Coming Home for Christmas Read Online Free PDF

had happened to him in the past ten years to change him into this stoic, distant man she’d met today?
    Putting Keith out of her mind, she scanned the small bedroom she’d entered. Amy’s room. Judging by the soft decor, the pastel accent colors and the white eyelet comforter on the four-poster double bed, the bedroom had not been touched since the girl had died.
    Amy had been a very pretty, popular teenage girl, Kenzie recalled, looking at the photographs tacked onto the cork bulletin board above the small desk. The montage included some shots from her childhood, but for the most part, it depicted her high school years. There was even, Kenzie realized as she drew closer, a picture of Amy and her. Her heart ached a little as she looked at it. It had been taken at one of the baseball games they’d attended at school. She could remember standing next to Amy when someone had snapped it.
    The next moment, another photograph caught her eye, and Kenzie paused to examine it. Amy had her arms around Keith, who appeared to be teasing her.
    That
was the Keith she remembered. A wave of nostalgia hit her. The man she’d left downstairs seemed to be light-years away from the teenager in the photograph she was looking at.
    He was decidedly happier in the picture, Kenzie thought. He had laughter in his eyes. The man answering the door downstairs didn’t appear as if he actually knew
how
to smile.
    Kenzie swiftly took account of the closet and the other items in the room. Although the bedroom had apparently been cleaned on a regular basis, nothing had been touched or moved. It had been preserved like a shrine to Amy’s memory. She guessed that had been Amy’s mother’s doing, because unless she’d read him incorrectly, Keith was definitely reluctant to come up here.
    Had he been here since Amy’s death? The thought saddened her that maybe he hadn’t. Taking it a step further, she began to think that quite possibly he hadn’t even been back to the house in all this time, which meant that he and his mother had been estranged at the time of her death.
    Her first impulse was to run downstairs and throw her arms around him, saying how sorry she was. Of course, since he didn’t seem to remember her, that would only spook him. She’d approach this more subtly, she decided—but she did intend to get to the bottom of this and find the answers to her questions. If nothing else, she owed it to Amy to see to it that Keith made peace with whatever demons were haunting him.
    Kenzie went through the other two upstairs bedrooms as quickly as she could. After doing this job for a number of years, she’d developed an eye for what could sell and what would be passed over. Since Keith had told her he wanted to get rid of everything, she inventoried the clothes and furnishings, placing everything into two categories: what would sell and what would ultimately have to be disposed of in some other fashion.
    When she was finished, Kenzie made her way downstairs quietly. She was just in time to hear the person—an older woman—who had rung the doorbell tell Keith, “I could drive you over to the funeral home if you’d like.”
    Keith guided the woman in his mother’s foyer toward the door. He’d been polite, letting her elaborate on how she felt when she’d let herself into the house and found his mother unconscious on the floor, but he didn’t know how much longer he could maintain his facade. He didn’t want details. Details would only reel him in, and he wanted to remain distant.
    It was time to send the woman on her way.
    â€œNo, I know where it is. Thanks, anyway, Mrs. Anderson.”
    Peggy Anderson lingered in the doorway. “It’s just not going to be the same without your mother living next door to me,” she told him sadly. “Your mother had a way of lighting up everyone’s life the second she came in contact with