True Blessings

Chapter One

Sammy was eleven, with blue eyes and brown hair, standing just short of five feet tall.

The jacket he wore was zipped to the chin, the wool cap pulled as low as possible to cover ears as his breath steamed into the cold as though he were a steam-powered locomotive.

He looked toward the large building hundreds of feet away from where his father had parked, feeling frustrated they couldn't park closer to the mall. But the hoards of holiday shoppers, arriving earlier, had filled the closer spaces and they had to park near the edge of the lot.

"Your grandfather will meet you here in a half hour," his father said as he closed his car door. "He'll call you when he arrives."

He pulled on his patrol cap then motioned to a convenience store sitting on the corner of the lot. "I'm going to run in and get a cup of coffee then head for the base."

"Couldn't you drop me off at the entrance?" Sammy asked.

His father smiled. "A few minutes of cold won't kill you."

Sammy grimaced as he sucked in cold air while he sighed. His mother had been killed in a car crash the previous March. His father served in the National Guard and had been called to duty for a crisis in the South.

Normally, Sammy would spend the time with his Aunt Jen, who lived thirty minutes away, or his mother's parents. But they were in Florida, away from the cold of New England. Instead, he was to spend the time with his dad's father.

Grandfather? Ha!

"Why do I have to stay with him?" he asked. "He needs mental help - why are you risking me with him?"

"Because you need to stay in school - your grades suck, and you can't if you stay with Jen or your mom's parents. Dad has issues but isn't dangerous. He loves you and you will mind your manners with him, regardless his issues."

Not to mention his father was the only person he could get to watch Sammy.

Sammy made a growl in his chest. "Yes, Sir," he said. "I hope you're home in time for Christmas."

He wiped at a tear - it would be their first without Mom. He wanted - needed - Dad home to spend it with him, not some mentally ill grandfather!

"That's four weeks from now," his father said. "The flooding in Texas shouldn't be too bad - but I can't promise."

"Okay, Dad."

He hugged his father, then watched him head for the convenience store. But, as a breath of wind curled around his legs, chilling him, he turned for the mall entrance, adjusting the backpack he wore containing clothes and a laptop.

******

Unlike her grandson, Christie Haines wasn't bothered parking in the far spaces of the Northwood Shopping Mall. But even on the fringes, parking spaces were few, although more would be available if not for idiots parking over the lines, taking two spaces.

Finding a space between a pile of snow, plowed into a corner of the lot, and a car parked such that its differential hung over the lines, she stepped from her car, eyeing the other vehicle with a shake of her head. When younger, she used to key cars parked by idiots such as this.

She had been an asshole then. An asshole who reacted instead of thinking - an asshole who thought they were privileged, entitled to judge right or wrong and meter out immediate punishment to wrongdoers.

She wasn't that asshole anymore.

She didn't know the story of those who had parked their car there. Maybe they had parked that way because another car was parked over the line next to them and had no choice. Maybe they had been in a hurry for some emergency, such as a child having to pee - a typical child who waited until the last minute to announce their need.