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It was only eight, but she may as well go to bed.
Before she did, there was one more thing in the box that she had to take care of. Christopher’s stocking.
She lifted it out of the box. It was gold and had Santa, an elf, and a reindeer standing in front of a Christmas tree. She had intended to have his name embroidered on the top after he was born. She’d also bought a matching stocking hanger. If she’d put the ornament on the tree, she may as well go all the way and put his stocking up too.
Chloe took it to the mantle and set it up beside her own.
She might not have anyone else in her life right now, but she would always have her son.
DECEMBER 23rd
10:13 A.M.
“Are you sure you should be up and about and not home in bed?” Savannah asked her friend.
“Positive,” Chloe replied. “Really; it looks worse than it feels.”
“That doesn’t really convince me—it looks pretty bad, so I’m sure you feel worse than you’re letting on.”
She was pretty sure that her friend was lying. Chloe had to be in a fair bit of pain, she just didn't want anyone to know it.
Savannah knew all about that.
It had been close to three years since she’d been hurt, and her hip still caused her pain. Most days it wasn't so bad, a little twinge here and there if she took the stairs too quickly or turned too sharply. When the weather was frigid, she tended to get more pain, and her joint would seize up. Some days it would be so bad it was all she could do to keep the tears at bay until she got home
But in the big scheme of things, it wasn't her ruined hip that hurt the most.
It was her broken heart.
Broken bones were a lot easier to heal—even if they didn’t heal completely correctly—than a broken heart was.
She shook off the doom and gloom. She had a lot to be thankful for. She had a job she adored, even if it wasn't the one she had originally wanted. She had a wonderful family and great friends who had supported her every step of the way during her long recovery. And it was Christmastime. She loved Christmas, especially all the baking. She usually started on December 1stand baked something new every day. Fudge, cookies, cakes, pies; shehad so much stuff, she was always giving most of it away as it was way too much for one person to eat.
On Christmas Eve, her baking efforts culminated in baking and assembling a huge gingerbread house. She usually went with a theme; she’d done the traditional Christmassy things at first: Santa’s house at the North Pole, the Nativity, but then she decided to start being original. She had done her childhood home and family, the FBI with all her colleagues, and a few of the criminals she’d help to put away. She’d done fairy tales and favorite books. This year, which would mark the ninth anniversary of the tradition she had started when she first moved into her own place at eighteen, she had decided her theme was a fairground, complete with moving carousel. She already had all the ingredients bought, and a plan drawn up and sitting on her kitchen counter waiting for tomorrow.
“I feel okay, I really do. Yes, sore, but nothing I can't handle,” Chloe said as she pulled to a stop in front of a pretty white house with a beautiful garden.
“Okay.” She’d let it go. If Chloe said she felt okay, then she had to believe that, even though it didn't look like she did. When she’d been recovering, she had hated the constant questions about how she was doing. She knew people only asked because they cared, but it had been annoying having to give the same answer over and over again.
“Careful when you get out, it’s slippery,” Chloe said as she climbed from the car.
Savannah wasalwayscareful. She couldn’t afford another fall. If her bad hip was injured again, there was a chance she would lose the ability to walk. At first, her doctors had hoped to put in an artificial hip which would give her much better movement and less pain than she had now. But the damage to the entire area had been extensive, and they hadn’t been able to guarantee that a replacement would work.
“I hope I’m able to help,” she said as Chloe walked slowly with her up the garden path to the front door.
“Me too. Taylor is refusing to look at photos of Harley Zabkar to see if he’s the man who abducted her. She says she doesn’t want to know. Apparently, she has decided she just wants to forget about the whole thing and move on. Butweneed to know. The killer has Avery Ormont, so we need Taylor to tell us if Harley is her kidnapper or if it’s Pete Larkin or someone else altogether.”
“Fin can't ask her? I thought he had been helping her,” she said slowly. She knew how much it had hurt her friend when she had walked away from the man she loved. Savannah really hoped they could work things out. If Fin would just admit to himself that his anger at Chloe was misplaced and he was really just feeling guilty, and if Chloe would just admit that what happened wasn't her fault and that she didn't deserve Fin’s anger, then maybe they could.
“Apparently he made a clean break with her after yesterday,” Chloe said as she rapped on the door.
“I can't believe she attacked you.”
Chloe shrugged. “She’s hurting and confused and traumatized and needed someone to lash out at. And that person just happens to be me. I think she thought of me as an obstacle in the way of her getting Fin, which is ridiculous given how adamant Fin has been about us never getting back together. But anyway, I don’t know how receptive she’s going to be to me, which is why you’re here. I was hoping that maybe the fact that you’d nearly been abducted, and that you were able to ID the man who did it, and that you’d also suffered a broken bone at the hands of your attacker, that it might provide some common ground and you’ll be able to get through to her.”
Not that she minded helping, but she worked crime scene and collected evidence—she didn't interview victims and theprospect of doing it was a little unnerving. “Tom couldn’t come?”
“Tom’s working on trying to get Harley Zabkar’s bail revoked.”
