Slattery O'Hearn
Love comes when we least expect it, or so Lori D'Angelo creatively explains in this noir-ish Christmas romance....
Jacob Marley wasn’t the only one who was dead. So was Slattery O’Hearn. But Jacob Marley had died of old age and miserliness, presumably. Slattery O’Hearn had been anything but miserly. She had been generous, too generous, with her food, her love, her kisses.
Mattie Monroe was the poor boy who loved her, married her, thought she loved him back. And she had loved him, but not only him. For Slattery, there was so much love to give and so many men to give it to. The police suspected that it was one of the men that Slattery loved but not exclusively who had shot her four time. But though an autopsy was conducted and the cause of death was very clearly two bullets to the back and two bullets to head and suspects were interviewed and released, the crime was never solved.
So many had motive. It was just a matter of figuring out who had opportunity. Some people thought that Mattie Monroe had done it himself, but others said that that poor boy was clearly broken up, though she had cheated him all the time. They said he loved her anyway.
The neighbor who watched Slattery come and go through her front window, the one who told police watching Slattery’s adventures was better than The Price is Right, said she felt sorry for that poor boy. He used to take Slattery out on fancy dinner dates. Now, he barely went out at all.
One year later at Christmastime, his life so boring that the neighbor was no longer watching, Mattie was still moping. December 24, last minute, he caved and decided to get a real tree, the kind Slattery liked because she was a fan of fresh and new and pretty because as his “I told you that girl was bad news” mother said: “You can’t stay locked up in that death trap of a house forever.”
The house wasn’t really a death trap. It just felt like one with Slattery gone.
As you can image, Christmas Eve at the Christmas tree lot was slim pickings, the last change offerings, the kind of take pity on me tree that Charlie Brown had found in the Peanuts Christmas Special. There were only two or three usable fixer-uppers, and Mattie wasn’t sure he had it him to fix them up.
Standing next to one was a girl with snot covered mittens crying. Mattie thought about leaving, but something in him, still alive and generous like Slattery O’Hearn had been, reached out to the girl and said: “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“This is the first Christmas without my dad,” she said trying to hold back the tears, “and he loved real trees. What’s a guy like you doing out here on a night like this?”
Her green eyes looked at him curiously, and he saw that despite her grief she still had some fighting spirit. And maybe he did too.
“Trying to get over a girl,” he said. Unlike her, he hadn’t bothered with mittens.
“Left you?” she asked. She looked like she wanted to push back the hair in her eyes, but her mittens were too snotty. He thought about offering but not yet.
“Left the earth,” he said only half clarifying. The story of Slattery O’Hearn was too big for tonight.
“Should we flip a coin for this, the most semi-usable tree?” she asked. She looked pretty despite her red eyes.
“You can have it,” he said, or he offered, daring to hope, “we could share.”
“Your place or mine?” she asked.
“We could lug it back and forth,” he suggested.
“That’s not very practical,” she said. He was admiring her red hair, perfectly curly though messy in the blistering air.
“Neither is Christmas,” he said. Or, he thought, chatting in the cold.
“Yes, but we have to do something to beat back the dark and the chill,” she said.
“I’m Mattie,” he said, offering a hand despite her snotty mitten.
“And I’m Kristen,” she said, removing her snotty mitten to be polite, and they shook hands, electricity hanging between them like Christmas lights.
“Come on, Kristen,” he said, “let’s get this tree home.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a smile that warmed him, and the night, his life, everything, for a moment, seemed a little less cold.
