Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(41)
Author: Hope Ramsay

He nodded, “You used to say we should offer up all that we’ve lost. You said it was the only way to be happy. But you’re not happy. Are you crying because of me?”

She looked at him, tears running down her cheeks. How could Sharon be the Sorrowful Angel? Sharon never cried.

“Stop blaming yourself for everything. Make room in your heart. Start laughing again. Pay attention to your children. Love again. Don’t you know that the things you’ve lost eventually come back to you with love?”

She flickered like a television set. She wasn’t real, was she? She was a hallucination, and he was probably talking right out loud to the air. But she was wise. Sharon had always been wiser than her years.

“I’ve got to go. You’ve got to offer me up to the light.” She got up and kind of drifted down the center aisle of the church. She was wearing her Watermelon Queen dress. The one she’d been married in. Had she been wearing that yesterday when he first saw her?

He couldn’t remember. She had been so beautiful in that dress.

Just then Clay started playing “Silent Night” on the church organ. Sharon stopped right before the altar, where a strange golden aura winked into existence. The light hurt Stone’s eyes, but even so, he knew there was a being inside that light.

Sharon reached toward it, her face filled with longing. But she couldn’t go any farther. She was tethered with an ethereal line that ran from her chest to his.

Every tug on that string made it harder for Stone to breathe.

And Sharon was crying.

His memory turned back to that awful morning when they’d argued about Sharon’s wish to attend college. He’d tried to hold her back that morning. And she’d cried. Her tears had surprised the hell out of him. And it hurt so much that his last memory of Sharon alive was the sight of her crying.

He needed to let her go. For her own sake. For himself. And for Haley. He needed to send Haley’s angel to Heaven where she belonged.

“You can go,” he whispered—halfway meaning those long-ago courses she had cried about on the day she died.

“You can go,” he said again, this time giving her a mental push toward the light. “You don’t have to stay here with me. Besides, Haley needs you to go,” he said, his voice thick. “It’s the only thing she wants for Christmas.”

The cord between them broke. His chest swelled as he took a deep, deep breath. As Sharon broke free, he immediately felt lighter somehow. She walked up onto the altar, and the angel embraced her, and then they were gone, leaving behind Lillian fussing with her flowers, and Millie and Thelma polishing brass, and Clay playing the organ like a virtuoso.

He rested his hands across the top of the pew and laid his head on them. His head was pounding, and his ribs ached. But he felt so much better.

Chapter 22

Lark woke up lonely and late.

She cracked her eye and cataloged the standard Days Inn furnishings: An oak bedside table bolted to the wall, a digital clock that said eleven-thirty, teal curtains edged with gray winter light, a bedspread with a cabbage rose motif that was echoed in the wallpaper border.

The long bureau had a flat-panel television tuned to CNN. She had fallen asleep with the television on, the sound set just above a whisper. The news anchor was covering a story about a kid in some midwestern town who had raised a load of money for toys and gifts for the disadvantaged. The kid in the story reminded her of David Raab—braces; too-large hands; serious, intelligent eyes.

A pang of regret squeezed her heart. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She needed to get up. She’d driven for six hours last night—to the Virginia border. She still had a couple of hours to go, and it was almost noon.

She stretched and sat up in bed. CNN had moved on to international news. More news about the tense situation in Africa and the Middle East. It sometimes seemed like nothing ever changed.

She picked up one of the many pillows on her bed and hugged it. She was so tired of recording history for everyone else. She rocked back and forth. This wasn’t fear talking. She wasn’t afraid of going back into the field. She could handle bullets and mayhem. She could find that invincible place in her mind and fool herself. She had done it yesterday.

She could do it, if she wanted to.

She just didn’t want to.

What did she want?

All thoughts led her back to Last Chance, South Carolina, where people genuinely cared about one another.

She thought about Pop as a young man, going there and falling in love. She thought about Nita, who was too scared to hold on to what she wanted. She thought about a certain small-town cop who worked hard to keep everyone safe.

She stopped thinking.

And started feeling. She leaned back against the padded headboard and squeezed the pillow to her chest. It was hard to be rational about Stone. He was in every way her deepest fantasy. A big, strong man who spoke with his body, and not with words. A guy who actually understood all of her deepest, darkest secrets. A family man who cared deeply, but who kind of bumbled his way through it all. He was adorable and serious and sexy as hell. He came ready-made with a big family, and damned if she didn’t long for that.

She stared at the ceiling for a long time, sorting through her feelings until she recognized the truth.

She was behaving like Pop.

Nita had been too scared to fight for what she wanted. And Pop had let Nita send him away. He hadn’t been brave enough either.

Maybe that’s what Pop meant about finding himself on the eighteenth hole. Maybe it wasn’t only about finding love in a sleeping bag. Maybe it was realizing that he had walked away from something really important because he was scared. Maybe he learned something from that.

Lark would never know, except that Pop’s version of Carmine Falcone always walked away. But Carmine Falcone wasn’t real.

And Stone wasn’t Carmine. Stone hadn’t sent her away. Yesterday afternoon, he’d told her she wasn’t ready to go back into the field. He’d told her he was worried about her. He told her that he’d had fun. She had pushed him away, not the other way around.

Idiot.

She didn’t want to run away like Pop and Nita. And she didn’t want to go back to Africa and shoot photos of starving kids. She wanted something different. She wanted to be part of someone’s family album, as stupid and ordinary as that might be.

She needed to stand and fight for what she wanted. She needed to ask for more. She needed to tell Stone that she loved him, even though she knew in her heart that he loved Sharon more. But if she never said the words, she would regret it for the rest of her life.

It terrified her. But then again, she had a role model in her mother. She didn’t remember Mom very well. But when Mom was alive, Lark had been happy and felt loved. Mom had showered love on everyone. Mom had been easy to love, so of course, Pop had loved her.

Terrence Wills had probably been like that, too.

Maybe she could be like them. She could be the person who came along second and was easy to love.

She picked up her cell phone and called her editor and told him she wasn’t going to Africa. He begged and pleaded. She stood her ground and told him all about her flashbacks and her fear of the camera’s shutter. He refused to take her resignation. Instead he gave her a leave of absence so she could go find herself. Lark found that mildly amusing.

She ended the call and noticed that she had fifteen voice-mail messages, and they were all from Stone. If there had been only one, she would have known he was merely calling to thank her for taking care of David and Lizzy when the shooting started.

But fifteen voice-mail messages said something else altogether. Her finger poised over the redial button. She should call him and explain why she’d left.

No.

No, Stone didn’t need her words right now. Right now she needed to act. And what she had to say to him was better said face-to-face. Maybe he would believe it when he found out that she wasn’t going to be on that plane to Africa.

Stone sat on a hard folding chair in the Christ Church fellowship hall waiting for Haley’s rescheduled Christmas play to begin. The kids were getting ready in one of the Sunday School rooms. All around him parishioners in Christmas finery were greeting one another.

He was here for the duration. After the play came the choir’s annual Christmas concert, followed by a traditional evening service. Christmas Eve was the one day of the year Momma got him to church—mostly because he enjoyed the music.

He was sitting down, feeling antsy and out of sorts. Why the hell hadn’t Lark returned any of his phone calls? Was she mad at him? He could understand that. They hadn’t parted well yesterday afternoon. He’d been too busy feeling guilty and thinking about Sharon. And he’d probably said some crazy things right after the shootings.

Well, he probably needed to let it go. Lark had to be on a plane to Africa tomorrow, so she was really busy. The thought left him feeling deeply depressed.

Yesterday he’d wanted to find a way to love her, but Sharon stood in the way. Now he wasn’t sure that was true. He needed to see Lark. He needed to figure this out.

“So, how’s your head?” Miriam Randall said as she sat down beside him. Today Miriam was wearing a bright green sweater and a costume jewelry wreath with a bunch of large sparkly stones. She cocked her head and studied him from behind her goofy trifocals.

“My head is pounding if you really want to know. And I’m feeling kind of strange.”

“Maybe that explains why you were in church earlier this morning. On your knees. Did that bump on the head knock some sense into you? Have you had a change of heart?”

He grunted a laugh. In some ways it definitely felt like his heart had changed. He couldn’t exactly explain the hallucination he’d had in church this noontime, but he’d felt lighter ever since. And more determined to speak with Lark.

“Are you ignoring me, son?”

“Uh, sorry. I’m kind of all over the place.”

“I asked if you were having a change of heart?”

“No, not really. I mean not about church.” He sighed. “Miriam, Arlene suggested a few days ago that I should consult you on the topic of love.” His face burned.

It was Miriam’s turn to laugh. “Honey,” she said patting his knee, “I gave you marital advice when you were eighteen. Near as I can see it’s still relevant, even if you are almost forty.”

He looked up. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Exactly what I say, but it’s so funny how people always misunderstand me. Now, you take Lark, for instance, I told her she needed to find someone she could talk to, and she thought I was suggesting she find a therapist.”

“You mean you really did give her a matrimonial prediction?”

“I’m surprised Lillian Bray didn’t trumpet it from one end of Palmetto Avenue to the other. But I think Lillian has the misguided notion that I only hand out advice to good Episcopalians. She’s a good woman but just a little narrow-minded.”

Stone studied the little old lady for a moment. “You told Lark she needed to find someone to talk to?”

“Yes. But not just anyone. Someone who really understood what was going on in her head. She’s quite afraid, you know.”