A Family For Christmas

He offered her the option to choose a book from the library he’d brought up with him. It covered an entire wall of the cabin. She did, and they read for a while. Until lunch, which she’d offered to help him make. He hoped his refusal didn’t come out sounding as desperate as it felt. He’d been looking forward to the ten minutes alone in the little kitchen that it would take him to grill up some cheese sandwiches.

Out of habit, when they first sat down, he studied the bruises and cuts on her face, making certain there was no sign of infection.

“You really don’t have to look at me right before you eat,” she said. “I’m fine with you looking away.”

“You say that as if you wouldn’t find it painful to have someone look at you and need to look away.”

Her shrug touched him. The ease with which she blew off pain bothered him, too.

“You’re used to walking around with bruises on your face.”

“You can see the scars, Doctor. They aren’t all that noticeable when I have makeup on, but you know this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. Which is why I know I’m fine. I’ve never taken even so much as a morning off from work in the past.”

“You weren’t left for dead in the past. Hadn’t faced a night of exposure. And you’re right, I’ve seen the scars. A couple of the cuts you have right now, most particularly the one on your lateral left cheek, had I not butterflied it, would have left a much deeper scar than the ones already there.”

“I thanked you for them. The butterflies.”

“I’m not looking for thanks.” He wasn’t looking for anything. But he got kind of frustrated when she silently finished half a sandwich. Some answers would be nice.

“I’m of the opinion that these current injuries are worse than those left from previous beatings.”

She didn’t respond.

“How did you go to work...on those mornings you didn’t take off?” His conversational skills definitely rusty, he filled his mouth with sandwich.

“Shawn owns a surfing school. I run...ran...the business end. Taking registrations, billing, scheduling, that kind of thing. A lot of it I could do from home.”

He focused on the way the bruise to the right of her lip moved when she spoke. It was showing no signs of the yellowing that would tell him it was healing with the rest of them.

He didn’t have to know her story. Her health was the only thing that concerned him. Still, they had to do something. “So, you hid out until you looked better. What about the scars?” he asked even as he remembered her mention of makeup.

“I didn’t always hide out,” she said. “Everyone knew that I sucked at surfing. As many times as Shawn tried to teach me, I just couldn’t make myself stay up on the board. Anytime I had bruises, he’d just say I’d tried to go surfing again.”

“And doctors believed him? What about the reports...”

“No doctors,” she said, her tone firm. Then she glanced at him, almost apologetically, it seemed, and said, “I’m not real fond of those who work in your profession.”

Interesting.

“No offense,” she added, biting into the second half of her sandwich. “You’ve been great. I feel fine. Well enough to leave...”

He raised his eyebrow, glad that the right side of his face, including the eye itself, still moved along with the left.

“...I know,” she said after a second under his silent look. “I promised I’d stay at least until tomorrow.”

They finished eating. He didn’t ask why she disliked doctors. She didn’t talk about leaving. He let her help him clean up—because it consisted of throwing away the napkins on which he’d set their sandwiches and washing out the glasses they’d used for their tea.

All that was left, then, was moving back to the living area—she on the couch, he with his book in the easy chair next to a side table with a lamp. He could read just fine. He could do most things just fine.

His right eye wasn’t getting the exercise it needed, though. Every hour mattered.

* * *

CARA COULDN’T STOP looking at him. The first time had been an accident. He’d turned a page; she’d looked up and caught his eye. Sort of. He hadn’t been focused on her, but she’d been in his line of vision. Usually a person would have fully focused, once caught out with that kind of sideways glance, right?

Without even a hint that he’d seen her, he looked out the window to the left of him. She’d waited for him to say something. Eventually he’d gone back to his reading.

And so had she.

She wouldn’t have expected that a woman so close to leaving the earth would care at all about broadening her mind, but the book she’d chosen—mostly because he’d been waiting for her to make a choice and it had been right in front of her—dealt with international espionage. Nothing she had any familiarity with whatsoever. The writing style was good. And the story was actually interesting enough to take her mind off the interminable wait.

Except for the break she took every ten minutes or so to look at him. Mostly, he was reading. Or staring out that window.

Maybe he saw something in the dry desert landscaping in the front yard that she was missing. Lots of sagebrush. Trees, because they were up on a mountain. But it was mostly rock and dirt with patches of weedy grass. Rough ground, all of it.

As she well knew. Cold ground, too, where it wasn’t exposed to direct sunlight.

He was doing it again. Turning his eyes enough that he had to see her watching him. Saying nothing.

He definitely had his secrets.

But that was fine. So did she.

Santa Raquel, California

LILA WAS IN her office, tending to a pile of paperwork—state compliance forms—early Friday evening. It had been two days since the near all-nighter she’d pulled pursuant to Edward’s call for help. She’d slept nearly twelve hours straight on Thursday after work, but she still didn’t feel rested.

Weariness had been slowly creeping up on her over the past few weeks, interspersed with bits of almost excitement-laced hours of energy. So unlike her. If things persisted, maybe she’d call her doctor.

The Stand was unusually busy. They’d added twenty more beds over the past year and still were almost filled to capacity. So much violence. So much pain.

It was no wonder she was tired.

And yet...with her right hand hovering over a signature line, she paused, took hold of her mouse in her left hand and opened a private folder on her computer. From day one she’d been saving pictures—taken with permission and for her personal use only—of recovered residents, survivors who were living happy, productive lives. Some of them for the first time.

As her gaze passed from one to another, she was filled again with the same sense of peace, knowing that she was not only where she was needed, but where she needed to be. Wanted to be.

Her gaze came to rest on the digital picture collages she’d made of the children who had come through the Stand—some with their mothers and a few alone. Looking at those smiles settled her entire being. She hadn’t been able to save her own little girl. But there was no doubt in Lila’s mind or heart that from her place in heaven, her own sweet girl watched over every single one of the TLS children. Lila and her baby girl were in partnership on this one.

People thought she lived alone. That, other than work, she spent her entire life alone. She knew some of her closest associates had concerns about her lack of outside life. She knew that, with loving hearts, they wondered about her. And every day, when she went out on the premises and offered smiles, when she brought calm to traumatic situations and gave peace to destroyed hearts, she also knew that she wasn’t alone. That she didn’t live alone. She and her baby girl, her precious daughter who’d only made it to the age of twelve, were in this together...

A knock sounded on her office door, and the pen she’d been holding over a form left a jagged mark on the signature line.

“Come in.” With her left hand still on the mouse, she quickly clicked out of the folder.

An impressive-looking suited man stepped halfway into her office. His short graying hair was impeccably in place, as was the silk tie inside his buttoned jacket. His features, while handsome, weren’t outwardly remarkable. Her stomach jolted anyway.

“Edward! I thought you’d gone. You have your dinner tonight...” Dr. Edward Mantle had been invited by a group of doctors he’d met at a recent hospital charity event to join them for their biweekly boys’ night out.