The Year the Cat Saved Christmas - a novella Read Online Free Page B

find us."
    "Damn it," he said, dragging a hand through
his snow-damp hair. "The timing stinks. I'm flying out to San
Francisco tonight."
    "Denise told me." She paused for a moment.
"What's the rush?"
    "The Japanese consortium is holding an open
house tomorrow afternoon at the building site."
    "And you wouldn't want to miss a big event
like that."
    "There's nothing holding me here." Is
there, Jilly?
    "No," she said lightly, "nothing at all."
    He tried to put a positive spin on her words
but failed miserably. You're a jerk, Whittaker. It's over. You'd
better get used to it.
    "About Sebastian," he said. "Where have you
looked for him?"
    "My car is being serviced," she said, "so I
couldn't get very far. I checked the yards and the woods behind the
house."
    He checked his watch.
    "I know you're a busy man," she said, her
words clipped. "I wouldn't have bothered you if I'd realized you
were leaving tonight."
    "I have a few hours," he said. "We'll see
what we can do."
    "I'll get my coat."
    He stood awkwardly in the foyer, feeling like
a stranger in his own house. The walls were stripped bare. The
furniture was gone. All that was left were a few cardboard boxes
and a bright red suitcase he remembered from years ago. He sniffed
the air. The house didn't even smell right any more. Jill used to
keep a pot of spices simmering on the back of the stove at
Christmastime, a blend of pine and cinnamon and apple that smelled
like home and love. Now all he could smell was sadness.
    He turned and went outside to wait by the
car.
     
     
    #
     
     
    How could you spend over one-third of your
life with a man and feel like you'd never really known him at
all?
    David hadn't so much as blinked a blue eye
when she told him Sebastian was gone. Sebastian had been with them
since their first married Christmas. He'd appointed himself the
twins' official guardian angel the first moment he laid eyes on
them. First words, first steps, first communions-- Sebastian had
been there for all of them.
    Okay, so maybe this wasn't the first time
Sebastian had wandered off but even David had to admit the cat had
stuck close to home the last year or two. David acted like
Sebastian had wandered down the hall to take a nap.
    She slipped into her coat, wondering how they
had ended up as one of those miserable marital statistics you heard
about on TV talk shows. Once upon a time David had been her knight
in shining armor, ready to slay dragons and lay them at her feet.
He was everything she'd ever wanted in a man: strong and idealistic
and passionate about life. Passionate about her. Had there really
been a time when they couldn't get enough of each other, when they
couldn't be apart for more than an hour without hungering for the
other's touch? The thought was so alien that it seemed more like
someone else's memory than her own.
    He was outside, brushing snow off the
windshield of his Porsche. She could almost see the waves of
impatience rolling up the driveway toward her. He hated to be kept
waiting for anything. It was as if he'd been born with a stopwatch
in his hand and he'd been hurrying to catch up ever since, as if he
were perennially five minutes behind the pack. She'd often wondered
if it had to do with the fact that he'd grown up without a family
of his own. She couldn't imagine how it had felt, growing up in
foster home after foster home. Her own life had been shamefully
blessed in comparison.
    "I'll always take care of you," he'd said
when they got married.
    "We'll take care of each other," she'd
started to reply but the serious look in his eyes had stilled her
words. He needed to take care of her, she'd realized, more than she
needed to be taken care of.
     
     
    #
     
    Then
     
    "You look fine, Davey," Jill said as she
smoothed the shoulders of his sport coat. "Nobody's going to know
you got the jacket at the consignment shop."
    "Your father will know," he said, glaring at
his reflection in the bedroom mirror.
    "The second I walk into the restaurant,