Head on a spring, the man nodded.
“My big fear is that he’s never going to be normal … enough to mainstream. I mean, you know, what would happen to him when we aren’t around anymore?”
“It must be difficult.”
“Difficult? He’s missing this, the snow, the mad rush of the holidays, the whole wide world.” A tear escaped the corner of her eye, and her nose was about to run, when suddenly a sensation came over her, one she had not experienced since she was a child, and all at once a gush of blood sputtered from her nose. She raised her hand to cover and catch it, but the blood ran over her fingers. The man was reaching for his handkerchief, and she coughed, and another clot burst and ran down her chin. Before she realized it, her blood had spread across the white cloth in her hand, and the man with the beard had reached over and tilted her head back and was holding her still, his hand cupped along the base of her skull, and telling her that it will be all right, it will be all right.
“I’m so embarrassed.” Her voice was muffled by the fabric. “I used to get these all the time growing up, but it’s been ages.”
They sat together, quiet and still, and waited for the bleeding to stop. There were fine flecks of her blood in his beard.
“Funny, but here I am confessing all my sins, and I was just talking to a priest this morning.”
“People say I have a trusting face, but I think it’s just the beard.” He stood and leaned close to get a better look. “Maybe it’s stopping. Do you want to try to sit up?”
As she nodded, she felt the reassuring cradle of his hand lift her. He kept his fingers on the base of her neck while she steadied herself and daubed the wet mess beneath her nose and mouth. A red spray had speckled the sleeve of his jacket, and the handkerchief looked like a crimson flag. She touched her face with her fingertips to determine how far the stain had spread.
“Let’s get you to the ladies’ washroom where you can clean up proper.”
In the bathroom mirror, she was shocked by the red map on her face. One of Jack’s pictures gone awry, her eyes half-crazed with horror and the blood running nearly ear to ear and curling beneath her chin to the throat. She washed her face gingerly till all traces had disappeared, and as she was inspecting her reflection, she saw the word over her shoulder, scratched into the paint of one of the stalls. It was backwards and foreign and she could not make out what it spelled. Turning round, she read it clearly: “wicked.” Wicked, indeed, the wicked witch of the mall.
The first thing she saw when she left the bathroom was the gallant man holding up the shopping bag as a sign of his fidelity. A bright smile emerged from the forest of his beard. “Feeling better?”
“I’m so embarrassed, and you’ve been so kind.”
“No more nosebleed? No more spirits tapping under the table?”
“All better,” she said and held out her hand in gratitude. He hooked the handle of the bag over her wrist.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “I hope your son enjoys his gifts.”
*
Low clouds bruised the late afternoon, and the sun kept disappearing, then reappearing as a faint halo on the misty sky. On the drive home, she delighted in the houses strung with bright lights, little beacons of cheer in the gloom. Along Mercy Point, she glimpsed a cargo ship far out at sea, its blinking lights sending off some melancholy signal, and she wondered if the captain and crew would make it home for the holidays, or if their turkey dinner would be a lonesome affair on the vast and wasteful ocean. Her thoughts drifted to the Porthleven and its doomed passengers. What terror it must have been for those poor souls taking on frigid water within sight of land.
The front rooms of the house were dark when Holly pulled into the driveway. Strange for Tim not to have lit the way for her, and by this late hour, he surely would have supper on the stove, but the place looked empty. She grabbed the bags from the passenger seat and hoped to sneak them past any prying eyes. Beneath the map light, she checked in the rearview mirror for any trace of blood on her face, and satisfied that she had removed all evidence, she stepped into the gloaming.