My Kind of Christmas

swelled while I was in a coma. They fixed it with the shunt to drain the edema but then they leave it in. It’s not working anymore but they don’t remove the shunt unless it creates a problem. We don’t do brain surgery unless we have to.”
    He watched her eyes. “Coma,” he said, still gently touching that lump. “Brain swelling. You had a head injury. A serious head injury.”
    “But really, I’m fine. Completely recovered. I mean, I think I am. Even given my chasing dangerous men into bars…”
    “It was a bad accident,” he confirmed. “Very bad.”
    She nodded. “Which explains why my mother thinks I have a personality disorder and wants me in a padded suit for the rest of my life. And maybe it also explains my resistance to that idea.”
    He smiled gently and said, “I like your personality.”
    “Thanks,” she said, some confidence restored. “That actually means a lot to me.” She gave him another smile, then turned and headed out to join the festivities.

Three
    O nce Angie left the bar, Patrick felt a little short of breath. Meeting her was the last thing he expected. Or intended. He was still feeling emotionally wounded by Leigh. Leigh, who was a sophisticated, thirty-year-old society girl, the daughter of a rich, widowed senator out of Charleston. Leigh, so stunning and brilliant she made men gasp when she strolled by.
    So perfect and, ultimately, so cold.
    Patrick threw a couple of bills on the bar for their coffee and went outside. There was still a lot of activity around the tree, but he didn’t see Angie. He left town to go home, but all the way there he found himself thinking about the differences between this young, warm, optimistic woman who’d cheated death and Leigh, who had everything and was grateful for nothing.
    How had he not noticed that Leigh was so unfeeling when he’d been involved with her?
    Patrick had only one picture of Leigh Brisbain with him, although there were still many in his Charleston home, a house Leigh had decorated to suit her tastes. In the picture he kept in his wallet, taken on a sailboat, she lounged against him, both of them hanging on to the rigging, windblown and smiling. She’d been out of his life for six months; all the pictures at home should at least be packed away somewhere. Maybe when he got back there, he’d do that.
    Leigh had a place of her own in Maryland, a place he’d only visited when he was available to attend charity or political events with her. When Patrick deployed, Leigh spent all her time near the nation’s capital, working full-time for her father. She never stayed in Patrick’s Charleston house without him, though Patrick had always thought of it as theirs, together. Leigh loved D.C. and planned to make her life there. Her ultimate ambition was to follow in her father’s footsteps. She’d run for office one day and split her time between D.C. and Charleston.
    How had he managed to miss that they were so unconnected? It had ended so suddenly. He had come home from sea to find a picture of her in a newspaper where she was dancing with a smiling man. Not exactly a smoking gun—she attended so many political and charity affairs that this didn’t alarm him in the least. He had casually asked, “Who’s the guy?”
    And she had replied, “I guess it’s finally time for us to have this talk, Patrick. Our lives are so out of sync—you’re committed to the Navy and I’m going for a career in civilian politics. You’re going to transfer around and I’m going to have to establish roots to support my constituency and political career. You’ll be flying—I’ll be here or in Washington.”
    “Haven’t we had this conversation many times?” he said. “You’re not running for office right away, probably not for years. We have plenty of time.”
    She merely shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she had said. “I’m not going to be a Navy wife. I’m building a career. I need a partner.”
    “To do what? Go to dances?” he asked. “You seem to do just fine, attending with your father.”
    “That’s not working for me,” she said.
    “Are you asking me to get out? After ten years plus four in the Academy? Is that what you want?” he asked.
    And clear as a bell she had said, “I’m afraid that won’t work for me, either.”
    That had pretty much summed it up. Oh, they’d talked it to death for a while, but the actual conclusion had been reached in the first two minutes of conversation. She was done.