THE LAST CHRISTMAS GIFT
A Serialized Novella
by
Hart Monroe

Christmas Eve, 1998

Paco Berelli
c/o Somewhere

Dearest Paco,

Everyone's here for the holidays. People are sleeping everywhere, it's tough scheduling bathroom time, I'm not as adept as you always were at running interference between your dad and Uncle Nick when they tangle, yet, I expect this will be one of our merriest Christmases ever. If each of us were granted a Christmas wish, however, the wish would be that you were here, too.

The family is so relieved that I really have progressed from the apparently lost cause I was at this time last year to my old self again. From phone conversations and letters over the past year they've understood I was recovering, but they all needed to see me in the flesh to believe it. They needed to meet the highly unlikely addition to the family to believe that, too. From the moment they started trickling in a few days ago, they've all been more or less grilling me to find out exactly what happened. I admit I've been mysterious about it for the last year, and even more mysterious since their arrival. I suppose it's because I needed this time to savor what happened last Christmas, to examine it, and construct a new life around it before I began sharing it, because it has changed everything.

I've been working at getting the story on paper since last Spring when things finally settled down in this household, when we finally achieved "An Honorable Peace." At first, I planned to relate the tale in First Person narrative because that seems customary in highly personal accounts like this. Unfortunately, some of it is still so painful, that in the end I had to switch to Third Person to get through it; the "I" had to become "she." Telling our tale to the family last night was kind of a test run. I did so after dinner with everyone gathered around the tree.

I expected their indulgence, mixed with at least some degree of skepticism; that, especially, from my dad (the least sentimental of the lot). Yet, he was the one who understood right away how inspired it was of you to choose what you did as our . . . conduit, so there couldn't be any mistaking what was happening for something else. When I came to the end of the story, it seemed to me that everyone was moved, everyone but your dad. I was crushed, Paco, because Salvatore's is the support I need most. There's no way to relate our tale without telling something of his as he set it down in the journal he kept during the autumn of 1960. Without his permission to use the journal, we'd be sunk.

When I expressed my doubts about sharing our story at large, partly to give your dad a graceful way to say no if he needed one, because everything in that journal is so personal, several of our nearest and dearest expressed very strong feelings about why I should go ahead with it as planned. My mom pointed out that miracles should never be discounted, whatever their size. Telling it for that reason alone is reason enough to tell it. My sister, who's finally fallen in love (another detective in her division) contends it's a terrific love story, two love stories, really, and that there can never be enough of those. Libby believes sharing the story will be a kind of insurance against Time working on my memory and making a skeptic of even me. With his usual style, Uncle Nick claimed that if I don't tell it, he'll tell it himself. (You know Uncle Nick.)

Your dad, normally so loquacious, had nothing to say on the subject, at all. I didn't want to pressure him, and I was anxious the rest of the evening because he remained so uncharacteristically remote and silent. When I suggested a game of "May I?" he wasn't interested. He wouldn't even get into it with Uncle Nick, even with Nick, worried, too, I think, waving the red flag on a variety of subjects. Instead, your dad went for a walk. He was gone so long, I almost went out to look for him. When he came back, he was chilled and went into the living room to sit near the fire.

Just before bedtime, I went in to kiss him goodnight. We were the only ones still awake. I put my arms around him and held him close. It was then he told me I could use the journal, that he agrees, the two stories are inextricably bound, and that it was just the shock of seeing the journal again after all these years and remembering what it chronicled, that threw him. Then he slipped something into my hand. It was the letter, Paco; the very last one you sent him; the one he always has in his wallet, no matter where in the world he is. The stationery you wrote it on is yellowing now. It's creased and food-stained, and one of the corners of one of the pages is torn, but I felt like he was handing me leaves from the sacred "Book of the Kells." To him, that's exactly what that letter is. He wants it included in the story, too.

He said that while he was out walking he began to think about how many people loved you and still miss you so, and what a comfort it would be if I shared with them the story of your last gift to me. Of course he's right, but I think you had something more in mind. There are so many others out there who've gotten lost and fallen into darkness the way I did, so many others who may need help turning back toward the light; the story of this gift was clearly meant for them, too. They all need to understand that there's a Dewey out there somewhere for them, and that a Dewey can come in any form.

In a way, of course, telling our story is my private prayer. I want to believe that somehow in that Somewhere Over There, just out of sight, you really are waiting for me and anyone else I've collected along the way and may care to bring. All else aside, from the bottom of my reinstated soul, Baby, I'm telling our story for you.

Always,

Jules

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Copyright 1998