Page 15 of His Christmas Star
I opened the small drawer in the stand next to his bed, and sure enough, there was a letter that said ‘Joe’ in a woman’s handwriting. “I’ll make sure he gets it when the time is right,” I promised, slipping it into my bag.
“Not before I go, got it?” he asked, a shaking finger pointed at me.
I crossed my heart and winked before taking his hand and tucking it back under the covers. “Get some sleep, or the nurses aren’t going to let me come back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he promised with a wink before I walked to the door.
I turned back to him, his body tiny and grizzled in the bed. “No passing on to the great ranch in the sky before you talk to Joe, got it?” I asked, my finger pointed at him like a schoolmarm.
“I can’t make no promises, but I sure will try, Star.”
I waved and walked down the hallway, saddened by the visit. When I climbed in my truck and turned it over, I remembered the look in Daddy Nash’s eyes as he stared up at the stars with envy. I’d better convince Jo-Jo Nash to get his head out of his Wranglers and talk to his father, and I’d better do it fast.
The stairs to her cabin creaked under my weight as I climbed them. I didn’t know why I’d come. I should be home in bed, but I couldn’t stay away. I lifted my hand to knock on her door when a sound drifted toward me. I cocked my head and listened to the strains of an acoustic guitar as it floated on the breeze. The melody took me back to my childhood. Back to a time when I knew who I was, or thought I did, anyway.
The chords ofWhat Child is This?filled my head. I closed my eyes and remembered the girl who learned to play the guitar to prove the band teacher wrong. She had to do that too many times in her life, and I was one of her transgressors. I’d apologized for teasing her relentlessly, but I’d always feel bad about it. What we saw as different about Tobi, she didn’t. She’d had those hands her entire life and knew what they could do. I’d learned that lesson a little too late, and only because Daddy Nash caught me carrying on about her with Cody and chewed us a new one. He forced us to move rocks from one side of the ranch to the other and chewed at us the whole time about learning what it meant to be a real man.
The music faded, and I shook my head, raising my fist and knocking on the door with far less anger than I would have three minutes ago. Leave it to Tobi to quell my anger without trying. I took a moment to remind myself that she didn’t deserve emotions that had nothing to do with her.
With drooping shoulders, I turned away from the door. That inner voice was right. I wasn’t mad at Tobi, and she didn’t deserve more hassle from me. It was time to go home, have a shot of whiskey, and climb into bed.
“Nash?”
I paused on the top stair. “I was just leaving. Don’t let me interrupt your evening.”
“But you knocked on my door. Did you need something?”
“On second thought, nothing you can help me with, so have a good night.”
She reached inside the door and grabbed her coat off the hook, shrugging it on before joining me at the stairs. “Maybe I can’t, but the ridge is a perfect place for a walk this time of night. Want to join me?”
She slid her hands into a pair of gloves, and my eyes widened. “They’re new,” she said on a shrug as she climbed down the steps. “Beau made them, and they protect my hands better. He knows how my hands get in the winter.”
“That was nice of him. He has a real talent for leatherwork.”
“I have to drive the sleigh for the community Christmas dance, and he didn’t want my hands to get shredded the way they did last year.”
A shiver ran through me, and I was happy she couldn’t see it. The memories of that night were burned into my mind forever. I’d seen a lot as a law enforcement agent, but when a friend loses their three-year-old child who is deaf and she can’t hear you calling to her, that’s terror you’ve never known. Finding her inside the pasture with a thousand-pound bison transcended understanding. When Tobi had gone out to search for Poppy, she didn’t take her gloves. Holding the reins in a below zero windchill had caused extensive damage to the skin and tissue of her hands. She was lucky they’d healed as well as they had.
“Wait,” I said when I’d processed what she said. “Heaven plans on having you, Tobi Star, drive the sleigh for a Christmas dance? She does know your nickname in high school, right?”
“Nope, she sure doesn’t. She wouldn’t care anyway,” she said as we walked along the path past the barn and up the ridge. We’d walk along the fence line, and while I stared at the beautiful bison in the fields, her trained eye would search for holes in the fence that bison horns might have made.
“Tobi the Grinch is going to carry the townsfolk over the river and through the woods. This I have to see.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be there, Sheriff.”
Her comeback was snappy, but I could tell I’d gotten to her. She hated that nickname in school, even though it was accurate. Tobi had hated Christmas with a passion, not that I could blame her. On Christmas Eve, her parents were killed when her dad drove home drunk after a party. I suppose as a kid, that would ruin the holiday for a long time to come. Since then, she’s been less verbal about her distaste for the holiday, but asking her to drive a sleigh on Christmas Eve was brave.
“Oh, I’ll be there. I’m already coordinating the security for it. Though, Blaze will hire extra security guards to help control traffic and make sure no one gets lost or wanders toward the ridges.”
“For the record, I don’t hate Christmas anymore. I’ve matured enough to understand that my father was an alcoholic. Regardless of the date, his decision to get behind the wheel drunk is what killed them. Nothing else.”
“I’m glad. I can understand why Christmas Eve is bittersweet, though. You did lose your mother that night, so I don’t expect you to be full of holiday cheer.”
We walked in silence along the ridge until we reached the lower pasture. She sat on a log near a firepit and motioned for me to join her. It was unseasonably warm tonight, but that would end according to the weatherman, and the temps would drop below zero tomorrow night.
“Do you think he’s up there?” she asked, her head turned to the sky.
