AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Like why he’d continued to treat her as the friend she had always been to him.
Since she was now in possession of some 20/20 hindsight, Emmy realized it was a good thing he’d never gotten the letter. Because if he had, everything between them would have changed. They might not even be friends now, and after the heart crushing she’d taken over Owen’s cheating, she desperately needed Calen’s friendship. Then again, if Calen had read the letter, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten involved with Owen in the first place.
Apparently, hindsight was a gift that kept on giving, and in this case, it was doling out plenty of doubts and what-ifs for her.
Calen was no doubt going through his own what-ifs, and while he’d spent the first hour of this visit just going through each bag and counting so they’d have a total, Emmy knew him. Knew that one letter he’d put in the center was gnawing away at him. Heck, it was gnawing away at her, too, but she refused to play what-if with this one. Best to treat it like the emotional keg of dynamite that it almost certainly was.
Because it was addressed to Daddy.
Emmy had no doubt that Calen had done the math on this one, too, and he knew the letter had been sent when he was eighteen. Ironically, it’d been postmarked the same day Emmy had sent her own letter to Calen.
“It can’t be meant for me,” Calen muttered after he took yet another shot of the whiskey she’d poured for him.
Even though the counting was done, Calen continued to sit on the floor and stare at the red envelope with the ho-ho-ho-ing Santa stamp and the child’s drawing of a snowman. Correction—a possible snowman. It could have also been a white poop emoji, but considering the holiday theme, it likely wasn’t the latter.
One thing for certain was that Calen hadn’t been the one to send it. At eighteen, he’d been long past the point of childhood drawings and such. So that meant someone else, a child, had mailed it to someone he or she thought of as Daddy.
Again, that meant it wasn’t for Calen, unless he’d knocked up someone when he was twelve or so. When Emmy looked at him consideringly, he gave her a scowl.
“No, just no,” he insisted. “I didn’t have sex until I was fifteen.”
She knew that. Knew, too, that overly perky cheerleader Mandy Tarkington had been the one. After that, it was a string of girls who’d obviously seen that Calen was the hottest guy in Christmas Creek. Emmy had seen it as well, but she’d never managed to catch him at the right time when both had been available. Then they’d ended up dating best friends Owen and Sasha, so Calen and she had become best friends as well.
Of course, Owen and Sasha had stretched their bestie status when they’d screwed around with each other, but that was a whine best saved for later. For now, she contemplated the Daddy letter while she chugged not booze but more Pepsi. Emmy had learned the hard way over the years that it was best to keep a clear head when dealing with stuff she couldn’t wrap her mind around.
“It’s like looking at multiple hornets’ nests,” Calen remarked. Sighing, he eyed the stacks and bundles as if they were indeed insects ready to swarm.
And he wasn’t far off in that opinion.
Even if she disregarded the child’s letter and the one she’d tucked away in her purse, Emmy could see plenty of possible bombshells. Like the one addressed to Dillon Mercer from his sister’s college roommate, Elise, who’d visited Christmas Creek several times. The handwriting on the letter looked awfully flowery, and according to the postmark, it would have been sent while Dillon was still married.
Then, there was the one from Gladys Herman to Clive Dunbar, both of whom were well into their seventies. Neither of them had ever married, nor had they appeared to show any interest in each other. Probably because Gladys was a straightlaced business owner from one of the town’s premier families, and Clive, well, wasn’t any of those things. He was an occasionally employed artist whose claim to fame was that he’d been at Woodstock. A surprise to absolutely no one because he still dressed as if he were living in that decade.
Not a perfect match on paper.
But there it was, the letter/Christmas card from five years ago, and Gladys had let the “s” in her name curl into a little heart. Such a small thing, but it would fire up gossip and speculation if it got out. Which made Emmy wonder why Elise and Gladys had taken such risks.
Of course, she’d risked bunches herself when she’d written to Calen.
Emmy blamed her risky behavior on youth and the fact that the holidays made you think all things were possible. Movies likeIt’s a Wonderful LifeandA Christmas Carolegged you on. Once January reality set in though, most of those holiday possibilities just seemed like pipe dreams.
Or in her case, a Texas-sized mistake.
Calen took a deep breath and reached for the daddy letter just as his phone dinged. Because Emmy was sitting right next to him with her back against the sofa, she saw the name on the screen. Deputy Mick Webster.
Mick would be manning the sheriff’s office, so maybe something else had gone wrong. Or maybe the deputy just wanted an update since Calen had told him about the mail bag before he’d left the office.
“Tell me bad news didn’t come in fours,” Calen snarled when he took the call. Even though he didn’t put Mick on speaker, Emmy heard the deputy speak.
“Yeah, it did. Or rather fives,” he said, causing Calen to groan. “But I guess you could say the fourth one is just a continuation of bad news number three about all those letters and such your dad didn’t deliver. How many more did you find?”
“Too many.” Calen was still snarling. Now, he put the call on speaker and began to put the small packages in a separate pile. “What’s wrong?”
“Word’s out about the mail,” Mick said, and this time it was Emmy who groaned. Well, that hadn’t taken long, less than two hours since she’d shown up at Calen’s office.
“How the hell did that happen?” Calen demanded.
Mick readily supplied the name of the dispatcher. “Junie. She has better hearing than she lets on. Anyway, she claims she only told one person, but it’s all over town. Folks have been dropping by and calling. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten any calls about it yet.”
