The Year the Cat Saved Christmas - a novella (2 page)

Wasn't it bad enough that the Man didn't live
with them anymore or that sometimes she cried herself to sleep when
she thought no one could hear her? Now they wouldn't even have a
home and everyone knew you couldn't be a family if you didn't have
a place where you could be together.

The cottage on Burnt Sugar Hill.

For days Sebastian had felt the pull of the
old place until the need to see that old house again was almost
irresistible. And now he finally thought he knew why: the secret to
being a family was hidden within its four walls and somehow
Sebastian had to lead his people back home before it was too
late.

Chapter One

Jill Whittaker crouched down and fastened the
top snap on her daughter's bright red down jacket. "There," she
said, sitting back on her heels and smiling. "Now you look
perfect."

Six-year-old Tori beamed at her mother. "I
know."

Jill laughed and turned to Tori's twin
brother Michael. She tugged at the Christmas green scarf around his
neck. "And you look perfect too."

Michael's dark brows knit together over the
bridge of his straight nose and for a moment Jill thought her heart
would break. He was a miniature version of his father, with the
same blue eyes and serious nature.

"Boys don't look perfect," Michael said,
casting a curious glance toward his sister. "Only babies care about
that."

Tori punched him in the arm. He grabbed for
her knit cap. Tori was about to retaliate with a swift kick learned
at karate class but Jill intervened.

"It's Christmas Eve," she said in her most
sternly maternal tone of voice. "If you don't behave, Santa might
think twice about coming to visit."

The twins were instantly chastened. Jill
breathed a sigh of relief but that relief was short-lived.

"How can Santa visit if we don't live here
anymore," Tori pointed out.

Michael nodded vigorously. "How will he know
we're at Aunt Patsy's."

"What if Santa can't find us?" Tori went on,
her small face pinched with worry.

"What if he doesn't know we're moving and he
looks for us here and can't find us?"

"Santa knows everything," Michael's eyes met
Jill's. "Doesn't he, Mommy?"

"I sent Santa a change of address form," Jill
said, congratulating herself on a quick save. "He knows we'll be at
Aunt Patsy's tonight."

The children watched her face carefully,
searching for the slightest indication that she'd spun her story
from whole cloth. They were at the age where they desperately
wanted to believe in Santa Claus and Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy
but were getting old enough to suspect something wasn't quite
right.

"What about Daddy?" Michael asked, looking
more like David than ever. "How will Santa find him?"

She swallowed hard against a terrible wave of
sadness. "You know how Daddy leaves messages on the answering
machine when we're out?" They nodded. "Well, Daddy left Santa a
message and told him he was going to San Francisco."

Tori's lower lip began to tremble. "I don't
want Daddy to go to San 'risco."

"Call Daddy," Michael ordered Jill. "Tell him
Santa said he shouldn't go."

And she had once thought labor was going to
be the tough part. "Sometimes mommies and daddies have to live
someplace else in order to do their jobs," she said carefully,
wondering how much of the explanation was actually getting through.
The only thing Tori and Michael really understood was that their
daddy was going away and, to them, that was all that was important.
"Isn't that what Daddy told you yesterday when you spent the day
with him?"

"Daddy said we can come to San 'risco and see
a gold bridge," Michael said.

"Bridges aren't gold," Tori said, shaking her
head. "You're dumb."

"Am not!"

"Yes, you are."

Michael pulled at Tori's scarf and the little
girl let out a shriek that could wake the dead while Jill wondered
why nobody ever told you the truth about parenthood. Oh, they
shared all the details about pregnancy and childbirth. And you
could find a million books about colic and teething and the
terrible twos. But nobody ever mentioned moments like this when
only a white lie (or a one-way ticket to Tahiti) would do.

Her neighbor Phyllis tapped on the open front
door. "Quakerbridge Mall taxi, at your service."

"Hi, Phyl." Jill stood up and tugged at the
hem of her sweatshirt. "Great timing," she said sotto voce. "We
were heading into dangerous territory."

Phyllis winked at Jill then turned to the
kids. "Get your mittens, kittens, and let's hit the road. Santa's
elves have two candy canes with your names on them waiting for
you."

The twins scampered off toward the
kitchen.

"Keep the door closed," Jill called out.
"Don't let Sebastian or Charlie get loose."

With the movers traipsing in and out all
morning, she'd had to keep a sharp eye on their menagerie.

"So how are you doing, girl?" Phyllis asked,
her grey eyes warm with concern.

"I just dodged another one of those tricky
Santa Claus questions. If I make it through this Christmas, I'll
kiss Rudolph right on his bright red nose."

"You'll make it," Phyllis said, "but I wish
you'd change your mind about moving."

"I have to move, Phyl." She drew in a
steadying breath. "I can't stay here now."

"The old neighborhood just won't be the same
without you. Believe me, if there was something we could do to
convince you to stay here, we--" Phyllis shook her head and pulled
a crumpled tissue from her coat pocket.

"Don't you dare!" Jill wagged a finger at her
friend and neighbor. "If you cry, I'll cry too." The kids had
already seen enough tears to last them a lifetime. She wouldn't do
that to them, not on Christmas Eve.

Phyllis crossed her heart, but her eyes still
glittered with tears. "By the way, what was Sebastian doing out by
the Zimmerman house?"

"Sebastian?" Jill frowned. "He's in the
kitchen with Charlie and Juanita."

"It sure looked just like him," Phyllis said.
"A big fluffy cat with mutton chop jowls."

Jill shook her head. "It couldn't possibly be
Sebastian. He's been inside all day."

Phyllis looked dubious. "I'm telling you,
honey, if it wasn't Sebastian it was his long-lost twin
brother."

"Maine coon cats aren't that unusual," Jill
said. "Besides, Sebastian hasn't wandered off in at least a year."
David said it was because Sebastian was getting older but Jill
liked to believe it was only because he'd grown lazy.

The kids bounded back into the room and
minutes later Phyllis and her tribe disappeared down the snowy
street.

The movers finished loading the furniture
from the second-story bedrooms and began to dismantle the family
room. She leaned against the wall in the foyer and watched as they
pulled pictures from the wall, unfastened curtains, and carried the
artifacts of a family to the moving van parked in the driveway.

It shouldn't be this easy to end a marriage.
The whole enterprise had been so without ceremony, just a series of
solitary meetings in a lawyer's office that culminated in a frenzy
of signatures on documents. There she was, about to say goodbye to
the only man she'd ever loved, and she hadn't even seen him in
weeks.

My choice
, she thought.
My
regrets.

"Ma'am, we need you to sign this." The job
site supervisor appeared at her elbow.

"I'm sorry," she said, blinking in surprise.
"What's that?"

He pushed a clipboard toward her. "You have
to okay the lunch break. We thought we'd push through until we
finish then grab something after. The snow is supposed to really
kick in this afternoon and with it being Christmas Eve and
all--"

"Sure." She scribbled her name on the
appropriate line. "You should all be home where you belong."

He countersigned the paper then gave her the
yellow copy. "Hell of a day to move."

"Yeah," she said softly. "It is, at
that."

Christmas Eve had always been their day, hers
and David's. They'd met and fallen in love on Christmas Eve
thirteen years ago and it seemed as if most of the milestones of
their life together had happened on December 24th. Sebastian came
to live with them on Christmas Eve. And it was on a magical
Christmas Eve when they discovered Jill was expecting the twins
after being told she would never get pregnant.

So it seemed strangely fitting that Christmas
Eve was the day their marriage ended.

It's not too late, that persistent voice
inside her heart reminded her. The divorce wouldn't be final until
the stroke of midnight which meant there was still time for one
last miracle.

And a miracle was exactly what it would
take.

This whole thing had gathered speed over the
past few months like a runaway train. She hadn't meant to ask David
for a divorce. The words had leaped from her mouth, almost of their
own volition and once they were out she couldn't find a way to pull
them back. She had been trying to shock him into admitting they had
a problem, that somehow they had grown apart and the day would come
when it would be too late to bridge the divide.

She should have known you didn't back a proud
man like her husband into an emotional corner that way. He'd come
home to tell her about his new assignment in San Francisco and
she'd turned it into a the-job-or-me confrontation. Money didn't
have the same resonance with her as it did with David. She had
grown up rich, the only child of a broken marriage where money was
substituted for love every chance her parents got. David had grown
up without love or money, a foster kid lost in the system until he
was too old to be of value to anyone but himself. Everything he'd
accomplished--from graduating Princeton to gaining a top position
with a leading architectural firm--had been accomplished by virtue
of brains and backbreaking work.

No man loved his family more than David did
but no matter how hard Jill tried, she couldn't make him see that
he was more important to them than the hefty salary he commanded.
Whether or not he realized it, David hadn't been happy for a very
long time. He was a gifted architect who was being wasted at his
firm. It was probably naive of her to believe there was a spiritual
aspect to architecture but once, a long time ago, he had believed
that too. David wasn't meant to be designing malls for greedy San
Francisco investors; he was meant to be creating beautiful
environments that enriched the spirit.

When he came home and told her they'd be
leaving for a two-year assignment in San Francisco, something
inside Jill had snapped. If he'd seemed happy about the project,
she might not have reacted that way but he'd talked only about the
raise in salary that came with the job. She remembered the fire in
his eyes when he began work on a design he loved, the joy he
brought to the drafting table, the sense of fulfillment that
permeated the entire house.

And she missed it almost as much as she
missed him.

She knew she could pick up the phone and call
David, tell him she'd been wrong, that she'd follow him anywhere,
even to San Francisco if that was what he wanted. She could tell
him that she liked seeing him put in eighty-hour days at the office
and that it didn't bother her to see him poring over his
architectural drawings until three or four in the morning. She
could even tell him that she didn't mind sleeping alone.

She could tell him all of that and more but
she would be lying. She missed him desperately. She missed them,
the way they used to be when they were happy. Couple by couple,
she'd watched their friends divorce but she'd never in a million
years thought it would happen to them. They were special. Everyone
had said so. They were the couple everyone turned to for advice,
the couple everyone thought would be together for the long
haul.

"I might as well book the restaurant now for
your Golden Anniversary party," her sister Patsy had said years
ago. "I've never seen two people more right for each other."

Or more wrong.

"Coming through!" Two movers, carting the
dining room breakfront, filled the doorway.

"Sorry." She fled for the kitchen. She wasn't
usually so docile but suddenly the house felt more like it belonged
to the movers than to her. A big pine tree should be standing in
front of the family room window, its branches decorated with the
wooden ornaments the twins had made last summer. White lights
should be twinkling among the ornaments and draped across the
mantel. There should be brightly wrapped packages beneath the tree
and stockings hung by the fireplace.

But most of all there should be love.

Charlie, the huge floppy-eared mutt they'd
found at a shelter, threw himself at Jill the moment she swung open
the kitchen door. "I'm glad to see you too," she said, giving the
dog a big hug. He looked longingly toward the door that separated
him from all the action in the other rooms. "You're better off in
here, Charlie," she said, giving him a biscuit from her pocket.
"They might pack you up with the china and carry you away."

Juanita, a dainty green conure, let out a
wolf whistle followed by a raucous laugh.

"Me too," she said, bobbing her sleek head.
"Me too."

Jill tossed her a dog biscuit that she caught
neatly in her beak. "You didn't think I'd forget about you, did
you?" Juanita didn't answer. She was too busy enjoying her
treat.

"I know what you're thinking, Sebastian."
Jill reached into her other pocket for the cat's favorite snack.
"Stop sulking and we'll call a truce." She knew she'd been sharp-
tempered with him earlier and Sebastian tended to hold a grudge.
"Come on, sweetie. You know I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings."

A tingle of apprehension moved across her
shoulders. No matter how annoyed he was, Sebastian would never turn
up his nose at food. She quickly surveyed the kitchen, opening the
cabinets and peering into the pantry. No sign of him. Okay, it was
nothing to worry about. He was probably hiding in the laundry room
or one of the bathrooms. No sign of him there either. The tingle of
apprehension escalated sharply.