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I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth goodwill to men.
The sound of bells rang through the night air. It was such a beautiful sound, meant to be celebratory and joyous, and Abby could have listened to them all night. Soon they stopped, though, leaving just the bustling sound of movement all around.
Sitting back on the pew behind her, she helped the older couple next to her raise the kneeling rail that they’d shared just moments before. After hastily gathering her belongings, she followed them into the aisle. The woman wished her a Merry Christmas, before taking her husband’s hand and walking on quickly, perhaps to a cozy house covered in twinkling lights where, later in the day, grandchildren would gather around an enormous Fraser Fir, covered with ornaments that had been collected over a lifetime together.
Sliding on her coat as she walked, Abby thought back to past Christmases when she’d made this same late night pilgrimage in her small Midwestern town with her mother. Her mom adored the Christmas Mass, and insisted that in those moments after midnight, she felt closer to God than any other time of the year. Abby suspected that was why she chose last Christmas Eve to give up the two-year long fight that she’d been waging against an aggressive form of brain cancer, to go be with him permanently. Before she died, she made Abby promise to continue the tradition, and she was nothing if not a dutiful daughter, even though she would have rather been in bed, wallowing in her private misery.
“Abigail?” A familiar voice reached out to her over the din of parishioners shuffling out into the cold winter night. The owner of the voice waved his hand, inviting her to join him near the large beautifully decorated tree in the middle of the narthex.
“Merry Christmas, Father,” she greeted him with the best forced smile that she could muster. “The service was beautiful.”
Father Lantom was one of the first people that she and her mother met when they moved to New York almost two years ago to be closer to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where her mother was getting treatment. Doctors were optimistic, so they left their familiar small town and found an apartment to share in Hell’s Kitchen. Abby found a job as a Librarian at the Columbus Library just a few blocks away, and they gave her the flexibility she needed to take care of her mom. After she passed, Abby thought about returning home, but she found herself making excuses to stay in the city longer, perhaps hoping to avoid all of the memories that waited for her there.
“Merry Christmas to you, my dear. I’m glad that you decided to come.”
“Well, I did promise, so here I am,” she shrugged.
“Yes, well I am happy to see you. Oh, pardon me. I am being very rude.” He turned to his other side, and for the first time she saw that another man was standing there. He was taller than her, dressed in a gray suit with a festive red tie that almost clashed with his neatly styled red hair. Even though it was late at night, he wore small round glasses, and carried a long white stick, which he clutched in his left hand. She realized quickly that he was blind. “Abigail Berken?” This is Matthew Murdock. He’s a long time resident of Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Merry Christmas, Ms. Berken.” He held his hand out to her and she shook it. “Matt’s fine. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Thank you. Merry Christmas to you as well. I go by Abby.” She didn’t bother with her forced smile this time, since he couldn’t see it anyway.
“If you two will excuse me,” Father Lantom interrupted. “I should go speak with some of the other parishioners. Have a blessed Christmas, both of you.” He made his goodbyes before leaving the two of them standing awkwardly together.
“So, uhhh, are you new to the area, Abby?”
“Not really. I’ve been here almost two years, I guess.”
“And do you like it?”
“It’s been a bit of an adjustment from the small town I grew up in, but I’m getting there. Not driving a car all the time is still something I’m not used to, not that I need to, I guess.”
“Right? I have a hard time with that too,” he mused.
She surprised herself by actually laughing. “Oh geez, I’m so sorry.”
“Not a problem at all,” he laughed. “I was just teasing you. Probably not the best thing to do on Christmas, I guess.”
“No, that’s okay. I could use the laugh.” She actually smiled without having to force it for the first time today, and it was nice. “Well, I should probably get going.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty late.” They walked together, toward the open doors. He moved very well and didn’t seem to need the wide berth that people gave him for his walking stick. After making their way down the steps, they both stopped.
“It was nice meeting you, Matt. I hope you have a nice Christmas.”
“Actually, you know, I was going to stop off at this 24-hour diner just down the street for a bite to eat before heading home. It’s sort of a Murdock Family Christmas tradition, breakfast after Midnight Mass? I think my dad liked to stuff me full of food so I’d sleep longer in the morning.” A grin spread across his face at the memory. “Any chance you’d be interested in joining me?”
She considered him for a moment. He seemed nice enough, and Father Lantom knew him, so how bad could he be? Besides, if she was being completely honest with herself, she just wasn’t ready to be alone.
“Sure, why not? I was just going to go home and eat half of my mother’s Famous Chocolate Reindeer cake, wash it down with a bottle of wine, and pass out in a drunken sugar induced coma, anyway.”
“Well, breakfast suddenly seems much healthier, for sure.” His smile was infectious as he offered her his arm and led her down the street.
The sidewalk was mostly clear of people and even though she’d lived there for a while, the dark alleys and strange city sounds were still something that she wasn’t quite used to. It didn’t appear to bother Matt at all, though, as he easily maneuvered the sidewalk and seemed to know exactly where he was going.
"So if you don’t mind me asking, why aren’t you spending the holiday with your family this year?”
“It was just me and my mom, and she’s dead. Passed a year ago yesterday, actually,” she responded.
“On Christmas Eve?”
She nodded and felt silly, because of course he couldn’t see that. “Yeah, cancer. There was a treatment that had a chance of working, which is why we moved here. In the end, it didn’t, and I guess she just got tired of fighting.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that. I heard you mention that you came to mass because you promised. Did Father Lantom make you promise that you’d come?”
“No. He was there when my mom made me promise I would, though. It was our tradition, and she was hung up on me continuing it, so I did.”
“Well, I’m glad that you did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have met you. It’s nice to have company.” He looked right at her, and once again she found herself smiling despite herself, and very glad that he couldn’t see the blush creeping across her cheeks. “So what do you do in the City?”
“I’m a Librarian at the Columbus Library on 10th Avenue.”
“Oh, nice. They have a pretty big audiobook section, as I recall, but I’ll be honest, I haven’t been doing much reading for fun lately. What made you decide to become a Librarian?”
“I love books, I love organizing things, and I really love telling people to be quiet,” she joked, causing him to laugh. “Back home I managed the entire library but considering you could probably fit that whole library in the Reference section of the Columbus, I’m glad that I’m not actually in charge. What about you? Window Washer? Taxi Driver? Pilot?” She was relieved when he laughed again at her attempt at a joke.
“All quite tempting,” he chuckled, “but I’m an attorney. My best friend, Foggy, and I have a small firm here in Hell’s Kitchen. By small I mean there’s only us and our Office Manager, Karen, and she threatens to quit on a daily basis.”
He stopped in front of the diner and held the door open for her. The restaurant was surprisingly crowded for just after midnight on Christmas day. She picked an empty booth near the back, and he took the seat across from her.
“So do you think you’ll stay in the City?” Matt asked, after the waitress came to take their drink orders. Abby realized that this must be a place Matt frequented fairly often, because the waitress knew him by name.
“I don’t know. I kind of like it here. There is so much to do and a lot of new people to meet, not that I’ve actually gone out to do either. I’ve kind of enjoyed the ability to get lost here, I guess. Back home it’s the same places and same people that I’ve been with most of my life, you know?”
“It’s probably nice not to have all of those memories to go back to as well. I bet your mom would want you to get out and take advantage of the city, though.”
“Part of me thinks that my Mom purposely made me come out here just to get me out of that town again. I never wanted to stay there. I went out of state for college, and when I got my Masters, I took a job at a library in St. Louis. That lasted almost a year until my mom was diagnosed, and I made up an excuse to come home. Soon, I was working at the town library, dating my high school sweetheart again and it was like everything that I never wanted when I was growing up.” The waitress came to take their orders, and realizing that he probably didn’t need to hear her life story, she decided to change the subject. “So what about you? Why aren’t you with your family?”
“No one left to be with. My mom died when I was a baby. My dad died when I was a kid. I spent time in the Saint Agnes orphanage before going off to school,” he shrugged.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I make the Midnight Mass in his honor too. It gets easier, but it never goes away.”
“I’d settle for easier, at this point.” She took a sip of her coffee, and decided to change the subject. “So, is it okay if I ask if you were born blind?”
“No. I wasn’t. I was just a kid when there was an accident, and my face got splashed by chemicals from a passing truck. This is what happened.”
“Oh, that had to be horrible!”
“Well, it wasn’t the best time, but my dad threw himself into making sure that I adapted as quickly as possible, and here I am. A blind attorney who helps people. At least I try to.”
“Very noble,” she replied.
“Doesn’t pay as well as being on the other side, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.”
As they ate, they carried on with polite conversation, until the waitress returned to refill her coffee. When Matt pushed the sugar bowl toward her, she was surprised. “How in the world did you know that I put sugar in my coffee?”
“I’m blind, not deaf,” he laughed. “I could hear the packet being opened earlier.”
“Impressive. Maybe you got super powers like my Mom did.”
Matt gave her an amused look. “Oh? Your mom got super powers? Could she fly? Turn invisible? Did she join the Avengers?”
Abby giggled. “It’s a little bit crazy. She had this whole belief that…You know what? It’s completely ridiculous, so I’ll spare you. You’ll think I’m nuts.”
“This sounds like a story that I want to hear,” he smiled at her, encouragingly.
“Okay, so when my mom was diagnosed with the brain tumor, she swore it gave her super powers.” Abby expected him to laugh again, but he sat there silently, his head inclined in her direction. “She believed that she could see the future.”
“Wow. That’s interesting. There have been cases where people swear that their tumor gave them special powers. Did you ever see it work?”
“Well, yeah, but it was mostly little things. She said that she had no control of it, she just kind of caught glimpses of things. For instance, she told a woman who worked at the grocery store in town to enjoy her vacation, and the woman insisted that she wasn’t going anywhere. We ran into her two weeks later at the store, and it turned out that on that very day, her husband surprised her with a cruise for their anniversary. Thing is, though, her husband owned the local mechanic shop, and my Mom was there the day before getting her tires rotated. She could have overheard him talking about it, even though she swore she didn’t.”
“Maybe she didn’t realize that she had.”
“That’s what I said! She had a string of these things, though. She congratulated our 18-year-old neighbor for getting into his first choice of college when he came over to mow the lawn for her, and he didn’t even get the letter for two more days. She congratulated my high school friend on her pregnancy before she even took the test, and told me that my boyfriend was going to be offered a job in Chicago.”
“Was he?”
“The very next week. He suggested that I go with him, but I would never have left my Mom alone while she was sick, and I wasn’t really sold on the longevity of our relationship anyway, so I declined and we broke up. Then there was the nurse at the cancer center here. Mom made me go buy a manicure gift certificate to a local spa nearby because it was the nurses birthday the next day. Mom insisted that she use it that afternoon, and sure enough, her boyfriend proposed to her the next day. Afterward my mom claimed she wanted to make sure she had pretty nails to show off her ring.”
“Foggy, loves to read all those unbelievable stories. He’d be absolutely ready to believe that your mom had special powers. I’m much more of the skeptical type, but to be honest, after aliens fell from the sky over Manhattan, I’m a little more inclined to believe things. Maybe she could see the future.”
“Or maybe she was just a really good guesser.”
The waitress dropped off the bill, and Matt grabbed it before she could even get her hand up. “I’ve got this. I asked you to join me, it’s my treat.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have to, but I am.” She decided not to argue when he flashed that handsome smile at her. “Consider it a Christmas present.”
“But I didn’t get you anything, you know, since we just met a little over an hour ago.”
“You can let me walk you home, then. Surprisingly, Christmas is usually a slow night for crime, but I’d feel better if you weren’t out there alone.”
“But then, you’d be walking home alone, wouldn’t you?”
“I grew up on these streets. I know them very well. It may not seem like it, but I can take care of myself well enough. If all else fails, I can beat them with my stick,” he grinned.
“Okay. You have a deal,” she finally agreed. Matt paid the check, and they headed out into the eerily quiet night. She took his arm when he offered it.
“So, did your mom have any premonitions about you?”
“She did, but you don’t want to hear that. It is so ridiculous that I didn’t even give it much thought. She was really going downhill, and I think she was just trying to make herself believe that everything would be okay for me, ya know?”
“As any mother would. Now you have to tell me, though.”
“Ugh. Okay, but it’s ridiculous. She made me promise that I’d keep our Christmas Eve tradition, especially this year, because she was convinced that I was meant to somehow meet Daredevil tonight.”
Matt stopped and turned toward her, his grip on her arm tightening just slightly. “Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. She had this thing in her head that Daredevil and I were going to be involved somehow. Honestly, I think she just didn’t like the idea that I might not be safe in the city, and what better way to make sure that I was, than imagining that I somehow ended up with the Savior of Hell’s Kitchen, as she called him.”
“Most people call him the Devil,” Matt shrugged, as he started walking again.
“That’s not what my mom thought. She thought he was a hero like Iron Man, Captain America, or any of those guys.”
“What do you think?”
“It seems like he does a lot of good things and deals with bad people, but I do question the fact that folks claim that he doesn’t kill anyone. Beating the crap out of someone and throwing them down a flight of stairs can kill people.”
“I read an article once that says he checks up on them, if they’re taken to the hospital, just to make sure they’re okay,” Matt replied, as they turned down the block that her apartment was on.
“Oh yeah, I can see how that works now. He calls the hospital to ask, and the employees are instructed to tell him that the bad guy is fine. He’s been released, given up his life of crime, and moved to Poughkeepsie to raise kittens. Never mind that he was tossed out of a four-story window after having his butt kicked, and actually died of head injuries at the scene.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” Matt chuckled. “I’m pretty sure that’s never happened. At least I hope not! So, what would you do if Daredevil showed up here right now?”
“I’d tell him to get lost. I never gave much thought to my Mom’s prediction until this week. I mean, there really seems to be only one way to meet Daredevil, and I’m not much interested in getting mugged, or worse, tonight.” She stopped in front of her building and patted his arm gently, so he knew to stop as well. “Lucky for me, I met you instead and have managed to make it home without needing to be rescued.”
“Oh, so this is it, huh?”
“Yep. I guess it is. Thanks for the company and for breakfast, Matt.”
“You’re welcome.” They stood together silently, neither of them in a hurry to leave. Finally, Matt spoke. “Abby? Any chance you’d like to have dinner at my place tomorrow? It won’t just be me. Foggy and his girlfriend Marci will be there, as well as a few other friends of mine.”
“Oh, I’d hate to be an imposition,” she replied. “We just met, and you weren’t really planning for me.”
“Trust me, there will be plenty of food. Marci put herself in charge of the menu, and last time she did that, we had food for days. It’ll be a lot of fun, and your mom would probably be happy that you’re out in the city, meeting new people. Besides, I am very interested in her Famous Chocolate Reindeer Cake, if you were serious about that.”
“Oh, I was. Best cake in town. People would be sure to stop by on Christmas, just to get a slice. I’ll be honest though. This is the first year I made it without her help. It looks good, but I have no idea how it will taste.”
“Then it’s settled. You need taste testers, and I will have a room full of them. Give me your number, and I’ll text you the address and details.”
“Well, okay,” she finally agreed. “I guess it would be sad not to share that giant cake with other people.” She typed her contact information into his phone, before they once again found themselves standing in awkward silence.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Merry Christmas, Abby.”
“Merry Christmas, Matt.” She grinned like an idiot all the way up the three flights of stairs that led to her apartment. Once the door was safely locked behind her, she made her way to the kitchen and sat her purse down on the counter. Glancing at the decedent chocolate cake sitting there, she hoped it tasted as good as it looked for tomorrow.
She stopped on her way to the bedroom and found herself staring at a framed photo on the shelf. “Well, Mom, looks like you got half of your prediction right. I didn’t meet Daredevil tonight, but Matt seems like a really sweet guy and I think you’d really like him. I miss you so much, but thanks to your insistence that I go to Mass, it looks like I won’t have to spend Christmas alone. Even when you aren’t around, you’re still looking out for me. Merry Christmas, Mom. I love you.”
One building over, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen stood among the rooftop shadows, keeping watch until the lights went off in the third-floor apartment. Satisfied that all was well, he turned to head home, enjoying the peaceful silence that had fallen over the usually bustling city below.