Upon a Midnight Clear (Legend, Colorado 2)

"Absolutely," he responded, helping her put it on.

Despite the chilly air circulating in the hall, Kim felt a warm, cozy feeling melt through her as he slipped the jacket onto her arms.

"Thanks," she said, feeling awkward and embarrassed, although she wasn't sure why. "Thanks very much."

"You're welcome very much," Tony said as he finished helping her on with the coat. He nodded toward the door. "Shall we?"

Kim stepped outside and experienced the same sense of frozen lethargy she always felt in cold, miserable weather. "It's freezing," she said.

"It's not freezing. It's just a little brisk."

"It's freezing," Kim repeated matter-of-factly, hurrying to catch up with him.

She followed him to a large, blue Cadillac. "This is your father's car," he said, his arms crossed in front of him to keep himself warm.

Kim glanced at the car with disbelief. It looked like the same car she remembered her father driving. Perhaps it was the same car. After all, they long ago stopped making cars as big as this.

"I hope you have gas money, because this car probably goes through a tank in about five minutes," Tony said.

Kim stepped forward with the key. She felt uncomfortable, as if she were breaking into a stranger's car.

Tony opened the driver's door for her. "I think the button for the trunk is…"

"Right here," Kim said, popping open the glove box and unlocking the trunk.

Tony smiled as he walked around to the back and set her suitcase inside the ample trunk. He walked around to the front just as Kim was using the windshield wipers to scrape off the light dusting of snow that had fallen. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked, leaning over the top of the door. "You remember how to get home?"

"Like it was yesterday. That's the problem." He nodded as though he understood, though what she had said really didn't make any sense, even to her. He stood up straight.

"Thank you," she said. "For the coat, for everything." "No problem," he said, still leaning over the door. His teeth were chattering and his lower lip was turning a shade of blue.

"You better get inside," she said. "Before you freeze." He shook his head. "Nah," he said, looking up at the sky.

"I like the cold. I'd stay out here all day… and night, if I could." He smiled at her as he stood back from the door.

"Have a good Thanksgiving evening." Thanksgiving. She had forgotten about that. "Same to you," she said as he shut the door. She smiled and waved good-bye as she fired up the Caddy.

Kim drove through the deserted, eerily familiar roads. She felt funny driving her father's car. Especially this car. This car made her feel tiny, which was not a simple feat. At five feet nine inches, she didn't often feel small. But in her father's Cadillac, she had to lean forward to be able to see out the window.

This was not the first time she had been behind the wheel of this car. She had driven it once before, when she was fourteen years old. She had been angry that her father had not allowed her to go on a date with a boy three years her senior, so she had retaliated by getting up in the middle of the night and driving her father's pride and joy, his brand-new big blue Cadillac, around the block. That was it. She had simply driven it around the block and parked it back in the driveway and he had never found out. It hadn't been much of a retaliation, but the truth of the matter was, her father scared the hell out of her, especially then. Not because he had a temper, but because he didn't have one. He was always so controlled. So cold. Even when he was angry.

Kim glanced at the mileage. The car incident was almost seventeen years ago, and her father had only 70,000 miles on the odometer. It was obvious he only used the car to drive to and from work.

Kim turned onto Sycamore Street, and her breath quickened. She stopped in front of her father's house—the same house she had grown up in. She looked at the willow tree in the front yard, the same tree she had fallen out of, breaking her leg. Feeling as though she had stepped back in time, Kim nestled her nose in Tony's jacket, his deep musky scent bringing her back to the present day. She loved the fact that he had given her his jacket. It had been a gallant, sweet act on his part, and she respected that. Whatever happened to the "Hey, it's cold out here, let me give you my coat" type of guy…?

Obviously he was alive and well and living in Michigan; she'd be sure to tell Barbara when they spoke that evening. She smiled as she straightened in her seat. Of course, the whole coat incident really didn't count, because she wasn't dating this man—he was simply being nice. But she was grateful, not only for the warmth the jacket provided but for the sweet reminder of her present-day life. She was not a child returning to an unhappy home, but an adult, returning to her father's house not because she had nowhere else to go, but because she had chosen to return.

Kim grabbed her suitcase out of the trunk and walked down the front walkway to the door. The back door seemed too personal a way to enter this house. It was for family. And she was a guest. Not even an official guest. A visitor.

She opened the door and walked in, shutting the door behind her. The house smelled like she remembered it, a mixture of Pledge and fresh laundry. She took it as a sign that her father had kept the same housekeeper all these years.

She glanced inside the large living room off to her right The same rust brown shag carpeting covered the floor. A familiar white, furry rug was still lying in front of the fireplace. The walls were paneled with the same heavy oak paneling. Even the furniture was as she remembered it. Kim stepped inside the room and stopped. The portrait of their family still hung over the fireplace, as though she, her mother, and father were still the occupants of this big, old lonely house.

Kim had a sick feeling in her stomach. This was weird. Very weird. Apparently her father had suffered a little bit more than she had suspected. Why else had he never changed the decor?

Kim couldn't bear to look at anything more. She walked up the stairs and made her way to her old bedroom. As she suspected, it was neat and clean, but appeared to be exactly as she'd left it. Exhausted, she slipped into her old twin bed and closed her eyes.

Kim reached the parking lot at five minutes after seven. The heat in the Cadillac was blasting as high as it could go. So hard, in fact, that her hair was blowing back. "Ahhhh," she sighed out loud, as she adjusted the vents so they were aimed at her toes. They just don't make cars like this anymore. She could understand why her father had wanted to hang on to it.