the weather report on the muted television hanging in one corner of the restaurant. “Looks like we might have some weather headed our way,” Hank Townsend said as he took the seat beside him. “Finally. Ski resorts need the snow. Other than that storm over Thanksgiving, this has been a scary-dry winter so far.”
“Maybe so, but it’s worked out for the Cavanaugh House project. We’re ahead of schedule.”
“You have motivated help. She’s paying her contractors top dollar. Folks are anxious to work for Mrs. Blessing.”
“That’s true.” Almost too true, in fact. Most days he had more help than he knew what to do with.
The mayor then asked Gabe’s opinion about a proposed park addition at Hummingbird Lake. By the time Hank Townsend’s lunch and Gabe’s own order of a turkey sandwich and fries arrived, three more business owners had joined them, and he’d somehow ended up seated at the center of a table for eight. He left the sandwich shop forty-five minutes later with one invitation to poker night, one to go ice fishing, three invites to dinner, two to church, and a sexual proposition from a seventy-two-year-old waitress with bold hands and a ready wink.
The temperature hovered in the twenties, and during lunch the snow the mayor had been waiting for had started to fall. Gabe looped the hand-knitted brown muffler Celeste Blessing had given him around the lower half of his face, shoved his hands in his coat pockets, and shivered his way up the street toward Cavanaugh House.
How in the world had a Texas boy ended up living in the tundra?
Gabe didn’t let himself think about the days of his youth very often. A couple of times when weakness got the better of him, he had Googled his brothers, but like the ancient mapmakers had written, that way there be dragons. Learning that they’d married and started families hurt more than it helped, and made the lonely hole in his heart grow bigger. John Callahan had “died” a long time ago.
Last winter, after the accident sent Gabe spiraling downward, Jack Davenport had attempted to help him by floating the idea of making contact with the Callahan family. As the CIA superspook responsible for the charade in which John Callahan had died, Davenport had the power to make the resurrection happen. He hadn’t gone into much detail other than to say that world players had changed and that it no longer served a useful purpose for John G. Callahan to remain dead. Once, Gabe would have jumped at the chance to reclaim his old life, but times had changed. He had changed. He’d refused his friend’s offer.
Gabe didn’t want the Callahans in his life. They would love him and expect his love in return. Well, he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t the same person who had grown up in a little hill-country town in Texas. The six months in an Eastern European prison had damaged him. Losing Jen and Matt had destroyed him.
The familiar cold, dark cloud descended on him, and despite the bitter chill, Gabe’s steps slowed. What was he doing down here in town, eating lunch with people who invited him to go fishing? Why was he working again? Sure, he’d decided not to die—for now, anyway—but what about that decision made it okay to start living again?
Stepping carefully around an icy patch on the sidewalk, he scowled. It was one thing to use his professional talents to help Celeste Blessing and Eternity Springs. It was something else to invest himself in the town’s recovery, to include himself in its social life. To become part of something again.
The warmth of this town and its citizens threatened to thaw the numbness within him. He could not allow that to happen. That way there be dragons.
Gabe tugged down the muffler and sucked in a deep breath, welcoming the cold sting in his lungs. He ignored the friendly wave from a driver making his way slowly up the block and turned his head away from the laughter of a pair of women struggling to hang Christmas garland around the doorway to their flower shop.
Christmas. He closed his eyes. Oh, joy. He might be beyond suicide at the moment, but nothing said he wouldn’t welcome a good old fatal heart attack.
In that moment, he found himself bombarded with the Christmas season. Holiday flags on lampposts. Twinkling lights in shop windows. Christmas carols piped through outdoor speakers. Red and green everywhere you turned.