Caleb's Christmas Wish Read online

  Caleb’s Christmas Wish

  Debra Salonen

  Loner Llama Press

  Contents

  Caleb’s Christmas Wish

  Special Offer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About the Author

  Also by Debra Salonen

  Copyright © 2004, 2016 by Debra Salonen

  Cover design: Covers By Rogenna

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 1-944300-21-X

  Created with Vellum

  Caleb’s Christmas Wish

  How far would you go for the sake of a child?

  In Jake Westin's world, the lines between black and red, profit and loss, are crisp and easy to delineate. A successful financial consultant living in Miami, Jake's only link to the "bad ol' days" of his youth is his best friend, Kenny Rydell. When Kenny and wife Pam are killed in a car accident during a Thanksgiving weekend ski trip, Jake catches the first plane west to his godson's rescue. Instead of a simple fix, he finds a situation that money alone can't remedy and a sad little boy who triggers memories Jake has worked hard to forget. Jake is determined to do the right thing for Caleb - even if that means sharing custody with the four-year-old's godmother, Allison Jeffries.

  Before the accident that claimed her best friend's life, Allison Jeffries's Fresno-based computer-consulting firm was her main focus. But when tragedy strikes, Allison knows she'll do anything in her power to give her godson, Caleb Rydell, the life Pam intended for her son. Even if that means sharing a house with a charismatic stranger, who soon has her wishing she hadn't sworn off men.

  Reviews

  "CALEB’S CHRISTMAS WISH is a tender and convincing portrayal of loss, love, and triumph. The romance blends into the forming of the new family, blurring the lines between the roles that Jake and Ally play with each other. Holidays spent without our loved ones are the hardest of all, and Ms. Salonen captures the pain of these changes with skilled sensitivity."

  —Grace, Romance Junkies

  Special Offer

  As a thank you for reading, I’d like to give you this FREE novella. By signing up for my Debra Salonen Newsletter, you’ll receive The Laws of Love for free (available through Book Funnel in all formats).

  For my children, Kelly and JonPaul~

  I’ve loved you since you were a twinkle in my eye, a barely whispered prayer, a morsel of inspiration. You continue to inspire me and fill me with pride as you reach for your goals, love your children and add beauty, hope and goodness to this world.

  Chapter 1

  “Hello? Is this Allison Jeffries?”

  “Yes, this is Allison,” she answered, still looking at the Gordian knot of printer, speaker, keyboard and mouse cords she’d been attempting to make sense of. “What can I do for you?”

  “Ma’am, this is Officer Deese with the Madera County Sheriff’s department. I’m at the home of Kenneth and Pamela Rydell in Coarsegold. Mrs. Rydell’s mother asked me to give you a call. Would it be possible for you to come here right away?”

  A jangle of apprehension rushed through her. She swallowed. “Why? What’s happened?”

  “There was a traffic accident this morning about five miles east of Shaver Lake.”

  “Kenny and Pam were hurt?”

  “I’m sorry. They didn’t make it. Black ice. A three-car pileup. The victims’ car was in the middle.”

  Victims?

  Pam and Kenny?

  No!

  She wanted to argue with him. To tell him he was wrong. She’d just spent yesterday—Thanksgiving—with her two closest friends. They couldn’t be…

  She closed her eyes and swallowed twice to keep the contents of her stomach in her stomach. She tried to speak, but the only word that came out was, “No!”

  “Allison? You’re white as a sheet. What is it?”

  Allison lifted her gaze from the swirling print on the carpet of

  Mary Zirandervon’s home office and blinked to focus on the woman facing her. Her client. A job that ten seconds earlier had seemed the most important thing in her world. Making money. Meeting payroll. Worrying about the loan she owed her parents. That was Allison’s life. Her narrow little life that was brightened immeasurably by her best friend and former college roommate Pam Rydell.

  She shook her head to chase away what the officer had said. Pam wasn’t dead. She was alive. Laughing. Teasing. Skiing. She was up on the slope at Sierra Summit right this instant. Someone else had been in that middle car. Pam was generous to a fault. Maybe she lent her car to someone who’d needed it.

  “It’s a mistake,” she said, partly to Mary, partly to the man on the phone.

  “The accident took place around seven,” the deputy said. “It took us awhile to identify all the victims.”

  Holding fast to her sliver of hope, she asked, “Are you sure it was the Rydells? Kenny owns a car dealership. He sometimes drives different cars. And Pam might have lent…”

  The officer didn’t let her finish. His voice sounded weary. “Ma’am, the Jeep was registered to the driver. And the passenger lived long enough to give the rescuers her name.”

  Allison’s knees buckled. She’d have dropped to the floor in a heap if Mary hadn’t rushed forward and helped her to the desk chair.

  Tears swamped her vision. Her throat closed and for a minute she couldn’t draw a breath. She shook her head back and forth, struggling to ward off the bad news that still rang in her ears. “No,” she said again. Too loud. The word echoed in the elegantly appointed room, bouncing off the windows that were shrouded by gray fog. Up in the mountains where Pam and Kenny had been headed, the sun would be shining. The air, crisp and clean. The snow brilliant. The black ice deadly.

  Mary took the phone from Allison’s numb fingers and spoke in a low, urgent tone that added to Allison’s turmoil. She needed to do something. Feel something. Act. But all she could do was sit in the plush leather chair and moan.

  At least, she assumed the low mewling sound was coming from her. But how was that possible? She wasn’t the kind of woman who fell apart in an emergency. Just ask Pam.

  “You’re my rock,” Pam often said. “Aren’t you the one who held my hand through my Caesarian after Kenny passed out?”

  Allison’s lips twitched at the memory. She and Pam had bonded the first day of college. Roommates as different as the worlds they’d come from – Allison, a farm girl from Minnesota, Pam a beauty queen from Michigan. But at the core, they were sisters. Allison was godmother to Pam and Kenny’s son, Caleb.

  “Oh, my God,” Allison said, shooting to her feet. “Caleb.”

  She snatched the phone away from Mary and shouted into the receiver, “Tell me their son wasn’t in the car with them.” Under her breath, she prayed, “Please, God, please, God, please, God.” Last night, Pam had still been undecided about whether to take the four-and-a-half year-old.

  “He loves the snow,” Pam had said right before Allison left. “But Kenny and I need some time together. You know how hectic the holidays get. My canned-food drive at Rydell Motors kicks off next week, and Caleb’s program at preschool is coming up.”

  Full, fat and ha
ppy from turkey and all the trimmings, Allison hadn’t paid very close attention to the final verdict. Blissfully content from a day of feasting, hiking and playing games with her best friends, Allison hadn’t felt the slightest premonition that it might be the last time she’d see her friend alive.

  She held her breath – frozen in agony – until the man said, “If you’re referring to a cute little towhead with a big truck in his hand, he’s right here with his grandmother. Mrs. Wells is … um, naturally this comes as a huge shock. She should have someone with her. When I asked who to call, she gave me your number.”

  Caleb was okay. Relief shot Allison to a momentary crest. Thank God. Thank you, thank you, thank you. She tried to say the words aloud, but was too overcome to speak. A fresh rush of tears blinded her to everything but the phone she grasped. All she could do was nod in response to Mary’s silent query.

  “Praise the Lord,” Mary said, hugging Allison. A second later, the woman dashed from the room, returning almost immediately with a fistful of tissues.

  “Here,” she said, forcing a wad into Allison’s immobile fingers.

  Allison leaned her hip against the desk to stay upright and mopped her face the best she could. “Thank you,” she finally managed to choke out.

  “Yes, ma’am, we can be thankful for small blessings. Now, will you be coming right away? Mrs. …um Wells seems to be having a little trouble breathing. And her color isn’t too good. Do you know if she has any medical condition we should be aware of?”

  The question required Allison to think. To focus. Something she was said to be good at. Except when her world fell apart.

  “High blood pressure maybe? Yes, I think that’s right. Pam was always getting after her mother for not watching her salt intake. And I think she’s borderline diabetic, too,” Allison said, trying to shake off the surreal feeling of speaking about everyday things when any fool knew life would never be normal again.

  “She could be in shock,” the deputy said, “but I think I’d better call in the paramedics, just to be safe. How long will it take you to get here?”

  It took Allison several seconds to remember where she was. From her home in Fresno, the drive to the Rydell home in Yosemite Lakes Park near the little gold rush-era town of Coarsegold took roughly forty-five minutes, but the Zirandervon home was on the northeast outskirts of town, which put Allison at least ten miles closer.

  “Fifteen—twenty minutes. If casino traffic isn’t bad,” she said.

  “I’ll keep an eye on things until you get here. Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

  No, Allison almost cried. She’d never be okay again. But something in his tone when he asked about Cordelia’s health problems made Allison’s stomach turn over. No more, she silently pleaded. We can’t handle anything else. But she knew that kind of logic was no guarantee that things wouldn’t get worse. There’d been a time when she thought learning you had cancer was the worst thing that could happen to a person. But then her doctors told her that the treatment they were prescribing could only be carried out by aborting the baby she was carrying. She’d had to make a decision too horrible to imagine. A decision that had ripped her family apart, poisoned her marriage and might have killed her – if not for Pam, who’d brought Allison back to life. Pam, who’d forced Allison to re-engage in life. But now, Pam was gone.

  The pain that twisted in Allison’s belly might have consumed her, if not for the knowledge that Cordelia and Caleb needed her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, making her vocal cords work despite the knot in her throat.

  She handed the phone to Mary, who hung it up. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive, Ally? I could call Ed. Or a cab…”

  Allison shook her head. “I’ll need my car.” She spun on one heel looking for her backpack, which also served as her purse. “Mary, I’m sorry. I can’t…”

  “Go,” Mary said with authority. “Don’t worry about this. You can send Ernesto out to finish the job or Ed can set it up himself.” Sniffing, she gripped Allison’s arm and said, “Go. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I knew Pam. Not as well as I knew Kenny. He sold me my car. Such a sweetheart. But she happened to be at the shop that day with their little boy. She was so bubbly and full of life. I can’t believe this has happened.”

  It happened. Allison repeated the phrase over and over as she drove. Hands clenched bone-white around the steering wheel, she kept her eyes on the road, while her mind careened with “what-ifs” and “if-onlys.”

  “Why didn’t I tell her I needed her help today?” Allison muttered, blinking away another bout of tears. Pam was hopeless around computers, but she was great in the front office. A true people person, Pam could soothe the most recalcitrant client into accepting the services of Jeffries Computing.

  “Oh, Pam, what am I going to do without you?”

  The pressure on her chest increased, and the dotted line down the middle of the road blurred. She blinked fiercely. She had to keep her emotions under control for Caleb’s sake. And Cordelia’s. The woman would be devastated. Her only child gone.

  Cordelia lived in the guest house directly behind the Rydells’ home. The eight-hundred-square-foot building had started life as a greenhouse, but Pam and Kenny remodeled it into a diminutive one-bed, one-bath suite after Pam’s father, George Wells, passed away.

  Pam had told Allison that Cordelia had been adamant about buying the empty lot next door with the intention of building a home of her own beside her daughter’s. But as she became settled, the urgency to build dwindled.

  Although Pam and her mother argued occasionally—they were after all, two women sharing one kitchen—the living arrangements seemed to work. Cordelia had proven to be a huge asset when it came to helping to care for Caleb. The little boy and his grandmother were close, which made the possibility of something happening to Cordelia all the more frightening. Allison stepped on the gas, pushing her Subaru wagon faster than normal.

  As she neared the entrance to the housing development that Pam often called Allison’s “country home,” Mary Zirandervon’s words came back. Pam was a sweetheart. Bubbly. Full of life.

  “Oh, Pam,” Allison cried, pounding the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Please let it be a mistake. I know you wouldn’t just quit on me. On Caleb. Or your mother.”

  She put on her blinker without thinking, turned across traffic without really looking and zoomed into the housing development. As her car soared up the slight incline past the reduced speed zone sign, Allison recalled an argument she and Pam had had about speeding.

  “Loosen up, Ally,” Pam had said, when Allison accused her of having a lead foot. “One might think you’re an uptight nerd –which I know you’re not.” Allison couldn’t remember the rest of the conversation, but she’d smiled. She and Pam were the kind of friends who could say things to each other that no one else could.

  But all that was over. And as she slowed to maneuver past the sheriff’s car that was partly blocking the driveway of the house on Sequoia Circle, Allison knew at a gut level that her best friend in the world was gone, and a part of herself was lost forever.

  The pain was more of an annoyance than anything else. It prevented Cordelia from taking a full breath, which made her head feel woozy and sent flickering yellow spots across her vision.

  “You silly old coot. Get a grip,” Cordelia Wells wanted to tell herself, but the effort it took to speak was more than she could muster. She’d never felt so weak, so useless.

  A small fear suddenly formed. What if this was a stroke? George had had a massive stroke before he died. She’d never forgotten the agony in his eyes, days on end in a hospital bed, trapped in a useless body, mute.

  Fear tightened the knot under her rib cage and the pain in the center of her chest increased. She let out a small whimper, even though she tried her best to keep it in.

  Caleb, who was playing on the carpet nearby with his favorite toy, looked up at her. His big green eyes grew ro
under and his bottom lip disappeared under his teeth. He had lovely teeth – just like his mother’s. Kenny’s mouth was generous and his smile ready, but Cordelia always wished his mother would have gotten him braces when he was younger. Even Pam, who defended her husband no matter what, agreed that Caleb would be better off with her teeth and gums.

  Thinking their names brought back the dark and dangerous reality she was trying desperately to keep at bay. She bit down on the wail that threatened to erupt from the deepest corner of her soul.

  “How are you doing, ma’am?” the young deputy asked. He set down the phone and returned to the couch he’d helped Cordelia onto after breaking the news of the accident. She’d been sitting up at the time, but was now lying down. She couldn’t remember falling over. She sensed that one leg was hanging down in a most ignoble pose, but she didn’t have the strength to move it.

  “Is that pain in your arm any better?” he asked, trying to elicit a response from her.

  Cordelia felt sorry for the deputy. He appeared too young for such a loathsome job—telling people their loved ones were dead.

  He dropped to one knee beside her and picked up her wrist. His large square fingers pressed against her vein. She could feel the erratic flutter as her heart did its job. Her broken heart. She’d tried to handle the news stoically when he’d first told her about the accident. Just as she had when the doctor had told her that George had passed away.

  But back then, she’d been prepared for the inevitable. She’d talked with friends – other widows. Everyone told her that life and death were linked. You couldn’t have one without the other. But that reasoning was easier to swallow when the person who’d died had lived his life with great verve and total disregard for the health concerns his wife had tried to alert him to. George had been seventy-two. Pam was just thirty-four.