Page 28 of Spicy Nick

“I don’t care what it is. This doesn’t feel right. This guy doesn’t sound like an angel, Scout; he sounds like a stalker!”

“Just listen, okay? He wasn’t a stalker.”

“Okay, hon; sure. Whatever you say.” But I’m already thinking of everything I need to do. First thing tomorrow morning, I’m gonna call the city and find out where they hired their Santa from. Next, I’ll contact the airline and try and get a lead on who was assigned to the seat next to Scout’s. After that?—

“You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”

“Doing what?”

“Figuring out what you’re going to do, how you’ll prove that he’s not an angel.”

“Not exactly, no.” I hadn’t even gotten to that part. Yet.

She smiles knowingly at me. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s something like that. Anyway, as I was saying, the first time I landed in Oberon, you weren’t there. Edge—that’s what he calls himself—picked me up in my old Mustang.”

“You mean a car that’s the same make and model, right? Not the actual?—”

“No. The actual car.”

“That’s impossible. You gotta know that’s impossible, right? I mean, do you even remember the VIN?”

She cocks her head to the side and asks, “Is it impossible? Are you sure about that?”

“Scout…”

“I know how it sounds, Nick. But my paperwork was in the glovebox, and it was all up-to-date.”

“It was probably fake.”

“I thought that, too. But if it was, it was a good enough fake to fool Ryan.”

“Ryan? What’s he got to do with it?”

“That’s not important right now.”

“I’m pretty sure it is.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Because it wasn’t the same Ryan. That’s what I’m trying to explain. It was a do-over, at least, that’s what the angel called it; it was a Christmas freebie. He said he was giving me the gift of seeing what Oberon would have been like if I’d stayed away, if I hadn’t come back five years ago.”

“And did he?”

“Well, that sure seemed to be the case. Unless this has all been an elaborate hoax and you and Ryan and Dan are all in on it.”

“You know I’dneverdo something like that,” I protest. “I can see how much this has upset you. I could never?—”

“Shh. I know.” She presses a quick finger against my lips, silencing me. “That’s why I have no choice but to believe it was real.”

“So what happened next?”

“Well, I still didn’t know what was happening, so I drove back to the house. When I got here—that’s when it really started to hit me. There were no decorations, no rosebushes—they’d all been cut down, or dug up, or something. There were no cats. Cole wasn’t here; and you weren’t here either. Your phone wasn’t working. Lucy, apparently, had left town. I think she’d taken both of the girls to Arizona for the holidays, which just…”

“And you’re sure it wasn’t a dream? What about an hallucination? Did you have something to drink on the flight? Could he have slipped something in it without you noticing?”

“You do realize that I’ve been married to you forfive whole years, right? Some of your paranoia has rubbed off. Of course, I thought about all of that! I tried for days to debunk his story. So, you’re kind of reinventing the wheel, right now.”

“Days? What days?”

“Nick! I’m trying to explain, but I can’t get a word in!”

---