Page 10 of The Trouble With Christmas

I spend the next half hour making calls and driving around the small beach village scanning the area for any signs of dogs or abandoned religious statues. It’s really a wild goose chase in my opinion, but Ollie is glued to the window, straining his eyes down every alley and sandy path we cross.

It’s after lunch when I finally locate replacement nativity characters a few towns over. “You getting hungry, bud?”

He blinks up at me and frowns deeply before nodding slowly. “I guess so.”

I’m not sure why this little guy tugs at my heart. I’ve never cared about kids until he and his mom and Joselyn stayed at my safe house those few weeks.

“You’re not hungry?”

“Not really.” His voice is quiet.

“What do you want to do?”

“Nothing, I guess. I just hoped…” His narrow shoulders rise, and he looks out the window again. Suddenly, he sits up straight and shouts so loud my stomach jumps. “Wait! Stop the car! Stop, Ironman!”

I quickly hit the brakes and pull onto the shoulder, and before I kill the engine he’s unbuckling his seatbelt. “Oliver, wait. What’s going on?”

“We’re going to miss him! He was moving fast!”

“Who?” I jog around the car and help him out. As soon as his feet touch the ground, he takes off running into the sandy thicket.

“Oliver!” I hustle after him, all the way down the hill through the skinny trees to a small, wooden bridge.

I’m thankful I pulled on boots this morning instead of my usual Italian leather loafers. I’m able to get down the hill, which is covered in a mixture of pine needles, sand, and leaves without sliding.

When I reach him, he’s bending down beside a stream studying a deep set of prints in the muddy bank. “I see some tracks down here.”

“Those look like deer tracks.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “You know what dog prints look like don’t you?”

“Oh yeah, sure…” He almost seems embarrassed, and I ease up.

“We can search around here. I think if I were a dog, I’d hide stuff in the woods.”

“Maybe he takes stuff because he doesn’t have a family and he’s lonely, and if we find him, maybe we could give him a home and a place to live so he doesn’t have to steal Baby Jesus anymore.”

My brow furrows. I never longed for a pet when I was a boy, yet as long as I’ve known Oliver, all he’s ever talked about is having a dog. His mother tried to appease him with Chartreuse, his odd little tree frog, but I know where his heart is.

“Ollie, the chances are great if it’s a stray dog, he’s fearful of humans. He might even try to bite you.” I do my best to keep my tone kind. “You can’t run up on an animal that’s never been around humans.”

His little mouth purses, and he nods, looking at his feet. “I just thought… I thought… You know, you and me, we know how it feels to be lonely.”

My chest tightens, and I take a knee beside him. “Yeah, we do. But why now?”

“Because it’s Christmas.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, and his round eyes are wide. “He doesn’t have to be bad if we help him.”

“Ollie, we don’t even know where—”

As if drawn by an intuition I’ve heard children sometimes possess, he takes my hand. I follow him across the narrow wooden bridge down the sandy path worn into the side of the hill to a small hollow beside a tree.

“This is where he is.”

Kneeling again, I peer into the small hole before taking out my phone and shining a light. Glassy blue eyes flare back at me, and my heart jumps.

“Shit!” I fall back on my ass before quickly getting on my knees and retrieving my phone. “Sorry, Ollie. Don’t repeat that.”

“What was it?” He steps forward, but I hold out a hand, shining my light again.

Now I can see the glassy eyes are in fact, the eyes of a doll. I’m about to reach inside when again, I’m startled by the lap of a warm, wet dog tongue. Jerking my hand away fast, I manage not to swear.

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