The December Market (Shelter Springs #2)

2

“I like Birdie. She’s nice.”

Rafe smiled down at his son. “She is, isn’t she?”

He had always liked Birdie Lovell. She was one of those rare people who treated everyone around her with kindness and compassion.

Once when he had been a kid, he and his cousin Alex had been playing street hockey on Huckleberry Street, where one of their other friends lived at the time, when Rafe had a shot go wild, the puck flying hard into her front window.

He could still remember the icy fear that had slithered down his back. Their buddy Paul had urged them all to run away and hide out in his basement recreation room, but Rafe knew they had to make it right.

He had been shaking when he went to her door to confess, Alex at his side. Birdie had only hugged them both, assured them that she understood accidents happened then had agreed to let the boys mow her lawn all that summer to pay for the repair of the window.

Remembering Alex brought the familiar pang of loss. They had been as close as brothers, raised side by side, really. Maria, Alex’s mother and Rafe’s paternal aunt, had died when Alex was only nine and Alex’s sister, Izzy, was six. Their father had no longer been in the picture. As a result, Alex and Izzy had come back to the area after their mother’s death to live with Paolo and Rosita in Shelter Springs, just around the corner from Rafe’s house.

They had always been a close family, but losing his aunt Maria had brought all the Arredondos closer together. They all rallied around Alex and Izzy.

Alex had been the best of them all. Smart, athletic, funny. He had earned a basketball scholarship shortly before his death and had been poised for amazing things.

All that promise, all that potential to make a difference in the world, had been snuffed out one December day.

He hated thinking about the sheer, senseless tragedy of it all.

“Why are you frowning, Dad?” Isaac asked him, worry creasing his own forehead. “Don’t you like Birdie?”

“Sure I do. What’s not to like? She’s great. I was just... remembering something sad.”

“Is it Mom? I get sad too when I think about her.”

He hugged his son, determined all over again to make this a much better Christmas than the past few.

“I was thinking about my cousin Alex. Remember how we sometimes take flowers to his grave when we’re going to visit Mom’s?”

“I remember. He liked basketball and fishing and playing chess with Abuelo .”

“He certainly did.” With effort, Rafe pushed away his sadness. This was a time for gratitude. A time to focus on family and blessings and all the things they had instead of all the things they had lost.

“Let’s go see if Abuelo is ready to go yet so we can take him to Abi and Ito ’s house.”

As his grandfather wasn’t in the recreation room where they had left him, Rafe led the way down the hall to Paolo’s apartment, in the opposite wing from Birdie’s. When they reached it, Isaac rang the doorbell with enthusiasm.

His grandfather opened the door right away with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry if I kept you waiting. I got a call from my accountant and decided I could hear him better in my apartment than out there. It seems an odd time to talk about my investments, but he wants to make some changes to my portfolio before the end of the year. We ended up talking longer than I expected. Get Todd started and sometimes it’s tough to wind him back down.”

Rafe suspected that particular conversation had not been one-way. His grandfather loved to talk to people. He had friends all over the county, former customers of the restaurant or other business owners he had met over the years.

Taking him anywhere in town was usually an exercise in patience while Paolo stopped to chat with old friends and new ones.

“No problem. The pizza is only ready now for me to pick up.”

Because Rafe was working the next night on Thanksgiving and would miss the festivities, he had offered to take pizza to his mom’s house that night.

Of course, Paolo did not want to miss out on all the family fun.

“I just have a quick errand. Go ahead out to your truck, if you want. I can meet you there. I only need to drop this one thing off at my friend Birdie’s apartment before we go,” Paolo said.

“We were just at Birdie’s apartment. We helped carry her groceries,” Isaac announced.

Paolo gave the boy a surprised look. “Did you?”

“Yeah. She gave us a peanut butter cookie. It was so good.”

“We had a little incident with the radio control car,” Rafe confessed. “I’m afraid we weren’t watching it as closely as we should have been and Birdie’s granddaughter Amanda ended up tripping over it.”

“Oh dear. I hope she’s all right.”

“She said she was.” Isaac frowned. “But I think she might have been limping a little when we went to Birdie’s apartment.”

That was news to Rafe. Why hadn’t he noticed? He had certainly noticed how Amanda Taylor always smelled delicious.

“In that case, we should perhaps take an extra box of chocolates for her as well.”

“I can come with you,” Isaac said. “Maybe Birdie will give me another cookie.”

As much as Rafe thought he should probably do something to dissuade his son from becoming a cookie beggar to all the senior citizens who lived in the building, he had to admit it was hard not to love Birdie’s cookies.

He hung back when Paolo rang the doorbell, not really eager for another encounter with Amanda Taylor, no matter how scrumptious she smelled. When Amanda answered the door, he saw she had taken off her coat. She was wearing a cable-knit sweater the color of acorns that set off her auburn hair and made her eyes look an even more brilliant green.

“Oh. Hello, Mr. Arredondo. Hi again, Isaac. Rafe.”

“Hi,” Isaac said, marching right inside the apartment with his usual cheer. “I put the car away at my abuelo ’s house so I can play with it again when we come to visit him. That way my cousins can play with it, too.”

She blinked a little at this unsolicited information. “That sounds like a lovely idea.”

“I have two cousins. One girl named Jade and one boy named Samuel. They’re my friends.”

“How lovely for you. I always wanted cousins but I’m afraid I didn’t have any.”

She had a brother, though. He knew Griffin Taylor well. They had been friends when they were younger, and Rafe often had interactions with him now when he transported patients to the local emergency room, as Dr. Taylor sometimes filled in for other doctors there.

“I understand you had a little mishap earlier,” his grandfather said, his tone courteous and gentlemanly.

“Yes. But I’m fine.”

“I cannot help but feel responsible since I’m the one who gave my grandson the car and urged him to try it out here in the recreation room and the hallway. I brought you a little something as a gesture of apology. I hope you can forgive us both.”

She looked even more startled by the box of chocolates he held out, though Rafe could see Paolo’s usual charm was working.

She sent Rafe a confused look, which he returned with a slight shrug. He wanted to tell her Paolo had a mind of his own. In his experience, it was usually best to simply let the man have his way.

“Truly. There is nothing to forgive. It was an accident. I should have been watching where I was going.”

“Take the gift, anyway. I buy them from a wonderful shop over in Haven Point.”

She looked at the label. “I love Cravings. They make some amazing chocolates.”

“There you go. Haven’t you heard that when you allow someone to give you a gift, you are giving their soul a gift in return? My soul needs all the gifts it can find.”

Rafe could tell that she didn’t have the heart to refuse his abuelo . Few people ever could.

“Thank you, then,” she said with a warmer smile than she had ever given Rafe . “I will enjoy these very much.”

“You are welcome. I actually have another box for your grandmother as well. Is she home?”

“I’m here. Hello, Paolo.” She moved to the doorway to stand beside her granddaughter.

At the sight of her, Rafe’s grandfather seemed to light up from the inside. He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, which made Isaac and Birdie giggle a little.

“Hello, darling Birdie. I’ve brought you some chocolate from Cravings, as well as that game you asked to borrow.”

“Oh yes. Thank you.”

“I’ll set them here on your entry table.”

“Perfect,” she said. Rafe wasn’t sure if the color on her wrinkled cheeks was from the heat of the kitchen or from his grandfather’s charm. He suspected the latter. Interesting. Birdie Lovell had never struck him as a woman prone to blushes.

“Amanda, this is the game I was telling you about,” Birdie said. “We had such a lovely time the other night playing it. Neither of us could stop laughing. I haven’t laughed that much in forever.”

Rafe saw Amanda frown and give his grandfather a slightly suspicious look.

“Great,” she said after a moment. “We can eat our chocolates and play the game tomorrow with Mabel after Thanksgiving Dinner.”

“You’re having dinner with Mabel Mulcahy?” Rafe had to ask.

“Yes. Poor dear,” Birdie answered. “She didn’t have anywhere else to go this year since her daughter is going to her in-laws’. I couldn’t bear the idea of her eating alone in her apartment.”

“You’re a kind woman, Birdie,” Paolo said with another of those twinkling smiles that only made Amanda’s suspicious expression tighten.

“We should go, Abuelo ,” Rafe said after a moment. “Everyone will be waiting for their pizza.”

“Of course. Of course. Have a lovely evening, you two. I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow morning before I head to my son’s house for dinner,” he said to Birdie.

“Yes. Definitely,” she answered.

Paolo and Isaac both patted Birdie’s dog one last time, then headed back out to the hallway.

When they walked outside to his pickup truck, they found the wind had picked up over the past hour and now it blew snowflakes around with gleeful abandon, like a toddler throwing sand at the playground.

“That Amanda Taylor is a lovely woman,” Paolo said as they made their way to Rafe’s pickup truck. “She’s always so kind to everyone. She comes to see her grandmother at least three or four times a week. They’re very close.”

Was that a dig against Rafe because he only managed to visit once or twice a week? He didn’t bother to point out that was probably more often than they typically had seen each other before Paolo moved to the apartment building.

“Yes. She’s very kind.”

“This town would fall apart without her efforts, especially when it comes to the Christmas market. She practically runs that thing single-handed. Spends all year getting ready for it.”

Yes. He knew that about Amanda. The woman loved to have a finger in every single pie, from the town’s annual Giving Market to the library board to the hospital foundation to the concerts in the park.

“It’s not a one-woman show,” Rafe pointed out. “Many people have a hand in the market. The fire department even handles the first aid booth there as a public service.”

Fortunately, Rafe was usually able to leave that to the EMTs.

“Yes, of course. You’re right. But I doubt the market would have grown as it has without Amanda’s efforts over the past five years or so that she has been running things. She’s quite unstoppable when she puts her mind to something. I believe she gets that from her grandmother.”

“No doubt,” Rafe said as he helped his grandfather up and into the passenger seat of his truck, then moved to the back seat of his king cab to help Isaac into his booster seat.

His thoughts kept returning to Amanda even after he had picked up the pizzas and garlic bread from their favorite local pizzeria and drove to his parents’ home.

He had known her forever, though she was a few years younger than Rafe, and their acquaintance had always seemed on the periphery of his world. Their paths didn’t intersect all that often, though he expected that might change somewhat now that he had bought a house down the street from her, and his grandfather lived in the same senior apartment building as her grandmother.

Despite her energy and enthusiasm for different civic causes, Amanda Taylor had always struck him as...sad, somehow. It wasn’t anything she said, just shadows in her eyes that even the brightest smile couldn’t hide.

She certainly had reason for her pain. Growing up the daughter of Dennis Taylor could not have been easy for her. Her father had left a legacy of pain in Shelter Springs that would be hard for anyone to escape.

Amanda had also lost her childhood sweetheart in a tragic avalanche. Rafe had been on the ski patrol twelve years earlier, before he had become a paramedic. He had been one of the first responders who had scrambled through snow and ice trying to dig out Jake Shepherd, and Rafe had been there when the man had been pulled to the surface, his features blue and lifeless.

He had rushed to help Griffin Taylor, who had been snowboarding with Jake, perform CPR, to no avail.

As far as he knew, Amanda had not dated much since her fiancé died. When it came to town events like the Founders Day parade or the fire department’s annual breakfast, she always came alone or with her grandmother or friends.

Was she still grieving for Jake, more than a decade later? He had no idea. The only thing he knew for certain was that Rafe needed to do his best to stay away from her.

He had made the grave mistake of marrying one woman with baggage, demons from her past she had been unable to outrun. He and his son were still trying to recover from the jagged hole Caitlin had ripped through their world.

He had learned his lesson well.