Together by Christmas

MIRANDA JAMES PUSHED aside the wicker basket of crusty rolls at the center of the table and replaced it with her high school yearbook, open to the page with photos of her graduating class.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But we really did go to school together. Grades one through twelve. See?” She pointed to Warren’s picture first, then her own.

Catherine Cox, producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, peered through dark-framed glasses at the caption beneath the photo. “‘Warren Addison,’” she read, squinting at the small print. “‘Favorite subject: anything to do with books. Nickname: Warty.’”

She shifted her attention to Miranda. “Warty? Warren Addison had warts?”

“No. A pet frog in grade eight.” Miranda tapped her pen against the saltshaker, impatient to move on. But Catherine was scrutinizing the yearbook again, holding it close to the window, where the light was better.

“Trust you to be gorgeous even in high school. Let’s see what they wrote about you….”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Miranda reached for the book, but Catherine shifted it just beyond her grasp.

“‘Miranda James,’” she began, quoting the couplet beneath the photo, “‘Most beautiful and the boys’ favorite pick. If she wasn’t so nice, she’d make us sick.’”

“Give that here!”

Catherine relinquished the book, laughing. The husky sound caught the attention of two men lunching at a nearby table. Their glances flickered over Catherine and settled on Miranda.

“Okay, you went to school with Warren Addison,” Catherine conceded. “But what makes you think he’ll be onside for a video biography? I’ve spoken to the publicist at his publishing house and he’s notoriously uncooperative when it comes to promoting his own work. Everyone but him is talking about Where It Began. He wouldn’t even return Oprah’s call when she asked him to appear on her show.”

“We grew up together, Catherine. I heard him read the first story he ever wrote to the class.”

Well, she probably had, she just couldn’t remember.

“Don’t worry about me not being able to deliver,” she continued. “The challenge will be editing all the material down to a reasonable length.”

Catherine opened her briefcase. “I suppose if anyone can do this, it’s you. Here. I had Accounting cut you a check.”

Thrilled, Miranda accepted the check before Catherine could change her mind. None of her other projects had ever been accepted this easily.

“I’d love to chat longer, but I have another meeting.” Catherine laid a fifty on the table to cover lunch. “Would you mind saving a copy of the bill for me? I need to run, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t stay and enjoy dessert and coffee.”

“Thanks, Catherine.” For everything, she wanted to add. But the svelte producer was already hustling out of the restaurant. The two men at the next table noticed her departure, too. One of them tried to catch Miranda’s eye, but she gazed deliberately down at the yearbook still in her hands.

“Can I get you anything else?” The server was back, whisking away the used wineglasses and salad plates.

“Mmm…” She glanced up from the yearbook. “An espresso, please?”

“Certainly.”

She hadn’t looked at this book for years…probably not since her mother, in one of her house-cleaning frenzies, had boxed it with a collection of other childhood mementos and shipped it to Toronto. She flipped through the glossy pages, finally returning to the photos of the 1990 graduation class.

A sweet ache lodged behind her ribs. She recognized the feeling as nostalgia, but cynically, she had to wonder. Did she yearn for what had been? Or for what never could be?

She focused on the picture of Chad English. With his smooth blond hair, tanned skin and even features he didn’t need his killer smile to stand out from the crowd. Still, he had it. As well as eyes born to flirt. She felt he was watching her from the yearbook page, about to include her in a fabulous secret.

Ah, Chad.

If she’d been the most popular girl in that small-town class of eleven students, he’d definitely been the most popular guy. Was she the only one who had seen them as the perfect couple? It seemed she’d dated just about all the guys in her grade and the one above it at one time or another. Except Chad. And Warren, of course, but he didn’t count, because as far as she knew, he’d never asked any of the girls out.

Maybe he was gay. Mentally filing the idea for future consideration, she refocused on Chad.

Why had he never asked her out? She’d always wondered. They’d been good friends since grade seven—still were good friends. But while he’d flirted plenty, he’d never taken their relationship that one crucial step further.

Of course, after his marriage to Bernie, Miranda had filed her feelings for him away as inappropriate. They’d continued their friendship, but she’d been cautious not to overstep the bounds of appropriateness.

Despite her circumspection, she knew Bernie didn’t like her. Actually, the other woman never had. Miranda picked out the photo of the petite girl with the light brown hair. Cute, bordering on pretty, but not a woman to turn a man’s head. Yet she’d turned Chad’s, when Miranda never had.

Oh, don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. This is ancient history…. The person she was supposed to be interested in right now had had nothing to do with all of that.

She studied Warren’s photo again. His dark hair was unruly, curling around his ears and down to his collar. In his long, thin face, his nose stood out prominently.

A different emotion stirred inside her now. Uncomfortable, unsettling. Warren had always had that effect, she remembered.

He hadn’t been an attractive kid. Especially compared with… Miranda’s gaze slid to Chad’s photo, then back to Warren’s. His recent success couldn’t help but have an impact on her assessment. Those dark-gray eyes she’d once found disconcerting now gleamed with intelligence and wit. The smile she’d thought of as crooked sported an ironic twist.

She stared a few minutes longer, but the photograph refused to yield anything more. She snapped the book shut and returned it to her briefcase, frustrated that of all her classmates, Warren was the one she’d known the least.

“Your espresso, miss.”

She smiled her thanks to the unobtrusive server before taking a sip.

Yes, Warren had been the most enigmatic of her classmates, and yet, he would be the subject of her next video biography. The check from the CBC, which she now carefully stowed in a zipper compartment of her purse, made it official, even though the idea had come to her only a week ago, during her Sunday phone call to her mother.

Annie James, who still lived in the small town in Saskatchewan where Miranda had grown up, had asked, “You remember Warren Addison?”

“Sure I do, Mom.”

“He’s back in Chatsworth. They say that book he wrote is a real blockbuster. They say there’s a producer who wants to make it into a movie.”

“I know. Where It Began is topping the bestseller lists all over North America.” She’d read the novel and loved it, found it absolutely magical.

“Well, he’s living on his parents’ farm, in that old clapboard the Addisons abandoned when they retired to Victoria.”

According to the dust jacket of his book—which, frustratingly, had included no photo of the author— Warren had a master’s in English from the University of Toronto and now resided and worked in New York City. That he would choose to return to a backwater prairie town remained incomprehensible to Miranda.

“Whatever for?”

“Lucky says he’s working on his second book. The press wouldn’t give him any peace in New York.”

Good old Lucky. The gray-haired proprietor of Chatsworth’s tiny grocery store could always be counted on to hand out more than change and a receipt at the till.

After the call ended, Miranda had thought over her mother’s news. Between projects at the moment, she’d been on the hunt for a challenge. And this struck her as the perfect opportunity. She could do a video biography on Warren Addison and spend some time with her mother.

Annie hadn’t been the same since a heart attack last June. The specialist in Regina had diagnosed only minimal damage, but the scare had raised a specter of worry in the fifty-eight-year-old and had caused her to curtail her lifestyle as well as to revamp her diet.

Miranda was guiltily aware that she hadn’t seen her mother since that week in Regina when Annie had undergone a battery of medical tests. She’d known her mother was waiting for an invitation to Toronto, but she’d been afraid that Annie might end up staying permanently, and so she’d stalled.