyer did only because it added to the farm’s festive feel and made customers more excited about buying the perfect tree. He’d strung bunting and flashing white fairy lights around the barn near the house, and he’d lit fires in a couple of forty-gallon drums flanking the barn’s door, brightening the ever-shortening winter day and providing some heat.

“Why don’t you go ahead and find your brother, and I’ll park the car,” Jenna suggested.

“Thanks.” Lacey couldn’t keep the gruffness from her voice, no matter how hard she swallowed. She slid out of the SUV, closing the door behind her and making her way across the lot. The chilly air bit through her sweater and shirt. She crossed her arms, pretending to warm herself up instead of giving herself a hug. She wandered through the cut firs and pines and spruces, displayed like a fragrant forest in their stands. She found Sawyer on the other side of the lot, feeding tree after tree through the baler, slimming them down with plastic wrap so families could get them in their cars and trucks. When he glanced up, his face ticked through several emotions so quickly she couldn’t catalog them. Her feet stopped moving. She’d been given two hugs today, one by Charlene and one by Jenna. Now she realized she wanted only one, a bear hug from her big brother that would make words unnecessary. An embrace that would sweep away all the disappointment she knew he felt even though he refused to come out and say it. One that would let her know they could start over, as fresh as seeds that hadn’t yet grown roots, much less fungus.

He straightened away from the baler, his gaze shifting over her just as hers did to him. How strange to stand and look at him after years of sitting uncomfortably across from him at a table and chairs too small for her, much less his carrying-sycamores-is-easy body. His face was hard, inscrutable and chiseled into sharp planes, but in the two months since she’d seen him his beard had grown unruly and hid most of his lower face. She was tempted to tell him he looked more like an ex-con than she did. He probably wouldn’t find the humor in that, though.

“Was beginning to think they hadn’t let you out.”

Well, shit.
So much for that hug. “There was some stuff going down at the prison.”

She glanced at the ground, disappointment just about crushing her. She’d been stupid to expect anything effusive from him. Hell, he’d seemed more comfortable visiting her in prison, where strict rules regulated their interactions. Deciding it was better to keep things on the surface than to hope for something more, she asked about the scout groups that had come for their trees. “How did the big pick-ups go?”

“They went. Sorry I couldn’t reschedule them.”

Lacey shrugged. “It’s nearly Christmas. I get it.” It wasn’t as if he could spread the sale of Christmas trees across the year. Plus, her parole date had moved a few times. Until the gate had slammed closed behind her, she hadn’t fully believed it would happen today.

“Your room’s all ready and there’s plenty of food in the fridge if you’re hungry. I won’t be able to stop for long, not today.”