AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Of course,” her mom said. “Fly safe.”
Her flight wouldn’t leave for another two hours, but she settled in at the gate with a textbook, her puzzles, and Helen’s voice looping in her head, asking her to stay.
* * *
Her parents’ house still felt like home. Her family had moved a lot while she was growing up, due to her father’s military career, finally staying in one place when she was fourteen. It had been a luxury to go to the same high school for four years.
Danny had already arrived at the house when her father parked in the driveway after picking her up. Only family was staying at the house this year: her parents, Danny and his wife Megan, and their daughter, Jenny. Her niece was four, just like Lori’s daughter Lindsay. They were going to stay until Christmas Eve, then head to Megan’s family for Christmas Day. Patty was disappointed, but the one year the two families had tried to combine Christmas while Annie was overseas, it was reportedly a disaster, and no one really liked Danny’s in-laws enough to try again.
The extended family would arrive early on Christmas Day. Grandparents and aunts and uncles and their children would be crammed into the house. Christmas had always been a big affair. Not Annie’s favorite holiday—that title went to Halloween while she was young enough to go trick-or-treating, then switched to any major holiday that paid her to stay home before her work took her overseas again.
There was candy all over her parents’ house, and she grabbed a handful of chocolates from a bowl by the door as she walked in.
“That all you brought?” her mom asked. Patty was wearing her red flannel nightgown with a white collar.
“All my warm clothes are here,” she said.
“Well, don’t fill up on sweets,” she said, eying the red- and green-foiled candies in Annie’s hand. “I saved you some supper.”
“I won’t,” she promised, though she ate four as soon as she got upstairs. The rest she squirreled away in her nightstand. She’d unpack later.
She looked around the small bedroom. Nothing had changed. Danny’s room, when he moved out, had become her father’s study, but hers had the same twin bed, same ruffled curtains, same books on the shelves. Her old Nancy Drew books,Eloise,andHarry the Dirty Dog.
Her father and everyone else had gone to bed, but her mom sat with her while she ate.
“How come you’ve never changed my room?” Annie asked between bites.
“You want to redecorate?” Patty asked. “I don’t think we have time this trip, but if you came home for the summer…”
“No,” she said. “That’s not… I mean, why haven’t you made it a guest room or a sewing room or a home gym or something? Danny had barely left before Dad was measuring for a desk.”
“Boys leave, and you know you’ll never get them back.” Patty waved a hand in the air. “We knew that when he married Meg so young. But you’re my girl, Anabelle. Girls should always know they have a home to come back to.”
“Well, that’s sweet, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Annie said. “You could put a bigger bed in there, have more guests.”
“What if you want to come back again someday and you don’t feel like you have a room of your own?”
“I don’t need the same things I had at sixteen to recognize this as my home, Mom,” she said with a laugh.
“I like to think I’ll get you back one day, honey.” She reached over and patting Annie’s hand. “You’re a hard one to let go. Anyway, you came back once before!”
First Frank Clifton, then Helen telling her to stay. Now her own mother. Annie felt like she was being pulled in too many directions, and she wondered what it would feel like if she could do exactly as she pleased. Where would she go? Who would she choose if there were no strings attached? California was supposed to be that place for her, but it seemed like she could never get far enough away.
She cleaned her plate, put it in the dishwasher, kissed her mother, and went to bed.
On Christmas Eve, her dad let her take his car to the mall. She’d been far too busy to buy gifts before she left.
Although the mall was a madhouse, the worst place to be on Christmas Eve, she managed to buy her father a sweater, her mother a silk scarf, something for Danny, and some toys for the kids. She was climbing the stairs to the third floor of the parking garage with her shopping bags when an unfamiliar sound began emanating from her purse.
She dug out the new pager and chastised it. “You have to bekiddingme,” she said. “Here?”
She put her purchases in the trunk and disappointed a harried woman waiting with two kids in the car for the parking spot. Annie mouthed an apology, but the woman gunned her engine and peeled out.
She found a pay phone just inside the side entry, pulled a quarter out of her pocket, and called the number.
“Agent Juno, Akron,” she said.
“Merry Christmas to you too,” said the familiar voice.
