Free Holiday Hearts by A. C. Arthur Page A

Keysa it was what it was. Her parents had started this war, and she was just an innocent bystander. So her only choice was to pick her armor and defend herself the best way she knew how.
    Eventually she got her college degree, moved out of her mother’s apartment and began to make a life for herself. Her father’s involvement in her life grew little by little. And once she learned that the divorce had been her mother’s idea because she’d assumed the Donovan family despised her because she was not rich, Keysa’s feelings had begun to change. Now, at age twenty-eight Keysa spoke to her father at least once a month. She’d even met his wife Jocelyn and their daughter—her half-sister Brynne—in Seattle a couple of times. Knowing that her mother would never approve of her visits with her father, Keysa, kept them a secret. She also strived to keep her mother’s bitterness out of her life. Unfortunately, none of this changed Keysa’s feelings about Christmas.  
    With a sigh Keysa realized that every year the same feelings came flooding back—the memories, the sadness, the crying. It was pitiful, yet she still couldn’t forget.
    The DJ had finished his weather advisory and a song was now playing. She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard the name of the song, but after a few notes of the intro she balled up her fists and groaned.
    It was “The Christmas Song”by Nat King Cole . The song always made her melancholy. She was just about to turn the radio off when a voice startled her.
    “Don’t like that song, eh?”
    Nearly jumping out of her chair, Keysa pressed a hand to her chest to calm her palpitating heart.  She jerked her head in the direction of the voice. “Excuse me?” she stammered.
    “I said you don’t like that song. I see you’re getting ready to turn off the radio.”
    After blinking a time or two Keysa recognized the gray uniform, white name tag and broom in the elderly man’s hand. He was the janitor, but she didn’t have a clue as to why he was cleaning her office now.
    “No. I wasn’t going to turn it off. I don’t like the quiet so I was just going to change the station.”
    With his grisly gray beard, mustache and dark eyes, the janitor looked up at her. He kept moving, sweeping the hardwood floor in her office as if it were the dirtiest he’d ever seen.  “So like I said, you don’t like the song.”
    “Uhm, no. I guess I don’t.” Now, for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to change the station. She pulled her hand back, rifled through the papers on her desk and tried to pull herself together. It was after hours, which was why the janitor was there. As usual, she was the one who was out of place.
    “I think it’s a great song. And nobody sings it like Nat,” the janitor said, pushing the chairs in front of her desk out of the way so he could sweep underneath them.
    “If you like that type of music,” she mumbled, not in the mood to talk period, and certainly not to talk about this song.
    “Puts you in the holiday spirit,” the janitor continued. “Makes you think of fireplaces, good food, loved ones. Real special song I’d say.”
    “Hmph,” was all Keysa could manage.
    “You should give it a good listen sometime,” he said humming through the next few lines of the song.
    “No thank you.”
    “Don’t like Christmas music?”
    “No,” she answered briskly.
    “Don’t like Christmas?”
    Keysa slammed her hands down on the desk. “As a matter of fact I don’t. And I don’t like being disturbed while I’m working. Do you think you could come back and finish cleaning my office a little later?”
    The janitor stopped, leaned an arm on his broom and simply stared at her. He wore his charcoal gray work cap pulled down low over his forehead so that his dark eyes were barely visible. From the sides of his cap, tuffs of the same grayish white hair covering his face stuck out. His face looked old but his thin wiry frame seemed fit. He