The Christmas Hope(5)

He shook his head.

“Miss Patricia, are you hungry?” She held on to Justin’s hand and led us into the small kitchen. “Would you like some coffee?” She poured me a cup and we sat down together at the table. I had looked through Rita’s apartment and gone over the expectations of the Department of Family Services with her on an earlier date so there was nothing left to do except wish them well.

I finished my coffee and stood to leave. “I’ll let you know when I’ll be back,” I said, opening the door.

“You can come by anytime for a confection, though,” Justin said, reminding me to come visit.

“I just might do that,” I said, looking in his eyes that held so much doubt.

Rita grabbed my arm before I walked out the door. “Thank you, Miss Patricia. Thank you for bringing my Justin back to me.”

I smiled at them, another one of my fragile families trying to start over again. Rita wrapped her arms around me. “I hope you have a beautiful Christmas!” I couldn’t say anything but waved as I walked toward the stairs and whispered a prayer that this time Rita would make it.

The day before I had typed Rita’s address onto the front of an envelope and used it as the return address as well. Enclosed were two gift certificates: one for a hardware store where she and Justin could find Christmas decorations and one for a nearby grocery store. They’d receive it in the mail by tomorrow at the latest. It wasn’t as much as what my mother had received in the envelope so many years ago but I hoped it was enough to help Rita and Justin have an extraordinary Christmas together.

I drove through Knight’s Auto Wash before heading to the office. I didn’t want salt buildup underneath, and Justin had left a trail of mud and dirt from his boots. I instructed the employees to move the seats back in order to clean well under them. They hadn’t done that last week. Once the car was clean, I drove to the office, turned on the computer at my desk, and rummaged through the Ramirez file, making sure it was updated. Weeks earlier many of the office staff had taken the last two hours of the day to decorate a small Christmas tree and hang ivy throughout the office. I made sure I had an appointment at that time so I could avoid the Christmas cheer and banter. Christmas was no longer a time of joy for me and I didn’t want to put a damper on the staff’s festivities.

I closed a drawer in my desk and the sound made a toy fish on Roy Braeden’s desk move to the tune of “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” I shook my head. For the last few weeks that fish had been driving me crazy. Thankfully, the dancing Santa was broken this year, although Roy picked him up every day trying to diagnose the problem. Roy had worked for family services longer than I had. His first wife died after twenty-eight years of marriage, leaving Roy lonely and depressed. Thinking he was in love, Roy married Ella a year after his wife’s funeral. It was a mistake. Roy realized he wasn’t in love but just desperate for companionship. The marriage lasted less than two years. Now he’d been dating Barbara for four years but was gun-shy about marriage although I often told him that he was going to lose Barbara if he didn’t marry her. She was a good woman and Roy was a good man. “You’re good for each other,” I said time and again to him. Roy was a father of four, grandfather of five and counting, and a good friend. I noticed a doughnut sitting on his desk across the aisle from me and I rolled over in my chair and swiped it, taking a bite. I didn’t think of it as stealing. I thought of it as doing him a favor. His cholesterol was up and he had no business eating a greasy doughnut. I heard his voice and pushed the last of the doughnut into my mouth. He walked to his desk and stopped.

“Patti, did you see a doughnut on my desk?”

I leaned over to look toward his desk. “No, I don’t see anything.”

He opened a drawer and looked inside. “I could swear I put a doughnut right here.” He started toward the lounge. “I’ll just go get another one.”

“There’s none back there,” I said, typing.

He threw up his hands. “All a man wants is a lousy doughnut to help him get through the day. Is that too much to ask?”

“From my view it looks like the man has had too many doughnuts over the years.”

He stopped and looked at me. “I guess you went into social work so you could encourage and uplift.”

I laughed as my phone rang.

“Do people say I’m heavy?” he asked, pulling his shirt across his belly.

I waved my hand to get him to be quiet and picked up the receiver. It was Lynn McSwain, our supervisor. He was calling from his cell phone.