“Oh, Sam,” she muttered aloud to her dead husband. “You really ruined Christmas this year, didn’t you? And here I thought you’d never top the mess you made of things last year.”
Of course, the catastrophe of last Christmas now paled in comparison to what the holiday promised to hold this year. Last year, all Sam Harmon had done was drink himself into oblivion and pass out on the Christmas tree. Of course, that, unfortunately, had resulted in the tree crashing into the fireplace. Which, even more unfortunately, had caused the tree to catch fire. And that, most unfortunately of all, had turned their entire house into a blazing tinderbox.
And as if all that still hadn’t been enough to ruin the holiday, after the smoke had cleared, Sam, who had always, always, insisted on controlling the checkbook—because, hey, he was the man, and the man always took care of the finances, unless he was a total wuss—had revealed that he had neglected to pay a few bills here and there recently. Like, for example, their homeowner’s insurance.
At least the two of them had come out of it alive. Homeless and penniless, but alive. And there had been a bright spotthe tragedy had made Sam finally realize that he needed to get help with his drinking. By summer, he’d been sober for nearly six months, and things had begun to look up. They’d even decided to start a family, and in August, Mindy learned she was expecting.
But the good times were short-lived. The day after she’d revealed her pregnancy to him, Sam started drinking again. And a few nights after that, on his way home from work via Stumpy’s Bar and Grill, he’d driven into a tree at a muchhigher-than-legal speed, and had been killed instantly.
Leaving Mindy, at twenty-seven years of age, widowed, expecting and broke. His life insurance had been just enough for her to bury him, pay off the mortgage for a house they didn’t even have anymore and bail herself out of the massive credit card debt they’d accrued over the years, thanks to Sam’s unrelenting spending. But there had been nothing—absolutely nothing—left to spare.
She supposed she should still be grieving for Sam—after all, it had only been four months since his death. But she’d had so many other things to think about in that time, so many other matters that had commanded her attention instead—taking care of herself and her unborn baby, making sure she had enough to eat and a place to sleep, and a way to pay for all the medical expenses, not to mention the endless array of things that the baby would need in the coming months. Sam hadn’t given her much choice in the matter. He hadn’t left her in a state where she could afford to grieve.
And, truth be told, their marriage had hardly been a happy one. They’d wed barely a month after meeting, and Mindy had realized—too late—that she really didn’t know her husband at all. Instead of the handsome, charming, happy-golucky sort she had thought Sam to be, she’d quickly learned that he could be moody and unpredictable when he was drinking. And he drank a lot. Too much. Enough to put a significant strain on their marriage.
In spite of all that, though, she’d made up her mind early on that she would make the marriage a good one, no matter what she had to do. Marriage was for keeps, after all, till death—
Well, it was for keeps, that was all. And Mindy struggled for years to make hers work, to smooth over the rocky spots and stay the course. Sam, however, hadn’t much shared her desire to keep things on track. More than once, he’d come home late smelling of bars and bourbon and beautiful women. Mindy had blamed his behavior on his drinking, but even in those all-too-few months of sobriety, even when the bars and bourbon were out of the picture, she knew the beautiful women weren’t.
She had hoped becoming pregnant would make a difference for both of them. Sam had shared her enthusiasm for having a baby, had agreed wholeheartedly that he wanted to become a father as much as she wanted to be a mother. But, as always, he let her down there, too. Because the prospect of becoming a father—of having to be responsible for someone other than himself—had driven him right back to his old life-style.
Mindy sighed again as she tossed the classifieds down onto the table beside the eviction notice, splaying both hands open over her softly swollen belly. She was certainly no stranger to poverty, having grown up surrounded by it. And likewise, she was accustomed—pretty much—to being alone. Except for her four years married to Sam—which had been pretty lonely, too, now that she thought about it—she’d been alone since her mother’s death when she was sixteen; she’d never known her father. And she was confident she could take care of herself, just as she had been doing for the last decade. But the little one…Ah, there was the worry. Because providing for herself was nothing compared to caring for a tiny, helpless life who would be solely dependent on her for survival.
She curled her fingers a little more possessively into her belly, battling the tears that threatened. Boy, pregnant women cried a lot, she thought. And she still had four months to go before the baby was born. Four months of complete uncertainty. Four months of wondering just how on earth she was going to manage to raise a baby on her meager income from waiting tables at a diner. Four months of feeling alone, frightened and anxious. Four months of worrying over how she was going to survive.
And then, once the baby was born, she knew, life would only hold more fear, more anxiety, more worry.
But, hey, that was four whole months away, she tried to reassure herself, swiping a quick finger under each eye. A lot could happen in four months. And she certainly wasn’t as bad off as some people, she reminded herself. She had a roof over her head and a warm bed to sleep in—at least for another two weeks. And she had food in the refrigerator, heat in the radiator and a job that paid her a steady, if meager, wage.
And in three weeks, it would be Christmas, she recalled with a smile. This was the most wonderful time of the year. The most magical time of the year. The most hopeful time of the year.
Yeah, a lot could happen between now and the baby’s birth. For the moment, at least, she…they…were okay. For the moment, she had everything she needed. For the moment, the balance of her life was just fine. She glanced down at her watch and frowned. And for the moment, she was running late for her shift, she realized. She was going to have to hustle if she wanted to make it to Evie’s Diner in time for the afterwork dinner rush.
Quickly, Mindy ran a brush through her unruly, shoulder length tresses, then bound them atop her head with a yellow ribbon, in a negligent heap of pale gold curls. A few pieces escaped to cascade around her face, but she didn’t have time to fix them. Instead, she hastily donned her yellow waitress uniform and white tights, and stepped into her white sneakers. Then she thrust her arms through the sleeves of a white sweater to ward off the chill of a South Jersey winter while she was working, and grabbed her coat from the closet by the front door.
As she locked the door behind herself, she couldn’t help but think that she would only be performing the gesture for another two weeks. Ed Franke—or, rather, Ed Cranky, as she inevitably thought of her joyless landlord—was throwing everyone out of the building, just in time to turn the place into a Christmas co-op. And with no family to turn to, there was nothing Mindy could do except find another place to stay once that due date arrived.
The phrase due date came back to haunt her as she raced down the stairs toward the street, stuffing her hands into her mittens as she went. Because even though the date of her eviction loomed far more heavily than the date of her baby’s birth, frankly, Mindy wasn’t ready for either of them. Unfortunately for her, though, there was no way she could avoid them. Because they would both be coming, all too soon.
Sure as Christmas.
Dr. Reed Atchison was in a lousy mood. But then, that wasn’t really surprising, seeing as how, so far today, he’d overslept, nicked his chin something fierce while shaving, skidded off a snowy road into a pile of snow that couldn’t have been more inconveniently placed and missed his turnoff on U.S. 31, thanks to unpredictable winter traffic—all of which had added up to making him late for work.
And that had just been that morning.
Since then, Reed had also had to intercede in a near-fracas between two dietary aides over whether Mr.