Free The Night Before by David Fulmer Page A

lifting his eyes from the scripture to glance his way, no doubt pondering what sort of tribulations had landed him on the cold Eastborough streets on Christmas Eve in the first place.
    He imagined himself saying:
I caught my wife. Her and our next-door neighbor. Caught them right as I was about to share the best news that’s come my way in years. That was God’s gift to me this night, Reverend.
    The words remained unspoken and he pushed past a replay of the dining room scene. Now his brain switched to another show, this one featuring Don and Mariel and the kids from both households thrown together into one big happy family. (Joe and Caroline having been put out on the curb for pickup.) The new couple’s combined incomes would add up to serious money and the kids would have everything they ever wanted, every day. Caroline would go directly into spinsterhood and Joe would end up drinking himself to death on his movie money, a shaking wreck of a -
    The phone jangled, jerking him out of the nightmare. Reverend Callum lifted the receiver, listened, spoke a few quiet words. He dropped the phone back in the cradle and stood up. “You ain’t in any hurry to leave?” he asked. Joe shook his head.
    â€œThen you mind watching the phone while I go collect someone?” Joe said, “I can do that.”
    The reverend took his coat down from the hook on the wall. Joe followed him into the chapel. “What happens if someone calls?” he said.
    â€œAin’t too likely that’ll happen this late,” Callum told him. “But just go ahead and get their location. If they’re outside, tell them to get indoors or under shelter and call back in just a bit. Tell them I’ll be around soon as I can.” He was buttoning his coat. “I won’t be gone but twenty-five, thirty minutes.” He stepped out into the night and locked the door behind him.
    Joe peered through a tear in one of the pieces of colored plastic. It had begun snowing again, though lightly, barely dusting what was already on the street. He watched the reverend climb in behind the wheel. The van stuttered off into the night trailing a billow of gray smoke.
    Except for the reedy music from the office radio, the little church was quiet. Joe moved from the window and sat down in a front pew. He noticed that the cross on the wall behind the pulpit was made of a hardwood he didn’t recognize, the color of honey, but swirled with bands of deep black grain. It was starkly stirring, constructed in a way that announced an imperfect hand. Reverend Callum’s? It would not surprise him to find out that the cross was the preacher’s work.
    Sitting there, he admitted to himself that he had taken advantage of that kind man’s errand to linger and avoid a decision. It was also true that there was nowhere he cared to go. A cab could carry him to a hotel downtown or a motel out on the interstate. He imagined greeting Christmas morning alone in an empty and antiseptic room while the rest of the world celebrated. Hannah and Christian would come downstairs to find him absent. What story would Mariel tell them? He couldn’t imagine; he was the one with all the grand fiction.
    Crashing at Billy’s or his parents’ or one of his siblings’ was out of the question. No, he would be home for his children on Christmas morning. No matter what happened afterward. The thought cheered him until he began mulling what he’d say to Mariel when he saw her again. As for the kids, he’d concoct something. The carload of presents would distract them for a while. And he would make a point of announcing the news about the option and the money that was coming their way. He took a moment to picture Mariel’s face when she realized that she had picked the wrong time to destroy the family.
    It was no good. Such imaginings wearied him and seemed a frankly cruel fit on someone taking grateful refuge in that sanctuary for