Chapter 30
Thirty
CHOICES
Fifty-five minutes later, the Tour of Homes was long over, the stores were closed, and most of the street vendors were either gone or packing up their trailers.
Only a few people still lingered on River Street while the local Boy Scout troop patrolled the streets to pick up litter.
The two hired off-duty state policemen were taking down barricades, Eli was driving an inebriated city council member home, and Goldie was slowly strolling back to her hotel from the post office and community Christmas tree, thinking about the kiss Eli had given her in the sleigh.
As she was approaching the Sparkledove Arms, she saw Stu Frey putting his Santa costume in the back of his truck parked on the street in front of the hotel. It had two swing-open back doors, no side windows, and he used the vehicle for his meat deliveries.
“Ay, Stu,” she greeted. “How ya doin’?”
“Hi, Goldie,” he greeted, now wearing his bib overalls and coat with the wool collar.
“You made a great Santa tonight,” she complimented. “I watched you with the kids. You really made ‘em believers.”
“Nice of you to say,” he said, closing one of the back doors, then the other. “Maddie and Dean let me change clothes in their office behind the registration counter. Congratulations, by the way, on the big story you broke about the Banyans. Everybody’s talking about it.”
“I’m glad it didn’t hurt tonight’s festivities.”
“Aw, Sparkledove doesn’t rise and fall on the actions of a couple of bad apples. It’s all the good apples that matter.”
“I guess so,” she agreed.
“So, will you be heading off to Columbus soon? Or would you rather go back to your own time in New York City?”
She looked at him as her eyes widened and jaw dropped.
“W-what did you say?”
“I said, are you going to head off to Columbus soon? Or would you rather go back to your own time in New York City?”
She looked at his scruffy white hair, barrel chest, white beard and swallowed hard.
“If you tell me you’re the real Santa Claus, I am gonna totally lose it.”
He smiled. “No. Not quite. But I do know who you are and where you really came from.”
She looked at him with a dazed expression while he put his calloused hands inside the pockets of his winter coat and nodded in the direction she’d just come. “C’mon. Let’s walk a little.”
They turned and started to head back down River Street. She went along because he clearly possessed answers she wanted.
After several silent seconds, she asked, “Who are you? I mean, really?”
“To the townspeople of Sparkledove, I’m Stu Frey, rancher and supplier of meat. To you, I’m an angel who can answer some of your questions.”
“An angel?”
“You were asking Father Fitzsimmons whether or not they were real in Clara’s Gifts, remember?” he reminded. He held out an arm. “Want to pinch me to see if I’m real?”
“I believe you,” she said, acceptingly. “There have been so many other weird things that have happened to me in this town, why not go walkin’ with an angel who has a ranch and plays Santa Claus?” She looked at him, suddenly concerned. “Is this place real? Am I dead?”
“I assure you, this place is very real, and no, you’re not dead. You’re in Sparkledove, Colorado, on December 11th, 1942. But you’re also in a coma back in twenty-first-century New York City, and have been for seventeen days.”
“A coma,” she realized. “I thought I could’ve been in a coma! I mean, I considered it days ago. B-but, why here? Why now? How can I be in two places at once?”
“Where do you think people go when they die, Goldie?” he asked.
“I-I guess they go to heaven… or, or hell. I mean, if they go anywhere at all.”
“Oh, they go somewhere. God said they would. For some, it’s pretty clear.
It’s either paradise or eternal damnation.
Then, there are people like you. Souls on the bubble.
Staying with Markie Santina for so long was a bad choice.
You enabled him. Supported him in everything from suggesting he buy a second condo in your building to hide things, to double-checking his books.
Pretty damning stuff, Goldie. But then, you go to Vegas to help a grieving aunt.
Or anonymously assist a burdened mother at an airport.
Or you fight bigotry and preserve a man’s dignity in a bus terminal.
You even helped a young couple become more aware of unprejudiced bias.
Nobody is ever totally good or evil. Still, the measure of a person’s deeds usually points one way or another.
But not you, Goldie. You’re fifty-fifty. So, you were sent here.”
“To 1942?”
“To purgatory, and a set of problems.”
“W-wait a minute,” she said, pausing. “Are you tellin’ me—I’m in purgatory?”
“Where do you think purgatory is, Goldie?” Stu asked. “Some middle plane of existence between heaven and hell?”
“I-eh-I dunno.”
“It could be anywhere… Detroit, Michigan, in 1954. Casablanca, Morocco, in 1870. Paris, France, in 1899. Or, Sparkledove, Colorado in 1942.”
They started walking again and were silent for several moments while Goldie thought about what she’d heard.
“So, purgatory is different places on Earth at different times?”
“I didn’t say that. I said purgatory could be anywhere. But it just so happens yours is in Sparkledove. And it also just so happens that this is my territory.”
“You mean, like, you’re a guardian angel?”
“I mean, like, this happens to be my territory.”
She sighed a little, feeling overwhelmed. “I need a drink.”
“I wouldn’t mind one, myself,” he agreed. “But it’s cold, and that place is closer.” He pointed down a cross street to St. Mark’s.
“Uh, it’s pretty late,” she said. “I don’t think the church will be open.”
“Oh, it will be for me,” he assured.
He started walking down the side street toward the church with Goldie a few steps behind.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “For you, sure. I mean, since you’re… unbelievable!” she muttered.
Stu came to the front doors of the church, tried them, and they were unlocked.
He went inside with Goldie following. The place was moody and filled with flickering shadows from a half dozen lit votive candles as well as the red sanctuary candle.
They walked about halfway down to the altar, then Stu genuflected and entered a pew.
He pulled down the kneeler, got on his knees, made the sign of the cross, and said a prayer in silence.
Taking his lead, Goldie did the same thing and silently said an “Our Father,” one of the few prayers she remembered from her Catholic upbringing.
“Purgatory can be for the living or the dead,” Stu finally said quietly, still on his knees.
“Where or when depends upon the soul involved. You were dropped into a place and a set of circumstances that you either had to accept or not. You were given clues to problems that you could choose to see or not. Then, once you saw those problems, you could either try to solve them or not.”
“Choices,” she realized.
“Choices,” Stu confirmed. “They define you. You made contradictory choices in your life in New York. You’ve made consistently good ones here, and they weren’t easy ones to make.”
“Spendin’ the night with Peter Banyan was not a good choice,” she admitted.
“But that’s how you found out he was working with his father,” Stu reminded.
She thought for a long moment, and the angel let her take all the time she needed.
“So, if I did good. Made smart choices. What happens now?”
“I’ve already clued you in on that. You can stay in 1942 and make a life for yourself, or you can wake up in a New York City hospital bed and go back to your life there.”
“I’m not gonna die?”
“Sure you are. Just not today. But either way, Goldie, there are challenges. Back in New York, Markie still intends to marry Kristen DiVarno, you will still be estranged from your sister, and you will struggle to build a new life. Here, you’ve got no family, there will be hundreds of things you’ll have to learn, and hundreds of modern conveniences you’ll lose. ”
“I’ve got no family here?” she asked.
Stu shook his head. “The Goldie Maraschino of 1942 is, like you, from New York City, but she has no family. She was raised in an orphanage in the Bronx until she was fourteen and then adopted by a couple who happened to be college professors. They wanted to adopt because they, themselves, were orphans. They wanted an older child because they were middle-aged and didn’t have the temperaments for an infant.
They also understood that, at fourteen, Goldie’s chances of finding a forever home were very slim.
A year later, her parents took new teaching jobs at Marietta College in Ohio.
That’s how they wound up in the Buckeye state.
The father died of a heart attack when Goldie was nineteen, and the mother died a year later from pneumonia.
But by that time, her education was nearly complete and her penchant for writing well established.
She worked for a newspaper for a couple of years, then moved to Columbus, where Owen Mitchell hired her.
If you stay, that’s who you are, and I’ll tell you more.
“If I stay, what happens to this other version of Goldie? Her being? Her soul?”
“A soul has incalculable value,” Stu smiled.
“The bible says so many times, and God loves his creations. But souls don’t always remain in a body for a full, long life.
If you stay, the Goldie of 1942 will be well taken care of, and you’ll take her place.
That’s all you need to know. If you go back to New York, then your accomplishments here become her accomplishments.
But if you go back, the good you’ve done here doesn’t mean an automatic free pass to paradise.
You’ve still got to make smart choices.”
She got off her knees and sank back into the pew, thinking, then shook her head. “This soul swappin’ stuff is a total mind fuuu—twist, she corrected, considering they were in church.