Merry Christmas

“It’s not a matter of getting rid of you, Kimberly,” he said tersely. “It’s a matter of what’s best for you.”

“You mean what’s best for you,” she retorted. “And best for her.” Her eyes flared fierce resentment. “I’m not stupid, Uncle Nick.”

“Precisely. Which is why I’d like you to start your secondary education at a good school. To give you the best teachers and the best education.”

“Most girls would consider it a privilege to go to PLC,” Rachel argued with some heat. “It’s certainly been advantageous to me.”

“Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” Kimberly retaliated. “Anything to shunt me out of the way. You think I don’t know when I’m not wanted?”

“That’s enough, Kimberly,” Nick warned. Rachel had tried to reach out to his niece. There just didn’t seem to be any meeting place. Or she wasn’t granted one.

“Why boarding school, Uncle Nick?” came the pointed challenge. “If it’s only education you’re thinking of, why couldn’t I go as a day pupil? PLC is right here in Sydney.”

“You’re on your own too much, Kimberly,” he answered. “I thought the companionship of other girls would round out your life more.”

“You thought?” An accusing glare at Rachel. “Or Ms. Pearce suggested?”

“I was going to discuss it with you after Christmas.”

The accusative glare swung onto him. “You told her to go ahead and try to get me in.”

“That’s still not decisive, Kimberly. And you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.”

“If Mum had wanted me to go to an expensive, private boarding school, she would have booked me in years ago.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “You don’t want me. Not like Mum and Dad did.”

The recognition of unresolved grief was swift and sharp. His stomach clenched. He couldn’t replace her parents. No one could. He missed them, too, his only sibling who’d virtually brought him up, and Colin who’d always given him affectionate support and approval. It had been a struggle this past year, trying to merge his life with a twelve-year-old’s, but not once had he begrudged the task or the responsibility.

“I do want you, Kimberly,” he assured her gravely.

She shook her head, her face screwing up with conflicting and painful emotions. “I was dumped on you and now you want to dump me somewhere else.”

“No.”

She swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing the wetness aside. “You won’t have to do anything if my real mother wants me. You can give me up and have your lady friend free and clear of somebody else’s daughter.” She glared balefully at Rachel. “I don’t want to be stuck with you any more than you want to be stuck with me, Ms. Pearce.”

Rachel heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes at Nick, powerless to stop the hostility aimed at her.

“Just go, Rachel,” he advised quietly.

“Sorry, Nick.”

“Not your fault.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Kimberly cried, her voice rising toward shrill hysteria. “I spoil it for both of you. So I’m the one who should go.”

The arm Nick swung out to stop her was left hanging uselessly as she rushed to the doorway and ducked past Rachel into the living room. He swiftly followed her but she ran full pelt to the front door, pausing only to yell back at him.

“If you care anything at all about me, Uncle Nick, you’ll do it. You’ll get my real mother for me for Christmas! Then maybe it could turn out right for all of us.”

CHAPTER TWO

IT HADN’T come today, either... the letter from Denise Graham with news of Kimberly and the photographs spanning another year.

Meredith Palmer struggled to fight off a depressing wave of anxiety as she entered her apartment and locked the rest of the world out. Again she shuffled through the stack of mail she’d just collected from her box; Christmas cards, bank statement, an advertising brochure. She opened the envelopes and extracted the contents, making doubly sure there was no mistake. Nothing from Denise Graham.

The packet usually came in the last week of November. It had done so for the past eleven years. Today was the fourteenth of December and the uneasy feeling that something was wrong was fast growing into conviction. Denise Graham had come across to Meredith, even in her letters, as a very precise person, the kind who would live by a strictly kept timetable. Unless the packet had somehow been lost or misdirected in the volume of Christmas mail, something had to be badly wrong in the Graham household.

Illness? An accident?

The tight feeling in her chest grew tighter as disastrous possibilities flew through Meredith’s mind. Not Kimberly, she fiercely prayed. Please...not Kimberly. Her little girl had to have a wonderful life ahead of her. Only by believing that had Meredith managed to repress the misery of not having kept her daughter.

She shook her head, fighting back the worst-case scenarios. Maybe something had happened to the solicitor who had handled the legal aspects of the adoption and subsequently become a conduit for the annual updates to Meredith. Whenever she’d had a change of address she had contacted him, at least half a dozen times before she’d saved enough money to invest in this apartment at Balmoral. Each time she had received a note of acknowledgment and nothing had gone wrong. Nevertheless, it could be that someone else was now handling his business, someone not as meticulously efficient.

She walked across her living room to the writing desk which spread across one corner, linking two walls of bookcases. Having automatically sorted her mail for future replies, she dropped it into in-baskets, then opened a drawer and took out her address book. It was too late to contact the firm of solicitors today but she’d do it first thing tomorrow. It made her feel better, simply copying the telephone number into the notebook she always carried in her handbag.

Despite having set herself a constructive course of action, Meredith still found it impossible to stop worrying. She switched on the television set to catch the evening news but didn’t hear a word of it. The glass of white wine she poured herself was consumed although she had no conscious memory of drinking it. After opening the refrigerator and staring at the contents of the shelves for several minutes without connecting anything together for a proper meal, she gave up on the idea of cooking and settled on cheese and pickles and crackers.

The problem was, she didn’t have a legal leg to stand on if Denise Graham had decided, for some reason, to break off the one promised contact with her. It had been a matter of trust, her letting Meredith know about their daughter’s life once a year...one mother’s word to another... an act of compassion in the face of Meredith’s grief at giving up her baby. If the solicitor told her there was to be no more contact, there was nothing she could do about it. Absolutely nothing.

A sense of helplessness kept eating at her, robbing her of any appetite, distracting her from doing anything purposeful. When the doorbell rang, she almost didn’t answer it. A check of her watch put the time at a few minutes past eight. She wasn’t expecting anyone and wasn’t in the mood to entertain a visitor. Only the thought of a neighbour in need prompted her to open the door.

Living alone had established automatic precautions. The security chain lock on the door only allowed an opening of a few centimetres. It was through this space—like a long crack in the fabric of time—Meredith saw the man she had never expected to see again.

His eyes caught hers, triggering the weird gush of feeling that only he had ever evoked...the wild whoosh from her heart to her head, like the sea washing into her ears, followed by a fountain of excitement shooting, splashing, rippling through her entire body, setting up an electric tingling of expectation for the most special connection in the world.

It had been like that for her thirteen years ago. As she stared at him now, the shocked sense of her world reeling backward was so strong, all she could do was stare and grip the doorknob with painful intensity, needing some reinforcement of current physical reality.

“Miss Palmer? Meredith Palmer?”

His voice struck old familiar chords that had lain dormant so long Meredith had forgotten them... chords of pleasure, of some sixth sense recognition, a deep resonant tone that thrummed through her, a seductive beat of belonging drawing on her soul.

Yet he didn’t know her. She could see he didn’t. He would have called her Merry. It had been his name for her...Merry...Merry Christmas... the best Christmas he had ever had.

“Yes,” she said, affirming her identity, her heart still bleeding over what his sister had sworn to her was the truth when she’d denied Meredith access to the father of her baby all those years ago. An accident had wiped out all memory of his summer vacation. He would have no recollection of her. Since he’d already left for the U.S. on a two-year study grant, Meredith had no possible way of testing if what his sister claimed was fact or fiction.

Now the evidence was in front of her. Not Merry. Miss Meredith Palmer with a question mark.

Yet shouldn’t there be a gut memory? Shouldn’t he feel at least an echo of what she was feeling? It hadn’t been one-sided back in the summer of her sixteenth year.

“My name is Nick Hamilton...”

There was a pause, as though he had to regather his thoughts and concentrate them on his purpose for coming to her. Since it wasn’t prompted by any memory of her—nerves tightened around Meredith’s stomach—it had to be related to Kimberly. Had he found out Kimberly was his daughter? Had something happened to her? Was he the carrier of bad news from his sister?

“...I’m Denise Graham’s brother,” he stated, identifying the connection that gave him credentials for calling on her.

“Yes,” Meredith repeated numbly, painfully aware of all the ramifications of that relationship. “You must have come about Kimberly. The packet...” She swallowed hard, a sickening wave of fear welling up over the emotional impact of seeing him again. “...I should have got it over a fortnight ago.”

“So I understand,” he said sympathetically. “May I come in? There’s a lot to explain.”