Free Coming Home for Christmas by Carla Kelly

never lie, Laura,” he lied. “What do you do here that is better?”
    â€œMost nearly everything,” she said succinctly, which made him smile in the dark. “We have special food, singing and dancing.” He could hear her sitting up in her bed. “We have fun. ”
    â€œFun is against the law in Scotland,” he told her and was rewarded, to his amusement, with a huge snort of disgust from the other bed. “No. Seriously. England outlawed fun.”
    â€œThen I cannot comment on such stupidity,” she said, pulling her dignity about her like a shawl, which never failed to make him smile. “We have a posada and that is the best of all.”
    Thomas listened appreciatively as Laura told him of the nine nights of processions of the Holy Family from door to door, seeking in song a place to spend the night. With growing enthusiasm she described their tender plea for succor, and the innkeepers’ disdain, also sung. “And on the last night, the eve of Christmas, Maria and José go to the final house and the innkeepers let themin,” she concluded in triumph, obviously aware that her Christmas far trumped his. “We pray and we eat.” She laughed softly. “A lot of both.”
    He knew what she spoke of, thinking of his years in San Diego and discounting the one year where the English and Spanish had still been officially at war and which he had spent mainly in prison. Even when the English and Spanish were friends, no one from the pueblo or presidio had included them in the festivities. “I remember the singing and the music,” he told her, his hands behind his head, as he lay there in the dark. “Can we have Maria and José visit us here in the infirmary?”
    She was silent a long time and he thought she had drifted to sleep. When she spoke, he heard the tears in her voice. “No one will have me, señor, ” she said. “Just as there are innkeepers who would not have the Christ Child.”
    â€œDamn them all, then,” he said softly in English.
    Thomas didn’t hesitate. It was his turn to throw back the bedclothes, cross the room to her bed, tug up her blanket and plant a gentle kiss on her forehead. Before he returned to his own bed, she took his hand and kissed it, which made him swallow, then kept him awake much of the night as he contemplated the depths of her shame at her father’s scandal, and his own emotions.
    I wish you would trust me enough to understand that if we help your people with medical attention, you’d be astounded how many friends you will have, he thought. He wanted to tell her that, but her even breathing told him that she slept.
    â€œCall me cynical, but it is true,” he whispered in Spanish, before his eyes closed. “Something needs to happen, because I cannot bear to see you so sad.”
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    From his lips to God’s ears. Thomas wasn’t sure what woke him so early on that morning of December 8th. He lay there listening; Laura was breathing gently on the other side of the little room. When he had got up around midnight to check on Ralph and the other patients, as he always did, he had left the door between the ward and their sitting room ajar. Now he listened, frowning. Nothing. Ralph’s breathing was labored, but that was to be expected, with advanced consumption.
    He listened harder and then it came to him that the animals taken into the courtyard were stirring restlessly, the cattle lowing and the horses whinnying, as though a wolf were among them. He got out of bed quietly and went to the door in the sitting room that opened onto the courtyard. He opened it a crack and watched the animals moving about; he could see no predators to disturb them.
    Thomas had just crawled back into bed and stretched out with a sigh, when the ground began to shake. The whole room seemed to sway. It was only seconds, but enough to nauseate him.
    He leaped from bed, his legs far apart