* * * * *
Sophia locked up and headed out to her car. She was feeling happier than she’d felt in a long time. The excitement of a new…attraction. A new romance, even a temporary, just-for-fun one, had her feeling bubbly and light on her feet—as if the butterflies in her chest were lifting her.
She hopped into her car and started the engine, but before she could shift into gear, pulled out her phone and tapped the voicemail icon, expecting a message from Aunt Vidalia, who liked her to call when she was leaving the saloon, “just in case.” The woman had made Sophia feel like one of her own, and the five daughters of Vidalia Brand McIntyre had treated like a long-lost sister.
It felt good to have six adult women who considered her family. It felt really good.
She tapped the play button on the phone and left it lying on the passenger seat.
“Hello, Sophia, it’s Dave Ruddman.”
Her lawyer again. She hit the brakes and stared at the phone, holding her breath.
“Thought you’d want to know the medical board’s findings came in. You’ve been cleared. Your license is safe. Your record remains clean.”
“It’s over,” she whispered. Then she closed her hands around the steering wheel and lowered her head onto it. “It’s really over.”
So much relief flooded her that she was limp for a minute or two. But finally, she took a deep breath, lifted her head, and put the car into gear. “That’s two things off the list, Santa,” she said and then her eyes went wider. “Three! I’m sleeping at night again.” She blinked and said, “Four! I didn’t want to be alone for the holidays and now I won’t. Wow. You know, you’ve almost got me believing, Mr. Claus.”
She turned on the radio, tuned it to XM Holly. Mariah Carey came on, and she smiled. What if everything really was happening just the way it was supposed to? She’d been engaged to a man she didn’t love, didn’t even know, as it turned out. And now she wasn’t. She’d been restless and unfulfilled by her life. Now she was standing at the threshold of a new life. She’d been unhappy and stressed out in her work, and now she was relaxed and enjoying herself. She’d been so tense for so long she’d started believing it was her normal state. But now she was uncoiling, every day a little more, as Big Falls seeped into her like warm honey. Soothing and sweet.
She drove around the big bend and into the tiny “downtown” area. It was maybe a quarter mile stretch of road with shops and businesses along both sides. Most of the storefronts bore green and white striped awnings, and all of them were decked out for the holidays. She couldn’t drive through this area without a little rush of that Christmassy feeling welling up inside. That swelling in the chest that radiates outward like sunbeams. That feeling had been a stranger to her for so long she’d almost forgotten it. But now that it had returned, it was as familiar as…as coming home.
Big Falls was the perfect place for her, she decided. She was sleeping at night again. What more evidence did she need?
But what about her career? She didn’t want to serve drinks for the rest of her life. She was a doctor. She wouldn’t feel fulfilled if she wasn’t using her gift.
The road split in the middle, circling around the park and meeting again on the other side. The park was a big round, grassy place with a giant pine tree all decked in lights right in the center. The lights twinkled, illuminating a rust and red pickup truck that looked like a relic from the 50’s. It bore a bumper sticker that lit up when Sophia’s headlights hit it. It said, “Just breathe. I’ve got this.” Beside the text was an image of a hand making the ‘ok’ sign against a cloudy blue sky.
Slowly, Sophia exhaled. All the breath in her lungs just eased out of her, and the last bit of tension seemed to leave her along with it.
She was sitting still in the middle of the road, gazing at the glittering tree and green park. Experimentally, she breathed in, slow and deep. And then she breathed a little deeper. Her muscles unclenched. She smiled.
A few lazy snowflakes drifted down. She followed one with her eyes as it swooped to and fro, looped up and down again, and then landed on the old truck’s windshield. Santa was at the wheel, grinning at her.
She jumped so hard she bumped her head. Then he waved at her. She waved back and pressed on the gas.
Either there was something magical but very real going on here, or she was losing it.
As she circled around the park to the other side, she noticed someone sitting on the park bench in a shadowy spot where the Christmas tree lights didn’t reach. His shoulders were hunched, his head down, and his face completely hidden within the dark blue hood of the sweatshirt he wore. He wasn’t moving, and she wondered briefly whether he was planning to sleep there.
But that was crazy. Big Falls didn’t have homeless people.