The Christmas Promise(25)

Chaz watched the monitors and saw the janitorial team working in Menswear, Juniors’, and the housewares department. The two outside monitors showed Carla getting out of her car at the loading dock entrance. Chaz spread out the sandwich and chips for Donovan. After several minutes Chaz walked up the stairs to the main floor, looking for him. Carla was pushing her cart outside the ladies’ restroom and he caught her before she went inside. She was wearing small headphones on her ears and didn’t see him. He touched her arm and she flinched. She looked terrible. “Hey!” he said. “Where’s Donovan?”

She took one headphone away from her ear. “Miss Glory could watch him tonight.” She snapped the headphones back on and heaved the cart into the restroom. Chaz felt lost. Donovan had become a regular part of his night, and as he looked out over the empty store buzzing with vacuums, he was as lonely as he’d ever been.

He went down to the mailroom and turned on the lights. High on the top shelf, below the air return, sat a large white envelope. He climbed up on the counter and pulled it down; it was from GKD Systems and was addressed to Judy Luitweiler. He walked down the hall to the back entrance and pushed through the door. The Dumpster was at the far end of the loading dock. He ripped the envelope to shreds before tossing it up into the Dumpster. In the rush of the season, he knew that no one would be wondering where the results of those prints were. He slammed the Dumpster lid shut. Now he could collect his last paycheck without any problems, and no one would ever know.





Seven



Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

—Victor Borge



Miriam turned the lights on in the kitchen at one thirty. She jumped when she saw me sitting at the table in the dark, my hands wrapped around a cup of tea. A red notebook sat opened on the table in front of me.

“I’m sorry, Miriam,” I said. “Did I wake you?”

She squinted in the light and moved to a chair, sitting down. “I just seemed to jump awake and couldn’t go back to sleep.”

I swirled the last of the tea around in the cup and watched it slosh up and down the sides. “Another case of the jump-awakes,” I said. “I jumped awake at twelve forty-two, the same time I always wake up on this day.”

“Why is that?” she said.

I drank the last of the tea and stared at the empty bottom. “It’s the time Walt died.”

Miriam was quiet. “I lost Lynn at three oh-seven in the afternoon, and no matter what I’m doing on that day I just know what time it is and everything stops.”

I nodded, cinching my robe tighter. “Lynn was a very kind man. He was good to you. I could tell.”

She laughed. “He was a kind man. People loved Lynn. His students admired him and I adored him. He had a goodness in him that attracted people. Although we were a couple, everyone just naturally took to him over me. He was very affable with people. I’ve never been that way.”

“I never noticed,” I said.

She shook her head and smiled. “I can be an opinionated snob.” I didn’t say anything. “You know it’s true, Gloria!”

“Well, I might have phrased it differently,” I said.

She brushed her hand in the air. “However you phrase it, it’s all the same. I’ve said things that I’ve regretted. I’ve let the door close on relationships and I’ve regretted it. Lynn never did that.” She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. “What was your husband like?”

I looked up at the ceiling and sighed, smiling at the thought of him. “He was a tall and splendid man. I met Walt when I was eighteen years old. He was thirty-four and my mother begged me not to get involved with him, but he was so different from the boys in our small Georgia town. He had a mind and a soul that I just loved being around. We married and my mother thought I’d lost my mind. You know when I got married no one, not even my mother, explained the lifetime of commitment that it would take to make our marriage work. Nobody told me that during that first year or two you just kind of muddle your way through.”

“Lynn and I managed to muddle through twenty-five years together,” she said.

“Thirty-five for us.”

“And how many children?”

I stood and walked into the dark living room, picking up an eight-by-ten photo from the mantel. I handed the family picture to Miriam. It had been taken when I was in my thirties and still had curves in the right places. Walt stood beside me, along with our three older children, and our toddler sat on my lap. “That’s Andrew, our oldest. He was seventeen there. He has three children and is a computer programmer now.” I pointed to our daughter with long, brown hair. “That’s Stephanie. She lives just about ten minutes from here and has two children. She’s a medical transcriber and is able to work at home. That’s Daniel,” I said, pointing to our son with reddish brown hair. “He was thirteen in that picture but now has two children and works for a land-development company in Georgia.” I pointed to the toddler on my lap. “And that’s Matthew, our youngest.”