Last Christmas Card Read online

  Inside, the steam from his radiator saturated his sweat with heat in a matter of minutes. He shrugged off his jacket, limped towards the rows of bottled water on the kitchen counter.

  His eye caught a flash of color from the postcard pinned to his cabinet. The memory of the chaplain behind it became vivid for a moment: the sound of a voice reciting a prayer, a hand holding his as he screamed in pain.

  Almost like the feel of the missionary girl's hand in the restaurant. The same feeling of warmth and understanding permeating his skin, awakening a sense of connection with a greater being than himself.

  He took a long sip from the bottle and closed his eyes. Hanging onto that thought for just a few minutes more before it escaped.

  *****

  Samantha dumped the last handful of torn newspapers, sticks, and leaves into a plastic garbage bag–the remains of a squirrel's nest constructed in the eaves of the attic. Her exploration had uncovered it when she moved aside a stack of empty cardboard boxes abandoned by the previous resident.

  Tying it shut, she took one last glance around her at the attic, as if a secret might suddenly be visible despite her previous searches. Nothing. Only the glint of tinsel protruding from an ornament box, a pile of yarn poking up from an old workbasket of rug patterns.

  Hauling the sack into the back courtyard, she stuffed it into a garbage can used by the workers renovating the basement. A pile of old plaster surround the back patio, along with a tangle of dead roses pulled from along the walls.

  An old woman shuffled from an open door in the house behind the brownstone. In her hand, a broom as she made her way towards a little stone area lined with potted plants.

  She was a complete stranger to Samantha, who had assumed the silent house behind her own was empty until this moment. She watched the red kerchief bob above a worn silk blouse and linen slacks.

  "Is that your garden?" Samantha called. The woman hesitated for a moment, then looked in her direction.

  "It is," she answered, her voice frail with age. "All I can keep up with at my age. But once this whole back lot was a garden, when I was a girl. Then I grew a Victory Garden–do you know what that is?"

  A shiver ran down Samantha's spine. She released her hold on the trashcan lid and crossed the yard towards the woman sweeping leaves from around the clay pots.

  "Did you live here when you were a girl?" she asked. The woman nodded without looking up.

  "This was my Papa's house," she answered. "He used to be a big banker in this city. Bought me my first car as a graduation present. Quite a deal back then, not like it is for every teenager these days." She scattered the leaves towards the bare lawn beyond the stones.

  "Did you know the family who used to live here?" asked Samantha. "The Larsens. They lived here during the war." She held her breath as the woman straightened up, one hand resting on her back.

  "The Larsens?" she repeated. "Oh, yes, I remember them. They had two children, one was a boy about my age and one was a girl, almost grown when I remember her."

  "Was her name Bette?" Samantha's excitement grew, creeping into her voice.

  "Bette? Maybe so; we called her Bets when we were kids." The woman propped her broom against the wall. "Did you know them, too?" she asked.

  "No," said Samantha. "But I live in their old house right now and I found something that belonged to Bette–Bets, I mean. I was curious what happened to her."

  "She got married after the war, I think. Moved away. So did the rest of the family, when their boy got older. Ben was his name. They had family somewhere outside the city." She moved slowly towards the entrance to her house. "It seems I might have a letter from them somewhere. Wrote to my mama after my papa died."

  "May I see it?" asked Samantha, before she realized what she was asking. "I mean, is there any way I can see the address where they moved?"

  "Of course, of course," the woman answered. "It's been years since anyone asked about them. A long time since I even heard their name in this neighborhood. Strange how these things come back again." As she opened the door to the crumbling brownstone's back entrance.

  *****

  The photograph album was filled with men and women from long ago. Soldiers in uniform, girls in work clothes for the factories, one in a pilot's jacket.

  Flora Davies' trembling finger pointed to a photo as Samantha turned the page. "That's Bette Larsen," she said.

  A girl in a striped bathing suit, posed on a sandy beach. One hand shaded her face from the glare of the sun as wavy dark hair brushed against her cheeks.

  "Taken at the beach the summer I was eight or so," said Ms. Davies. "We were invited to come along for her brother's birthday. My mother took that photo and I remember thinking I wished I would be just as pretty when I grew up."

  "Wow," said Samantha, softly. Amazed that Bette Larsen's face was real, that the ghost on the back of the envelope was now flesh and blood.

  "You said she was married," Samantha continued. "Do you remember her husband's name? Was he a soldier from Boston?" She held her breath as she waited for the answer.

  Ms. Davies frowned. "I remember he worked in a factory somewhere," she answered. "But I don't remember a uniform. But then, I was a little girl with an uncle and cousins in the war, so most of my memories of soldiers are of them."

  "So no boys from this neighborhood were soldiers?" she asked, working hard to keep disappointment from showing in her face as the imagined world for Mac Hydberg crumbled away.

  "A couple–but this neighborhood didn't have too many older kids at the time. Mostly families with grown boys gone away. Older people, you know."

  Samantha's fingers turned the pages, looking at the images of smiling faces, traces of care visible in mothers and boys going off to war. Her hostess's finger tapped another impatiently.

  "That's me." A little girl in a sundress, holding a Shirley Temple doll. Part of a woman's skirt was visible, a silky floral pattern.

  "How old were you?" asked Samantha. She guessed eight; somewhere there was a photograph of herself at that age, the same spindly legs and knobbly knees beneath a ruffled skirt.

  "Eight, I think; or nine." Ms. Davies had risen from the sofa and was rummaging through cubbyholes in a walnut desk. "Somewhere I have it here. Or rather, mama did; she used this desk after my papa died. Kept bills and important notices here, like I did later."

  She drew a yellowed scrap of paper from behind a crowd of magazine offers and coupons that easily expired twenty years ago.

  "This is it," she said, handing it to Samantha. A tattered envelope with the stamps cut off the corner, an address visible in faint handwriting.

  "It's in New York," said Ms. Davies. "I remember now. That's where the Larsens moved; although I don't know about the girl. She went wherever her husband was going, I suppose."

  Samantha scribbled the address on a scrap of paper from her pocket. "That's near New Jersey," she muttered to herself, noting the town. "I don't think it's on the coast." Imagining the miles that lay between her and the Larsen family. An address that could easily be a cold trail, given the postmark from 1954.

  "Did you ever hear from them again?" she asked, handing the letter to her hostess again. Ms. Davies tucked it out of sight, her face clouding as she considered the question.

  "Once–when I was grown, I think–they sent my mama a Christmas card. Could have been '60, maybe earlier. That would've been the last time," she answered.

  So maybe even as late as 1960, the Larsens had been in New York. Still over forty years ago, but nothing was impossible.

  "What did you find of theirs?" asked Ms. Davies. "Not many leave behind something so important that it matters after all this time."

  "Just a letter," Samantha answered. "I thought maybe someone would want it."

  "Well, that's awfully good of you." said Ms. Davies. "Awfully nice." She patted Samantha's hand.

  "Would you like to see some other albums?" she asked. "Nothing but photos from when I was a girl, I'm afraid. Old ca
rs and clothes now."

  "I would love to," Samantha answered. As Ms. Davies drew something from the book on her lap before closing it.

  "Keep this," she said. "I think maybe you should have it. Nobody else will remember it when I'm gone, you know." She rose and carried the book away in quest of another.

  Samantha looked down at her hand, the piece of paper resting in her palm. At the smiling face of Bette Larsen in her striped bathing suit.

  *****

  She pinned Bette Larsen's photo on the fridge, beside the Christmas card. As she surfed the web for phone listings for the name Larsen in Belmont, New York. Then, when the list of possibilities grew depressing, for Bette Hydberg.

  It was evening when she dug into a box of takeout, a cup of cocoa brewed from the last in her chocolate canister. Hoping against hope to find an answer somewhere in these listings.

  Name after name, number after number. Wrong ages, wrong spelling, wrong family tree.

  Apparently, the Larsen family had vanished once again. And Bette Larsen or Hydberg along with them.

  *****

  Samantha strung tinsel across the branches of the pine tree. Strand by strand, the way her mother always had when she was a child. Some of the silver had worn off the pieces, pulled into curls and snarls from previous holidays on an unknown tree for an unknown family.

  Nestled in pockets of quilt batting, old dime store ornaments in worn pink and blue. A gold star tarnished with age, a handful of glittered pinecones made out of soft plastic.

  Tucked in the attic, they had been forgotten by their previous owner, but they were the closest thing to a traditional Christmas Samantha had known in ages. Her last tree had been a scrubby bush someone stuck in a pot, jokingly decorating it with painted feathers and chains made from magazine paper.

  At the time, it had seemed like the most beautiful tree on earth. Even in the heat of an Australian summer.

  She crawled around beneath the folding table, looking for the plug along the baseboard. A strip of wallpaper pulled loose around the plastic cover was the first sign. She shoved the cord into the socket, praying that there were no frayed wires or burnt-out bulbs. Overhead, a flicker of color as the lights burst into bloom. Faded green and gold, white and red, encased in tiny plastic flowers reflecting the colors of the rainbow.

  The phone rang beside the sofa. Scurrying out from beneath the table, she reached for the receiver.

  "Hello?" she said. Feeling a tingle she couldn't explain before the voice came on the line.

  "Are you sitting down?" She recognized Ty's voice on the other end.

  "What do you mean?" she asked, confused by his tone and the sound of static on the other end. It must be a cell phone, located somewhere with spotty reception.

  "I found Private Mac Hydberg."

  She froze for a moment, startled by the words. No reply came to mind at first, as she sank onto the sofa.

  "You found him?" she repeated. She heard a short laugh on the other end.

  "He's in New York," he said. "Or at least he was. He passed away four years ago at a veteran's hospital near New Jersey. But he has a wife still living."

  "Is it Bette?" she leaped ahead of him. "I found someone who knew her and they said she might have gone to New York after the war."

  "His spouse is listed as a Bette Hydberg. Resides in an assisted living facility, which is why she doesn't have an address anymore."

  "How did you find her?" asked Samantha.

  "That's for me to know and you to find out," he answered. "Anyway, I know it's close to Christmas, but ..." He paused for a moment, as if hesitating.

  To her surprise, her heart was pounding in her chest as she waited. Almost as if she knew what he was going to say next.

  "I have a few days off around Christmas," he said. "If you want, I'll drive you there. You can give Bette her card before Christmas."

  Her fingers trembled slightly as she cradled the phone. "All right," she answered. "I'd like that. I wanted you to see how things work out, too." Praying silently that this was some kind of sign; that a miracle awaited in all this for Sergeant Tyler Lars.

  "I'll admit I'm curious to see the end of the story," he answered. "I hope it's what you've been wanting, Miss Samantha Sowerman."

  "I hope so, too," she answered.

  *****

  It had taken him three weeks to find the answer. Longer than he'd spent on any other project. In between hours at the office, in between short jogging sessions to try to push his muscles back into strength, he dug up every possible source he could find. Military blogs, World War II history buffs, a series of nonprofit veteran's assistance groups.

  Crossing names off the list one by one. Until he reached Private Mac Hydberg of Belmont, New York.

  "I'm sorry, I'm afraid Mr. Hydberg passed away a few years ago," said the nurse at the facility. "Cancer of the liver. He was ill for quite some time."

  "Do you know if he had any next of kin?" asked Ty, propping his sore leg on the coffee table as he spoke. "Maybe someone I could speak to about his military years? It's important that I get in touch with them." He pictured a long conversation involving names from Hydberg's unit, dates of battles–but no mention of sweethearts at home or letters written to the states.

  "I only know of his wife," answered the nurse. "As far as I know, Mrs. Hydberg is still alive."

  "Would you have an address for her?" He clicked his pen, poised over the page. "Maybe a phone number?"

  "I'm afraid she doesn't have a direct phone line," answered the nurse.

  Of course, she doesn't... he thought.

  "Or an address on file, either. She and her husband had an apartment at the Belmont Assisted Living facilities. They would have a mailing address for her if you call them. Mrs. Bette Hydberg."

  It was too impossible. Too perfect to be true. Even Samantha would have to agree with him on this one.

  He paused, before asking "Bette Hydberg, you said?"

  "That's correct," the nurse answered.

  On Christmas Eve, he was behind the wheel of his car, traveling in the direction of New York's state line. With Samantha in the passenger seat next to him, an old cassette of Christmas classics jammed in his tape player.

  Finding her apartment required him to circle the block a few times in the early morning hours, past shabby historic homes in need of repair and brownstones kept in pristine condition by proud homeowners. Until he saw a girl with corkscrew curls and a battered pea green jacket seated on the brick steps of one of the houses.

  He pulled into the driveway, noting the frayed knees of her jeans and hem of her t-shirt visible beneath the jacket. Cleary, she was as ill-prepared for cold weather as he was after desert life.

  "Thanks for doing this," she said, climbing into the seat. She dropped her shoulder bag onto the floor and pulled a thermos from inside.

  "Herbal tea?" she asked. He shook his head.

  "No thanks," he answered. "More of a coffee guy, actually." As he pulled away from the frozen curb.

  There was mostly silence for the first hour of the drive. The sound of Christmas tunes was the only voice in the car, except when he mumbled an apology for the heating system. One moment blasting like a sauna, the next dead to the touch.

  "It's okay, really," she answered. "It's kind of weird to have climate control in cars after so much time in old jeeps and trucks. No heat, no air–sometimes no windows or windshields, either."

  "Sounds kind of like some of the vehicles on the road in Iraq," he answered. "Made me appreciate a good military ride, believe me." He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  "Look," he cleared his throat, "it'll be a long drive, even leaving this early. So if we have to stop somewhere overnight–" he glanced towards her. "I don't want you to think I'm thinking about asking you to do anything you find wrong. I know what I said about my religion might–"

  "I know you're not thinking anything," she answered. "I don't think that just because you have a hard time with your fa
ith means you don't have a moral compass anymore."

  He nodded. "Okay. Just so you know." He relaxed slightly, reaching over to play with the stereo knobs.

  "Sorry there's not much music selection," he apologized. "No radio reception–my antenna got broken off while the car was parked at a friend's house. That's the problem with being a soldier–needing somebody to baby-sit your things while you're gone. Sometimes they're not exactly like you left them when you get back after a long tour."

  "I know the feeling," she answered, with a sympathetic smile. Comfortable at this moment in the knowledge that she really did. She pulled her battered Bible from inside her bag.

  He glanced at it, as if expecting her to launch into a sermon. She could see his jaw tightening, a slightly hunted look as he focused on the highway ahead of them.

  "Will you tell me a little bit about what it was like?" she asked. "Your tour of duty, I mean. If you're comfortable with that." She let the book rest on her leg, one hand propped on the cover.

  "You're sure about this?" He gave her one of the rare grins she observed before. "It's one of those stories that could go on a long time."

  "We've got plenty of time," she answered.

  *****

  "We were sleeping in tents. Sometimes for weeks, a month or two," Ty said. "They'd set one up for a recreation room, but you couldn't get away from the heat and the sand, no matter what. The same old video games and magazines to keep you company when you weren't on duty."

  He stirred a spoonful of creamer in his coffee as he sat in a diner booth; across from him, Samantha took a sip from an ice cream float. A girl made equally happy by herbal health teas and soda fountain favorites was something that took him by surprise. Like layers of personality peeling back one by one to the complex core beneath.