Month: December 2023

Early December, Bay City, California, 1970.

John Blaine regarded the young man sitting on his back steps, a half-spent cigarette dangling from his fingers.

Blaine fingered the envelope in his hand. David Starsky was no longer the skinny teenager living with his aunt and uncle. Gone was the wide-eyed young man ready to conquer the world when they’d bid him farewell at 18, only to send him off to the brutal jungles of Vietnam a few years later.

Davey came back after 6 months as a POW. However, he returned an angry young man, scarred in more ways than one.

Blaine couldn’t help but feel that Davey was even more bewildered than when he left. He had no place to call his own and no clear sense of purpose. Back on American soil, Starsky couldn’t seem to settle in one place or hold down a job. The longest job he’d held was the most recent, as a cab driver.

That was until tonight.

With a sigh, Blaine shoved the envelope into his pocket before opening the backdoor.

“You better come in; Maggie will have my hide if I let you catch a cold or starve.” Blaine caught the side-eye glance from dark blue eyes and a quirky mouth twist. Continue reading “December 6th: Written in the Stars by Nicoltyler and Terri Beckett”

“Rosie,” Edith Dobey glanced at her watch, grabbing her coat and hat. “I have to run over to the church to bring these cookies to the Christmas faire.”

Rosie glanced up from coloring book. She was determined to finish the entire thing in the next two weeks. That way, Santa would notice that she no longer had a coloring book and bring her a new one. Along with the other things she had asked for. “Okay,” she said, feeling all grown up if Mommy was willing to leave her by herself.

“It shouldn’t take half an hour.” Edith crammed two boxes of gingerbread and one of iced sugar into a carry bag. “Starsky and Hutch will be coming by for the other boxes of cookies to bring to Marshall School, so you won’t be alone for very long.”

“Good! I missed them.”

“And Cal should be back from basketball practice soon, too,” Edith added.

“Mommy! I can be by myself! I turned eight last month,” Rosie insisted. Her birthday had been before Thanksgiving. Continue reading “December 5th: Always Time for Cookies by Dawnwind”