The Knight Before Christmas
By Patrice Stanton
copyright 2013 Patrice Stanton
Cover copyright 2013 Patrice Stanton
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This book is a work of fiction and any similarities within it to other persons (living, dead, or fictional), businesses (public, private, non-profit, or fictional), places (actual or fictional), or events (current, historical, or fictional) are purely coincidental. The work (and therefore all elements it consists of) are products of the author’s imagination, so are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Bible Quote
About the Author
Part 1
Jamison Riley strode quietly to the doorway leading into the spacious modern kitchen. “Mrs. Costas!” The frat housemother glanced up calmly, as if she truly did have a sixth sense when it came to her boys. “What are you still doing here? It’s after five on Christmas Eve for God’s…I mean, well…” The 21-year-old suddenly looked embarrassed.
Sigma Mu Pi’s chief cook and practically resident Dear Abby glared at him; quickly glanced heavenward; mouthed something religious sounding; then made the sign of the cross.
“I could ask you the same thing, Mr. Riley. Weren’t you--”
He cut her off. “Meeting a new ‘friend’ that now I fully suspect will turn out to be a figment of Mr. Brit-Lit’s imagination? Yeah, well, either way it kinda fell through…” If she was real all they had to do to dissuade her was post any of a million geeky pictures they have of me.
“Oh dear. I’m so sorry, Jamison,” she said, rushing around the island cook top, arms outstretched towards the lanky 6’ 7” engineering student, whose Santa hat barely brushed the top of the doorframe, even in thick-soled boots. He’d had a major say in designing the new house, recently rebuilt from the ground up. So here, at home, his typically battered noggin was safe, unlike elsewhere around the historic college, with its antiquated structures.
He halfheartedly returned the proffered hug.
“So that’s what some of the boys were joking about it,” she said, “at the farewell breakfast…” She looked away and bustled back to finish whatever tidying he’d caught her at.
“Seriously? Well, no great loss; it was just coffee.” Though he tried to sound cavalier, the date was the first he’d almost had all semester. “Guess they took bets on how close to 6 p.m. she’d bail.”
“Bail?”
“You know; break the date. Bail out…on me.” He set a large SMP-logo’d mug in position under the single-serve coffee maker and absently twirled the pod tree.
On the cast-concrete counter Ivana Costas’ phone lit up and vibrated.
“Ah. There’s my baby,” she said and snatched it up, but not before Jamison had gotten a look at the glowing portrait of Nadia, the housemother’s achingly attractive youngest daughter.
Nadia…for me it might as well be nyet.
“Oh Noddy, sweetheart,” she paused listening, “I’m so sorry--” paused again and locked eyes with Jamison; shook her head and shrugged. She looked at the kitchen clock. 5:20. “Then there’s no reason, I mean no objection counselor, that you can possibly come up with now to keep from coming to dinner and then to church with the rest of us.”
The older woman fairly beamed. As if she’d won her first case against her law-student daughter. “Five minutes then?” She paused to listen. “I’ll overrule you! Approach me at the curb.” She chuckled into the phone and winked at Jamison as if he was in on all of it. “Love you, too. Bye.”
“She’s…Nadia’s…back? From the University?” He squeaked at the end and felt plenty stupid. Of course she was back. It’s Christmas, idiot. It was no secret, from most of the students in SMP and because of that, most likely not from Ivana Costas either: Jamison had long been smitten with the girl. From the first time he’d seen her sitting in the car out front while her mother had interviewed for the in-house job and every time thereafter she’d acted as chauffeur.
“Why, she’s been back since Saturday,” the woman looked wistfully down at the now-blank phone screen and started putting on her coat, “but I wish I knew what else was bothering her. Besides money…” Her head snapped up, probably realizing her faux pas. “And, well, mostly right at the moment she seems to be having the same bad luck with her Christmas Eve date as you’re having.”
Ivana Costas stopped wrestling with the puffy down-filled coat.
“Why don’t you join us tonight? You’re all dressed up,” she looked him over more carefully now. From head to toe. “Well, as much as you kids ever ‘dress up.’ You’ve got nothing better to do…” She stopped; appeared even more embarrassed.
She’s right. But instantly at that self-acknowledgement - and the thought of an evening with Nadia – Jamison’s vitals began an immediate and steady increase, along with a color invasion of his normally pale face.
“Oh dear, there I go again. I’m so sorry.” She busied herself with zipping up the coat, on her roundish barely 5’2” frame it flared out and fell well below-knee. “What a rude housemother I’m turning into! And on this night, of all nights.” She turned and headed towards the back door, a glossy silver rip-stop nylon Christmas tree save for a crowning ornament.
Jamison watched her; replayed the family offers he’d gotten - and turned down - in favor of staying in the empty frat house. Flying to Aspen; driving to Stowe; jet-lagging it all the way over to Maui.
“I’d, I’d love to.” He’d blurted. With a little too much emphasis on the “love.” Now he figured she knew for sure about his childish crush. He spun away before she could respond and began a jog towards the elevator. He’d ride in the car with her. With her and her mother. “I’ll just get my coat,” he shouted back towards the kitchen. “We’ll go out the front together and lock up that way.” He paused at the twin elevators. Though the five-story industrial-modern house was only designed for twenty-five students the wide left-hand doors opened into a freight elevator whose ground floor doors also opened on the small parking area out back. Easiest move-in on campus. He punched the UP button but instantly changed his mind.
The four flights of stairs to the so-called Playboy Penthouse, the year-round residence his Trust-fund financing of the building had earned him, were a piece of cake. Especially for a runner. Especially now. Especially three at a time.
Part 2
“Nadia,” Ivana Costas followed her daughter from the family’s dining room back out to the front door. “You promised.”
“I’ve made arrangements. It’s something I must do.” Though the young woman spoke softly Jamison heard without trying, as if totally tuned-in on her frequency.
“Whatever it is can wait a few days. I mean you had time enough for a date,” her mother said emphatically.
“No, it was just coffee, or was supposed to be. Besides, I made an agreement,” Nadia said, her voice rising with every syllable it seemed. The door opened then slammed, ending that last sentence of their exchange with a very loud period.
Part 3
Jamison didn
’t know how his mates had pulled it off but it sure looked like they’d tricked both him and Nadia into believing the coffee set-up was through an on-campus “matchmaking site.” He had to contact her. Apologize or something.
He’d patiently waited for an entire five minutes: until one of Ivana’s four rambunctious grandsons had taken off for, and then locked himself into, the downstairs’ guest bathroom.
“Um-m-m, Mrs. Costas, do you have another…” he pointed to the tiny room between the entryway and kitchen.
She smiled and gave him the door-count for “the kids’ bathroom” at the top of the stairs: first door on the left, unnecessarily adding, right across the hall from Nadia’s room. Nadia’s room. Precisely what Jamison had needed to find. He’d gotten her cellphone number earlier - along with mock surprise - from Ivana Costas, but now he needed access to the law student’s laptop. Sure he was invading her privacy, but he believed she’d forgive him. Someday. Anyway, how else could he help her? And what better Christmas present than for him to play $ecret $anta to a hardworking daughter in a hardworking family, considering all the clues he’d managed to secure and piece together during the boisterous bunch’s belt-busting traditional twelve-course Eastern Orthodox dinner?
Part 4
“O.K., so the guys will call me a White Knight, or a sucker, or a traditionalist-loser,” Jamison said out loud, as he pushed away from Nadia Costas’ computer.
He pulled out his phone and frantically began punching in the young woman’s actual cell number; the “just coffee” business had been done through intermediary numbers; they’d connected through a sort of digital switchboard operator and pin-numbered mailboxes.
Suddenly Jamison found himself sincerely praying as he reflected on the appointment he’d discovered in Nadia’s calendar. “Please, God; please, please, please,” he whispered, stepping quietly across the hall and ducked into his pretended destination. He flushed the toilet to complete the charade. In his mind, unbidden, came a vague recollection of the Bible’s first story of deception. Given his circumstances, now, and Nadia’s it seemed doubly apropos.
God…did He even exist? And if He did, would Jamison be on the do-not-listen-to list? God…I beg you…For the last ten years - since the quote-unquote home-invasion/burglary-gone-wrong that had claimed his parents - he’d had little to do with God, and even less reason to believe in or pray to Him. Except that very first night, screaming either at God or for the boarding school chaplain who’d brought the gruesome news to tell his God He might as well go ahead and kill Jamison - the couple’s only-child - too.
Was I spared for this?
Part 5
Nadia couldn’t have missed the clinic if she’d tried. At the far end a liquor store’s brand name neon signs flickered. Together they and the molded plastic letters spelling W-O-M-E-N-S H-E-A-L-T-H at her end were the only lights illuminated along the dingy mostly abandoned strip mall. No surprise, considering it was Christmas Eve.
Even at that hour the waiting area was crowded with a couple dozen women, of all ages and stages. It was stuffy despite the freezing temperatures outside. Most of her forms finished, Nadia now struggled out of her coat; women on either side who’d arrived after her still wore theirs, so infringed on her space. She folded the garment and kept it on her lap; picked the clipboard back up from between her feet and signed the last of the seemingly endless pages.
She looked at the faces around her. Most were black, a few brown, and a couple white; only two in the entire bunch had a boyfriend or husband next to them. So most were solo; like her but not like her. They look a lot worse for wear. Probably written off as “charity cases,” the pro-bono work the big name clinic liked to brag about as their outreach - to the “under-served communities.” She flipped once more through the papers that would at least cut her costs a little. Hey, I’m a full time student and that’s expensive, damn it. I deserve to save as much as I can for this, this…
She had to stop thinking so concretely about it. Just had to do it. Rather, had to have them do it, the “first trimester ‘health procedure’” as the forms called it.
“Miss Costas?”
Nadia rose; walked slowly towards the reception desk. Her phone twittered again with a second text she couldn’t be bothered to look at. She muted it and handed the paperwork to the yawning woman who looked way younger than herself. As Nadia began to shove the phone into her bag it shivered with a third incoming message.
“You’ll need to shut that thing off completely,” the young woman said, her face more glum than before.
Nadia tilted it towards herself and instinctively laughed at the icon. The Richie-Rich frat-boy her mother had invited to dinner, Jamison-Riley-the-third, now glowed in Technicolor on her screen: his own very long, very pale face cleverly inserted into a photo-portrait of one of the Star Trek Spocks. During dinner, chiming right along with the kids, he’d “only wanted to look at her phone.” Right! She had to give him credit, though, for putting himself in her phone book in the blink of an eye. In plain sight.
Odd…all three messages are from him!
“Stop. Check UR balance. Bank Balance.”
“Seriously stop. Part gift part loan. U can do it. Or adoption. I beg U.”
The last one was only twelve characters: “Genesis 3:13a.”
Part 6
Thirty minutes later Nadia entered the sanctuary as one of the many traditional hymns was beginning. She looked for her family.
“Glory to God in the highest,” everyone sang, “on earth peace, good will among men…” they continued. She had to bite her lip to hold back the grief of what she’d been about to do, only minutes before.
How could “peace” or “good will” ever exist on earth if women like her - smart women, beautiful women, women with every opportunity laid out like a banquet before them – thought next to nothing about paying someone to tear limb-from-limb - and from their most private places - another living being? Then, in essence, pay a second one to toss all that into a waste bin as if it was no more than table scraps?
The song echoed off the walls of the large open space as she spotted her earthly rescuer, her temporal savior, Jamison Riley. He’d made the finding easy, towering nearly a foot above her tallest family members. She hurried to join him - and them - a lot more scared, yet more hopeful and thankful than she’d been in a long while.
Part 7
Jamison looked up from trying to follow the song book and saw Nadia working her way past all her family members to stand next to him.
She reached out for his hand and gazed up at him, eyes shining, tears clearly threatening to burst out. He bent down and whispered…
“A lot of us have been deceived.” He squeezed her hand gently; she lifted his to her lips and kissed it.
Yup. A white knight, a sucker, and a traditionalist-loser. Who just helped save an innocent’s life.
THE END
Genesis 3:13a
Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
About the Author
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