LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER NINE

      RYDER couldn’t believe the cars. The parking lot was full. There were cars parked all along the driveway, and halfway to Willowbrook.

      “Don’t people have better things to do on Christmas Eve?” he asked grouchily, finding a place, finally, to squeeze his car in where he wouldn’t have to walk too far carrying Tess to get to the house and the pond.

      But he wasn’t really grouchy. As soon as he had turned into that driveway he had felt as if he was coming home.

      Tess was babbling happily, Bebo held firmly in her clutches. He’d finally realized it wasn’t exactly gibberish. It was Boo and Eggie she was talking to. When she said Emma, Um-uh, it sounded like Mama. She said those three names over and over again, running them together, in a little melody of joy. She was still humming excitedly as they got out of the car, as she strained in his arms, looking.

      He went up the front steps. There was a basket on it, with a sign. Admission by Donation. The basket was overflowing.

      He wandered through the house, allowed the sensation of homecoming to deepen.

      “Um-uh, Boo, Eggie,” Tess cried.

      But it was obvious the house was empty.

      “Burglar heaven,” Ryder said out loud. How like Emma to just trust the whole world—her house open, the basket of money on the stairs. “At least she doesn’t have a television anyone would want,” he said to Tess, heading out the back door.

      He followed the Christmas-lit pathway to the pond. Throngs of people skated, swirling in bright patterns over torch-lit ice. The sounds of the laughter and conversation of those gathered around the bonfires drifted up to him.

      It was a Christmas-card-pretty scene. Emma must be loving this.

      He moved through the crowds at the warming shed, and suddenly Sue and Peggy burst out of a little cluster of people around the bonfire, looking taller on their skates.

      “Tess!”

      Tess went shy. “Boo, Eggie,” she whispered, and then leaned out of his arms, offering Bebo back.

      The shyness was momentary.

      “DOWN,” she ordered, and her best friends each took a hand and patiently walked her down to the ice and her little sled, sitting nearly where they had left it.

      Mona, harried inside the warming shed, looked at him, looked again, and then as beautiful a smile as he had ever seen lit her face.

      “Isn’t this great?” she shouted. “Welcome back.”

      “It’s great,” he agreed, but he felt as if he could not wait a moment longer. “Where is Emma?”

      “I haven’t seen her for awhile. If you do see her, could you tell her I need some more gingerbread? That’s about all we have left.”

      “Will do. The girls have Tess.”

      “I’ll watch out for her.”

      Ryder focused on the pond. Surely with all the things that needed to be doing, Emma wouldn’t be out there skating? He remembered her delight in her newfound skill. Then again, maybe she would be. Maybe, he frowned, she had even found someone to dance with her. But, no, as he searched the throngs, he did not see a familiar red toque with crazy curls protruding around the edges of it.

      He did see Tim bringing the big team of horses around the pond, steam coming out their nostrils, poofs of snow exploding around their huge feet. The harness bells jingled. He went to meet him.

      Tim pulled up beside him, jumped down, helped each person off the sleigh.

      He turned and regarded Ryder not with surprise, but with approval, judging him a man who had done the right thing.

      “She’s not here,” Tim said, not a doubt in his mind what Ryder had come back here for. And it was not Holiday Happenings.

      Ryder felt his heart fall. Not here? But where—

      “She left for the bus station in Willowbrook. At least an hour ago. The bus was supposed to be in at eight, so she should have been back by now.”

      Tim’s eyes met his, something in them unspoken.

      But Ryder heard him loud and clear.

      He headed for Willowbrook breaking all speed limits. It seemed as though every residence and business in the tiny hamlet was in competition to have the finest Christmas display. The bus station stood out for its lack of Christmas attire, a gray, squat building with no cheer, inside or out.

      Through the front plate-glass window, he saw Emma sitting in a row of hard chairs, the only one in the station except for a clerk behind the counter. The red Santa hat was on the seat beside her.

      Seeing her there, so alone and so hopeful despite the fact it was now nearly nine-thirty, Ryder should have been able to tell himself that he had come back for her.

      He should have been able to confirm he was a good man after all.

      He had come just in time, to help Emma finally know what a good Christmas was.

      He’d come back, a choice. Choosing to live, even if it meant risk. Last year, one year ago on Christmas, standing in the ashes of his life, he had made a choice not to live anymore, and to not forgive himself, ever, for what had happened there.

      Now, standing here, he was aware of making another choice, this time to live after all. And finally, to forgive himself.

      He’d come back here because he had started off on a road to one place ten days ago, and instead he had ended up somewhere else. And by some miracle the place he had ended up had turned out to be exactly where he needed to be, where he was meant to be.

      Was it possible that all things, even the things he had no hope of ever understanding, like two people gone too soon, lost too young, could have a meaning if his heart opened to them?

      Watching Emma, he was so achingly aware of what she was hoping would come off the next bus.

      And while she waited for it to get off that bus, watched the main door, the place the passengers came through into the bus depot, love would do what love did. The unexpected, the unscheduled, love would slip in the side door.

      Hadn’t it already? Hadn’t it come to her in the form of Tim and Mona, and Peggy and Sue?

      Hadn’t it come to her on a stormy night nine days ago?

      Ryder walked through the side door. A man in chains had entered her life nine days ago, but a free man went to join her now.