Finding Yuletide Karol

By L.A. Merrill

Fifty years ago, during the Vietnam War, Lee Elbridge fell in love with an Army cook nicknamed Yuletide Karol, but they haven’t seen each other since.

Now, led by a clue in an old cookbook, Lee sets off on a road trip to find his lost love. He arrives on Karol’s upstate New York farm to find preparations for a handfasting in full swing, and is mistaken for the wedding planner’s assistant. As Lee is roped into folding hemp napkin goats and mashing fresh sweet potatoes, he is welcomed by Karol’s large, eccentric family of witches and pagans. When Lee and Karol finally get a moment alone, Lee tells him the truth, but it will take more than a little Yuletide magick to bring them together again after almost a lifetime.

For all those who served in silence.

Acknowledgments

MANY THANKS to Mara Perry and L.C. McBride, the best beta ladies ever, and to The Fritz, for invaluable research help.

Author’s Note

KAROL’S SUN cakes are based on a recipe for sweet potato moon cakes found in The Book of Kitchen Witchery by Cerridwen Greenleaf (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2016).

OFFICE HOLIDAY parties belonged in a special circle of hell. The circle where everyone knows they’re in hell but has to pretend to be enjoying themselves anyway.

Lee knew he shouldn’t complain. As president of Union Financial’s New York division, his presence probably made everyone much more uncomfortable around him than he was around them. And he pitied whoever drew his name for the Secret Santa. Unless it was Will from the IT department again. Will from IT seemed to think it was funny to give your septuagenarian boss inappropriate gag gifts. Lee would rather have another boring silk tie than a candy dispenser shaped like a penis.

Having dutifully circulated, he armed himself with another champagne flute of sparkling grape juice and made a strategic retreat to the chair by the windows. He suspected Bobbi, his assistant, placed it there before the party. She knew how much he dreaded these events. He actually had an alarm set on his phone, marking the time past which it would not be rude for him to just leave.

The winter holidays, he reflected, looking out over the comfortingly bright and indifferent city, were the perfect time to think about your life and be grateful for the people who loved you. That really only worked, though, if you had people in your life who loved you.

He’d spent eighteen months in Vietnam and Cambodia watching his friends die around him, and then he’d come home and finished college and nursed his mother through ovarian cancer and watched her die too. He’d moved to the city and gone to grad school, started a career where he was closeted and a social life where he was not. He watched his friends die all over again, victims of an invisible war waged inside their own bodies. He survived, and he rose to the top of his profession. He had an apartment full of books and art on the Upper West Side, a seven-figure salary and a job he was intimidatingly good at. He knew, he knew he shouldn’t complain. And he never did—out loud. He was very lucky. And very, very lonely.

He thought of the chair underneath him, a carefully planned escape pod just for him. He scanned the executive conference room full of diamond-encrusted women and self-satisfied men. Bobbi stood by the bar, dwarfed by a man from Houlihan Lokey, who was probably explaining finance to her, despite the fact that Bobbi was in her last year of grad school and explained finance to other people on a weekly basis. She was wearing a bright orange long-sleeved mini dress and had dusted glitter through her baby ’fro. It sparkled in the light when she turned her head. Lee caught her eye and raised his glass in a salute of thanks. She smiled and sent him a little wave, and then went back to nodding and edging away from the bar. Bobbi cared about him. Of course, Bobbi was also unfailingly polite and good at her job, so perhaps he was reading too much into it.

Lee was about to abandon his good intentions and leave the party before his alarm went off when the new VP, Sam Walsh, called the room to order with an ostentatious clinking of fork against glass.

“I know you’re all itching to see what your Secret Santa got you,” Sam said, leering, and the room laughed on cue, “so I’ll keep this short. Union Financial is a company built on people and trust and integrity and all that good shit. Or at least that’s what we tell people, right?” More laughter. “We know the truth, though, don’t we? Union Financial is built around one principle—Greed. Is. Good!”

A few of the young male staffers whooped like frat boys. Walsh grinned. “And now, without further ado, the man himself, our own personal Ebenezer Scrooge, your president, Mr. Leon Elbridge!”

Asshole, thought Lee, and then he stood up and smiled, and advanced into the ranks of smiling, clapping party people.

The financial market had always been a cutthroat industry, and there were bastards in every business, but there was a level of integrity lacking in some of the new blood. Union Financial hired more and more people every month, and they seemed to grow younger every day. He tried to lead by example instead of directly calling people out, but that only curbed the exorbitant behavior of a few of them. Lee found himself fervently hoping the financial future contained more people like Bobbi and fewer people like Sam Walsh and his crass cronies.

His alarm went off halfway through his speech. He couldn’t pull out his phone to silence it in the middle of trying to set a better example for millennials and had to let it vibrate inside his jacket pocket for a full minute. The unpleasant sensation put him off his stride and he fumbled a few of the words. Walsh’s smile never shifted as he stood at Lee’s left, but Lee felt sure this moment was going in Walsh’s little file of passive-aggressive ammunition for the next board meeting. Walsh had been gunning for president since he was appointed VP, but he could damn well wait until Lee was ready to retire. He didn’t have anything else in his life besides this job, and he wasn’t about to hand it over to a man whose worst tendencies leached out in public after only two drinks.

He brought the speech round to the season of giving and closed with something heartfelt about the new year, and then—because, while it would look odd to leave early, it would look even odder to make a speech about teamwork and then flee—he spent half an hour shaking hands and congratulating people on their ability to make money.

And then he fled.

The expensively carpeted hallways were dim and empty, and Lee wished it were like this more often. The little gold sconces cast a soothing glow along the cappuccino-colored walls, and because of superior soundproofing technology, Lee could almost pretend there was no one left in the building but him. The illusion was ruined every time someone opened the conference room door, but Lee shut the door to his office and turned on his desk lamp and went back to pretending it was just him and lots and lots of numbers. Numbers were soothing. There was only ever one right answer, and they ran the world with a sturdy inexorability.

Sometime later there was a knock at his door. Lee checked his watch: eleven thirty. Two hours had gone by without his notice. “Come in,” he called. Bobbi stuck her head in, clocked the probably familiar sight of him sitting with fifty printouts spread over his desk and his gold-rimmed reading glasses halfway down his nose, and sidled the rest of the way in. She was holding a small package.

“Party still going on?” Lee asked, removing his glasses and leaning back.

“Oh yes. The alcohol saturation has reached critical mass. I thought I’d leave before someone decided to be a stereotype and snort cocaine with a rolled-up hundred-dollar bill.”

Lee felt privileged to be one of the few people at Union Financial who knew what a snarky lady Bobbi could be. It usually only slipped out when she was overcaffeinated or slightly drunk.

“You should head home,” he advised her. “It’s late.”

“Not that late. I have some work to catch up on.” She raised a brow. “Besides, I leave when you leave, remember?”

She headed for the door again, then seemed to remember she was holding something and turned back. “You cut out before the Secret Santa exchange,” she said, and laid the package on his desk. “I got you something.” She flashed him a smile and decamped to her desk in the outer office.

Lee put his glasses back on and examined the little package. It was neatly wrapped in holiday-neutral, snowflake-patterned craft paper, a testament to Bobbi’s unflagging efficiency. He slit the tape with his letter opener and pulled out a slim book. A note fluttered out. For your collection, it read. Thanks for being such an awesome boss. X, Bobbi Smollett.

It was a vintage spiral-bound cookbook. Lee was surprised she remembered he collected vintage cookbooks, and then he chided himself for doubting her. Bobbi remembered everything you ever told her. It was one of her most useful and frightening skills.

Cackleberries and Mystery Meat: Army Cooking 1950-1980. Lee flipped through it, laughing a little at some of the recipe names. He could remember eating stuff like this in Vietnam. It had always been hit-or-miss out there—sometimes you got a connoisseur of quantity cooking, and sometimes you found yourself in the mess tent of someone for whom opening a can of Spam seemed too taxing.

And then there was that one night, that one particular mess tent, on the border of South Vietnam and Cambodia. Christmas Eve, 1969.

There were so many things no one told you about war. No one told you you were going to spend hours, days, sometimes weeks, getting to know someone, and then never see them again, never know if they lived or died. And sometimes you met the love of your life when you were twenty-one years old, standing in a mess tent in the Dak Lak province, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Nobody warned you about that, either.

Lee pushed the memory away and shut the book. If he went down that road, he’d be here all night, lost in thought or running numbers to escape his thoughts, and he really did need to go home. If only so Bobbi would go home. He picked up her note and made to slide it inside the cookbook for safekeeping, but a recipe title caught his eye, and he paused, the book half-open in his hand.

“Yuletide Karol’s” Sweet Potato Sun Cakes.

Yuletide Karol. He hadn’t seen or heard that name in fifty years. And he’d been looking. He opened the book all the way and laid it flat on the desk. Distantly, he noticed his hands were shaking.

There was a short note before each recipe from the contributor. Above the recipe for sweet potato sun cakes it read: There’s nothing like sweet potato to ground a frazzled soul. These were always popular with the boys in ’Nam. One guy even told me my sun cakes saved his life. Goddess bless him, wherever he is now. Eat in good health!—“Yuletide Karol” Walenty, Kingston, New York.

Lee’s mind couldn’t decide what to freak out about first. He now knew Karol’s last name. Kingston was only ninety miles away from Manhattan. Karol might only be ninety miles away. Karol remembered him.

Lee was the guy who’d told Karol his sun cakes saved his life.

Karol remembered him.

Lee flipped to the front to see when the cookbook had been printed. 1991. So it was possible Karol didn’t live in Kingston anymore. It was possible Karol wasn’t even alive anymore.

But he’d been alive and remembering Lee and living in Kingston, New York, as of twenty-eight years ago, and that was more information than Lee had been able to glean in fifty years of searching for the man who saved his life one Christmas Eve in South Vietnam.

The man he’d been in love with for fifty lonely years.

Kingston was only ninety miles away.

Leon Elbridge, Divisional President, was not given to snap decisions. He was known company-wide as a thoughtful and methodical man. But inside Mr. Elbridge there was still just Lee, the boy who’d signed up for ’Nam before he was drafted, the young man who moved to New York City two days after his mother’s funeral because he couldn’t stand to be in his hometown for one more minute. Lee, the person who’d fallen in love in eight hours over sun cakes and kindness. And Lee, not Leon, was the one who decided to drive to Kingston, New York, at eleven forty-five on a December night, to see if the man he loved still remembered him.

Lee grabbed his phone and the cookbook, bundled himself into his coat and scarf, and rushed out the door before common sense could change his mind—and then he stopped, halted by the sight of Bobbi, snoring softly at her desk with her head pillowed on her arms.

He gently shook her shoulder, and she sat up fast. “I am awake,” she proclaimed, then squinted and looked around. “Wait, did you need something?”

“I’m going to walk you out, and we’re going to get you a cab, okay?” Lee retrieved her coat from the rack and helped her into it.

“An’ you’re going home?” Bobbi checked, leaning on his arm as they made their way to the elevators.

“Sure,” said Lee. The “I leave when you leave” policy came into being during Bobbi’s second week on the job, when she’d figured out that unless he was guilted into going home, he’d sleep in his office more often than his apartment.

“You are a terrible liar,” Bobbi chided. “Where’re you really going?”

“Home,” said Lee. “Actually, Kingston.”

“Jamaica?” Bobbi squinted up at him. “I didn’t know you were from Jamaica.”

Lee held back a smile. “Not Jamaica. Kingston, upstate. And I’m from Rhode Island. Bobbi,” he added, when she seemed to be drifting back to sleep on his sleeve. “Where did you get that cookbook?”

“Oh, um, Amazon?” She lifted her head. “Did you like it?”

“Very much. Thank you.”

“Y’r welcome.”

He flagged down a cab for her and helped her into the back seat, paid the driver in advance, and tipped him heavily to wait until the driver saw her go into her building. Then he waved her off and headed back inside to access the underground employee parking garage.

He hadn’t even made it to the elevator before the glass street door was flung open and Bobbi, somewhat sobered by panic, ran back inside, carrying her shoes.

“Why are you driving upstate at midnight?” she demanded. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Lee assured her. The security guard was watching them with the expression of a man whose nights did not usually hold this much excitement.

Bobbi planted her sturdy five-foot-two self in front of him. “Then what. Is going. On?”

“I’m going to meet an old friend. From the Army, from Vietnam. I didn’t—I haven’t known where he was for a very long time, but he contributed a recipe to this cookbook—” He pulled out Bobbi’s gift as Exhibit A. “—and it says he lives up in Kingston. I know it’s a long shot, probably a wild goose chase, but I—I really need to see him again.”

Bobbi narrowed her eyes. “Is Edgar driving you?”

“I gave Edgar the night off.”

“You can’t go by yourself! What if your friend is a serial killer?”

“I… highly doubt that.”

“Still. You can’t go by yourself. It’s late, and you’re—” Bobbi broke off, and Lee figured she’d stopped just shy of saying really old. “Anyway. I’m coming with you. You’re not driving yourself.”

“And you’re not driving at all. You’ve been drinking.”

“Then I’ll keep you company until I’m sober, and then I’ll drive.” She folded her arms and raised the end-of-discussion eyebrow. “I’m coming. With you.”

Lee sighed and gave in. “You’d better put your shoes back on, then.”

IT TOOK an hour to get out of the metro area, with the increased holiday traffic and an impromptu stop at a convenience store in Yonkers to get Bobbi a couple of sixty-four-ounce bottles of water.

Lee did not normally drive himself anymore. Living so long in the city, he’d become accustomed to taxis and public transport. With the position of division president had come an open tab from Mercedes-Benz to purchase whatever he wanted, and the services of Edgar Ramirez, a driver. Edgar was competent and calm, and also very chatty. Lee found himself incredibly well-informed about Edgar’s three daughters’ lives without ever realizing it had happened. He knew when all their birthdays were; Bobbi sent cards.

He routinely gave Edgar the whole of Christmas week off, paid leave, to spend with his family. Lee usually spent Christmas week holed up in his apartment, reading or painting or trying, year after year, to learn how to cook. Every year he was unsuccessful. It did not seem to be in his genetic makeup. Last year’s attempts at crème brûlée had ended with another small fire and a plea from the FDNY to “stop the madness.”

His mother had never been much of a cook either, not that either of them minded. They muddled through. But Patrick, his college roommate, had been obsessed with flea markets, and Lee accompanied him almost every weekend, driving up 9 Highway along the Hudson River Valley, since he was the one with a driver’s license, stopping at every little town with an outdoor market spread out to entice the city folk. Late one Sunday afternoon, as they were heading back to school, they stopped at one last market, a dismal thing sinking into the mud outside Tarrytown. They’d felt sorry for the few determined sellers, sticking it out to make a few bucks, and Patrick pity-purchased a god-awful painting of owls on velvet and Lee picked a book at random out of a moldy box. It was a cookbook, he discovered in the car. Holiday Party Casseroles, a brightly illustrated little book from a small press in Mount Vernon. He became slightly obsessed with the book, reading the recipes over to himself late at night, when he was lonely or stressed about school. The calm recitation of ingredients and logical instructions for baking comforted him, and he began to look for more cookbooks when he and Patrick went shopping.

He didn’t start trying to make the food until he lived on his own during grad school. Somewhere along the way, he’d begun equating homemade food with being cared for, and since he’d never quite found someone else to care for him—to be perfectly honest, he’d never really looked—he’d decided to care for himself. Except it only ever ended in disappointment and flames.

Driving, though. Driving he was good at. He’d missed driving, he discovered, zipping up 9 Highway in the comparatively light, middle-of-the-night traffic. He’d have to see if Edgar would let him drive more often. Edgar was very attached to the Mercedes, and Lee could see why. The W218 CLS handled like a trained panther, powerful but pliant, and it shifted like a dream.

Bobbi didn’t ask any more questions about their sudden road trip. She seemed to accept his reaction to her gift as normal behavior; then again, Bobbi had drunk at least three glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, and perhaps that was the point at which late-night road trips with your boss made perfect sense to young people. He saw her texting as they drove out of the city; probably her girlfriend, who was spending six months in Ecuador building hospitals. Bobbi then shifted her concentration to drinking water and trying to stay awake. She lost the battle somewhere around Cornwall-on-Hudson; Lee looked over and she was fast asleep, her hair squashed against the side of the seat, glitter twinkling in waves as they passed under lights.

Lee almost envied her. He didn’t sleep more than three hours a night anymore. As he drove, his thoughts turned to the memories that often visited him at 2:00 a.m., memories that had spurred this whole insane trip. Christmas Eve in Vietnam, 1969.

He’d been a driver in Vietnam, and he always blamed himself for the M35 breaking down that day, though logically he knew there was little he could have done to prevent it. The transport vehicles in ’Nam were not new; some of them were left over from Korea, and even the new ones were five years old by the time Lee got there, and Southeast Asia was not kind to motor vehicles.

They had been driving to the base in Buon Ma Thuot, taking a circuitous route to recce the Cambodian border, seeing if the PAVN/VC forces stationed over the line seemed to be making any serious movements in opposition to the impending Christmas ceasefire.

He hadn’t known then what a timing belt sounded like when it went out—he thought he’d driven over a mine. Once the smoke enveloping the engine cleared and everyone realized they weren’t dead, they all piled out of the truck and clapped Lee on the back, whooping and cheering as if he’d actually saved them from something. He and the ten other guys decided to walk the rest of the way. The ceasefire was scheduled to begin in less than six hours, at midnight on Christmas Day.

They made it two miles down the muddy track on foot before the shooting started.

THE LOW fuel indicator in the Mercedes dinged. Lee turned off the highway at the nearest exit and pulled into a Gulf station. He shut his door quietly and tried to fill the tank with as little noise as possible, so as not to wake Bobbi. On the other side of the pump, a tired-looking man bundled up in a plaid barn coat and a long white scarf got gas while his wife and five kids slept in the minivan. The father gave him a nod and a smile. Lee nodded back. The tank was full; he got back in the car and back on the highway. Thirty-four miles to Kingston.

THE MESS cook found him crouched under a table in the farthest corner of the empty tent. Lee was squeezing his hands together rhythmically, one inside the other, over and over, wanting so badly to ignore the bloodstains on his hands and his uniform but finding it impossible to look away.

“Heya,” said a soft voice. A young man in olive pants, a white T-shirt, and a half apron crawled under the table and settled next to him. “You come in with the boys from the ambush?”

Lee nodded, and then made himself stop nodding before it became another tic. “I was driving. We broke down. It’s my fault.” These were the words looping on repeat through his mind, in time to the ceaseless squeezing of his hands. I was driving. We broke down. It’s my fault. I was driving. We broke down. It’s my—

The young man placed his hand over both of Lee’s and gently held them still. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Look at me.”

It was a request, not an order. Lee looked. The young man smiled to see his face. He had the loveliest smile Lee had ever seen, genuine and easy, with a deep dimple appearing on either side. “I’m Karol,” he said. “You got a name?”

“Lee.”

Karol slipped his hand into Lee’s and held on. “Lee, it wasn’t your fault.” Lee started shaking his head and Karol shook his right back. “It wasn’t. I promise you. Not your fault. You did what you could, what you were trained to do, right? You got your friends here. They’re going to be okay. Heck, as soon as the helo gets here tomorrow, they even get to go home!”

“Not all of them,” Lee whispered, looking down at their clasped hands.

“Oh, baby.” Karol wrapped him in a hug and pulled him close, safe under the table. No man had ever called Lee “baby” or touched him like this, with free affection. Lee had barely even considered the possibility that one might. He didn’t even like to be hugged, usually, but Karol’s strong arms and soft voice and the way he smelled like cinnamon and sweat and warm cotton—Lee didn’t ever want to leave the shelter of the table and Karol’s embrace.

“I need your help now,” Karol said after a few minutes. “You like sweet potatoes?”

“Yeah?”

“Great, because Uncle Sam, in his infinite wisdom, gifted me with forty pounds of sweet potatoes in the Christmas rations, and I need an extra pair of hands for peeling duty. We’re making sun cakes.”

“What are sun cakes?” Lee asked, sitting up.

Karol bounced his eyebrows. “Guess you’ll find out.”

SUN CAKES, it turned out, were very similar to the potato pancakes Lee’s mother’s Jewish friends made for Hanukkah, except that they were thicker and made of sweet potatoes and condensed milk. “My grandmother created this recipe—well, not this exact recipe, a better one with yogurt and herbs and stuff—and she passed it on to my sister, who passed it on to me because I am a wizard in the kitchen,” Karol said as they worked side by side to peel, grate, mix, and shape. “Devra may be a witch, but she is definitely not a kitchen witch, bless her.”

“Your sister’s a witch?”

“Yeah. You know, Wiccan. Pretty cool stuff when you start to read about it.”

Together they made enough sun cakes to feed the whole camp, along with green beans and something Karol promised was meat but that he disguised with a heavy gravy all the same. Lee helped Karol serve, enjoying the way the men joshed with Karol, calling him “Yuletide Karol” and asking what Christmas miracle he was going to work with the food tomorrow.

Lee considered it a Christmas miracle—if he believed in such a thing; he wasn’t sure—that he and Lt. Danvers found this place. It seemed to appear out of the jungle like a fairy-tale village, right when they needed shelter. Supporting and watching over their five injured comrades, running scared—the memories, only a few hours old, made Lee’s heart race and his hands sweat and his head spin, and he looked to Karol, lovely, calm Karol, who caught him looking and winked.

After dinner, they cleaned up and washed the small mountain of dishes, taking turns scrubbing and drying, the radio playing low in the background, set to an Army station that played hits from home. Lee felt he needed to say something, to explain something, but he’d never been good at articulating his thoughts, and it took him the better part of a sink of dishes to figure out how to begin.

“When you found me, I was—I was thinking about—”

“I know. I saw your revolver on the floor.” Karol flipped the damp dish towel over his shoulder and picked up another one to keep drying. “Don’t worry. I got one of my guys to pick it up. It’s in the barracks. People drop stuff all the time in the mess tent, he won’t think it’s strange.”

Lee’s hands fell still in the soapy water. “You don’t think it’s strange?”

“I think it’s a perfectly natural reaction to what happened to you.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone?”

“’Course not.”

“But I was going to—I almost—”

“But you didn’t. You made sun cakes with me instead.”

Lee meant to say you saved my life. What came out was “Sun cakes saved my life.”

Karol laughed and turned up the radio. “Dance with me.”

Van Morrison started singing “Brown Eyed Girl” over the wires and Karol swung Lee into a jaunty two-step, spun him out and back, and Lee caught himself on Karol’s chest, and they swayed to the music filling the kitchen. Karol touched the corner of Lee’s eye and cupped his jaw. “My brown-eyed boy,” he murmured, and Lee leaned in to kiss him.

Karol pressed his thumb to Lee’s mouth to stop him. He smiled, but his eyes were sad. He traced the line of Lee’s bottom lip with his thumb, and Lee shivered. “Not here,” Karol whispered, and Lee flushed, suddenly conscious of the dozens of other men in the camp, surrounding them and judging them and ready to turn them in.

“I’ll kiss you when the war is over,” Karol said, and it sounded like a poem, like a promise. “When we get home. I’ll make it out and you’ll make it out, and it’ll be just like a movie or something. I’ll find you.”

“You better,” said Lee, cheeky for pretty much the first and only time in his life. “You owe me a kiss.”

THE HELICOPTER came at dawn on Christmas Day to transport Lee and the six remaining men from the M35 back to base. They made it to Buon Ma Thuot by lunchtime. Lee never saw Karol again.

LEE AND Bobbi arrived on the outskirts of Kingston around five. They’d run into a knot of traffic around Poughkeepsie, and after safely navigating them through that, Lee had pulled into a lay-by near a state park. He was exhausted, but Bobbi was still asleep and he wasn’t about to wake her. He’d tried to take a cat nap in the driver’s seat for an hour or so, but his mind wouldn’t let him rest and in the end he’d just pulled back out onto the road and kept driving.

The sky was still a deep bluish-gray, but the edges of the town, full of the usual suburban stores and gas stations, were already waking up. Bobbi was finally awake and fully sober. They both needed something to eat, and Bobbi was discreetly jiggling her leg up and down after all the water she’d drunk, so Lee kept going until they found a McDonald’s, one of the few places open this early and already very busy. Bobbi bolted for the ladies’ room and left Lee facing an unfamiliar menu with so many items, the screens had to keep changing to show them all. The last time he’d been in a McDonald’s, there were about ten items on a single light-up board. Now there seemed to be a hundred, and he was informed of their calorie content too. Lee considered that was one of the last things you wanted to know about the food at McDonald’s, right before what it was made of.

He settled on two coffees and two english muffin sandwiches and took the tray of food over to a high-top table to wait for Bobbi. She emerged a few minutes later and dove gratefully into her sandwich. She’d managed to unsquish her hair, and the glitter she’d dusted into it for the company party now sparkled on her cheeks and hands and dress.

“So, any idea where we’re headed?” Bobbi asked, after she’d demolished half the sandwich. “Are we just going to drive around…?”

Lee, who had been picking at his sandwich but mostly staring out the window, snapped out of his reverie. “I have his last name now. I suppose we could ask if they have a phone book here, or at a service station.” He slipped his phone from his pocket. “Or I could try googling him, see if anything comes up.”

“Nah, I got you.” She pulled out her own phone. “I signed up for one of those online white pages, find-a-person sites when I started at Union. Executive assistant’s best friend.” A few swipes of her fingers and she looked up expectantly. “Okay, what’s his name?”

“Karol Walenty. K on the first name, Y on the last.”

“This should be easy. How many guys are there in New York named Karol Walen—okay,” she amended, as the results loaded. “There are a not insubstantial number of guys named Karol Walenty living in New York State.”

Lee’s fingers tightened around his thin foam coffee cup. “Any around Kingston?”

“One… second… aha! We have a winner!” She showed him the phone screen. “There is a Mr. Karol Walenty living in—” She turned the phone around and frowned at the listing. “I think that’s a retirement community? Here in Kingston. And as a backup, there’s a Karol Walenty living out by the Ashokan Reservoir. But that’s halfway to Woodstock, so probably not. Hey,” she added, gathering up their trash. “Did you go to Woodstock?”

Lee laughed. “Not my scene. Besides, Rhode Island, remember?”

“People drove! It’s not that far!” She dumped the tray and came back for her coat and phone. “Speaking of which, I’ll drive now.”

“That’s okay, I can—”

“You’ve been driving all night.” She snapped her fingers and held out her hand. “Keys.”

He handed them over. “Yes, boss.”

BOBBI NAVIGATED them to the other side of Kingston and pulled into visitor parking at the Sunset Hills Assisted Living and Memory Care Center. The sun still hadn’t risen. Lee was afraid the front desk would tell them visiting hours did not start until later, but it was a different problem they encountered when they asked to see Mr. Walenty.

“Mr. Walenty doesn’t see visitors,” said the large dark-haired woman at the desk. She wore scrubs covered in Christmas puppies and her name tag read “Welcome! My name is BRANDI.”

“Should we come back later?” Lee asked.

“No, hon, Mr. Walenty doesn’t see visitors any time.” She lowered her voice. “He’s in the memory care unit.”

“Oh.”

“Are you… family?”

“Old friends,” said Lee. “I think. I—think I knew Mr. Walenty in the Army, during the war, and I was hoping to reconnect.”

Brandi gave them an appraising look. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think either one of you was alive during the war Mr. Walenty fought in. He’s ninety-seven,” she clarified. “He fought in Europe? Liberated Paris, all that?”

“Oh, right. Yes.” Lee cleared his throat. “No, that’s not—I’m sorry. Thank you for your—have a good day.”

Lee suddenly needed to be very far away from the smell of bleach and good intentions. He strode out to the Mercedes, coat flapping in the cold wind coming down from the mountains. He had long-term care insurance, of course. It only made sense, but the thought of having to end up in a place like this, however well maintained and cheerfully staffed, chilled him far worse than the piercing wind. Alone, no visitors, possibly not even remembering who or where he was….

Bobbi dropped into the driver’s seat and started the car. “Ashokan Reservoir?” she asked, one hand on the wheel, eyeing him with something like understanding.

“Ashokan Reservoir,” Lee agreed after a moment. “Might as well.”

THE DRIVE out State Highway 28 to Ashokan Reservoir took half an hour, and the undersides of the snow-filled clouds were just beginning to be edged in pink by the time they reached the listed address of the second Karol Walenty.

The gray stone farmhouse appeared out of a gap in the trees like a fairy-tale cottage tucked deep in winter woods. Snow from last week’s storm lay mostly untouched across the front lawn, although the bluestone walk was clear. Even this early in the morning, all the lights in the house were on, and there was the suggestion of great activity inside and out back.

Across the two-lane highway, a barren field dominated by a large dilapidated red barn had been converted into a rough parking area for close to thirty cars, with about ten more parked precariously along the verge. Bobbi slowed down and pulled the Mercedes into a parallel slot left between two aging station wagons. Lee stared at the house, making no move to get out of the car. Several minutes passed.

“So are you going to go say hi,” Bobbi asked, “or are we just going to creep on your old Army buddy from out here?”

THE FRONT door was opened by a small androgynous child who seemed to be wearing a glorified nightgown and a Christmas wreath on their head. They all stared at each other for a moment, and then the child offered them a limp Twizzler.

“No, thank you,” said Lee, and peered over the child’s head. “Are your parents home? Grandparents?”

“Ev’rybody’s here,” said the child, somewhat indistinctly, gnawing on the rejected Twizzler. “Who d’you want?”

“Ah, Mr. Walenty? Mr.… Karol Walenty?”

“Papa!” the child screamed, so suddenly that Bobbi stumbled back and almost fell off her shoes. Lee steadied her. “There’s people at the doo-oor, Papa!”

The child disappeared, leaving the door wide-open. The old house smelled distinctly Christmasy, as if a Hallmark store had recently exploded inside. Lee spared a brief thought for the odd sight the two of them must present, standing there on the porch: a petite young Black woman, clearly dressed in last night’s party clothes, and a slim silver-haired white man in a rumpled three-piece suit. He glanced back at his slate gray Mercedes, parked between the two bumper sticker–encrusted Subarus, and when he turned around, there was a man standing in the open doorway.

He was shorter than Lee, and his tawny skin was peppered with moles and freckles and age spots. His tightly curled gray hair had receded to the back of his head and merged with a neat beard and mustache. He was fat, and he was wearing a voluminous white-and-green cowled robe. He looked nothing like the young man Lee had known—and then he smiled.

And he looked exactly like the young man Lee had loved.

Karol Walenty opened his arms and enveloped them both in a sandalwood-scented bear hug. “Thank the Goddess you’re here!” he exclaimed. “The napkin goats are a mess, and Rhiannon is losing her mind.”

Lee and Bobbi exchanged a glance over Karol’s shoulders. What’s happening? Bobbi mouthed, and Lee shook his head.

Karol stepped back and ushered them inside. Lee hesitated for only a second and stepped through into the dim hall. The walls of the farmhouse were very thick, and dark wood beams lowered the ceiling so that even Lee, who was only of medium height, felt he had to duck or risk a smack to the head.

Karol placed a hand on Bobbi’s back and steered her toward a wide doorway on their right. “What’s your name, darling? My granddaughter found you online, I believe, and we only knew your—Twitter handle, is it called?”

Lee saw Bobbi’s mask of politeness descend over her face like a portcullis. “My name is Bobbi,” she said.

“Lovely to meet you, Bobbi. And you brought your father! How splendid!” Karol shook Lee’s hand. “You must be so proud of your daughter, running her own wedding-planning business. Come along in here, and you can meet everyone. Everyone, this is Bobbi and her father!”

An eclectic group of people sat, stood, and lounged in the wide front room. Almost everyone wore a thick robe like Karol’s, in green or red or cream. They were finishing up a buffet-style breakfast from the banquet table under the mullioned windows that looked out over the front garden. Everyone stared at the newcomers.

“Bright Blessings,” said a man with a pink-tipped beard, and suddenly everyone was following suit, showering Lee and Bobbi with blessings and greetings and offering them food.

“Thank you,” said Bobbi, accepting a multigrain pistachio muffin. “A Christmas wedding, how exciting!”

The chatter paused again. “It’s a handfasting,” a person lying on the hearth rug corrected.

“Right, yeah.”

“And it’s Yule,” said a woman with a tattooed face. “Not Christmas.”

“Yes,” said Bobbi, “of course.”

A tiny, silvery woman smiled kindly. “We’re witches, dear.”

“Okay….”

Lee and Bobbi exchanged another look, communicating with the sort of shorthand eye-telepathy they’d perfected after three years of tedious board meetings and truculent clients.

I want to stay, said Lee’s look. I have to know.

I don’t know how to get out of this with grace, now, said Bobbi’s look. Bobbi gave a minuscule shrug and turned back with a bright smile to the room full of witches. “Which one of you is the bride?”

“I am!” Rhiannon was very tall and curvy, with a cascade of bright red curls and a beatific smile. She looked like a Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life. She leaped up from her seat on the floor and clasped Bobbi’s hands. “It’s so good to meet you at last! I can’t believe we’ve planned all this over email, but I’m so glad you’re here to see it all come together. And you brought your dad? That’s so awesome!” Her voice was husky and sweet. “That is a fantastic dress, by the way.”

“Thank you,” said Bobbi faintly.

Rhiannon hugged Bobbi, who looked overwhelmed. “Let me show you the fairy lights,” said Rhiannon, moving them toward the door, “and you can explain your vision for the glen to me. We’ve almost finished constructing the fertility arbor.”

The rest of the witches dispersed to various tasks, talking, laughing, and singing snatches of songs Lee didn’t recognize as they went. Three boys ran through the front room, hitting each other with their Yule wreath headdresses and shouting that they were the Oak and Holly Kings, and the Holly King’s evil twin Lolly.

Lee did not see Karol anywhere. He was left standing in the middle of a rapidly emptying room, next to a woman folding a pile of stiff brown napkins into four-legged animals. “Would you like some help?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the woman with the napkin goats. “I’m Juniper, Rhiannon’s grandmother. Have a seat.”

Lee felt an odd spasm around his heart. “You’re Karol’s wife, then?”

Juniper laughed. “Oh no. We’re friends. We decided to have a child together. That’s her in the picture over there.” She waved a hand covered in silver rings and henna tattoos at a photo of Rhiannon and an older woman with the same tight red curls. “Chelsea. She’s gone to the Summerland, but I feel her presence here today.” Juniper smiled at the air in general. Her hair was dyed red and pulled back with a crescent moon-shaped hair clip, and she was wearing the same thick cream robe everyone else had on. She was barefoot in the middle of winter.

It suddenly occurred to Lee that he was sitting in a house full of people who probably went to Woodstock.

RHIANNON WAS marrying a strapping young man named Baldur, “or just Tim,” said Baldur/Tim. “Either one is fine.”

And they weren’t exactly getting married. This was explained to Lee every time he slipped up and used the terms “wedding” or “marriage.”

“A handfasting is a beautiful ceremony,” some well-meaning witch invariably began, “but it’s not always a marriage in the mainstream sense. Some pagan couples do follow a handfasting with a civil ceremony, or the high priestess is already a justice of the peace or something. But not all of them. A handfasting is like entering into a partnership of love.”

How is that fundamentally different than marriage? Lee wondered, and then he remembered all the many different living room ceremonies he’d been to in the eighties and early nineties, the cheap rings exchanged at hospital bedsides, the boy in the striped leather jacket who’d stood on the bar in the Stonewall Inn and told the entire room that “Jason and I belong to each other!” and the entire room had cheered and bought them drinks and celebrated their love. And he thought perhaps he understood.

IN THE late morning, Lee collected Bobbi from outside and brought her into the kitchen to warm up.

“We need to stop this,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I need to tell them the truth.”

“Yes. Great idea.” Bobbi shoved her hands under her arms and bounced a little. “I never knew what a fertility arbor is, but now I really, really do, and I’m not sure I needed that information.”

“What is a fertility arbor?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“It’s time for sun cake making!” Karol boomed, entering the kitchen, the center of a hurricane of children. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed upon spotting Lee and Bobbi. “You can help!”

Lee felt a powerful sense of déjà vu, except with the addition of eleven children in increasingly grimy robes. Bobbi gave him a look that clearly said after this you’re telling him, and then she hung up her coat and rolled up her sleeves to wash her hands and help the littlest kids wash theirs.

The kitchen of the farmhouse was an amalgamation of styles and periods, containing everything from a fireplace big enough to cook in—with an antique wood-burning stove shoved inside it—to a modern refrigerator and a microwave from twenty years ago.

Karol put Lee in charge of peeling sweet potatoes, since that involved a sharp knife and one of the children had already stabbed another in the eye with a spoon. They set up a rough assembly line around the farmhouse table, peeling and grating and mixing and shaping. There were herbs now, and sour cream instead of condensed milk. It went much faster with thirteen people working instead of two, and soon the first batch of sun cakes was disappearing into the oven.

Lee watched Bobbi help one of the younger children, a small boy he thought might be on the spectrum, painstakingly count out the shreds of sweet potato it took to make one cake. A wave of affection for her sloshed over his heart. She was such an exceptionally kind person, and he didn’t know whether he’d ever told her that. She deserved to be told every day.

Across the table, Karol shaped the sweet potato mixture into cakes with the help of two little girls. Lee had been incredibly aware of his presence since he walked in the kitchen. He glanced up again and saw Karol take a fresh tray of sun cakes over to the counter to wait for the oven to be free. Karol stayed over there, leaning on the wooden counter, his head bowed, so long that Lee became concerned.

Lee handed the paring knife off to the older boy standing next to him. “You want to try this for a while?”

The boy nodded.

Lee showed him how to hold and angle the knife. “Keep your thumb on the blunt edge of the blade and your fingers tucked in, see?”

He edged around the table and over to Karol, placed a hand on Karol’s rounded shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Karol nodded. He lifted his head and stared out over the heavily wooded backyard. “Get to be our age, you have a lot of memories, you know?” They stood together for a moment, Karol watching the proceedings outside, Lee wondering how to begin. Karol breathed deeply and straightened up. “Here,” he offered, “come help me shape some sun cakes. Everybody should shape a sun cake at least once in their life.”

The little girls shifted over and very conscientiously showed Lee how to flour his hands and pat the potato mixture into shape. Karol passed him lumps of the orangey goop from the mixing bowl. It smelled of sage and cloves. My hands will smell like this for days, Lee thought, and I’m actually cooking! And nothing’s on fire!

Karol watched him work.

“You’re a wizard at this,” Karol said. “It’s like you’ve made them before.”

Lee almost told him then. But a second later one of the children scratched themselves with the grater and started wailing, which set off a chain reaction of wailing children, and the moment was lost.

DEVRA, A short woman with prominent streaks of silver running through her masses of black hair, snagged Lee after lunch and told him he was going to help her carve candles. She led him to a room upstairs that was filled with cream pillar candles and a heady vanilla scent. She handed him a printed sheet of squiggly lines and a small knife.

“These are runes,” she said briskly, settling herself cross-legged on the floor with her own knife and picking up a half-carved candle. “They symbolize love and peace and prosperity and whatnot. Carve them into the sides of the candles. We need them for the feast table and the circle ritual.” She pointed to a plastic tub across the room. “Finished ones go over there.”

Lee studied his sheet. “Do they need to go in any particular order, or—?”

“Just make it look pretty,” said Devra.

They worked in companionable silence for a couple of hours. Lee’s runes looked more like patterns left by sidewinder snakes at first, but he got better at it, and he figured it was the thought that counted. He made sure to really think about the concept the rune represented as he carved it. He wondered if that’s what magick was.

“Karol is my brother,” said Devra in the late afternoon, not taking her concentration off her candle.

“Oh?” said Lee. “That’s nice.”

“Different fathers,” Devra explained.

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know.” She set her candle aside. She held on to the knife. “I know you and Bobbi aren’t the wedding planners Rhiannon hired.”

Lee almost dropped his candle. The knife cut a huge gash in the side, straight through the rune for peace.

“For one thing, neither one of you has any idea what you’re doing, although you’re pretty good at faking it.” She flicked the knife closed and twiddled it in her hand. “For another, I checked Rhiannon’s email for her, and the actual wedding planner sent her a message that she had the flu and couldn’t come today. I never liked the woman. Rhiannon’s so trusting she’d let a vampire in to supper. I never said anything, but that woman overcharged her and let Rhiannon do most of the work. But that doesn’t change the fact that your Bobbi isn’t her.

“So tell me—” She leaned forward. “—who you are and what you’re doing here.”

Lee laid the candle and knife aside and made sure to keep Devra’s eye contact. “I met Karol—your brother—in Vietnam. We were supposed to meet up after the war, only—we didn’t. I never heard from him. I’ve been looking for him for fifty years, and yesterday—last night, I found out he lived up here, and we drove up, and I… wanted to see if he remembered me. I wanted to see him.”

“Well,” said Devra. She flipped her knife open and went back to carving her candle. “Then I think you’d better go and tell him that, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Lee stood up. “Yes, I think I should.”

DOWNSTAIRS, THE house was mostly empty, with all of the activity concentrated outside, or upstairs in Rhiannon’s room as she got dressed and ready. Lee descended the stairs and saw Karol gathering up ribbon and hemp scraps in the front room, tidying up and carrying leftover craft supplies to the hall closet.

“Karol,” said Lee, snagging Karol’s sleeve as he bustled past. “Karol, could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course! In here, should be pretty quiet for now.” Karol led him down the hall to the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen. “I’m so sorry,” Karol said, “but I don’t think I ever caught your name.” He laughed. “I’ve been calling you ‘Bobbi’s dad,’ all day in my head.”

“Lee,” said Lee, watching him for a response, a flicker of recognition. “My name is Lee.”

“Lee! What a lovely name. Have a seat, Lee.” Karol settled himself on a wicker-bottom stool at the farmhouse table. Lee sat across from him, feeling subtly wrong inside his own skin. “Now,” said Karol, “what’s up? Is it something about the ritual?”

“No.” Lee squeezed his hands together in his lap, one inside the other, over and over. “I—we—we’re not who you think we are, Bobbi and I. I’m not her father. She’s not a wedding planner. Neither one of us are wedding planners.”

Karol seemed slightly taken aback, as well he might. “You’re doing an awfully good job,” he said at last, “for not being wedding planners. What are you doing here, then? Who are you really?”

“I work for Union Financial, in the city. Bobbi is my assistant. We—I’m here because—” His hands hurt, he was squeezing them so hard, but the pain helped him focus. He stared at the deeply scratched tabletop. “You and I, we met once before.”

“Oh?” Karol sounded much cooler than he had all day, but still curious. “And where was that?”

Lee managed a flash of eye contact, then back down to the tabletop. “Vietnam. Dak Lak province. Christmas Eve, 1969. You saved my life. I—helped you make dinner. I’m Lee. Lee.” He looked up and held Karol’s gaze. He needed to see him, needed to know. “Do you remember me?”

For a moment, Karol’s expression did not change. Then his eyebrows climbed his forehead and he sat back on the stool, holding the edge of the table to keep his balance. “My God.”

Suddenly he frowned. “But why didn’t you say all that when you arrived this morning? Why did you go along with—you spent two hours folding napkin goats! Why not just tell me?”

“I am not very good with people?” said Lee. “And Bobbi is very polite.”

Karol laughed. It sounded a little broken.

“And I was afraid,” Lee added very quietly.

“Afraid of what, me?”

“Afraid you wouldn’t remember me.” I needed to see you. I’ve wanted to see you for so long. The words stuck in his chest. And you were so happy, and now you’re not.

“I remember you. Of course I remember you, darling.” Lee was not confused by the endearment. He’d heard Karol call a tree “sweetheart” this afternoon; it was clearly a reflex. “I’ve thought about you over the years, wondered what happened to you. And I suppose”—his voice became stiffer than Lee had ever heard it—“you want to know what happened to me?”

Lee tried very hard to keep years of hurt and loneliness out of his tone. “Where did you go?” he asked. “I looked for you and looked for you, in Army records, with the VFW, but I didn’t have your last name, only ‘Karol’….”

“Ah, well, I can clear that up for you—I lied about my name on my draft card. Left out the ‘o.’ As far as the US Army was concerned, my name was Karl.” Karol rested his arms on the table and picked at his thumbnail. “I was a gay man, but I still wanted to serve my country. I was trying to sound more butch.”

“Oh.”

“How did you find me after all this time? I’m not on social media, and if you didn’t have my last name—you really never knew my last name?”

“You never told me.”

“No, I guess I didn’t. So how did you find—” He broke off as Lee got up, crossed to where his coat hung behind the kitchen door, and returned carrying the spiral-bound cookbook. Lee flipped through to the entry for “Yuletide Karol’s Sweet Potato Sun Cakes” and placed the book flat on the table in front of Karol.

Karol looked at the cover and then back at the recipe, smoothing his fingers over the print. “I’d forgotten I did this.”

“Karol?” Lee asked in a hushed voice. “Where did you go?”

Karol closed the cookbook and set it aside, fidgeted a bit with the plastic binding, then laced his fingers together to stop the fidgets.

“I was captured,” he said. “Early 1970. Only a few weeks after we met, actually. I was on a supply run, picking up a delivery that had gone astray. The helo was shot down over the Cambodian border, and the pilot and I were transferred to Hanoi.

“I stayed there until ’73. Operation Homecoming. The pilot died in captivity. I didn’t.”

A shocked silence yawned and settled between them. Lee wanted to hug him, to comfort him the way Karol had comforted Lee once, but he couldn’t move. Slowly, he made his hands unclench and laid them on the table, extended them toward Karol’s hands until the backs of his fingers were touching Karol’s. Karol gripped his hands and held on.

“I thought about you, in the camp. I thought about you, and I thought about my family, and when I came home—I wasn’t right. It took me a long time to get right, and that meant—I couldn’t think about you anymore.” Karol squeezed his hands and started to cry. “My brown-eyed boy. I wanted to find you, but you reminded me of the war, and if I wanted my sanity, I couldn’t have you.”

Lee felt as if he’d retreated somewhere deep within his own body, and Karol was so much farther away than right across the table. This was an unbridgeable gap. Lee had seen terrible things during his tour of duty—everyone over there had. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the specter of the POW camps in and around Hanoi.

I remind him of the war.

They sat in silence, simple and tense, the ticking of the clock and the little noises the food made in the oven the only sounds besides their breathing. Karol closed his eyes and let the tears spill over his cheeks. Lee held on to his hands and did not let go.

The back door burst open, and Bobbi skidded into the room in her borrowed moccasins, bringing herself up short at the sight of them holding hands at the kitchen table.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, clutching the door, “but the fertility arbor is kind of a little bit… on fire?”

Karol withdrew his hands and wiped at the tears glistening under his eyes. “Fire extinguisher’s under the sink,” he said, pushing back his stool. “I’ll help you.”

He dug out the extinguisher and handed it to her. Bobbi paused, hugging it to her chest, and gave Lee a look he could not interpret, then ran back out to the fire.

Lee stood up. “I should go. Do you need help? I should—I should go.”

“You should stay,” Karol contradicted, but Lee could tell it was the same as calling him “sweetheart” earlier—automatic affection, Karol’s knee-jerk welcoming instincts. Karol seemed to realize it too. His shoulders slumped a little farther and he wouldn’t look at Lee. “Rhiannon would want you to stay.”

After a moment, Karol added, “You’re wrong, you know.” He gazed out over the backyard, where evening was beginning to settle around the edges of the trees. “About you and Bobbi. You are her father. Blood doesn’t matter. Only love does.”

Lee didn’t know what to say to that.

“It was good to see you, Lee.” Karol smiled, but he was crying again, and Lee couldn’t tell if he meant the words. “Take care of yourself,” Karol said, and then he went outside, and Lee was alone.

LEE LEFT the Army cookbook on the kitchen table. Bobbi came back in as he was struggling into his coat. He saw her notice the book, and then she walked over and held the coat for him.

“I’m very tired,” he said, keeping tight control on his voice so it wouldn’t shake. “Could you drive us back?”

“We’re leaving?” Bobbi looked at his face. “Yeah, no, sure, give me the keys.”

They went out the front and no one stopped them, because everyone was out back getting into position for the ritual. Lee closed the door very carefully behind them. It had started to snow. Bobbi turned the key in the ignition and then turned it off again. “You loved him, didn’t you? You guys were in love.”

“I just want to go home.”

She started the car.

Lee closed his eyes and rested his head against the heated seat. He wished he could say it had been a terrible idea to come up here, but he couldn’t. Even if Karol wanted nothing to do with him, at least now he knew what had happened to him. Now he knew that Karol had made it out, that he had a full life and a loving family. His granddaughter was getting married—handfasted—today. Lee hoped he hadn’t messed that up too much.

If he’d searched harder when he got home in ’71, if he’d looked for Karol harder when he was still in Vietnam, was there any way he could have found him? Was there any way he could have saved him from three years in a camp and a lifetime with those memories? And if Karol had come home sooner, would he and Lee have—Bobbi slammed on the brakes.

Standing in the middle of the road was a small crowd of witches.

They were very organized witches. As Lee and Bobbi watched, the women formed a line across the road, planted their feet, and linked arms. Lee suspected they had perfected this technique at countless antiwar protests and Save the Rainforest rallies. Their hair was every shade from dyed turquoise and pink to brindled silver and black. Their cream and red and green robes shifted restlessly against their set bodies in the chill wind. Their faces, wrinkled and freckled, young and old, showed only focus and determination. These women were not going anywhere.

Lee broke the spell. “This can’t be the only road out of town. Back up and turn around—”

“There are witches behind the car too,” said Bobbi.

Lee got out of the car. Before he could say anything, one woman broke from the line and approached him. The line reformed behind her. It was Devra. She stopped a few feet away from him.

“We can’t let you leave,” she said, raising her voice slightly to be heard above the wind.

For a moment, some kind of Stephen King-esque, Misery-type situation—but with witches—flashed across Lee’s mind.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Lee said. “I’m sorry. I think it’s best if I go.”

“You think it was your decision to come here?” Devra scoffed. “You’ve been waiting fifty years to see Karol again. You think it was random chance that led you here? It’s not that hard to find someone these days. The Universe kept you apart until you were ready to be together, and then it sent you a sign.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee said again. “I don’t really believe in all that—”

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not. The sun goes up and comes down, the world turns without our belief. We’re just here to observe it all and be grateful. And sometimes, when another human makes a stupid-ass decision, we help the Universe out.

“Your love doesn’t belong to the past. If it did, you two would have been together from the moment my brother walked off that plane in ’73.” Devra pushed her thick silver-and-black hair out of her face and fixed him with a stern look. “The thought of you kept him alive. You saved his life as much as he saved yours back then, and I’ve listened to him talk about you, his brown-eyed boy, for years now. You were meant to find each other again when you were ready. And you’re ready now.”

“But I’m—but Karol—” Lee was afraid he might begin to cry in the middle of a state highway, confronted by a band of truth-telling witches. “I remind him of the war.”

“So do sweet potatoes,” said Devra briskly. “You see us hiding those today? Look, I didn’t say it was going to be easy. I may not know you very well, but I don’t think a man who’s searched and waited for fifty years is interested in easy.”

Lee looked around him, at the faces of Karol’s friends and family, solemn and steadfast; at Bobbi, standing by the car and shivering in her stylish coat. Bobbi, who had plucked the old cookbook out of the vastness of the internet; Bobbi, who insisted on coming with him and had stuck by him all through this strange day because she cared about him.

Sometimes… we help the Universe out.

Karol and his family believed that everything happened for a reason, the way the Universe intended. And Lee wanted, more than anything, to believe that too.

He turned back to Devra. “I love him. I’m not going to leave.”

“Atta boy!” Devra clapped him on the shoulder and then pulled him into a hearty hug as the chains of witches broke into cheers. “For a minute there, I thought I’d have to go get my Love Wins placards out again.”

THE WITCHES walked back to the farmhouse along the middle of the highway, a shifting crowd of white and green and red and gold, the Mercedes following slowly in their wake. They waited while Lee and Bobbi got out of the car, probably thinking Lee might bolt again if left to his own devices. Lee wasn’t sure that wasn’t a fair assessment.

The women hustled them into the house, down the dark halls to the kitchen, and streamed out into the backyard. Lee saw the cookbook, still lying on the table where he left it, and he touched Bobbi’s arm and hung back.

She looked up at him questioningly.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice deep and sincere. For once he didn’t have any trouble getting the words out. “For coming with me today. For staying. For your gift, and—for everything, the past three years. You’re an amazing person, Bobbi, and I’m proud of you and—and very fond of you.”

Bobbi smiled and stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. Her glitter transferred to his dark coat. “I love you, too, old man. Now come on.” She tucked her arm through his and faced them toward the door. “We have a wedding to finish crashing.”

“It’s not a wedding,” Lee said with mock severity. “It is a handfasting.”

“Oh my God.” Bobbi laughed. “You’re one of them now.”

THE BACKYARD had been transformed. Lee had seen parts of it come together throughout the day, but the final effect was breathtaking. Strings of multicolored, hand-blown fairy lights hung between the trees, keeping away the dark, while five firepits placed around the space kept away the chill. The feast table stood ready under an avenue of trees, and in the center of the glen stood the circle of Karol’s family, waiting for Bobbi and Lee.

They joined the circle, taking each other’s hands and the hands of those standing next to them, until everyone stood in an unbroken chain. The ritual began. Karol led the chants and prayers. Rhiannon and Baldur stood in the center of the circle, looking at each other as if nothing existed in the Universe but the two of them.

They called the four corners of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, and welcomed Spirit and the Goddess and the God. Bobbi gamely joined in; Lee mostly did not, afraid he would mess things up, but he felt the growing energy around him and a growing peace around his heart, every time he snuck a glance at Karol and found Karol looking back at him with warmth and not fear.

Before the handfasting ceremony began, Rhiannon turned to the circle and invited anyone who wanted to, to speak freely. About what? Lee wondered, but everyone around him seemed to know.

Devra spoke about the pagan lore for this season of the year, about battles and waiting and rebirth.

Aelfric talked about his cats.

Juniper made a partnership metaphor out of cooking and gardening. It made Baldur kiss Rhiannon’s hand at the end.

The circle fell quiet. Bobbi nudged Lee. Lee took a deep breath and hoped he wouldn’t pass out. It’s just like giving a speech at work, he thought. Except you haven’t prepared at all and it’s way more important.

“I want to say something,” Lee said, jumping at the sound of his own voice. “About love.”

Rhiannon graced him with her glowing smile. “Please, go ahead.”

“Someone told me today that love is the only thing that matters.” A ripple of laughter moved through the circle and everyone glanced at Karol. Lee guessed that was a familiar saying of his. “I think—I think they’re right. Love is what keeps us going, even through the hard parts of life. Love of friends, and family”—Bobbi squeezed his hand—“and love of a partner. Remembering love is wonderful. Love in the past is something to be treasured, something you can build on. But love doesn’t belong to the past. Love belongs to the future.”

Karol was looking at him and smiling and crying. Lee held his gaze and did not look away.

Rhiannon looked between the two of them. “After Baldur and I are done, Papa, do you two want to give it a try?”

The circle laughed and the witches cheered, Karol and Lee along with them.

LEE HAD been awake for forty hours straight by the time the first glow of dawn lit the eastern edge of the sky. Juniper had promised everyone that after the drum chant and a celebratory breakfast of sun cakes, the house was open to anyone who wanted to take a nap. Bobbi was already asleep, curled up in a pile of blankets and sleeping bags next to Lee’s chair under the spreading branches of the oak tree. All the children had gathered round her for story time at midnight, and Bobbi and a turquoise-haired person named Hathor took turns reading aloud from a thick blue book of pagan tales. Now, two little girls were snuggled up with Bobbi, like puppies in a nest of bedding.

Lee watched as Rhiannon and her new partner placed a drum in front of Devra, Juniper, and a few of the older witches, and passed out small percussion instruments to everyone else. A little boy ran up, threw a tiny pair of finger cymbals into Lee’s lap, and ran away again. The dawn grew stronger.

He didn’t know what the future was going to hold. He’d known for so long, measured his days in a comfortable, echoing monotony of work and numbers and necessary events. Now he wasn’t even sure what tomorrow was going to be like.

But he was excited to find out.

Karol claimed the chair beside Lee’s and let out a contented sigh. “I haven’t stayed up for a Solstice vigil in a long time,” he said. “Usually I’m like that—” He gestured at Bobbi and the kids and chuckled. “—as soon as the sun goes down.”

“Glad you did?” asked Lee, suddenly feeling shy.

Karol held his gaze. “I’m glad about everything that happened today.” He reached out and cupped Lee’s jaw, his hand warm despite the chilly air. Karol smiled, and if there was a trace of sadness in the smile, it was overpowered by affection and a contented peace. “My brown-eyed boy,” he murmured. A day’s worth of silver stubble was coming up on Lee’s face, but Karol didn’t seem to mind. He rasped his thumb along the line of Lee’s cheek, and then he leaned across the divide between them and pressed a kiss to his lips.

Lee closed his eyes and covered Karol’s hand with his own, giving himself up to the lovely floaty feelings of light-headedness and love. Karol tasted like cinnamon, and when he opened his eyes, Karol was looking at him with something like wonder.

“I’ve been waiting fifty years for you to kiss me,” said Lee.

Karol grinned. “Was it worth it?”

“Every minute,” said Lee, and he kissed him again as the snow fell and the witches chanted and the year turned.

L.A. MERRILL is a Kansas City native and author of more than six impossible things. She has worked as a tour guide, an assistant stage director, and spent one memorable summer as a camp counselor. Her work has appeared in Kansas City Voices magazine, on the YouTube series The Blank Scene, and online. An avid knitter, she has yet to follow a pattern and has made some interestingly shaped hats as a result. She lives in a tiny house filled with over five thousand books and an indeterminate number of dogs. Follow her on Twitter for feminism and fangirling @la_mer92, on Facebook @L.A.MerrillWrites, or check out her website, www.leahmerrillwrites.wordpress.com.

By L.A. Merrill

Don’t Let the Light Go Out

Finding Yuletide Karol

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Starstruck Anthology

Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Published by

DREAMSPINNER PRESS

5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

www.dreamspinnerpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Finding Yuletide Karol

© 2019 L.A. Merrill

Cover Art

© 2019 Brooke Albrecht

http://brookealbrechstudio.com

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dreamspinnerpress.com.

Digital ISBN: 978-1-64405-793-3

Digital eBook published December 2019

v. 1.0

Printed in the United States of America