In short time, they found a kit that held walkie-talkies as well as a compass and a spy-glass. Amanda’s eyes brightened. "She’ll like this gray color, I think, don’t you?"

Jaylynn nodded. She had already been through this same kind of scene with Erin, who had wanted to buy her sister a karaoke machine because she wanted one. Erin could carry a tune - somewhat - but Amanda couldn’t. The blonde steered her nine-year-old sister to the art supply department. The passion of Amanda’s life - besides Barbie dolls - was drawing. She was quite good at sketching little outfits for paper dolls, and sometimes Jaylynn wondered if Amanda might grow up to be a clothes designer or graphic artist.

So she had talked Erin into getting their sister some high quality colored pencils and paper and a lap easel. They smuggled it out to the trunk of the car before coming back to the store to shop more.

Now that Amanda had made her selection for her younger sister, she and Jaylynn went to the checkout area, with the younger girl’s head swiveling all around to keep an eye out for Erin. They made it safely through without being seen, and the walkie-talkies were small enough for Jaylynn to carry in a shopping bag.

Amanda looked up at her. "You’re sure she won’t be able to tell, right?"

Jaylynn smiled and shook her head. "No, punkin, she’ll never know what we’ve got here. And we’ll wrap it right up when we get home. How ’bout we disguise it when we wrap it so when we put it under the tree, she’ll never have a clue?"

"Yeah! Good idea."

They stood near the front, waiting, until Erin and Jaylynn’s mother, Janet Lindstrom, headed their way. From the distance, her mother gave a toss of her head, so the blonde leaned down and said, "Amanda, let’s go check out the purses."

"Oh, okay."

She steered the younger girl over through the watch department and to the bags, and they spent a few minutes looking at handbags and purses until Janet and Erin appeared, each carrying a shopping bag.

"My turn," her mother said. "Why don’t you go hang out in the snack bar, and I’ll take these two off to look for one final present." She met her daughter’s eyes over the top of the littler girls’ heads and winked.

"I can take this stuff out to the car."

"Good idea."

Next thing she knew, she was loaded down with three bags, which she hauled out to the parking lot and stowed in the trunk. Shivering, she hustled back into the store, avoiding a frozen puddle of water in front of the curb. She went to the snack area and bought a Coke, then sat down at the blood-red colored table to wait.

This was not how she had imagined spending her Christmas. After the great time she had had in St. Paul at Thanksgiving with Dez and Luella’s clan, she hadn’t even been sure if she would return to Seattle to spend the holiday with her family. All along she had assumed that Dez would come with her. And now she had to face the fact that here it was, two days before Christmas, and she was alone. She had already spent time working out elaborate plans in her mind which entailed the tall woman flying in, unexpectedly, just in time, but she hadn’t heard a peep from her. She was unwilling to admit that she was going to spend Christmas alone, without Dez, but a part of her was practical. It had already hurt her heart enough not to be able to reach the dark-haired woman on her birthday, and now she didn’t even want to consider how awful she would feel - alone with only her family - on Christmas morning. She sat in the snack bar as a wave of sadness and fatigue washed over her, threatening to overwhelm her right in public. She looked around, glad that she didn’t recognize a single soul, then leaned on the table, head in hands, and closed her eyes to wait for the gleeful shoppers to join her.

* * *

Later that day, after the girls left for a Christmas party with their neighborhood Brownie friends, Jaylynn sought her mother out. Janet had already wrested most of the details - a few at a time - out of her daughter, but now the blonde was ready to confide her feelings. And confide she did, mostly focusing on how angry she was at the tall cop. Her step-dad wisely gave the family room a wide berth while she stormed and raged, venting her feelings. Her mom listened sympathetically. Once she got the angry words out, Jaylynn sat on the sofa and burst into tears.

In the rocking chair across the room, next to the warm fireplace, Janet Lindstrom took a sip from her cup of tea and smiled to herself. She set the teacup down on the side table, remembering being 25 and in love. Her daughter had been appropriately named: "Jay" after her mercurial father and "Lynn" after her father’s sister, who was a wise and loving woman with much patience. Most of the time they called her Lynnie, a holdover to the time when her father, Jay, had been alive, and everyone got their names mixed up. Jaylynn had many of her Aunt Lynn’s good qualities, and she was also a great deal like her father had been: optimistic, lively, energetic - and with passionate emotions. Being with him had been like living through periodic lightning and thunderstorms punctuated by long periods of pleasant weather.

"Why are you laughing at me, Mom?"

She looked over at her daughter’s miserable face and bit back her smile. "I’m not laughing at you - just thinking how very much you’ve turned out like your father."

"Hmph. He spent a lot of time crying?"

"No, but when he loved someone, he loved with all his heart. He fought for what he loved - he was a lover and a fighter. You’re like that, too." She didn’t know how to comfort her daughter, so she chose to ask a question. "What do you think is going to happen, Lynnie?"

Jaylynn kicked her tennis shoes off and angled herself into the back corner of the sofa, crossing her arms in front of her. Janet watched as her daughter flexed her casted hand, then crossed her arms over her sweatshirted chest. "If I could just talk to her - well, I think we could straighten things out. But she doesn’t answer the damn phone, and her cell phone and pager are offline. I don’t know where the hell she is!"

Janet nodded as she rocked and watched the torrent of emotions on her daughter’s face. "What happens if, for some reason, she withdraws from you permanently?"

She felt bad to see the fresh spate of tears well up in her daughter’s eyes. Rising, Janet grabbed a box of tissues from the coffee table and held it out to Jaylynn, then sat down next to her, one hand patting and rubbing her daughter’s leg.

Jaylynn wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "I don’t want that . . . she can’t do that. She promised me before that she would never cut me out of her life again . . ."

"People don’t always keep their promises - "

"No, Mom. Dez isn’t like that. She keeps her promises." She hesitated, then took another tissue. Her next words came out slowly, as though she didn’t want to say them. "I’m worried something is wrong - really wrong."

"Like she might do harm to herself?"

Tears spilled over again, and the young woman seemed to sink into an even smaller, tighter ball in the corner of the couch. She choked out her next words. "Her job is at risk, she thinks I’m gonna get killed on the job, and then I send her away."

"I don’t think you’re giving Dez enough credit, Lynnie." She thought about what she knew of the taciturn woman she had met the previous April and then again four months before. "Let’s see. Her partner was shot on duty, and she’s lived through that. She met you when Sara was attacked, and she lived through that."

Jaylynn smirked and smacked her mother’s arm with the back of her hand. "Very funny."

With an innocent look on her face, Janet said, "I’m just detailing facts."

"Yeah, right."

"Let’s see . . . you and she walked in on that robbery, she got shot, and you killed the man."

"Don’t even remind me of that."

"Since then, my dear child, you’ve been hurt on the job, what? Three times?"

"No, just twice."

Counting off on her fingers, Janet said, "If I remember correctly, we have your wrist, your collarbone, and the trip to the hospital after the fire."

Jaylynn let out a little sputter. "You can’t count minor smoke inhalation!"

"Sure I can. As your mother, I’m counting scraped knees, small bruises, and black eyes, too. Mothers count everything."

Jaylynn got a grouchy look on her face and let out a snort, but didn’t say anything.

"And I expect lovers do the same." When her daughter didn’t say anything, Janet went on. "Honey, Dez has had a real hard year - actually, more than a year. Sometimes love is not enough to help a person through something like that. After everything that has happened to her - to you - I don’t blame her for going away to regroup. I think you need to be patient. I think you need to have faith. I know I haven’t seen the two of you together since last summer, but there’s one thing I do know . . ." She reached over to smooth a shock of blond hair out of her daughter’s eyes. "She’s crazy about you. I would be very, very surprised if she didn’t come back. I can’t even imagine it. I think you’re just going to have to be patient, Miss Snappy Turtle."

Jaylynn found herself smiling at the old endearment. Miss Snappy Turtle and Miss Careless Kitty Cat - titles her mother used to give her when she was cranky or when she lost or broke something.

Janet reached over and put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. With a sigh, Jaylynn let herself relax against her mother, glad that she had talked things over with her.

After a moment, the older woman groaned. "The Brownie lunch must be over."

The blonde looked at her watch. 1:30. "How do you know that?

"They’re out front, I’m sure of it. Can’t you hear Erin?"

Jaylynn concentrated for a moment, and then she heard what her mother’s ears had already picked up - off-key singing - something about God wrestling merry gentlemen.

Janet rose and stretched a hand out to her daughter. "Well, you’re the big sister. Are you ready for yet another round of Monopoly? Or would you rather take them to the movies where at least they’ll be quiet for two hours?"

"I think we ought to spike their Kool-Aid with sleeping draught." She put an arm around her mother’s waist.

"Now, now dear, they just have a lot of energy - and not even as much as you used to."

"Sure, that’s what you say."

"Tsk-tsk-tsk . . . everything your mother says is gospel truth."

The two women passed through the kitchen and dining room, out to the foyer and to the front door to look out the window at two scrawny blondes in light brown dresses playing in the front yard. As she listened to Erin’s plaintive warble, Jaylynn could only hope that her mother was a true oracle, in the same vein as those old time prophets in the Bible.

PART NINE

Dez shifted the pile of mail from one hand to the other so she could unlock the door to her apartment. She tucked her keys into her coat pocket, flicked on the kitchen light, and picked up two shopping bags, one of which was bursting with tubes of wrapping paper. Passing through the small kitchen, she dropped the pile of mail on the table, then kept moving into the bigger room beyond where she set the bag on her bed.

After adjusting the thermostat, she headed back outside to her truck, and hauled in two more bags filled with groceries. Locking the kitchen door behind her, she took off her coat, and spent a few minutes putting food away in the cupboards and refrigerator. There was a fine layer of dust on the counter and table, so she got out a washrag and ran it over the various surfaces, making a mental note to dust the furniture in the other room in the morning.

Once the kitchen was tidied up, she moved into the other room, turned on the light over her roll top desk, and sat in her desk chair. She shuffled envelopes and bank statements aside and pulled out her bank savings book, opened it, and checked the balance.

More than enough. She shut the small book and left it on the desk surface, then sat back in the chair. It was the night before Christmas Eve, and she had several things to get ready before tomorrow. She checked her watch. It was already ten p.m., but she had plenty of time ahead of her.

She spent the next half hour wrapping presents. After a while, she got thirsty and went to the kitchen for water. It was then that she glanced at the mail on the table and saw the over-sized envelope with her mother’s writing on it. The card was thick and the paper a rich off-white color. She riffled through the pile of circulars, ads, and bills, and pulled out all the cards, then took them to her desk where she slit them all with a letter opener, then sat down to look at them. She remembered she hadn’t gotten anything to drink and went back to the kitchen for ice water, then returned and resumed her examination of the Christmas cards.

The first was from Crystal and Shayna and contained a note inviting her to drop by any time Christmas day. The second was from her dentist’s office, wishing her well, and urging her to brush regularly, especially through the sugary holiday season. She tossed it into the wastebasket.

The third was from Cowboy. His note said: "Haven’t seen you around lately, Half Pint. Hope you have a good Christmas. Let’s get together when you get things squared away. C." That was nice of him to send me a card. She hadn’t expected it.

She straightened up in the chair when she saw the writing on the next envelope. She pulled the card out in haste to find it was not a Christmas card, but a regular note card that was blank inside. The picture on the outside was of a shimmery lake, evergreen trees on one side, and birds flying above beneath fluffy clouds. Inside, it said:

Dear Dez,