The Night Before Christmas Read Free

home.”
    â€œI’m home, Dad,” Daisy agreed. “And I missed you so much.” She sounded like herself, the self that Jack thought was just about perfect, but when he set her down and took a closer look at her, she didn’t look like herself. Not entirely. She looked thinner, and her blue eyes were shadowed with fatigue, her pale skin almost translucent.
    â€œDaisy, what’s wrong?” he asked.
    â€œNothing’s wrong,” she assured him, as the bus driver opened the baggage compartment and Jack took her suitcase out. They thanked the driver then, and Jack carried her suitcase over to his pickup and sat it down in the flatbed.
    â€œDad, I’m fine,” Daisy said, as they both climbed into the truck. “Really,” she insisted, seeing the worried expression on his face. “It’s just . . .”
    â€œIt’s just what?” he asked, turning on the ignition so the heat would be on in the truck, but making no move to drive away.
    â€œI don’t know, it’s just . . . everything,” she said, with a helpless shrug.
    Jack said nothing, but he knew what Daisy meant by “everything.” She meant Will Hughes. Will was Daisy’s boyfriend. Her first serious boyfriend. They’d gone to high school together, though they’d been in different worlds there. Daisy, the straight A student and gifted athlete, and Will, the perennial bad boy, irresistible to girls, but, alas, not to the administrators and teachers at their school. Last summer, though, to everyone’s surprise, Daisy’s and Will’s worlds had intersected—­or, in Caroline’s mind, collided—­and the two of them had been inseparable. When Will had told Daisy at the end of the summer that he was joining the army, she’d been almost inconsolable. And Will, it turned out, hadn’t been much better, though there hadn’t been any tears on his part, just a stoic misery that Jack had recognized immediately. It was that same misery that had kept him company on those late nights, and those early mornings, after he’d given up drinking, but before he knew if he would ever get his wife and daughter back again.
    â€œHey,” Jack said gently, watching the bus drive away. “I know what it’s like to miss someone.”
    Daisy nodded, and, as she snuggled deeper into her down jacket, she suddenly looked much younger than her twenty-­one years. “Did it ever get better?” she asked.
    Jack sighed, considered lying, then changed his mind. “No, not until I was with you and your mother again,” he said. And, for a moment, he almost told her about the surprise they were planning for her. But it wasn’t definite yet, and to get her hopes up now only to dash them later seemed especially cruel. So he pulled on his seat belt and shifted the truck into drive, then glanced over at Daisy, and said, “We better get going. Your mom’s expecting us for lunch at Pearl’s, and I promised Jessica you’d have a hot chocolate with her afterward.”
    â€œThat sounds good,” Daisy said, as Jack pulled out onto the highway. And then, “How’s Mom?”
    â€œMom’s good,” he said. “Excited to see you, of course.”
    â€œAnd busy with the wedding plans?” Daisy asked, looking out the window at the snowy landscape sliding by. And there was something about the way she said this, and looked away from him as she said it, that gave Jack pause.
    â€œShe’s very excited about the wedding,” he said carefully. “But I’m getting the impression you’re not.”
    â€œOh, no, I am excited,” Daisy said emphatically, turning to him. “I’m thrilled you two are getting remarried, Dad. I don’t have any reservations about that. But this wedding Mom’s planned, I have to say, honestly, it doesn’t sound like her at all. And it definitely