Page 13 of His Christmas Star
Chapter Five
“You’re going to make some lucky guy a great wife someday, Star,” Daddy Nash said, blowing a smoke circle from his cigar.
“Daddy, I told you to call me Tobi. Star feels so stripperish.”
He snorted, and I was afraid he was going to choke to death right there in front of me, chugging on his final cigar. When he cleared his throat enough to speak, he shot me a look of unabashed amusement. “I’ll call you Star until the day I take my last breath because you are one.”
“Oh, sure,” I said on an eye roll, wishing he’d hurry up with that cigar so we could go back in where it was warm. I paused on that thought and sighed. On second thought, I’d offer him the grace to take as long as he wanted. It might be his last. By the sounds of Wanda and the look of Daddy, it was one of the last, that was for sure. I made a mental note to make a standing date with him every week from now on. “Guys are beating down my door to date me.”
“I didn’t say nothing about guys,” he reminded me on a puff of smoke. “I meant in general. Some guy giving you guff? I still have some fight left in me.”
I chuckled as he punched the air with his right hand. “If I ever need an enforcer, I know who to call.”
“You think about him much?” he asked out of the blue, his gaze pinned on the night sky as the stars started to twinkle. I’d arrived late, but I couldn’t head into town until my afternoon chores were done. Daddy Nash didn’t seem to mind. I suppose to him, every minute just ran into the next.
“Think about who?” I was afraid he would say Joe, and then I’d have to lie to the old man’s face.
“Cody.”
A puff of air left my lips at the name. Leave it to Daddy Nash to open that can of worms. “It would be a lie if I didn’t say nearly every minute of the day.”
“Even after all these years?”
I leaned forward and clasped my hands in a strange crisscross pattern only I could make. “I’ve learned one thing living at Heavenly Lane, and that’s this. Grief doesn’t have an expiration date.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” he said, holding up his grizzled hand to the sky, the cigar perched in his fingers. “I still miss Clarissa after thirty years.”
“It’s like that some days,” I agreed. “Most days, it’s not grief anymore, though. Cody was my twin, so it’s hard for me not to think about him. We were fraternal, but we had a bond that differed from most siblings. He’s always with me, and I try to see him as my guiding light now more than anything.”
“I’m going to find him, you know.”
“What now?” I asked, taking the butt of the cigar from him and making sure it was out before I put it in the garbage can.
“When I get up there, I’m going to find Clarissa, your grandma, and Cody. I want to find out what happened to him, and I’ll figure out a way to get you the message.”
I grasped his shoulder in silent solidarity for a moment. “I hope you can find him, Daddy, just not too soon, okay? I’d like to see your grumpy face for a few more years.”
He laughed then, and it sounded like it used to before the stroke. “Star, my time here is coming to a close. I know it, the doctors know it, and you know it. That’s okay. I’ve lived my life here. I’ve done a few good things in the world and tried to make right what I did wrong. I got nothing left to do here, but I have a lot of things left to do once I leave. I’ll have more freedom then, girlie. It might be the only way to make Joe see reason.”
“What’s up with Jo-Jo lately?” I asked with careful precision. “Wanda told me he hasn’t been around here much, and he’s pricklier than a porcupine every time I see him.”
Daddy Nash tapped the fingers of his right hand on the arm of the wheelchair for a few minutes while he stared at the sky. I wasn’t sure if he was going to sleep or didn’t know what to say. I suspected it was the latter.
“How about I take you back inside?” I asked the old man. “You must be getting cold.”
“Joseph was a wrong I tried to right, Star.”
I lowered my butt back to the chair. “I don’t understand,” I said, spinning his wheelchair to face me.
“I don’t think Joe did either, and that’s why he’s not been around.”
“He can be angry, but he can’t abandon his father when he needs him,” I said adamantly. “He’ll regret that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. If I weren’t prepared for Joe’s anger, I wouldn’t have told him the truth.”
“You knew he’d be angry?”
“There was good a chance as any,” he said with a head nod. “I told him the truth about him and his momma. He didn’t like it so much, I guess.”
