The Gift of Christmas Past.

Lynn Kurland.

Prologue.

"DAMES," BRUNO SAID, with a regretful shake of his head. "Whatcha gonna do wit 'em?"

Sir Maximillian Sweetums swished his tail twice, settled himself more comfortably on his cloud, and admitted to himself that he quite had to agree with his companion-as indelicately put as the sentiment had been.

"Ah, dear Bruno," Sir Sweetums said, "there's the rub. Women don't like to be 'done with.' Especially The Abigail. A most forthright and in-dependent spirit, she is."

"It ain't like you ain't tried, Boss," Bruno offered. "Before you, uh, I mean while you was still, uh-"

Sir Sweetums held up his well-manicured white paw to spare the blushing bulldog further embarra.s.sment.

"Yes, I understand." It was very impolite to mention to a feline that his nine lives were up, but Sir Sweetums overlooked the faux pas. After all, he'd lived his turns to the fullest, using his considerable wits and wiles to their best advantage.

He'd had a different charge during each of his nine lives, and he'd seen eight of those mortal charges successfully settled. It was Number Nine who had, and continued, to elude his superior matchmaking skills. The Abigail. He'd tried, oh, how he'd tried.

He'd made an unmentionable deposit into the toolbox of a less-than-

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desirable handyman The Abigail had taken a fancy to. He'd leaped off the back of the couch over an insufferable attorney, s.n.a.t.c.hing the man's hair-piece and wresting it to the ground. Snags in gabardine trousers, blood-curdling yowls, sneak attacks from the bushes-they had served only to keep the undesirables from The Abigail. But a suitor to suit? Sir Sweet-urns wrinkled his aristocratic nose disdainfully. Nary a one, dear reader, nary a one!

That was before. Two years into his post-ninth life and subsequent Guardian Feline a.s.sociation membership, Sir Sweetums had found the Right One for The Abigail.

Now it was just a question of bringing them together.

"Hey, Boss, uh, is you ready to go yet?"

Sir Sweetums tucked a bit of stray fur behind his left ear. "Yes, my friend, I believe the time has come. You saw to the details?"

"Yeah, Boss. Dat movie's on right now. Only how come dey don't have no parts for no Guardian Animals in dat one?"

"Perhaps The Capra was allergic."

A thoughtful expression descended onto the bulldog's pudgy face. "Yeah," he said, nodding slowly. "Maybe dat's it." He looked up at Sir Sweetums and snapped to attention when he saw the feline was poised to jump. "Anyting' else, Boss, befores you go? Some Tenda Viddles? A sawsah of haf n' haf?"

Sir Sweetums was already leaping down athletically from the cloud. "No time, dear Bruno," he called back. "We mustn't keep Fate waiting any longer!"

"Good luck, Boss! You's gonna need it," Bruno added, in an under-tone. "Dames," he said, with a slow shake of his head. "Whatcha gonna do wit 'em?"

Chapter One.

IT WASN'T A wonderful life.

Abigail Moira Garrett stood on the bridge and stared down into the murky waters below her. She couldn't even find a decently rushing river to throw herself into. The best she could do was Murphy's Pond and the lit-tle one-lane bridge that arched over the narrow end of it. Instead of meet-ing her end in a torrent of water, she'd probably do no better than strangle herself in the marshy weeds below. It was indicative of how her life had been going lately.

It had all started last Monday. Her power had gone off during the night, causing her to sleep until ten A.M. The phone call from her boss had been what had woken her. He'd told her not to bother coming in. Ever.

If only it had stopped there. But it hadn't. And why? Because she'd uttered the words, "It can't get any worse than this." Those were magical words, guaranteed to prove the utterer wrong, words that drew every con-trary force in the universe to zero in on the speaker with single-minded in-tensity.

Tuesday she'd been informed that because of a glitch in the system, it would take several weeks to collect unemployment.

Wednesday she'd been informed that she wouldn't be getting any un-employment because her Social Security number didn't exist. If she wanted to take it up with the Social Security office, their number was . . .

Thursday, her landlord had told her he wanted her out. Being be-

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tween jobs, she had now become a freeloader and he wasn't taking any chances on her. Chest pains had begun that night.

On Friday her fiance, whom she had always considered boyishly charming, boyishly mannered, and boyishly handsome, had left her a note telling her that since she no longer had a job and wouldn't be able to sup-port him in the style to which he wanted to become accustomed after they married, he was moving on to greener pastures. To the woman in the apartment next door, to be exact.

And now, on top of everything else, Christmas was three days away. Christmas was meant to be spent with family, basking in the glow of friendship, food, and hearthfire. All she had to bask in was the odor of sweat socks that permeated her apartment, despite her attempts to dispel it. She had no family, no hopes for posterity anytime soon and, most espe-cially, no cat.

She dragged her sleeve across her eyes. This was her second catless Christmas. She should have been used to it by now, but she wasn't. Just how was one to make the acquaintance of Sir Maximillian Sweetums, live with him for ten years, then be expected to live without him? One day he'd been there and the next, poof, he'd been gone. She'd cried for days, looked for weeks, hoped for months. But no Sir Sweetums.

And now that darned movie had just made matters worse. She had watched George Bailey lose it all, then regain it in the most Christma.s.sy, heartfelt of ways. It certainly had been a wonderful life for him. All watch-ing it had done for her was make her realize just exactly what she didn't have. Good grief, she didn't even have a Social Security number anymore!

She stepped up on the first rung of the railing and stared down into the placid waters. All right, now was the time to get ahold of herself and make a few decisions. She had no intentions of jumping-not that she would have done herself much harm anyway. Well, short of getting stran-gled in Mr. Murphy's weeds, that is. No, she had come to face death and figure out just what it was she had to live for.

She threw out her hands as a gust of wind unbalanced her. Okay, so maybe this was a little drastic, but she was a Garrett and Garretts never did things by halves. That's what her father had always told her and she 7 had taken it to heart. Her dad ought to have known. He'd fallen off Mt. Everest at age seventy.

She stared out over the placid pond and contemplated her situation. So, she'd lost her job. She didn't like typing for a living and she hated fetching her boss coffee. She would find something else. And her apart-ment was hazardous to her sense of smell. She could do better.

Her fiance Brett could be replaced as well. What did she need with a perpetual Peter Pan who had three times as many clothes as she did, wore gallons of cologne, and deep down in his boyish heart of hearts was certain she should be supporting him while he found himself? Maybe she'd look for a different kind of guy this time, one who didn't mind working and wouldn't hog all her closet s.p.a.ce. She crossed her heart as she made her vow. No one who dresses better, smells nicer, or works less than I do.

So maybe her life was in the toilet. At least she was still in the bowl, not flushed out on her way to the sewer. She could go on for another few days.

Oh, but Sir Sweetums. Abby swayed on the railing, shivering. He was irreplaceable. Even after two years, she still felt his loss. Who was she supposed to talk to now while she gardened in that little plot downstairs? Who would greet her at the end of each day with a meow that said, "and just where have you been, Miss? I positively demand your attention!" Who would wake her up in the morning with dignified pats on her cheek with his soft paw?

Meow!

Abby gasped as she saw something take a swan dive into the pond. She climbed up to the top of the railing for a better look. That had to have been a cat. It had definitely meowed and those headlights had most cer-tainly highlighted a tail.

Headlights? A very large truck traveling at an unsafe speed rumbled over the one-lane bridge, leaving behind a hefty gust of wind. Abby made windmill-like motions with her arms as she fought to keep herself bal-anced on that skinny railing.

"Hey, I wasn't through sorting out my life!" she exclaimed, fighting the air.

It was no use.

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Darkness engulfed her. She didn't see the pond coming, but she cer-tainly felt it. Her breath departed with a rush as she plunged down into the water. She sank like a rock. Her chest burned with the effort of hold-ing what little breath she still possessed.

Time stopped and she lost all sense of direction. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that Murphy's Pond wasn't that deep. Maybe she had bonked her head on a stiff bit of pond sc.u.m and was now hallucinating. Or worse.

An eternity later, her feet touched solid, though squishy, ground. With strength born of pure panic, she pushed off from the gooey pond bottom and clawed her way to the surface. She started to lose conscious-ness and she fought it with all her strength. No halves for this Garrett.

She burst through the surface and gulped in great lungfuls of air. She flailed about in the water to keep afloat, grateful she was breathing air and not water. Finally, she managed to stop coughing long enough to catch her breath.

And then she wished she hadn't.

The smell was blinding. Her teeth started to chatter. Maybe she had died and been sent straight along to h.e.l.l. Was this what h.e.l.l smelled like?

Well, at least there was dry land in sight. It was possible she had just drifted to a different part of Mr. Murphy's pond. Things floated by her, but she didn't stick around to investigate. Pond sc.u.m was better left un-examined at close range. She swam to the bank and heaved herself out of the water. She rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, content to be on terra firma, still breathing, still conscious.

She had to get hold of herself. Life just wasn't that bad. Lots of people had it worse. She could have had it worse. She could have married Brett and watched her closet s.p.a.ce dwindle to nothing. She could have been fetching Mr. Schlessinger coffee until she was as personable as the cactus plants he kept on his windowsill. Life had given her the chance to start over. It would be very un-Garrett-like not to take the do-over and run like h.e.l.l with it.

She took a last deep breath. She needed to get up, find her car and go home. Maybe she'd stop at the Mini Mart and get a small snack. Some- 9 thing chocolate. Something very bad for her. Yes, that was the ticket. She sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked back over the pond, wondering just where she'd wound up.

She froze.

Then her jaw went slack.

It seemed that the moon had come out. How nice. It illuminated the countryside quite well. She blinked. Then she rubbed her eyes.

She wasn't sitting on the bank of Murphy's Pond. She was sitting on the bank of a moat.

She looked to her left. What should have been the bridge over the narrow end of the pond, wasn't. It looked like a drawbridge. She followed it across the water, then looked up. She blinked some more, but it didn't help.

All right, so maybe she had died and gone to h.e.l.l. But she'd always a.s.sumed h.e.l.l was very warm, what with all that fire and brimstone dot-ting the landscape. She definitely wasn't warm and she definitely wasn't looking at brimstone. She was looking at a castle.

She groaned and flopped back onto the gra.s.s. Faint, d.a.m.n it! she com-manded herself.

Shoot. It was that blasted Garrett const.i.tution coming to the fore. Garretts never fainted. But did they lose their minds? Abby turned that thought over in her head for a few minutes. She didn't know of anyone in the family having lost it. Lots of deaths of Garretts of grandparent vintage driving at unsafe speeds, skiing down unsafe hills, climbing up things better admired from a distance. But no incontinence, incapacity, or insanity.

Meow.

Abby sat up so fast, she saw stars. She put her hand to her head. Once the world had settled back down to normal rotation, she looked around frantically.

"Sir Sweetums?" Abby called. Meow, came the answer, to her left.

Abby looked, then did a double take. "Sir Sweetums!" She jumped to her feet. "It's you!"

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There, not twenty feet from her, sat her beloved Sir Maximillian Sweetums, staring at her with what could only be described as his digni-fied kitty look. He flicked his ears at her.

Abby took a step forward, then froze. What did this mean? Surely Sir Sweetums hadn't been packed off to h.e.l.l. But she had the feeling he just couldn't be alive. Did that mean she was dead, too?

Without further ado, she pulled back and slapped herself smartly across the face.

"Yeouch!" she exclaimed, rubbing her cheek. Well, that answered a few questions. Though Sir Sweetums might have left his corporeal self be-hind, she certainly hadn't.

But, whatever his status, His Maximillianness was obviously in a hurry to be off somewhere. He gave her another meow, then hopped up on all fours, did a graceful leap to change his direction, and headed toward the drawbridge.

"Hey," Abby said, "wait!"

And Sir Sweetums, being himself, ignored her. That was the thing about cats; they had minds of their own.

"Sir Sweetums, wait!"

The blasted cat was now on the drawbridge and heading straight for the castle.

The castle?

"I'll deal with that later," Abby promised herself.

Later-when she figured out why the moonlight was shining down on walls topped with towers and those little slits that looked just about big enough for a man to squeeze through and either shoot something at you, or fling boiling oil at you. Later-when she'd decided just what she was: dead or alive, in heaven or h.e.l.l. Later-when she'd had a bath to re-move the lovely fragrance of eau de sewer from her hair and clothes.

"Hey, stop!" Abby exclaimed, thumping across the drawbridge. She pulled up short at the sight of the gate. It looked suspiciously like some-thing she'd seen in a doc.u.mentary on medieval castles. Abby took a deep breath and added that little detail to her list of things to worry about later.

11 Now she had to catch her fleeing feline before he slipped through the gate grates.

She made a diving leap for Sir Sweetums's tail. She wound up flat on her face in a puddle of mud, clutching a fistful of what should have been cat hair.

She jumped to her feet and took hold of the gate, peering through the grates. They were about ten inches square-big enough for her to see through, but definitely not big enough to squeeze through.

"Sir Sweetums," she crooned, in her best come-here-I-have-some-half-and-half-in-your-favorite-china-bowl voice.

Nothing. Drat.

"Come on, Max," she tried, in her best aw-shucks-cut-me-some-slack voice.

Not even a swish of a tail to let her know she'd been heard.