Silence was the only reply, but there was the scent of food in the air, and her mother had said she’d be home all evening. Bailey left her suitcase in the entry hall and wandered past the living room in the direction of the kitchen. “Mom?”
A light glowed over the stovetop, but there wasn’t a plate on the counter or any dishes in the sink. Ghost fingers feathered over Bailey’s skin as she hurried to the staircase. The walls were lined with photos, and she couldn’t help but slow to look at them. Baby Bailey with two teeth and a pink-bowed topknot. Her brother, Harry, in footed pajamas. Stiff school photos, group shots of gymnastic teams, Little League, soccer.
Prom photo of Harry and some tall bombshell whose pinkie-and svelte figure-he’d been wrapped around until graduation last June. Then, oh…
Prom photo of Bailey and Finn. She tried forcing her gaze away-God, what had she been thinking when she bought that silver dress?-but then it snagged on Finn. Finn, two years older, eons more fascinating than any boy she’d ever known.
She’d chosen silver to match the thick steel hoops he wore in his ears. Of course the color washed out her blond looks, but who wouldn’t look washed out compared to Finn, with his bad-boy bleached-on-black hair and his brooding brown eyes? He’d worn motorcycle boots with his dark-as-night tuxedo, and by the time they’d arrived at the dance, he’d already yanked free from his neck the bow tie his grandmother had been so careful to tie for him.
He’d never been careful with anything but Bailey.
It had only made him more dangerous, more imperative to run away from. She’d done it ten years ago.
Forcing him out of her mind, she climbed the last of the steps. “Mom?”
A scuffle down the hall sent her toward Harry’s room. In the doorway, she halted, relieved to finally find her quarry sitting on Harry’s bed, her back half turned. Surely with a little forthright conversation she could convince her mother to swallow her pride or her heartbreak or whatever was keeping her out of the store. Bailey could jump back in her car and drive away from Christmas and from Coronado. Maybe tonight!
“Mom, I’ve been calling you.”
Tracy Willis swiveled to face her. “Oh, I didn’t hear you, honey.”
Bailey swallowed. The last time she’d seen her mother had been at Harry’s high school graduation. But the older woman looked as if years had passed instead of months. Her face and neck were thin, her blunt-cut hair straggled toward her shoulders. It looked gray instead of its usual blond. She wore a pair of muddy green sweat pants and shearling slippers. A football jersey.
Another unwelcome memory bubbled up from the La Brea tar at the back of Bailey’s mind. Her mother, lying in an empty bathtub in Bailey’s father’s flannel robe, sobbing, unaware that her kindergarten daughter was peering through the cracked door. Her kindergarten daughter who was wondering why her daddy had left and made her mother so miserable. It could have been yesterday, an hour ago, ten minutes before. There’d been a bumpy mosquito bite on Bailey’s calf and she’d stood there, silent, scratching it until it bled like red tears into her thin white sock.
A shudder jolted her back to the present, and she shoved the recollection down and cleared her throat. Old memories, just another reason to get away from here ASAP. Trying to sound normal, she asked, “Is that the top half of Harry’s high school uniform you’re wearing?”
Her mother absently plucked at the slippery fabric, the hem nearly reaching her knees. “It’s comfortable.”
“So’s a shower curtain, Mom, but it’s not a good look. What are you doing in here?”
“I…” Her mother shrugged, then made a vague gesture behind her. “Just, just…”
Bailey stepped inside the room to peer around her mother’s newly skinny body. “You’re eating in here?” A small saucepan, more than half full of mac and cheese, was on the bedspread behind her mother, a fork jammed in the middle. “You’re eating out of the
Okay, Bailey ate out of pans often enough. Weren’t Lean Cuisine microwave trays pans, after all? But her mother didn’t eat out of them. And her mother didn’t let people eat in bedrooms.
Bailey snatched up the food and tried catching her mother’s eye. “Mom, we need to talk.”
“Are you hungry?” Tracy asked, her own gaze wandering off. “It’s not from a box. It’s my recipe.”
Her stomach growling, Bailey forked up a mouthful. “We need to talk about the store, about Dan, about what’s going on.” She retreated toward the room’s windows and the desk that sat beneath them. Leaning her butt against the edge, she swallowed, then pierced some more pieces of macaroni. “Mom-”
“I don’t want to talk about Dan.” Tracy still didn’t meet her eyes.
This wasn’t good. Her mother didn’t sound reasonable and willing to step back up to her responsibilities. “Mom-”
“And now you’re here to take care of the store.”
“Yes, but Mom-” Someone had upped the volume on his speakers, and “Joy to the World” blared its way into the room through the half-open window. Grimacing at the oh-so-inappropriate background music, Bailey clunked the pan onto Harry’s desk. Then she twisted to shove shut the wooden sash.
The houses were so close together, she was peering right into Mrs. Jacobson’s rear garden. There was a man there, a wide-shouldered man. She couldn’t see his face, his back was turned to her, and he was carrying a Christmas tree through the kitchen door.
Her heart thumped. Her stomach clenched.
He could be anyone, her common sense told her. A handyman. Another neighbor. A generic good Samaritan spreading holiday cheer.
But that wasn’t what her intuition said. Her intuition was cringing away from the glass and the soul-freezing knowledge of who was really moving through Mrs. Jacobson’s back door.
She should ignore her silly intuition. She should turn off those goofy internal warning bells and get back to real business. She should face her mother and insist they talk.
But her mouth was suddenly so dry, she couldn’t find her own voice.
December 25 wasn’t going to arrive soon enough, that was certain. Because Bailey had a very bad, very unignorable feeling that Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past had both come home to Coronado for an untimely visit.
The word
Chapter 2
With the door shut behind that mysterious figure next door, Bailey had managed to put him from her mind to concentrate on talking with her mother about her recent separation and The Perfect Christmas. The effort hadn’t gotten her anywhere, however. So she’d followed Tracy to an early bedtime and woke up early as well, to now find dark-rimmed eyes staring into hers.
Bailey jumped, pressing back against the pan-cake-flat pillow of her childhood, then relaxed again as she realized she was gazing at one of her old band posters and into Kurt Cobain’s compelling-likely drug-addled-gaze. Even still, she felt a tug of attraction.
Once you jonesed for a bad boy, you always jonesed for bad boys.
But she wasn’t going to think about bad boys, or mysterious strangers, or even the possibility that the mysterious stranger next door was Finn.
