Hesitantly, the boy nodded.
“Okay. Let ’er rip.”
Gaze lowered, Timmy Harmon mumbled something Sam couldn’t understand. “Say it again?”
Timmy raised his eyes. “I want a daddy.”
Hell.
Oh, how Sam wished he’d listened to the damn elf. Feeling his throat freeze, he wondered what he could say. I’m sure your mommy will get you one?
Involuntarily, his eyes fastened on the boy’s mother. The soft smile was still in place. She was standing near the exit, too far away to hear what was being said, particularly with the piped-in holiday Muzak, but she looked curious, apparently aware that he was taking more time with her son than he had with the others.
“Where’s your daddy?”
Timmy folded his hands neatly in his lap. His cheeks were pink. The small shoulders lifted in a shrug.
Well, you had no business asking that, Mclean, none at all. But he wondered. He definitely wondered.
A woman who made cookies for her son to give to Santa, who had hair like autumn, skin like winter and—if they were anything like her son’s—eyes green as summer leaves…had someone walked away from that? And from this boy?
Keep your mind on the job.
“Listen,” he began. He no intention of implying that Santa could dish up dads for Christmas. “Fathers… you know, they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. I mean, without one you only get yelled at half as much, right?” The smile he attempted fell flat.
His logic made no impression on Timmy, who shrugged again, then asked, “Will you tell Santa?”
Sam looked at the little fellow, so hopeful, so tentative. To say he was out of his element didn’t begin to describe the ineptitude Sam felt. What could he say? “I’ll tell him.”
Timmy stared at Sam a long time. Probably wondering if he should trust a’guy who admits to wearing a fake beard.
Sliding off Sam’s lap to stand at his knee, the child issued a very polite thank-you, then turned and ran off.
The exit from Santa’s Holiday Village was a green runner between two rows of painted cardboard pine trees. Timmy got about halfway down the twenty-five-foot walkway before another child approached for an audience. Sam smiled absently at the little girl, lifting her to his knee. He kept his eyes on Timmy.
At the end of the makeshift aisle, Timmy jogged right, running headlong for his mother and the man Sam guessed was Granpop. The woman received her son by holding out her arm, pulling him in for a quick hug and bending low to speak to him. When she straightened again, she looked directly at Sam and smiled.
It was a thank-you, nothing more, nothing less.
It turned her face into a work of art.
Sam continued to stare after she and her family had walked away. He spent the next forty minutes uttering Santa-isms and a half hour after that had changed out of his costume. He exited the employee lounge, then halted as abrubtly as his bum leg would allow.
Facing him on the opposite side of the wide hall was a community bulletin board crowded with notices about lost dogs, skis for sale and jobs wanted. Standing in front of the board were Timmy Harmon and his grandfather.
“Put on a blue one,” Timmy instructed, bouncing with approval when his grandfather stabbed a colored thumbtack into the corkboard.
“All right, that’ll do it.” Nodding, the older man stood to study the three-by-five card he’d posted. “She’s going to thank me for this. Eventually.”
He put a hand on top of Timmy’s red head. “Let’s see if your mother’s through shopping yet. She’s happier in a market than a gopher in a hole.”
Timmy giggled, and they moved off. Sam wondered if the little boy would recognize him as they passed, but he was chattering up a storm and didn’t even glance Sam’s way. Apparently, out of the red suit Sam was just a stranger with a cane—and Timmy’s mother’s cookies in a brown paper bag tucked in his hand.
Thinking of the cookies drew a growl from his stomach.
Thinking of Timmy’s mother drew him to the bulletin board.
He felt like a voyeur, looking at a board in which he took no interest except for the small card with the blue thumbtack at the top. His eyes first widened, then narrowed as he read the message.
WANTED Man to work on small organic farm. Able to relocate and live on premises for room, board (good food!) and small stipend with potential for future partnership. Must like children. Please reply to Gene, 555-1807
Sam leaned on his cane, staring at the notice. Seemed Timmy wasn’t the only one who thought they needed a man around the house.
Gazing down the hall, he felt a stirring of interest he hadn’t felt for anything in a long while.
When his stomach spoke up again, he unrolled the bag of cookies, reached in and extracted one thick, uniformly browned circle. He planned to have a late lunch or early dinner in the coffee shop next to his motel room, but in the meantime—
The first bite nearly brought a tear to his eye. He tasted oats and brown sugar. He tasted coconut and pecans and…home.
Standing in front of the bulletin board, he chewed slowly, letting the taste—and the feeling—linger.
Home. It had been a long time. It seemed like forever.
Sam stayed where he was until a couple of employees emerged from the lounge, arguing about which of the town’s two movie theaters they should visit Coming back to his surroundings, he pretended to scan the board. But his gaze never strayed, really, his attention never shifted, from the card stuck to the board with a blue thumbtack.
Leaning back in a desk chair barely large enough to support his big frame, Joe Lawson pointed a finger at his old buddy Sam and nodded. “You look good in a full beard. The white tended to age you, but…” He shrugged and a slow, deliberate grin spread across his amiable features.
Closing the door behind him, Sam entered his friend’s office with an expression more befitting the Grim Reaper than Santa Claus.
“Now, Sammy—” Joe held up a hand as Sam limped into the room “—if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were peeved. And that can’t be, because Old St. Nick is a jolly old soul.” Clasping his hands behind his head, Joe kicked his feet up on the desk and frowned. “Or is that Frosty the Snowman?”
One hundred percent certain now that the Santa job had been Joe Lawson’s pathetic attempt at a practical joke, Sam shook his head.
“Neither,” he corrected, approaching the desk. “Old King Cole was a merry old soul.” Smiling, he cocked his head. “I don’t suppose you remember the one about Humpty Dumpty?”
“Humpty Dumpty?” Joe looked bemused.
“Yeah. How did that go?”
“You’re kidding.”
“No.” Resting his cane against the desk, Sam folded his arms. “Recite it.”
Shrugging at his friend’s sudden interest in nursery rhymes, Joe recited, “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great—Hey!”
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, but not as great as the spill Joe took when Sam lifted his feet off the desk and shoved him backward. The cushy leather chair in which Joe liked to rock back listed all the way, right