Page 5 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
Her mother shook her head and smiled. “This will be an interesting deposit for the memory bank.”
Arianna looked for the humor and didn’t see it. What a way to end Christmas Day.
Alden Brightman had worked the night shift at Saint Michael’s Hospital. He’d fallen into bed at eight in the morning after setting his alarm for 1:00 p.m. That was how it went at Christmas. Even though he’d done the big Christmas Eve gathering with his extended family before going to work, his parents still expected him to come over to open presents at two o’clock followed by Christmas dinner. Before he started working night shift as a nurse, it had been presents and brunch. His family had moved their gathering time back in an effort to accommodate him and he appreciated it. He didn’t do well on less than eight hours, but for Christmas he could suck it up and function fine on five.
He’d hoped to get five this morning, but it had taken him a while to get to sleep. It had been a crazy night in the emergency room—one man who’d celebrated too much had managed to fall off his deck and break his arm. Another guy came in needing help with an artificial bladder that was malfunctioning. That had been a new one for the books. A middle-aged woman had stripped off all her clothes and gone streaking through the emergency room (it had taken Alden and two orderlies to catch her), and another woman who needed to be hooked up to an EKG but wasn’t a fan of male nurses had screamed at him to get out. No wonder he always needed a full eight hours of sleep. His job could really take it out of him.
He was dreaming when the sounds of The Jackson 5 singing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” drifted in through the bedroom window he kept cracked open for fresh air, pulling him awake. It was probably just as well. Dreaming about trying to hook up with the Sugar Plum Fairy was sick and wrong. His subconscious was obviously still whacked out from having broken up with his girlfriend earlier in the year.
Except Cynthia was no Sugar Plum Fairy. She’d been a drama queen who could sit through the saddest movie dry-eyed but cry over a ruined dress. He’d stood by through six months of constant selfies, constant compliment-fishing and constant complaints over everything from where he took her to dinner to what he wore when he took her and what he said or didn’t say when they were eating.
“Are you really serious with that girl?” his mother had asked when Cynthia threw a fit after one of his nephews accidentally ran into her with his hot dog at a family Fourth of July barbecue and got mustard on her top. “She does not like children.”
Of course, he’d had to defend her. “No, she doesn’t like getting smeared with mustard.”
Deep down he’d known Mom was right, and it had finally begun to sink in that his dream girl had a nightmare side to her. In the end he’d realized Cynthia didn’t like anyone as much as she liked herself. As for him, he was just a placeholder, someone to use while she waited for a better model to come along.
Well, life went on. He hiked, he mountain biked, he worked. He hung out with his friends and he played with his dog. And once in a while checked his dating app. Then shrugged and repeated the whole cycle again, filling in the spaces in between with as much sleep as he could manage. Which he sure wasn’t managing at the moment.
In addition to the Christmas serenade pushing its way in through his window, he realized he smelled smoke. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, which put Buster, his Boston terrier on alert. He got out of bed, making Buster bark with excitement and join him as he looked out his window. It gave him a good view of the house next door.
He saw his neighbor and the woman he assumed was her daughter bundled in coats and standing on their snow-speckled front walk. The mother was tall, with light brown hair highlighted with silver. Her daughter was shorter and curvier. She’d probably come up to about his shoulder. Her hair, also a light brown, was long but she had it up in that kind of messy-bun thing women often did to their hair. She wore pajama bottoms and slippers under her coat. It had obviously been a quick exit. Smoke was wafting out the open front door of their house. What the heck?
Not your problem, he told himself. The older woman, Mia White, was nice. She’d brought him cookies when he first moved in. But the daughter was a shrew. He’d seen her standing on the front porch and heard her screaming into her phone on more than one occasion. She was good-looking—nice legs and a pretty, round face with full lips and a delicate nose. But he’d seen that pretty face contort into a scary mask when she was on the phone. (From a distance, thank God.) Yeah, there was a turn-on. If you were a masochist. Now what was she doing, trying to burn down her mom’s house?
Mia was rubbing her arms and stamping her feet, trying to keep warm. Chivalry demanded he go over there and see if he could help. Who bothered with chivalry these days, anyway? The shrew was bouncing up and down in an obvious effort to keep warm.
Well, shit.
“We shouldn’t be awake,” he informed Buster as he pulled a sweatshirt over his bare chest, glancing at the alarm clock that wouldn’t go off for another hour.
Buster didn’t agree. He barked and raced for the bedroom door.
If there was a fire, the women had probably already called 911. He slipped his boots on over his pajama bottoms, then informed Buster that there was nothing for him to do out there, shutting him inside the house. Probably nothing for Alden to do, either. But he’d be a rotten neighbor not to offer to help.
“Are you ladies okay?” he asked as he approached them.
“Oh, yeah, it’s a great day to stand around in the cold,” the younger woman said in a snotty voice. Hazel. Her eyes were hazel-colored.
Who cared? He’d left his nice warm bed for this? He ignored her and spoke to her mother, who appeared to be a rational human being. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Miss Snotball spoke for her. “No, we’re fine. We just had a little accident with the fireplace.”
“We forgot to open the damper,” her mom explained.
He nodded. “I assume it’s open now.”
“No, it’s not, I can’t find it,” snapped Miss Snotball.
Okay, well, that was an easy fix. He started for the house.
“The fire’s going out,” the snotball called after him.
“Getting the damper pulled out will help with the smoke,” he called back. Who started a fire in their fireplace and didn’t pull out the damper? Someone who wasn’t the brightest bulb in the string of Christmas lights.
He took a deep breath, then entered the house. The living room was filled with smoke and stank. They’d be leaving the door and windows open for a long time. He found the kitchen, grabbed a towel from where it hung on the stove handle, and wrapped it around his hand. Then he opened the kitchen window, took another breath and went back into the living room. A small fire was still burning and the smoke was still floating out of the hearth. He felt around for the damper, found it and pulled, and the smoke reversed direction and began swirling up the chimney.
Okay, good deed done for the day. His bed was calling. He dumped the towel on the coffee table and went back outside and joined the women.
