The Christmas Light (15 page)

“You got one of our names right,” Andrew says, looking up at her.

“And it only took three weeks and one million gray hairs.” She watches as they dismantle the cookie arrangement and sighs. “I’d love to say that I’m going to miss them,” she says to Gloria. “But if I did, that would make me—”

“A liar,” Gloria says.

“Well, I was going to say ‘sentimental’ but ‘liar’ works, too.”

Gloria laughs, pouring herself and Miriam a cup of spiced cider. “To a wonderful Nativity,” she says, handing a cup to Miriam. “It was touching and beautiful and brought Christmas to life.”

“Gloria, it was, in your words, a hot mess! Whatever will the church do to us?”

“Ask us to head it up again next year!” Gloria says.

They both cackle with laughter and Miriam looks into her cup, groaning. “Is this the strongest drink that you have? At the very least, don’t you have any eggnog?”

“There are children,” Gloria says, opening her arms.

She rolls her eyes. “Oh! I’m so sick of children.”

Gloria throws her head back, laughing.

When Avery arrives, Sofia grabs her hand and runs to the kitchen. They slip two pieces of chocolate chess pie onto plates before scurrying to a corner of the kitchen, where they sit together on the floor. “I am feeling just like the innkeeper,” Gloria says, watching them. “There’s plenty,” she says to Jen. “Fill up a plate and find a seat or a place on the floor!”

Louis Armstrong’s “’Zat You, Santa Claus” fills the home and the house smells like burning wood, cider, coffee, cookies, and ham. “Any word from Lily yet?” Jen asks, reaching for a plate.

Gloria reaches for her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “Nothing yet but I’ve got my phone on vibrate in case I don’t hear it.”

Miriam raises her brows. “And you’re suggesting you can feel it through all that padding?”

Gloria looks at Jen. “Not even Christmas makes her nice.”

Jen takes her plate of food and searches the living room, before heading to the den. The room is dark but he’s here, looking out the window. “Hi,” Jen says. Ryan turns, smiling. “Is it snowing?”

“No. There’s a star or a planet. It’s huge.”

She steps next to him and looks up. “Our very own Bethlehem star.” She looks into her cup. “That’s what Avery called it when we were driving over here.”

“She’s a pretty awesome little girl.”

“She is.” She looks into the sky with him. “She’s so much like Michael!” He nods, holding his cup. “He died three and a half years ago.”

He turns to look at her. “Your husband…”

“In June. When we’d gotten up that morning, I reminded him of the hallway bathroom toilet. It had been running for several days and he kept telling me he’d fix it. That morning, he said he’d pick up a pizza for all of us after work. It was Friday and our pizza night. Avery loved it. She still does. He said he’d fix the toilet after we ate our pizza. He collapsed at work, and a few hours later, he died in the hospital. A faulty heart that he didn’t know about. I never heard the toilet running after that. The noise was still there but I didn’t hear it anymore.”

Ryan leans against the window, facing her. “I thought your husband … I mean, Avery talked about him like…”

She smiles. “Avery’s had a rough time. Michael’s death really didn’t sink in until a year or so ago. For some reason, everything just caught up with her and she couldn’t wrap her head around it. She was so confused. So sad.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

Light from the moon and the stars fall on her face. “Yes. She’s heard from her very own angel.” He is confused and she smiles. “It’s a long story but somewhere out there, there’s an angel who’s probably sitting by a fire drinking eggnog with a house full of family and friends, with no idea of what a simple letter meant to a little girl at Christmas. She never got to say good-bye to Michael. The last she heard from him was that we were going to have pizza and he was going to play Candyland with her. Now she has some sort of closure.”

He turns, leaning against the window. “That day when we were working on the set and I said that I thought it would be easier if Julie were no longer here … I didn’t mean that. I would never mean that.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know how that would devastate Sofia.” He watches her. “Or how it has devastated Avery. I can’t imagine the last three and a half years for either of you.”

She shakes her head. “It’s been worse than I could have imagined—the loneliness I feel without him. You know, picking up the phone to tell him something or turning to see his reaction after Avery does something funny but he isn’t here. We always talked in bed before Avery got up but there’s no one to talk to anymore. His voice, his laugh, his hugs are no longer here. Part of my heart and my body are missing and I can’t get it back.”

“I’m sorry he’s gone.”

She nods. “But in a lot of ways it’s been better than I could have imagined. So many people helped us at just the right time. Things like mowing our yard and painting the outside of our house or Marshall showing me how Michael did all of our bills online. In the weeks following Michael’s death, during that time when people would still drop by or call, someone fixed the toilet. I don’t even know who did it. But one day I woke up and realized it was quiet, and in a strange way I missed the sound because it was the last thing that Michael was going to do.” She shakes her head. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. I don’t know who first said that, but they were wrong. It can’t heal all wounds but people sure help ease the pain.”

He’s looking out the window, thinking. “What was Michael like?”

“He was funny. He liked to tease me and Avery. He could really get her giggling—much better than I can. He loved sports, especially football. He always watched it but actually played basketball.” She smiles, remembering. “He played on a rec league and was a crazy man out on the court. He liked to fly-fish with his dad, he loved food, especially good pizza, and he liked to mow the lawn. He actually looked forward to it in the summer.” She looks into her cup. “He was a good man although not without faults; he had plenty of them that he spoke plainly about but he was a great man who left this world too soon.” Her eyes are wet and she and Ryan stand in the quiet. They hear Avery and Sofia laughing in the living room and smile, listening to them. “Avery’s going to miss seeing Sofia.”

“Even if she sees her every day at school?”

Jen glances up at him. “I thought you settled on the job with the company in Riverside.”

He shakes his head. “We couldn’t come to an agreement on benefits and Sofia really loves it here. We found a house two blocks from here on the same day that Hazelton offered me more money. It just made sense.”

She smiles, listening to Avery’s and Sofia’s voices rise and fall. “Would you and Sofia be open to having Christmas dinner with Avery and me tomorrow?”

He nods. “That’d be great.”

Jen is about to say more when one of the triplets yells from the living room, “Another baby is here!” She and Ryan move to the doorway and see Gloria and the triplets, standing in the middle of the room, looking at her phone. “Robert Layton has just texted me about Lily. He’s her father, you know?”

“Everyone knows,” Miriam hisses, waving her hand in the air for her to get on with it. “What did she have?”

“Jonathan Robert is the newest citizen of Grandon!” Cheers erupt from the party and Gloria lifts her cup. “To Lily and Stephen’s new life and to the wonderful young woman who gave it to them and a very merry Christmas to all!”

Ryan and Jen and everyone in the living room lift their cups and shout, “
Merry Christmas!
”

SEVENTEEN

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.

—S
AINT
F
RANCIS
OF
A
SSISI

Jen and Avery sit on the living room floor, playing with Avery’s new tea set, as Perry Como sings in the background. Avery slept in Jen’s room last night, where they watched
A Charlie Brown Christmas
before talking about Michael’s Christmas in heaven.

“What will he eat?” Avery had asked.

“The best food ever!” Jen said, pulling the blankets up to Avery’s neck and lying on her side so they could talk.

“Chocolate pie?”

Jen smiled. “With no calories! Peanut butter fudge, sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles, and stuff we’ve never even heard of before.”

“Like what?” Her eyes were sleepy.

“I don’t know, because we’ve never heard of it but, boy, is it awesome! So yummy!”

“With marshmallows and chocolate?”

Jen nodded, her eyes were bright. “Biggest, fluffiest, tastiest marshmallows ever!”

“I want some.”

Jen laughed. “Me, too! But we’ll have to wait and just let Dad have them for now.”

Avery turned her face upward and shouted, “Merry Christmas, Dad!” Jen smiled and Avery looked at her. “Sad or happy tears, Mom?”

“Happy,” she said, kissing Avery’s face.

The light has returned to Avery’s eyes, and although Jen knows there will be troubled days ahead, filled with homework woes, jealousies, hurt feelings, mean girls, and boyfriend angst, she is grateful. There is enough light to walk out with.

She smells the ham and jumps up to look inside the crockpot. “Hope this tastes as good as it looks. First time for everything,” she says, closing the lid. “Would you like to mash the potatoes when it’s time?”

Avery’s head pops up next to the coffee table. “Do I have to?”

“No,” Jen says, laughing. “I’m kidding.” She spots the angel’s letter to Avery on the countertop and picks it up, reading over the words again before propping it against the wall, behind a picture of her, Avery, and Michael.

“When are we eating, Mom? I’m getting hungry!”

“Very soon! You’ll have enough time to get out of your jammies and put on some nice clothes.”

“Nice clothes?”

The doorbell rings and Jen laughs, walking toward the door. “No! Like I could ever get you out of jammies today!”

Avery bolts for the door, opening it with a flourish. She reaches for Sofia’s arms, which are full of her own toys, and pulls her inside. “Look what I got!”

“Are we too early?” Ryan asks, holding two wrapped gifts.

“No. Come in,” Jen says.

He follows her inside and they watch the girls, reveling in their new toys. He holds the presents out. “For you and Avery.”

She takes them and sets them on the coffee table. “Thank you.”

Her eyes look blue today and her hair hasn’t been brushed but rather pulled back into a quick ponytail. She is close and he breathes in her perfume. She is lovely and perfect.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asks, leading him to the kitchen.

“Not yet. I had about four cups of coffee and eggnog at Aunt Gloria’s for breakfast.” He sits at the table and his eyes land on the rainbow-colored, woolen scarf around her neck, straining to see something on the end of it.

She catches him staring. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. It looked like there was something on the end of your scarf.”

She takes the chair across from him and holds the end of the scarf out “This?” He looks at the monogram:
RM
.

“That looks like … Where?” He can’t find the words.

“Three years ago, Avery and I were in a car accident.” He sits back in the chair, listening. “We were twenty miles from Grandon and it was pitch-black out on the highway. A stranger prayed for us that night and gave me this scarf and Avery an angel doll. That was you.”

He rubs his face with both palms, reaching for words. “Wow … I … I don’t… That was you? How did you know it was me?”

“It came together in pieces. First, I remembered your look when you saw the angel doll that Avery gave Sofia.” She picks up the end of the scarf. “I thought this belonged to a man with the fire and rescue department, who was first on the scene of the accident. His name even matched these initials. But he was adamant it wasn’t him. Then, I remembered seeing this exact scarf on Sofia when you walked through the door at Gloria’s, the night I was there doing the sewing. I didn’t think anything about it then. I just couldn’t imagine how the ‘RM’ on this scarf could be you, but last night when you were closing the car door, it sounded like you said, ‘Please get her to the hospital on time.’ I realized later that you weren’t talking to her dad—because of course he’d do everything possible to get her there on time—but that it was a quick prayer. It was so quick I could have missed it. It all came together then. After the Nativity, I was helping Avery with her coat and the scarf and I held on to it to make sure the initials really said ‘RM.’”

He sits back in the chair, looking at her and then at the girls in the living room. “I don’t even know what to…” He shakes his head and exhales. “I had remodeled Gloria and Marshall’s upstairs bathroom and was leaving Grandon that night, heading home, when I stopped and got Sofia that angel doll on Main Street. I knew she’d be asleep when I got home, but I was going to give it to her when she woke up the next day. That was the night that Julie left. I never thought another thing about the doll. All these years and I never remembered giving it away. And I never thought another thing about the scarf. Julie’s parents gave it to me and I never liked it. They gave a matching scarf to Julie. Sofia loves to wear it.” He looks at her and shakes his head again. “This is … I don’t know how to wrap my mind around it.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to.” She takes a breath, looking at him. “For the last couple of years I’ve been searching for answers about Michael’s death. What signs did we miss about his heart? Did he ignore any symptoms that I didn’t know about? Our therapist told me I’ll probably never have those answers. For the longest time, I even blamed the doctors who tried to save Michael’s life. I’d walk through my days so angry at them, even though I knew deep inside that they did everything they could. I wondered how many of them went home that day and suffered because they couldn’t save Michael? In the last few weeks I’ve thanked everyone who helped Michael that day. I know they did everything they could. And when I started doing that I realized that I wanted to thank everyone who helped Avery and me at the accident scene. I’ve been looking for you for weeks. And here you are.” He shakes his head, smiling. “Thank you. For your simple kindness to us that night.”