face of the biggest professional disaster of her career, she could still feel blessed.
Maureen loved everything about Christmas—the cold nip in the air and the crunch of snow underfoot. The aroma of baking cookies and the twinkle of lights in shop windows and along roof lines. The old songs drifting from the radio, sentimental movies on TV, stacks of Christmas books on library tables, the children’s artwork on display. The cheery clink of coins in the Salvation Army collection bucket and the fellowship of people working together on holiday projects.
All of this made her feel a part of something. All of this made her feel safe. Yes, she loved Christmas.
Five
Eddie Haven couldn’t stand Christmas. It was his own private hell. His aversion had started at a young age, and had only grown stronger with the passage of years. Which did not explain why he was on his way to help build a nativity scene in front of the Heart of the Mountains Church.
At least he didn’t have to go alone. His passengers were three brothers who had been categorized at the local high school as at-risk teens. Eddie had never been fond of the label, “at-risk.” As far as he could tell, just being a teenager was risky. Tonight, three of them were his unlikely allies, and at the moment they were arguing over nothing, as brothers seemed to do. Tonight was all about keeping the boys occupied. One of the main reasons they were at risk was that they had too much time on their hands. He figured by putting their hands on hammers and hay bales, they’d spend a productive evening and stay out of trouble.
“Hey, Mr. Haven,” said Omar Veltry, his youngest charge. “I bet you five dollars I can tell you where you got them boots you’re wearing.”
“What makes you think I even have five dollars?” Eddie asked.
“Then bet me,” Omar piped up. “Maybe I’ll lose and you’ll get five dollars off me. Five dollars says I can tell you where you got those boots.”
“Hell, I don’t even know where I got them. So go for it.”
“Ha. You got those boots on your feet, man.” Omar nearly bounced himself off the seat. He high-fived each brother in turn and they all giggled like maniacs.
Christ. At a stoplight, Eddie dug in his pocket, found a five. “Man. You are way too smart for me. All three of you are real wiseguys.”
“Ain’t we, though?”
“I bet you’re smart enough to put that fiver in the church collection box,” Eddie added.
“Oh, man.” Omar collapsed against the seat.
Heart of the Mountains Church was situated on a hillside overlooking Willow Lake, its slender steeple rising above the trees. The downhill-sloping road bowed out to the left near the main yard of the church, and a failure to negotiate the curve could mean a swift ride to disaster. Eddie slowed the van. No matter how many times he rounded this curve in the road, he always felt the same shudder of memory. This was where the two halves of his life had collided—the past and the future—one snowy night, ten years ago.
Tonight, the road was bare and dry. The iconic church was the picture of placid serenity, its windows aglow in the twilight, the landscape stark but beautiful, waiting for the snow. This, Eddie figured, was the sort of setting people imagined for weddings and holiday worship, community events—and of course, AA meetings.
He pulled into the church parking lot. “I’m officially broke now. Thanks a lot.”
“I heard you used to be a movie star,” Randy, the older brother, pointed out. “Everybody knows movie stars are rich.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Eddie said. “Rich.”
“Betcha you’re rich from that movie,” the middle brother, Moby, pointed out. “I saw it on TV just the other night. ‘There’s magic in Christmas, if only you believe,’” he quoted. It was a famous line in The Christmas Caper, uttered by a wide-eyed and irresistible little Eddie. The damn thing aired endlessly like a digital virus every holiday season.
“Now you’re officially on my nerves,” said Eddie. “And FYI, I’m not rich from the movie. Not even close.”
“Huh,” Moby said with a snort of disbelief. Moby was his nickname, based not on his size, but on the fact that his given name was Richard. “Your movie’s huge. It’s on TV every Christmas.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t do me a bit of good.”
“You don’t, like, get a cut or anything?”
“Geez, don’t look at me like that. I was a kid, okay? And my parents didn’t do so hot, being in charge of finances.” The Havens had been incredibly naive, in fact. Against all odds and conventional wisdom, they’d managed to fail to make money off one of the most successful films of the year.
Maybe that was why he avoided his folks like poison ivy around the holidays. Oh, please let it not be so, Eddie thought. He didn’t want to be so shallow. But neither did he want to try figuring out the real reason he steered clear of family matters at Christmas.
“Did they, like, take your money and spend it on cars and stuff?” Randy asked. “Or make stupid investments?”
“It’s complicated,” Eddie said. “To make a long story short, they signed some contracts without quite knowing what they were agreeing to, and none of us saw any earnings. It was a long time ago,” he added. “Water under the bridge.”
“Didn’t you, like, grow up in some kind of compound?” Moby asked. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”
Eddie laughed. “Commune, not compound. There’s a difference.” His parents had caught the tail end of the radical sixties, and for a time, they’d dropped out of society. They’d spent the seventies on a commune in a remote, rural area of the Catskills, convinced that simple living and self-sufficiency would lead the way to Nirvana. Eddie had been born in a hand-built cabin without electricity or running water, his mother attended by a midwife and surrounded by chanting doulas. He wondered what the Veltry brothers would say if they knew the actual name on his birth certificate. It was a far cry from Eddie. “A commune is based on the idea that the community raises the kids, not just the parents,” he explained to them. “I was homeschooled, too. The group kind of fell apart after a while, but by then, my folks had created a traveling show. We were on the road a lot.”
“Musta sucked for you,” Randy said.
Eddie had thought so, but working with kids like the Veltrys had shown him everything was relative. Compared to the three brothers, Eddie’s problems had been nothing. At least both of his parents had been present. According to Eddie’s friend Ray Tolley, who was with the local PD, the Veltry boys were in foster care more than they were out. Eddie didn’t know the precise reason and he didn’t want to bug them by asking. They’d never known their father, and they had a mother who couldn’t manage to stay out of jail.
When Eddie was their age, his biggest worry had been how to survive his parents and the legacy of the Haven family. He came from a long line of entertainers dating back generations, to Edvard Haszczak, a circus acrobat who stowed away on a freighter from the Baltic Sea. Upon arrival in America, Edvard had changed his unspellable last name and founded a family of performers. Eddie’s great-grandparents had been vaudeville singers; his grandparents were borscht-belt
