“Christmas is a time for miracles,” Ryan
McDougal tells his mother, when he is told that a long lost cousin, Millie, has
resurfaced after nearly forty years, the cousin whose picture his mother
clasped the day his father abandoned him. Though they occurred decades apart,
he always believed the two disappearances were connected like opposite links of
a chain. With Millie’s arrival, perhaps he might finally receive the answers he
so desperately sought. However, Ryan has a third thorn in his side, more
devastating than any mystery. His wife, the love of his life, has left his arms
and his bed. How long before she moves out of the house and takes his beloved
son with her? He prays for his own Christmas miracle. Millie’s anticipated
visit prompts Ryan’s mother to reveal secrets that bring all to light. However,
when past and present collide, the truth is more than Ryan can bear.
Excerpt:
Ryan McDougal
Christmas Eve
1999
Why now? How did I come to this point
on this night? Willing to throw everything away, like my father did more than
twenty years before? Willing to do the very thing for which I’d hated him?
With doomsday predicted by many in the
scientific community, the Y2K bug loomed on everyone’s mind. What did I care if
planes fell from the sky because computers would not accept the year 2000? My
world had already collapsed. What more could global chaos do to me?
I’d tried for a year to save my
marriage. Didn’t tonight prove it was beyond help? Why stay any longer?
Earlier, I finally learned the truth
behind the secrets shrouding my life, the
trident that pierced my soul. Yet, revelation didn’t bring peace. I pulled my
jacket collar over my ears as I wandered down Maple Street, my mind jumbled by a lifetime of lies.
Christmas, one more charade to add to
the heap. To me, the holiday had become a one-act play where I pretended
delight with feigned enthusiasm. For me, the holiday lost its magic many years
ago when my father deserted us while I dreamed of transformers under the tree.
An eight-year-old doesn’t expect to begin
his favorite holiday in an upside down world. I woke eager to tear open
packages. Instead, I found no presents under the tree, no blueberry muffins,
and no turkey in the oven.
My mother sat on a chair. She stared
blankly out the kitchen window, a gold-framed photograph on her lap. had always
enshrined the picture of the pretty but sullen
teenager. For reasons never shared with me, the unnamed girl ran away on her
sixteenth birthday. I wondered why, from my earliest memory, her picture held a
place of honor on the fireplace mantel.
I shook my mother’s shoulder. No
response.
Where was my father? He could explain
what was wrong—why Christmas dreams turned into yuletide nightmares. I searched
for him, first his bedroom then the entire house.
“Mom, where’s Pop?”
She clutched the picture to her chest.
“He’s gone, Ryan.”
“Where did he go? It’s Christmas. He
promised to be here when I woke up.”
Pop was a telephone lineman. Whenever
he went off for a job, he’d put on his yellow hard hat, rub my head, and say,
“Take care of your mother until I get back.” If I’d already gone to bed, he’d
wake me to give me the order. I always promised I would.
I rushed to the window. There’d been a fresh snowfall overnight. Maybe Pop had been called out. If he hadn’t
come to wake me, he must have left in an awful hurry. He went someplace to save
Christmas for other people. To me, my pop was a superhero in a yellow hard hat.
My gaze wandered to the kitchen table
adorned only with my father’s yellow hard
hat. Superman wouldn’t forget his cape. Why did my father leave his hat? My
child’s heart sensed then I’d never see him again. From that point on,
Christmas became another day on the calendar where I nursed a zombie-like woman
who preferred her sorrow over her son—a woman who hopelessly waited for her man
to come back.
Her energy, what little she possessed,
would have been better spent in a job search. Our neighbor helped us get
welfare so we wouldn’t starve to death. Every Christmas, she brought over a
small decorated tree, a ham dinner, and presents. I think there’s a special
place in heaven for people like Gina Forbes, one of the few true Christians I’d
ever known.
Here I was years later, now dealing
with the third fork in the trident that pierced my soul. As midnight zeroed in,
I took another glance down Maple Street, the place my younger self couldn’t
wait to leave. I’d lived with Stone Woman long enough. So two days after high
school graduation, I left to begin my Army career. As I walked out the door, my
mother lifted her head. Her eyes misted a goodbye. Were the tears for me or my
long-lost father? Gina Forbes wrote occasional letters to let me know how Mom
fared. I spent my leaves anywhere but home.
After basic training, I served as an MP. Somehow, I missed deployment overseas. A
year before my hitch ended, I met Penny, a girl with a voice to match her
beauty. We married a week later. When you know you’ve found the one, there’s no
need to wait. Nine months later, our boy Ryan Junior came along. To avoid
confusion, most everyone called him R.J. I went to his room every night to
watch him sleep, and I made the same promise. “I’ll never leave you, my sweet
sonny boy.”
Yet, here I stood. Ready to break the
most solemn of promises.
When my Army hitch ended, I wasn’t
sure what I’d do next. Sometimes life makes those decisions for you. For me,
clarity came with a package from Gina Forbes containing a card, a blue quilt
for my son, and a handwritten note: Sorry
to tell you that your mother’s health has deteriorated. She was in the hospital
for a few days last month. The doctor wanted to put her on antidepressants, but
she refused to take them. She shouldn’t be alone. I’ve let the doctor know how
bad she is. She refuses to go back to the hospital. Yesterday, out of the blue,
she asked if I knew where you were. She’d forgotten you’d joined the Army. If
you can find it in your heart to forgive your mother for her failures, perhaps
you could at least brighten her day with a visit.
My protests proved moot against
Penny’s insistence we move into the house on Maple Street to take care of my
mother. “Ryan, no matter what your mother did or did not do, she is still the
woman who gave you birth.”
How was it possible on this night, I
stood ready to leave the most wonderful woman in the world?
A grandchild, as well as a
daughter-in-law’s unconditional love, built the ladder Mom needed to climb out of
despair, to the point she went to church with Gina Forbes. Life fell into
predictable rhythms of acceptability for all of us on Maple Street. Until last
year—when my wife left my bed and moved into the den. For the past year, with
each sunrise, I asked myself the same question—why doesn’t my wife love me anymore?
Nor did the specter of unexplained
disappearances ever leave our house. We relegated the unknowns to a corner,
like a sulking child. Now my wife’s emotional abandonment completed the
triangle of mysteries, a geometric spear of perplexity. Even so, we muddled
through our existence, actors who performed their monologs on a shared stage.
Funny how life deludes us. One day,
reality crashes upon a crafted, albeit imperfect world, which is why I now strolled
up and down Maple Street and considered a different existence. Why not join the
ranks of those who had disappeared?
For the second time today, I turned to
a God I had yet to call my own.
Author Bio
Award winning author, LINDA WOOD RONDEAU,
believes God is able to turn our worst past into our best future, the purpose
for her many contemporary novels. Walk with her unforgettable characters as
they journey paths much like our own. After a long career in human services,
Linda moved from her home near the Adirondack Mountains to Jacksonville,
Florida, and now anticipates a move to Maryland. When not writing, she enjoys
playing golf with her husband and best friend in life, Steve. Find Linda on
Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Google Plus or visit her website at www.lindarondeau.com where you’ll find
links to social media, information about her books, and enjoy her blog, Snark
and Sensibility.
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