An Underestimated Christmas (Underestimated 3) Read online

  “Oh my god, Alicia. I’m getting drunk,” I assured her in a hug. Alicia ducked around me and scooped up Nicholas.

  “Did you eat spinach again?” she teased. Tadpole informed her that he did, raising his shirt and flexing his nonexistent muscle. Drew taught him that.

  Alicia was just what I needed. Once everyone was fed and sound asleep, we sat out on the deck and talked, well I did. Alicia listened. She listened to everything from how sorry I was about letting Chelsea come between us to how I gradually started taking more and more pain pills just to deal.

  “I still don’t know what’s going on. He’s been on his computer a lot more lately, and he’s leaving the room to take calls at home. Something just doesn’t feel right. And he’s totally changed overnight. Like we don’t talk about anything serious. He won’t. He just keeps telling me to trust him. I don’t like it. Are you sure he hasn’t said anything to Celeste?” I asked, looking to her and yawning.

  “You know she’s not going to tell me if he did. She knows I would blab my mouth.”

  “True. Hey, what do you want to do for the holidays? I was thinking maybe Peru again. That beach resort we stayed at last Christmas was so nice for the kids.”

  “That wasn’t Christmas. It was the end of January. Sorry, we’re going to Florida to my parents this year. They’re really trying with the whole Celeste and me thing. They want to know their grandkids. We’re spending Thanksgiving there and they’re coming to us for Christmas.”

  “NOOOO,” I whined. I hated Christmas. Alicia helped me deal with it while we drank too much alcohol and acted silly.

  “We’ll spend New Year’s with you. I promise. I have to try to make things better with my parents. I miss them. Why don’t you do the family thing with your mom this year?”

  “Nah, they make a big deal about it with their guests. By the time my mother stops with the everyday crafts, or tree trimming, caroling, and all the other lame stuff she does at the bed and breakfast, I’m so over Christmas, I could scream. I try to stay away from there in December.”

  Neither Alicia nor I got drunk like we’d talked about and planned all week. I think we were just happy to sit and watch the tide while we caught up on life. It was nice having Alicia around. Alicia was irreplaceable. I could have fifty Chelsea’s and they would never add up to one Alicia. Alicia was a once in a lifetime kind of friend. And I was sure glad she was mine, except for maybe the whole pill thing. I couldn’t believe she was going to make me ask.

  “I think I am going to turn in and call Drew, I’m getting a horrible headache,” I lied, hoping she took the hint.

  “Okay, I’m going to do the same. Maybe we’ll take the kids up to Crab Mad Moe’s and let them play tomorrow,” Alicia suggested, standing.

  “Alicia?”

  “What?” she asked, turning to me with a clueless look.

  “I need a couple pills before I go to bed. I just told you I had a headache and you know you have them,” I reminded her with a bit more agitation than I meant to express.

  “Drew told me to make you ask,” she quietly responded. “I wish I knew how to help.”

  Pity wasn’t what I wanted. “I’m fine. Drew makes it sound way worse than it is. You know how dramatic he can be.”

  “I’m only giving you one. Drew said one.”

  “Of course he did.”

  The one pill did help tremendously and my hands instantly stopped shaking, but Drew wasn’t answering. It went right to voicemail.

  Drew finally answered his phone just after midnight.

  “Why are you still awake, love?”

  “I have been worried sick about you. Where have you been?”

  “I’m in a snowstorm right now. The plane had to land in Jamestown instead of JFK. The whole east coast is under a snow.”

  “Ugh, I’m glad I’m not there. Are you going to get a room and fly the rest tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, that’s the plan. How are the boys?”

  “They were both out by eight. That flight gets to them every time. Hey, Drew. What did you have planned to get Nicky for his birthday?”

  “I ordered him a couple bridge DVD’s and book. Why? Did you have something in mind?”

  “We watched a sales presentation about a metal detector on the beach this evening. Nicky was very intrigued. Do you think he’s too little for something like that?”

  “No, I don’t think so at all. I love it. Let me do some searching.”

  “Was that a horn? Are you driving? I thought you said you were going to be safe in a room?” I questioned. I knew how the roads could get. I grew up in the mountains.

  “I’m trying. A lot of planes got grounded here. I got the last four wheel drive rental car and I’m trying to find a room now.”

  “Why did you get a rental car? Why wouldn’t you take a cab?”

  “I would have had there been any available. I’m fine. I’ll get off the road at the next hotel. I promise.”

  “What if you get stuck there and you miss Nicky’s birthday?” I panicked.

  “I won’t. And if I do, so what. His birthday isn’t November 12th anyway. It’s the 15th. If I miss it Sunday, we’ll have the party the next day. It’s a surprise birthday party. He won’t know.”

  Drew was right. We were just doing a little something over at my mom’s bed and breakfast anyway. We could do it any day. He would never know.

  “Okay, you’re right. Do you want me to go look for the metal detector?”

  “NO!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I smiled at the quick response.

  “It means, you don’t know how to buy that kind of thing. You don’t know what questions to ask.”

  “Oh, and you know a lot about metal detectors,” I doubted.

  “No, but you know as soon as I get to a room, I’m going to research them.”

  “Yeah, you’re going to go spend five hundred bucks on something I would have spent thirty on. He’s five, Drew.”

  “I’m still not going to buy a thirty dollar piece of shit from Walmart that I’ll set out with the trash next month. Hey, Morgan. I’m going to hang up. I can barely see where the road is. I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Oh no you won’t. You call me as soon as you’re safe in a room.”

  “Go to sleep, love. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”

  “I mean it, Drew. Don’t make me lay here and worry about you all night.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll call you. I love you. Close your eyes and rest until I call.”

  “I love you, too. Hurry up and get off the roads.”

  Resting my eyes sounded like a splendid idea. My pain pill left me feeling relaxed and drowsy. Drew promised he’d call as soon as he got to a room. I would just rest my eyes for a few minutes while I waited.

  I’m not sure what woke me at three AM, but I searched for my phone, lost amongst the covers. I hadn’t missed Drew’s call and he never texted. I was going to kill him. Debating whether to call or not, I decided to wait until he woke before killing him. He would say he was sorry and didn’t want to wake me anyway. There was no sense in waking him.

  Feeling the little foot in my back explained what woke me. Tadpole was sideways in my bed. I twisted his little body by an arm and a leg, landing him on Drew’s pillow for all of two minutes. I swear that boy did flip flops in his sleep. When I woke, he was sideways at the foot of the bed. I slid him to the top and covered him again for the third time. Between worrying about Drew and Tadpole doing acrobats in my bed all night, my night was very restless.

  “You look like hell. We only had two drinks,” Alicia questioned me from her coffee making.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, pulling a sleepy Christina to my lap when she entered the kitchen at the same time I did. “I feel like hell. Drew’s stuck somewhere in New York in a snowstorm. He was supposed to call and let me know he was okay last night. He never called. And the devil must have been after Tadpole last night. He was all over my bed.
/>   “I’m sure Drew is fine. And that one did the same thing to me. Let’s not give them Mountain Dew before bed again,” Alicia suggested with a straight pinky.

  I locked mine with hers and pinky swore not to do that again. “He could at least send me a message,” I alleged, swiping my phone. Nothing. Jerk.

  You’ve reached Drew Kelley with Kelley Elegance of Hollywood. I’m unavailable to take your call right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.

  “He’s not answering. It went straight to voicemail. That’s not like Drew.”

  “He’s probably in the air again. Where did he land?”

  “Oh yeah, that makes sense. He still had a ways to go. I think he said he landed in Jamestown. Isn’t that close to Buffalo?”

  “Beats me. You’re the reader, not me. Did you go pee in the potty?” Alicia asked, Christina, curled in my chest with her little eyes closed.

  “No, she went in the pull-up. I felt it on my lap,” I smiled, kissing her sweet little blond head. Why couldn’t Tadpole have been a little girl? Alicia grumbled under her breath.

  “She’s older than Tadpole. She shouldn’t still be doing this.”

  “She wouldn’t had one of us mommies taken her potty instead of snuggling her little warm body. I’d pee my pants, too, if I could.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah, no I wouldn’t,” I agreed.

  By one in the afternoon, I was begging Alicia for another pill. Drew still hadn’t called. He should have been on the ground by now. Jason and my mom came and took the kids for some sort of turkey craft for Thanksgiving and I sat on the edge of the sofa, bouncing my knees. Buffalo New York was under eighteen inches of snow. I knew what that was, too. Eighteen inches stops the world. My cousin Jack was born just like the baby Jesus, in a barn. The squad slid into a ditch and the paramedics wheeled Aunt Betty to the nearby barn. Eighteen inches would cripple everything on wheels. Dammit. Where the hell was he?

  Alicia ended up giving me a pill by three. I was going out of my mind. This wasn’t like Drew. Drew would call me. What if he didn’t make it to the hotel? What if he was freezing over an embankment or something?

  “Morgan, I’m sure he’s fine. Will you stop worrying? Let’s go get the kids. We’ll take them to Crab Mad Joes and let them play on the pirate ship. You have your phone. He’ll call. There’s no sense in sitting around here worrying about it. He’ll call.”

  Knowing Alicia was right, I traded with her. One pill for the outing with the kids. Maybe she was right. The boys loved climbing around that pirate ship, Nicky would be ecstatic. The suspension bridges hanging about the massive pirate ship left him talking about it for hours. That wasn’t always a good thing. I read about kids obsessing over certain things from the pamphlets that Dr. Inglewood gave us. Nicky’s was definitely bridges. How do you tell a five-year-old that just because he loves the complexity of a bridge, didn’t mean everyone else did?

  Most everyone Nicky enlightened about his bridge knowledge were overly impressed. It wasn’t every day you found a five-year-old that knew why the Angers Bridge in France collapsed back in eighteen fifty. Even I shouldn’t know that wind and possibly a resonance of soldiers led to the collapse.

  What if Drew was on a bridge that collapsed? What if he slid off the road and was under a bridge. I’ve heard of people being trapped for days in a snowstorm.

  STOP!

  “Okay, yes. Let’s go take the boys to eat shrimp and play on the pirate ship,” I agreed without any more reluctance.

  I was going to go crazy if I stayed there for one more second.

  I checked the dead phone in my room for the fifteenth time. The entire east coast was at a standstill and we were one of the lucky ones to lose power.

  “Stacy has some homemade soup. You don’t want to pass that up,” the gentleman not much older than myself said from the door. I smiled, dropping the vintage receiver back to its hook. “Don’t worry about your family. I’ll get you over to the Henderson’s after some hot lunch. He’s got a CB radio. We can send a number to one of his friends out there and they can get a message to your wife if you’d like.”

  “Yes, yes, thank you. I would appreciate that. She’s got to be worried sick. I hate giving her unneeded stress,” I explained. That made me feel better. I hated the thought of Morgan sitting around worrying. And I knew she was doing just that. Worrying herself sick.

  Mrs. Allen was a very good cook. I would love to have this recipe for Morgan. The bread was just as tasty. I must have been hungrier than I thought.

  “Does it always snow like this around here?” I asked, creating conversation with the nice country family who took me in. I would have been frozen to death by now had Mr. Allen not had a cow loose. Thank god for broken fences.

  “Actually, we haven’t had snow like this since the eighties, not in November anyway.”

  “How long do you expect it to be before I can get out of here?” I worried.

  “Hard to say. If it stops soon, should be in the next couple days.”

  “Days,” I groaned.

  This sucked. I couldn’t even call the store in New York City to tell him I was having a hard time getting there, and I was supposed to be in North Carolina with a new metal detector tomorrow. Looking over the kitchen sink, the small window told me I wasn’t getting out of there whether I liked it or not. The snow had slowed, but stayed light and steady all day.

  The Allen’s kids were very well mannered. I enjoyed talking to them around the table while we sat in the eat-in kitchen. Their seven-year-old daughter, Amanda was cute as hell. I swear she could have been Nicky and Tadpole’s sister. Her features could have easily been passed down from Morgan and me. Charlie was eleven and Adam was the oldest, just turned thirteen a week ago.

  “Do you work out, wrestle? Something,” I teased the oldest boy. He was buff for such a young boy. Made me decide to pick up another day in the gym, looking at him.

  He snickered a little and informed me of something I hadn’t had to endure in my lifetime. “We live on farm. I’m always working out. Come over sometime and I’ll show you what a real work out is. How many bales of hay did we throw off the last time, Dad?” he asked, turning to his father for help.

  “Two hundred and twelve, all weighing in at around eighty pounds,” his dad, Solomon explained, looking at his strong son, proudly.

  “That explains it,” I settled.

  “I have big muscles, too,” Amanda said, trying her best to make a muscle.

  “You sure do. I think maybe yours may be bigger than you older brother’s. You think?”

  She agreed with a front-tooth-missing smile and a proud headshake. Her puny muscle made me miss my Tadpole. Dammit. Why didn’t I wait at the airport?

  Spending the entire day with the Allen family left me longing. I didn’t know what it was exactly. Maybe I wasn’t used to seeing other married couples. Morgan and I didn’t really have a couple that we interacted with like this. Celeste and Alicia didn’t really count. Celeste was too much like me and public affection wasn’t something either of us was accustomed to.

  All three kids rose from their seats after the meal and commenced to cleaning up the table. Amanda took care of the silverware, Charlie cleared the plates and the cups, and Adam took care of the rest. Their mother thanked them and sent them on their way while she ran the dishwater. Sole stood, and took a clean dishtowel from the drawer.

  “My wife would drop dead if I helped with the dishes without being told. I usually whine long enough for her to tell me to go bathe the boys or something,” I teased, missing my family.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the old saying about a man getting more in the bedroom if he helps with the dishes?” Solomon joked. His wife Stacy jerked the dishtowel and snapped him with it. I laughed and stopped myself before saying I got plenty of that. “I’m kidding. Marriage is a two way street. If my wife can help me dig a fence row, I sure as hell can he
lp with the dishes,” he rephrased with a loving smile. God, I missed my family.

  Sole kept his word and after him giving me warmer clothes and a pair of boots, we set out to the barn. I climbed on the back and Sole took us through the snow, gliding along the top on a snow mobile. Damn. I hadn’t realized I’d gotten so far off the main road. I knew I was lost, but this was in Never-land.

  “Where exactly am I?” I yelled over the loud engine.

  “Center Station, New York. Population 2,023,” he called back.

  “Where the hell is Buffalo?”

  “About fifty miles west.”

  Damn, I was really out of the way.

  The radio worked perfect. Paul Henderson also showed me appreciated hospitality. Not only did he use the hand held mic to contact a buddy with the same contraption, I got to talk to Morgan. Sort of.

  The guy on the other end did the translating, but at least he was able to tell her I was fine, and I would call her as soon as the phone lines were back up, or I had cell phone service. She translated back that she loved me and to be safe. I felt much better knowing Morgan felt better. I kept her waiting for almost twenty-four hours and now I knew she could relax and enjoy her time with Alicia.

  Sole and I sat around Paul’s table and had a beer with him. He was young, maybe twenty-five or so, but one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. Paul was in a wheelchair for whatever reason, but he had a very important job around Center Station. He took care of all the dispatching for the majority of the farmers in the area, instructing the truckers on the silage hauling.

  Just because his legs didn’t work, didn’t mean everything else didn’t. He had the cutest little girl and a pretty hot wife. Paul Jr, as Sole called him, told him we’d better get going after he offered us another beer. I didn’t mind sitting around the table, drinking beer with Paul Jr. We were just going to go back to his house and be bored. Damn. I missed my family.