My Christmas Wish Page 3

  So was I in a hospital room, maybe? Had someone found me and taken me to the ER with a concussion? Or had I come to my senses and wandered back to my condo, still confused, unable to remember what had happened once I woke up fully?

  I had no idea. All I knew was, the light was absolutely blinding. I sat up, rubbing at the back of my skull. It didn’t hurt, so maybe I hadn’t hit my head after all.

  “Hey. What's wrong? Did you have another nightmare?”

  At the unfamiliar feminine voice, I blinked and looked around, discovering I was in a four-poster cherry bed that took up most of a small bedroom. I heard the soft, pleasant sounds of a small town outside—kids calling out as they played, dogs barking, the occasional whoosh of a car passing at slow speed. It sounded like Smithfield, but it could have been any other small town or suburb just as easily.

  None of it was familiar… except for the scantily clad redhead draped across the other side of the bed. She was quite familiar.

  It was Kerryn Addison.

  The very same Kerryn I’d dated for several years in college, who’d moved in with me briefly, just around the same time Stephen and I started having sex. My parents had adored her before their passing, and it had been hard to let her go, even when my attraction to Stephen became too strong to ignore. But when she’d caught the two of us in bed together, that had been that. Which was just as well, considering my total lack of physical interest in women.

  I hadn’t seen her in years. She’d been at college in California, like I said. But now I was definitely seeing her. Seeing more of her than I really was comfortable with, in fact.

  I remembered Stephen’s voice: Hey, did you know Kerryn’s back in town?

  Back in town was one thing, but what the hell was she doing half-naked in my bed?

  I averted my gaze quickly, jerking my head around and staring at the wall. “Kerryn. Um… what are you doing here?”

  She sat up, and I risked another glance at her, seeing that at least she wore some sort of lacy nightgown that covered her to a certain extent. But she looked distinctly pissed.

  When the two of us had been together, she’d invariably worn a sweet and demure expression, but I’d always suspected there was a core of steel within her. Apparently I’d been right. She spoke, and her voice was the furthest thing from sweet or demure. She sounded hard and cold.

  “We agreed to give it another chance, remember?”

  I blinked at her. “Huh?”

  “Bastard,” she hissed, her voice dripping with venom. “You're the one who wanted to try again, not me. I should have known you didn't really mean it.”

  Jesus. What the hell was going on here? I looked around, a little wildly, and decided I must’ve hit my head really, really hard. Had I gotten a concussion, and then awakened and climbed into my car, driven off to find Kerryn, and fallen into bed with her? Had I felt some sort of warped desire to use her to avenge myself on Stephen, or something along those lines? Or had I just run into her somewhere, and been so lonely that I—

  No, I thought, cutting off my increasingly far-fetched speculation. It was impossible. Even though I’d broken up with Stephen, I would never have run off to sleep with my ex-girlfriend. Among other issues, I just wasn’t into women, and I sincerely doubted I could have managed it physically.

  Besides…I loved Stephen. Even with a concussion, I wouldn’t have run off and fallen into bed with someone else. I would have tried to fix things first.

  I looked around at the unfamiliar bedroom, and sighed. The available evidence seemed to suggest that I had in fact fallen into bed with someone else. And not just a random someone. My ex.

  “Um,” I said again. “What exactly happened?”

  She snorted, the most unladylike sound I’d ever heard from her. “You told me you wanted to try again,” she said again, her voice bitter. “And I believed you. After five years of marriage, you'd think I'd know better, but I guess not.”

  Marriage.

  Five years of marriage.

  What. The. Fuck?

  I stared at her blankly, aware that my mouth was hanging open. There was, I noticed, a plain gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. Stephen hadn’t mentioned she was married, but there was the proof of it, right there.

  So she was married… and in bed with me?

  Five years of marriage, she’d said. In a way that implied she meant the two of us. Reflexively, I checked my own left hand, and saw a matching gold band on my own finger. Something like panic rose inside me.

  It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

  But apparently it was.

  Evidently I was married. And not to the man I’d been dating for five years now.

  No, somehow or other, I was married…to Kerryn Addison.

  Chapter Three

  “Get up. It’s Christmas Eve.”

  Kerryn delivered the words coldly, and rose to her feet, her hair tumbling around her shoulders. I wasn’t sure what was happening here, but I knew I wasn’t married to her, not really. I’d been dating Stephen for the past five years. I couldn’t possibly have hit my head hard enough to forget that.

  “Um…” I said, as intelligently as I was able. I looked away, politely trying to avoid looking at her half-naked body. “I don’t quite understand. What’s going on?”

  “Typical.” She rummaged in an old pine dresser, casting an angry look at me in the big mirror above it, and answered the question with one of her own. “You can’t even stand looking at me, can you?”

  “You know that’s not true.” I had no idea how I’d gotten here, or what was happening between us, but I tried to sound sincere, because I could hear the hurt in her voice along with the anger. It wasn’t that I couldn’t stand looking at her, but her curves held no real attraction for me. “You’re a very pretty woman.”

  She made a hmmphhing sound, and disappeared into the bathroom. I lay there, staring blankly at the big mirror. For an instant I thought I saw something move in it, and I stared harder. But there was nothing there, only the reflection of a very ordinary bedroom.

  A bedroom I’d never seen before in my life.

  Why was I here? What the hell was going on?

  Kerryn emerged from the bathroom, her hair straggly and unkempt. Her long dark-red mane had once been the pride of her heart. Her “glory,” as 1 Corinthians put it. But now it looked as if she didn’t even bother to brush it, most of the time. She cast one last vitriolic look at me, and stalked out of the room.

  Relieved to find myself alone, so that I could take stock of this weird situation, I sat up. I was somewhat horrified to discover I was only wearing boxers and a white t-shirt. I’d been lying in bed with someone other than Stephen, wearing practically nothing.

  What the hell?

  I rubbed at the back of my head again, wondering at the lack of any pain or lump there. What on earth had happened? I’d fallen, and… and then what? Clearly I’d lost some of my memory, despite the lack of any evidence for a concussion. Had I still been so angry with Stephen that I’d called Kerryn, proposed to her, and run off to get married?

  No. That was impossible. If this was Christmas Eve, then I’d fallen down those stairs only last night. There was no possible way the two of us could have gotten married in that time frame—even if I’d wanted to marry Kerryn, which I most certainly did not. Virginia didn’t have a waiting period any more, but I was pretty sure you had to show up at the Circuit Court to get a marriage license, which had to be done during normal working hours. It had been after eight when I’d fallen down those stairs, and according to the clock next to this bed, it was seven-fifteen in the morning now.

  Anyway, the idea that we would just spontaneously have decided to get hitched was ridiculous. Kerryn didn’t want to marry me any more than I wanted to marry her, I was sure. She’d just gotten her bachelor’s degree, and she’d be starting on a career soon, or maybe post-graduate work. The last thing she’d want would be to tie herself down to a guy who’d humiliated and hurt her five years ago.

  It was much more likely, I decided, that Kerryn was playing some kind of a vengeful prank on me. God knew I’d done enough to her to warrant revenge. Maybe she’d found me there on the sidewalk, dragged me to this place somehow, and—

  But no. I was a big guy, and she was tiny. She couldn’t have just picked me up and hauled me away like so much garbage. Maybe I’d been confused and she’d convinced me to come along with her… but that seemed wildly unlikely. It didn’t make any sense.

  None of this made any sense.

  And yet here I was.

  This had to be a prank of some kind. It had to be. Maybe it was Stephen, messing with my head to get back at me. Yeah, that seemed possible. Stephen had the infinite resources required to pull something like this off.

  And yet… I yanked the wedding ring off my finger, and examined it closely. It had that softly glowing, gently scratched-up look that gold gets after it’s been worn for some time, and inside I saw engraved a cursive inscription. Gabriel and Kerryn forever.

  And a date, five years earlier.

  Five years of marriage, she’d said. Unbelievable words, but the ring seemed to support them.

  If this was a prank or some sort of ugly retribution on Stephen’s part, it was incredibly elaborate, and I didn’t see how he could have pulled it all together in a single night. Assuming this was in fact Christmas Eve. I groped around for my phone, intending to check the date, but it wasn’t on the nightstand, or in the sheets, or anywhere on the floor that I could see.

  Panic clawed at me, making my throat close up. I didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but it didn’t take a genius to recognize that something wasn’t right here. The situation was strange enough to freak me out.

  Maybe this was all just some sort of bizarre nightmare, but I didn’t feel like I was asleep. This all felt very real. The vague warmth of the winter sun shone through the window and heated my face, and I could smell the faint fragrance that Kerryn had left behind when she stalked out of the room. I could feel my stomach rumbling with hunger, too. It all seemed far too vivid to simply be a dream.

  I slid the ring back onto my finger, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell else to do with it, and got unsteadily to my feet. As I did so, I saw something move in the mirror again.

  A guy. There was a guy in the mirror. It looked almost like—

  I moved toward it, and the flickering image I thought I’d seen disappeared. There was nothing reflected there except me. And I was a mess, my black hair tousled on top of my head like I’d slept in a tornado, big circles under my eyes. I looked like I seriously needed an extra-large coffee, and maybe a shower too.

  But I wasn’t going to shower here. I didn’t even know where the hell I was, let alone why I was here. I decided it was time to quit playing along and get the fuck out, so I looked around for the clothes I’d been wearing last night.

  They’d disappeared.

  I looked around the room carefully, but the clothes had evidently vanished into the same vortex as my phone. My car keys seemed to be missing, too.

  I swore under my breath, and stalked into the small walk-in closet, hoping to find something to wear, since I obviously couldn’t leave this house in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt. Maybe, just maybe, Kerryn had stored my clothes in the closet.

  I didn’t find my own clothing, but to my surprise, there were a bunch of guy clothes in there. I selected a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeved hunter green shirt and put them on. They fit perfectly, which had to be more than a coincidence. I’m a big guy, three inches over six feet, with really wide shoulders and narrow hips. It isn’t easy to find clothes that fit me. And yet here was half a closet full of them.

  A quiver of unease ran through me. Something really, really weird was going on here. This seemed like more than a prank. Someone was fucking with my head big time, and I didn’t like it.

  I shook off my bewilderment. I’d figure it all out eventually. All I really had to do was walk out of here. Maybe I’d been kidnapped, or maybe I’d found my way here of my own accord, but it wasn’t as if Kerryn could keep me here against my will. This wasn’t Misery, and she simply wasn’t strong enough to restrain me.

  Near the masculine clothes, I found my wallet, or what seemed to be my wallet, only all my credit cards were missing. I added theft to kidnapping in my mental list of crimes that had apparently been committed here, and shoved it into my pocket. Then I plodded into the small bathroom, which was fairly clean except for some long red hairs in the sink. I rinsed my mouth out and borrowed the comb that lay on the side of the sink. I ran it through my hair, trying to get some of the bedhead out.

  Suddenly I saw a face over my right shoulder, a weathered face surrounded by graying dark hair, a faint smile crinkling the corners of piercing blue eyes not unlike my own. The man in the reflection wore a threadbare dark suit. The face was as familiar to me as my own, and I spun around with a startled gasp.

  “Dad!”

  No one was there. No one could possibly be there. Dad had been dead for seven years now, after all. I stared wildly around the room for a moment, wondering if I was going crazy.

  Crazy? Me? Just because I woke up apparently married to a woman I don’t love and haven’t seen in five years, and now I'm seeing things that aren't there? No, there's nothing crazy about that. Not at all.

  The room was empty. My dad had disappeared, assuming he'd ever been there at all. Since he was long dead, of course he hadn't been. It had just been wishful thinking on my part, or part of this crazy dream.

  And yet, there in the shadows in the corner—

  I realized that what I’d seen had been the reflection of something lurking in the shadows. My heart pounded with fear, but I stifled the instinctive urge to flee. I squinted, staring hard, and the shadow seemed to shift and form itself into something I recognized. Someone I recognized. My mouth fell open.

  My father—my dead father—was gazing at me from the shadows.

  “Dad?” This time I barely whispered the word as I stared at his face. It was blurry around the edges, as if it wasn’t quite there, and the rest of him just sort of faded into the shadows. If I narrowed my eyes and looked really hard, I could make out a face and part of a torso, but nothing else. “Dad, is that really you?”

  “Of course it's me.”

  The voice was the same as I remembered it—rusty and low, capable of ranging from a barely-there whisper to a full-throated shout, a voice that could compel its listeners to believe in Heaven or hellfire, angels or demons. A preacher’s voice. My father’s congregation had been small, but that had been more because of the wacky fringe beliefs he’d espoused than because of any failure to move his listeners. He’d been a hell of a preacher.

  He’d also been a hell of an asshole.

  “Now I know I’m dreaming,” I said.

  His eyes crinkled in a smile, something I’d rarely seen grace his face in his lifetime. “Why do you say that, son?”

  “I’m an atheist,” I informed him. “I don’t believe in Heaven or hell or any of the rest of it.”

  “Well…” His mouth curved wryly. “As it happens, you’re right. At least, you’re closer to the truth than I ever was. Most of what I believed to be true when I walked upon the earth turns out to be entirely wrong.”

  “So there’s no Heaven,” I said skeptically. “And no hell. And yet you’re here, somehow? If there’s no Heaven, where exactly did you come from?”

  He shrugged a shoulder. “The truth is that I’m not here, precisely. I am what some people call a shade. In the Bible, they used the term tsalmaveth—a shadow of death. A reflection of the past, you could say. Not a soul, so much as an echo.”

  I swallowed against the panicked tightness in my throat. I didn’t believe in the afterlife—but there he was. A shadowy, vague form, to be sure, but unmistakably my father. Maybe I was crazy or dreaming or having some sort of wild drug trip, but I decided I had to believe the evidence of my own eyes.

  “Fine,” I answered shortly. “So you’re here, sort of, but not really. Can you tell me what's going on, and what’s happening to me? Why are you here? Why now? You’ve been dead for seven years, and I’ve never so much as glimpsed you before—so why now?”

  “Because of the wish you made.”

  My forehead wrinkled in confusion. “The wish? I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t make a wish.”

  “Of course you did. You went to the Wishing Angel, as your mother always called it. Don’t you remember?”

  Yeah, and I vaguely remember falling down the steps and hitting my head. Must’ve hit it harder than I thought, because I’m obviously hallucinating. “I remember. But the Wishing Angel is made out of plywood, Dad. You’re not trying to tell me it has supernatural powers or anything, are you?”

  “Of course not. There is nothing mystical or magical about a wooden Christmas decoration, no matter how beautifully painted it may be. But you made a heartfelt wish, focusing it on an object that had sentimental value to you, and at this time of year, such wishes are sometimes granted. Not often, but occasionally.”

  “So I wished…” I trailed off. I remembered heading toward the Wishing Angel with the vague idea of wishing that Stephen and I could work out our differences, but I’d never actually made that wish. I’d decided it was too childish and silly, hadn’t I? And then I’d walked away. “I didn’t wish for anything, actually.”

  “Of course you did. And you made the wish to your beloved, which granted it even more force.”

  Made the wish to my—

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you talking about—do you mean what I said to Stephen in my text?”

  “Yes.” My father smiled at me, a benevolent, kindly expression I’d never seen aimed at me before. He’d been the furthest thing from benevolent and kindly, most of the time. “You wished that you’d never met him. And now you’ve been given a chance few men receive. The chance to see what your life would be like if you had taken another road, five years ago. The chance to walk another path.”