The Noel Letters (The Noel Collection Book 4)

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  In memory of Carolyn Reidy

  PROLOGUE

  When I was young, my father taught me something that has given me considerable insight into humanity: As you walk through life, he said, don’t be surprised to find that there are fewer people seeking truth than those seeking confirmation of what they already believe.

  My father was right. I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics we go through to protect our beliefs—even when they’re our own worst enemy. Sometimes it seems the shakier the belief, the tighter our grip.

  I’m not judging humanity as much as I’m judging myself, as that perfectly described me when this story took place. This is a story about the lies I nurtured and what happened when they were exposed to truth. You could say this is the story of my awakening.

  I was born with the last name of Book. Maybe that’s why I became a writer. I know that sounds like a joke but it’s not. Research has proven that your name influences what you’ll do in life. For instance, there’s a statistically improbable number of men named Dennis who become dentists. And people with the last name Cook are 20 percent more likely to pursue a career in the culinary arts. It’s true; look it up.

  It’s certainly true in my experience. My father, Robert Book, owned a bookstore. And here I am, writing a book.

  My full name is Noel Book, which sounds like either the name of a holiday-themed bookstore or the publisher of Christmas tales, which, ironically, isn’t far from the truth. When this story began, I was working in New York as an editor for one of the Big Five publishers. I’ve worked on more than my fair share of holiday books.

  Actually, the surname Book has nothing to do with literature. It’s of Scottish origin and refers to a region in Scotland called Boak, which, regrettably, means “to belch” or “to nearly throw up.” It’s not exactly the kind of name that strikes fear in the hearts of your enemies. Growing up I was teased for my last name. I’m just grateful no one ever found out its true meaning. I had few enough friends as it was.

  Adding to my overall ostracization by my peers was the fact that my vocabulary was advanced for my age. My father was to blame for that. He spoke like a dictionary. He didn’t do it to impress, the way some people do; it was just the way he talked. It was as if he had a license to use more words than most. Sometimes it sounded like a different language. One time he told a man off and the guy thanked him. My father liked words and he was smart, which, I guess, rubbed off on me.

  When I was eight years old he would quiz me on the Reader’s Digest Word Power section. I just thought it was something all parents did with their kids. The result was that I spoke like my teachers, which, of course, the other kids teased me about. In middle school a boy called me Thesaurus Rex—a name that both hurt and stuck. It was the same year my mother was killed in a car accident, the first falling domino that set off the entire awful chain of events that became my life.

  That was the same year I stopped dancing. It was also the year that the fissure opened between me and my father. There’s no doubt the two were connected. My father loved to watch me dance, and I had stopped loving my father.

  For almost two decades I nurtured the distance between my father and me. Then, in one holiday season that changed. It was the time that the letters arrived.

  If you choose to read my story, I ask just one mercy. I’m not proud of who I was back then. Please don’t judge me too harshly or too quickly. I’ve already done that for you. And my sins carry their own punishment. Thankfully, there are still a few people out there who aren’t afraid of truth. And there are still a few people who know how to love—even someone as unlovable as me.

  CHAPTER one

  I can stand about anything for a week if I have a good enough book.

  —Noel Book

  “Is Salt Lake City home for you?”

  I looked over at the smiling, silver-haired woman sitting inches from me in the middle seat of our row. On her lap were two knitting needles impaling the rectangular mass of what looked like a blanket. She had smiled at me as we boarded the plane at JFK, but she had sat knitting so quietly throughout the flight I’d forgotten she was even there. Or maybe I’d just been too preoccupied winding my way through the labyrinth of my thoughts. At any rate, her question vexed me. I wasn’t sure where home was anymore. I wasn’t even sure if I knew what the word meant.

  “I was born there,” I said softly. “But I haven’t been back for sixteen years.”

  “Goodness, that’s a long time to be away. What brings you back now?”

  “I’m going to see my father.”

  Her smile broadened. “I’ve always loved a homecoming. After all that time, you must be so excited to see him.”

  “He’s dying,” I said.

  Her expression fell. “I’m sorry, dear. God bless you.”

  “Thank you.” I looked back out the window at the snow-covered world below. The crystalline blanket reflected the light of the winter moon in a dull cobalt blue. The Wasatch Range was taller than I remembered, rising in a jagged ridge running in a near-perfect line north to south of the valley like a great snow wall. The buildings below looked small and flat and well-spaced, nothing like New York, where every street was a slot canyon and every building a mountain.

  Home. Homeward bound. One of my colleagues at the publishing house called me a hobo, which she said was a contraction of “homeward bound.” Of course, I looked it up. Maybe. Or it might be a contraction of “homeless boy,” or even a derivative of Hoboken, New Jersey. It’s another one of those words that slipped into the back row of our cultural lexicon without a ticket.

  My anxiety rose with each passing minute. I hadn’t even taken the book I’d brought with me out of my carry-on, which pretty much shows the state I was in. After all this time, I had no idea what I would say to my father. Actually, I was more concerned about what he would say to me. Maybe it would be a weeklong shame festival with a dying man. Why was I doing this? I think if I could have turned the plane around I probably would.

  The previous holiday, a colleague told me she was going home for Thanksgiving for the first time in five years. She had hopes for reconciliation with her mother. Her anticipated homecoming lasted less than an hour. She likened the experience to an emotional ambush. Seven hours later she was back in New York eating a Banquet turkey potpie for Thanksgiving. The difference between her experience and mine is that I had no such expectations. My father was dying. The most I could hope for was to put the past in a box and bury it. Literally as well as figuratively.

  When my father was first diagnosed with cancer, the doctor had given him six months to live, which he hadn’t told me until the last two weeks when, I guess, he finally accepted that he was engaged in a losing battle. That’s when he asked to see me one last time. There are things that need to be said. Those words scared me most of all.

  He had invited me to stay at his house, my childhood home, adding that my room was exactly the same as I’d left it almost two decades ago. I had resisted the invitation, it was my MO, but he was anticipating my rejection. “Noel,” he said softly. “It’s our last chance.”

  What could I say to that? Frankly, I didn’t need the expense of a hotel
. New York is expensive and book editors aren’t exactly overpaid. He had also offered to pay for my flight and the use of his car, which he obviously wouldn’t be using while I was there. From the sound of things, probably never again.

  I consoled myself that it would only be a week. I could stand anything for a week.

  My father had arranged for Wendy, the manager of his bookstore, to pick me up from the airport. I had met her, but it had been a while. We were roughly the same age, though she always seemed like a much older soul to me. She’d started working part-time at the bookstore just a few months before I left, and had worked her way up to manager. I remembered that she was pretty, in a different sort of way. She had the slight, lanky figure of a Lladró statuette, with bright carrot-colored hair and a matching complexion. The thing I remembered most about her was that she worshipped my father. Even back then I thought of her as obsequious—lapping up every word my father said as though he were Plato. She was Team Robert. I wasn’t. I wondered if there would be tension.

  Typical for the holidays and New York, it was an overcrowded flight, and when the plane’s seatbelt bell chimed, most of the passengers jumped from their seats as if they were spring-loaded. I didn’t. I was in no hurry to deplane. I’d checked two pieces of luggage and I’d rather sit alone on the plane than make awkward conversation with someone I barely knew and assumed didn’t like me.

  I also wasn’t in a hurry to see my father—not just to see him in his compromised condition but to confront my absence from his life. It was like ignoring someone’s phone call for a week then running into them at the mall. Except a thousand times that. Things that need to be said.

  “Good luck, dear,” the old woman said to me as she rose from her seat, her bag of yarn and needles tucked away in the vinyl Trader Joe’s grocery bag hanging from her shoulder.

  It was nearly ten minutes later that the plane had fully emptied. I retrieved my carry-on from the overhead bin and left the plane as the flight attendants made their sweep of the aircraft.

  It had been quite a while since I’d been in the Salt Lake airport. The last time I was there was especially memorable. Someone had stolen my laptop when I’d set it down in a bookstore to look for one of my authors’ books. I was changing planes on a layover to Los Angeles and never even left the terminal. My ex-husband, Marc, never let me live that down.

  I stopped at the Starbucks near the security exit and got myself a Venti latte and finished it before heading down to claim my luggage. As I came down the escalator, Wendy was waiting for me in a stanchioned waiting area holding a piece of paper with my name on it. I was a little surprised that I recognized her so quickly, even though she was hard to miss. She was wearing a bright orange ski parka—which only drew more attention to her ginger complexion—black leggings, and fur-lined boots. A small purse hung over her arm. She was prettier than I remembered. Striking, even.

  I stepped off the crowded escalator and walked in her direction. She recognized me as well, lowering her sign and stepping toward me. As I neared, I noticed her eyes were red and swollen.

  When we were close, she said, “Hi, Noel, I’m Wendy.”

  “I remember you,” I said.

  “It’s been a few years,” she said softly. She looked at me with dark eyes. “Your father passed away four hours ago.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t even sure what I felt.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She breathed out slowly, took her hand from her coat pocket, and wiped her eyes with a Kleenex. After another long moment she looked down at my carry-on and said, “Do you have more luggage?”

  “I have two bags.”

  “Your luggage is on carousel eight. It’s this way.” She started off toward the west end of the terminal. I followed her, pulling my carry-on behind me. The carousel was already half-full of baggage, and Wendy and I stood next to each other watching the bags come out.

  After a few minutes Wendy said, “Do you know how long you’ll be staying in Utah?”

  “Not long,” I said.

  I had planned to stay until my father’s death. Now that my plan had been upended, I really had no idea how long I was staying. As short as possible. There were too many hard memories. Too much pain.

  It was another ten minutes before my luggage emerged. My bags were large, both of them “big enough to hold a body,” the guy at the Costco cash register had said. Still, I had to sit on them to zip them shut. My mind said it was a quick stop, but I’d packed like I’d be here for weeks. I’m sure my therapist would have fun with that.

  I wrestled my first bag off the carousel as my second bag appeared.

  “That ugly purple-burgundy one is mine too,” I said to Wendy as the bag passed me. Wendy stepped forward to grab it, though I wasn’t sure how she was going to get it down as it was even larger than the first and was riding near the top of the overcrowded carousel. A tall, bearded man wearing a ski patrol parka stepped up and pulled it off, setting it on the ground next to her.

  “Thank you,” Wendy said. “That was kind of you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, his smile visible beneath his facial bush. I’m sure Wendy got a lot of that.

  Wendy seemed oblivious to it. Or maybe she was just jaded. “You said two bags?”

  “This is it,” I said.

  Wendy pulled the handle up on the suitcase. “All right. Let’s go.”

  We took the elevator up to the skybridge then exited to the short-term parking garage. The night air was sharp and cold, freezing my breath in front of me in white puffs.

  “My car’s over there,” Wendy said, pointing to an older white Subaru wagon. When we reached it, she lifted the hatch and we put my bags in, which filled the entire back of the wagon.

  She unlocked the doors and we simultaneously climbed in. There was cat hair on my seat and footwell. Actually, it was everywhere. Wendy had two Siamese cats: Jennifur and Clawdia. My father had referenced them from time to time. He was allergic to cats. So was I. My eyes watered.

  As I put on my seat belt I glanced over at Wendy. Her eyes were closed tight but tears still managed to escape her eyelids and roll down her cheeks.

  “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer, but again wiped her eyes. Then she breathed out, leaned forward, and started the car. Christmas music came on. Perry Como, something I was familiar with, as our family listened to it when I was young.

  “They’re playing Christmas music early here,” I said. “In New York the stations don’t play Christmas music until after Halloween.”

  “It’s a CD. It makes me happy,” she said, then added, “I need a little happy right now.” She reached down and turned off the music then turned up the heat. The warm air blew loudly from the dash vents. “Let me know if it gets too hot.”

  “Thank you.”

  We drove out of the parking garage then south toward the eastbound I-80 freeway. The Salt Lake airport is only six miles west of the city in what is likely the most desolate part of the valley, the land surrounding the Great Salt Lake.

  The only thing that’s great about the lake, other than its name, is its size. Lakes are usually beautiful places that draw people. The Great Salt Lake did the opposite. Think of it as a North American version of Israel’s Dead Sea and you’ll understand its lack of appeal.

  My parents first took me to the lake as a child. I remembered thinking how pretty it was, its salt crystals sparkling in the sun. My delight vanished the moment I got in and discovered how uncomfortable the saline-rich water felt on my skin. Parts of the Great Salt Lake are ten times saltier than the ocean, which means little can live in it, outside of nasty microbes and the brine shrimp that feed off them. One of the by-products of the salt is hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Not exactly Lake Tahoe.

  Neither of us said much on the ride to my father’s house. I just silently looked out the window at the transformed scenery. The city had changed as much as I had since I left. In one of his letters my father had told
me that Downtown had doubled in size, which was impressive, but still left it a dwarfed, meager percentile of the Manhattan skyline.

  We took Interstate 80 to 215 South, then the ramp east to the Highland Drive exit.

  As we pulled into my old neighborhood, the only thing I recognized was the 7-Eleven my father used to take me to every Sunday to buy me a Slurpee and a box of Lemonhead candy. What had been a Taco Bell on the corner was now a dental office—a peculiar and disappointing conversion.

  In my eighteen-year absence the trees and bushes had grown, and the aged houses seemed to have shrunk. The street was beautifully tree lined. The area had gentrified as the older residents passed on and younger homeowners moved in, remodeling or outright demolishing the older homes.

  The area of the city I’d grown up in was called Sugar House, or Sugarhouse as the locals wrote it. It was named for a sugar beet test factory that had resided there more than a century prior. Sugarhouse was one of Salt Lake’s oldest neighborhoods and the tiny home where I’d spent my childhood had been built before World War II on what had once been the Mormon prophet Brigham Young’s apricot orchard. One of the few original trees still existed in our yard. The tree produced copious amounts of fruit each year, and I remember watching my mom and dad pick the apricots and place them in baskets, which I’d sell by the side of the road for two dollars a bushel.

  The backyard had been magical to me—my own fantastical kingdom where I battled bad guys and villains and ruled with a broom sword. Our backyard neighbor, an elderly woman I called Mrs. Betty, had two frenetic, cotton-white toy poodles that would stick their noses through the space between the fence slats and lick my hand, which delighted me to no end.

  The dogs’ yapping would alert Mrs. Betty to my presence in the backyard, and I’d hear her slide open her back door and then push her walker through the grass to see me. Looking back, I think she must have been terribly lonesome. Sometimes she would bring me cookies, which tasted of rancid butter but were still sweet and welcomed.