Free Holiday Hearts by A. C. Arthur

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    ONE
    “Watch out for sheets of black ice on the streets tonight, especially on side roads and parking lots if you’re driving on this wintry evening,” warned the DJ on WJLB-FM from the radio sitting on the corner of Keysa’s desk.
    She heard the DJ’s familiar voice of course, but wasn’t paying close attention. It was ambient background noise just like the furniture in her office—there, but not really memorable. It was a quarter after seven, and Keysa Donovan’s focus was on the promotional plan for Joy Noel’s new book that was being released in just five months.
    Artistry Publishing, which was Joy’s publisher, was one of Maser Marketing’s biggest clients. Every month they released between four and twelve books. Three executives worked on the Artistry account alone, and Keysa was one of them.
    Spread out across her desk was the marketing plan for the mystery novel and analysis of the genre. She had everything from buyer statistics to monthly sales fluctuations and product placement. It was her job to make sure the book was packaged, promoted and distributed in those markets that would make Artistry as much money as possible. Usually it was a job she thoroughly enjoyed, but not tonight.
    Three days before Christmas and she was struggling to concentrate. It was that time of year. She knew what it was because it happened every year since she was seven years old.  Everyone else was in a festive mood, singing Christmas carols, eagerly awaiting Santa and all the toys, spending every penny they have on gifts for people who probably won’t appreciate them. Yet her world seemed like it was falling apart. It happened repeatedly, year after year, over and over again.
    One would think that after twenty years the wound would have healed, the memories would be long gone and that she would have moved on by now. Not.
    Her father, Bernard Donovan, lived in Seattle where she’d been born. After the divorce, he’d kept the house, the cars and the dog.
    Mary Lee Donovan, her mother, kept Keysa. With her child in tow, Mary moved as far away from Bernard as she could get—to Detroit.
    The divorce proceedings began in August, the summer Keysa was six and ended in a tidy settlement and final divorce papers delivered to Keysa’s mother in their new Macomb County apartment on Christmas Eve the following year. Her mother cried for seven days straight. Keysa had wiped her tears, wrapped and unwrapped her own Christmas gifts, ate cereal at every meal, stood on the dining room chair to do the dishes and swore she’d never fall in love, get married or celebrate Christmas ever again.
    Over the years, she’d stuck to that rule as best she could.  The next year, her mother had tried to make the holidays festive for her only child. Problem was Christmas had already been ruined for Keysa. Sure, she smiled and acted as if she enjoyed the holidays and made her mother believe she had given her the best Christmas presents in the world, but deep down Keysa just wanted it all to be over.
    Her father never made an appearance at Christmastime. In fact, Keysa didn’t see much of her father for the first six years after the divorce. She remembered hearing her mother arguing on the phone once and assumed she was arguing with her father again. There was always such drama between her parents that Keysa figured it was easier to avoid seeing her father and just stay with her mother.  That is until she was thirteen, and Bernard Donovan came by the schoolyard one day to pick her up. That had been the beginning of a cool weekend and Keysa had mistakenly thought her dismal life had suddenly taken a turn for the better. But before her father left that Sunday he told her he was remarrying and that Keysa would soon have a new baby brother or sister.
    Keysa became angry and didn’t see her father or his new family for another five years. It probably seemed petty and more than a little selfish, but to