Rebuilding Home by Kimberly Diede

Author:Kimberly Diede [Diede, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780999299647
Publisher: Kimberly Diede

Chapter Twenty

Gift of a Cool Head and Cool Hands

Rex remembered when he used to like Christmas, back before his wife died. Gail always had a knack for making the holidays special. They loved to travel, and flights were cheaper on Christmas Eve when everyone else wanted to be home with family.

Through the years there had been beach vacations, ski trips, and even an overseas adventure where they slept in a castle. The ghosts that were rumored to share their sleeping quarters never materialized, but the food was amazing and Rex was happy to keep Gail “safe from the boogeyman” until dawn.

Now those memories were all he had to keep him warm at night.

After Gail was gone, Rex struggled with the holidays, just as so many others do after they lose loved ones. He’d often take his mom over to his brother’s house and try to enjoy the festivities. He even went to Ethan’s parents’ house a time or two. The crowd and excitement were fun for a while, but it only magnified the quiet once he got home.

This year was different . . . worse. He couldn’t bring himself to do much of anything. He’d barely managed to arrange for his niece to get his mother over to see the rest of the family. He wasn’t allowed to leave town, anyway, as a condition of his bail. Ethan and some of his family had left a few messages for him leading up to Christmas Eve, but Rex hadn’t called anyone back.

He kept getting calls on his cell from a number he didn’t recognize, too. The caller ID appeared to be for a local number. The number kept calling and calling until he finally answered it out of frustration, ready to chew out whoever was on the other end of the line. But no one was there. It must have been coming from an auto dialer.

He’d bought a small turkey breast, intending to prepare himself a Christmas feast, but he hadn’t even bothered to take it out of the fridge once he brought it home from the grocery store. Chips and beer made an easier, if less tasty, meal—and if he drank enough of the beer, he sometimes thought about something other than smoke and flames.

He was proud of himself on Christmas Eve. He held off on drinking the beer until after he’d gotten home from church. Attending Midnight Mass was the one tradition he’d continued after Gail died. The darkness of night, the glowing candles in the sanctuary, and the smell of incense somehow made him feel closer to his wife . . . as if a part of her was somehow still there, in the church, looking over him. He’d arrived early so he could sit in their favorite pew—the same pew they always used to try to sit in whenever they went to Mass.

Even when they used to travel over the holidays, Gail always insisted they find a church so they could celebrate the Lord’s birth. And so he still went without her.

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