Christmas at the Hummingbird House (4 page)

“She usually takes care of them while they’re out of school,” Purline explained, “but my sister’s having gallbladder surgery so she had to go out and stay with her, didn’t she?  It being Christmas and all.  Speaking of Christmas, when are you all going to put up your tree?”

“Trees,” corrected Paul.  “The Hummingbird House will have multiple trees on display. Each room will be a different vignette, which is another reason we simply can’t have children …”

“Well, I’d get to it if I was you,” she said.  “Fifteen days till Christmas and all.  I know a place you can cut your own for twenty dollars, any size. Just let me know.”  She grasped the handle of the vacuum cleaner and started to turn back the way she had come, then caught sight of the check that was still in Derrick’s hand.  She peered closer.  “Lord have mercy,” she said, “just look at all those commas.  You folks really
don’t
know when to count your blessings, do you?  I’ll be back after lunch,” she added, straightening up, “and I’m cleaning that office whether you like it or not.”

The two men stood in the corridor for a moment after she was gone, Derrick gazing down rather guiltily at the check in his hand, and Paul staring at Derrick.  Paul said, “Did you hear what she said?”

Derrick nodded.  “She’s right.  We really do need to stop and count our blessings.”

“No,” Paul said impatiently. “Not that.  Christmas is only fifteen days away!”

Derrick lifted his eyes slowly to Paul’s as understanding dawned.  “Oh good heavens,” he said.  “We haven’t put up a single vignette.”

“And if Harmony’s not going to be here to hang the garland and arrange the flowers …”

“Not to mention the tablescapes …”

“Or the outdoor lighting …”

“Or the Christmas trees!” Derrick took a single deep sobering breath.  “We have got to get busy,” he said.

“We have to get help,” clarified Paul.

Derrick gave a decisive nod.  “We have to talk to the girls,” he said.

THREE

The Sunflower Room

“
M
iracles,” intoned Geoffery Allen Windsor, “are usually identified as supernatural events, divine intervention on the behalf of human beings in crisis. And as you’ve seen from some of the examples in this book, this is very often the case.  But another way to define a miracle is when you find exactly what you need when you need it.  If you look at it like that, I think you’ll start to see miracles all around you, every single day.”

  He took off his glasses, looking over the lectern at the small clutch of people gathered in the back room of the bookstore.  He was an aging, slightly stooped-shouldered man with thinning hair who had said those same words a thousand times, taken off his glasses just like that a thousand times, and smiled that same smile a thousand times before.  “Thank you for coming. Each and every one of you is certainly a miracle in my life.  I’ll be happy to sign copies or answer any questions you have.”

A handful of people came up to ask him to sign copies—most of them purchased from a used bookstore, he couldn’t help but notice—or to tell him their own amazing story of the sister whose ten-pound tumor disappeared or the dog who came back home after five years.  He listened with a polite smile and glazed-over eyes, and signed his name with a simple “Happy holidays” inscription.  “I love the story of the angel at the Twin Towers,” one plump, middle-aged woman confided.  There was always at least one. “Do you think it really happened?”  He told her, as he always did, that he only collected the stories, he hadn’t witnessed them, but that he believed all things were possible with faith. 

In his line of work, it was important to be able to tell a good lie.

Eventually the room cleared and he walked out with Bobbie, who was waiting at the back of the room dying for a smoke.  He knew he should stop to thank the store manager, but she was busy at one of the registers, ringing up wrapping paper and stereo headphones and DVDs of the latest zombie apocalypse movie.  Besides, thank her for what?  She hadn’t sold a single copy of his book, although why that should surprise him he didn’t know.  The last things bookstores were interested in selling these days were books.

He pulled on his coat and gloves and he and Bobbie pushed out into the dull gray light of a crowded mall parking lot just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas.  Bobbie snatched a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her stylish black leather coat and lit up almost before the door closed behind them.

“You’re the last person in America who still smokes,” he observed.

She blew out a long satisfied stream of gray smoke. “At least I’ll be remembered for something.”

He shot her a dark look and she patted his arm in casual reassurance.  “Not that you’re not enough to be remembered for, darling.  After all, thirty-six weeks on the
Times
list is nothing to be sneezed at.”

“That was six years ago.”

“Well.”  She inhaled deeply and blew out smoke.  “There’s that.”

He nodded toward the coffee kiosk that was arranged beneath a cluster of naked Japanese maples strung with white lights just outside the entrance to J.C. Penny, and they turned their steps in that direction.  “So let’s have it,” he said.  “You didn’t come all the way out here just to listen to that speech again.”

Bobbie Banks had been Geoffery’s representative at the prestigious Leeman Literary Agency for over ten years.  In the beginning, she had been there to help kick off every book tour and personal appearance, and had made it a point to be in the audience when he appeared on Oprah or Regis and Kelly. And why shouldn’t she have been?  He was making her—not to mention the agency—a fortune.  These days he was lucky to get her on the phone once or twice a year, and he knew for a fact that the only reason she had been at the reading today was because she was in town for the same writer’s conference he was.  He had been invited to be on a panel about writing non-fiction; she was scouting for new clients.

They took two paper cups of coffee and sat on an iron bench beneath the display of white lights.  A gaggle of teenage girls in boots and colorful striped scarves walked past, giggling and texting and sharing Instagram photos on their phones.  Bobbie blew out a last stream of smoke and stubbed out the cigarette on the side of the bench.  “It’s not that I didn’t try, darling, you know that.  But the publisher has decided not to go with the second Miracle book.  You surely can’t be surprised.  They feel the material has run its course and the audience just isn’t what it used to be.  The entire book industry isn’t what it used to be, you know that.  Hell,
I
’
m
not what I used to be.”

Geoffery sipped his coffee and said nothing.  Bobbie lit another cigarette.

“What I need from you,” she said, blowing out smoke, “is something new, fresh, dynamic. Something I can get excited about. I mean, this stuff was hot back in oh-nine when the country was in a nosedive and everybody was running scared, but we’ve moved on since then.  Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded slowly, taking another sip of his coffee.  “It’s a lot easier to sell hope during a recession.”

“Precisely! But we’re all driving new cars now, everybody’s back to work, and nobody’s interested in that sentimental drivel these days.”  She cast a quick look at him.  “Sorry, darling, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.  You know what I mean.”

He gave a small grunt of mirthless laughter.  “Of course I do.  I’m the one who has to
read
that sentimental drivel to old ladies in the backs of bookstores and blog about that sentimental drivel three times a week and talk about that sentimental drivel ad nauseum every time somebody asks me out to dinner.  And I’ll tell you something else.”  He drank from his cup.  “There was no damn angel at the Twin Towers.”

She nodded her understanding and drew on the cigarette, giving his knee a single reassuring pat.  “As long as we’re on the same page.”

She smoked in silence for a moment, and he sipped his coffee.  “What you need is a good celebrity exposé, or a true crime.  They’re short-lived, but big bucks.  I could get you six figures today for a behind-the-scenes exclusive with a mass murderer.”

“I don’t know any mass murderers.”

“God knows there’re enough of them to choose from.”

“Still don’t know any of them.”

She glanced at him.  “Well, you didn’t know anyone who’d ever seen an angel until you started looking, did you?”

“Still don’t.”

“Just think about it.”

“I will.”  He took another sip of his coffee.  “God knows I’m not going to be able to live off what I’m making much longer.”

She snorted laughter, blowing smoke through her nose.  “Baby, I
already
can’t live off what you’re making.”

They shared a smile, and she stubbed out her cigarette.  “Well, I’ve got to get back.  I’m interviewing five more wannabes this afternoon, and I haven’t been able to make myself read even one of their proposals.  Talk about your miracles.  That’s what it would be if I can find a semi-literate sentence in that pile of dreck.  Walk me to the shuttle?”

“Sure.”  He stood.  “I guess I’ll head back to the hotel, too.  I think there’s an episode of
Castle
on television this afternoon that I haven’t seen, and happy hour starts in the Kingfisher room at 4:00.  They have free pigs-in-a-blanket.”

She looped her arm through his, and they walked back toward the parking lot, her high-heeled boots clicking on the sidewalk.  “What are your plans for the holidays?”

“Actually, I’m doing a reading at a B&B in Virginia.  Four days, five nights in the middle of the woods, stargazing by night, reading beside the fire during the day.  And I only have to work for one afternoon.”

She wrinkled her nose.  “Sounds ghastly.”

“It was that or an inside, below-decks, eight-by-ten cabin on a cruise to the Bahamas, seven days of making nice with eighteen hundred people, three readings and one night of leading the conga line.  It seemed to me there was less chance of listeria at the B&B, and besides, they’re offering a stipend.  It’s Paul Slater’s place,” he added.  “You remember him, from the
Washington
Post
?”

“Oh, so that’s what he’s doing now.  Come to think of it, I do seem to recall reading he’d bought a place in the country after he left the
Post
. Now, there’s a man who knows how to make money hand over fist.  Three best-sellers, three years in a row?  Please.  And I still have his coffee-table book.  Do me a favor, will you?”  She stopped and plucked a business card out of a side pocket in her purse.  “Give him my card.  Ask if he’s happy with his representation.”

Geoffery hesitated, then took the card with a resigned quirk of his lips and tucked it into his pocket.  “Right.”

They edged past a Christmas topiary display outside the Sears entrance, where animated elves tossed an endless supply of artificial snowflakes over a garden of lighted trees.  It seemed to be a popular place for mothers with children in strollers to stop and point and make baby talk.

Geoffery asked politely, “So what are you doing for the holidays?”

She lit another cigarette and waved away the smoke.  “Oh, please.  I lost my religion decades ago, and I’m a lot happier for it. I don’t even celebrate Chanukah any more.  Thought about the Hamptons, but they’re dead this time of year.  Probably I’ll just watch the parade from my window and catch up on some work. Ah, screw the parade.  It’s just a bunch of freaky little men in worn-out elf costumes dancing around, anyway.  I mean seriously, I ask you, aren’t we all tired of Christmas by December twenty-fifth anyway?”

“Bobbie, can I ask you something?”

He stopped and looked at her seriously. She started to take another drag on the cigarette, then changed her mind, waiting.

Geoffery said, “There’s never been a publisher in the history of the world who rejected a book because it was based on a tried and true formula.  Why did they really turn down the second book?”

Bobbie dropped the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her boot.  She returned a steady gaze to him. “It’s you, Geoffery,” she said.  “Your writing.  They thought it felt like you were phoning it in, rehashing old stuff.  What made the first book so powerful was the way you told it, the way you convinced us, the way you, I don’t know,
cared
.  Hell, you almost had me converting once or twice.”  She tried for a smile and failed.  “But when Liz died,” she went on, “I saw something go out of you.  I kept expecting it to come back, but it never did. So the truth is … maybe this isn’t your genre anymore.  Things change, you know?”

For a long moment, he didn’t reply.  And then he said, quietly, “Yeah.  I know.”

They walked back to the shuttle without speaking.

FOUR

Ladybugs and Angel Cakes

P
aul and Derrick’s friendship with Bridget, Cici and Lindsay dated back to the time they had all lived on Huntington Lane, a tony neighborhood in the suburbs of Baltimore. Between the five of them, they’d practically run the Homeowner’s Association, the Gardens and Beautification Committee, and the Thursday Night Supper Club.  They’d gone to the theater together, taken the train into Washington for shopping trips and gallery openings together, and every autumn they made a sojourn into the country to pick apples together.  At least the ladies picked apples; Paul and Derrick preferred to have their baskets filled by professionals and waiting for them at the gift shop at the end of the day.  They took turns trying to outdo each other by giving the best parties in town, and they
always
celebrated Christmas together.

Paul and Derrick had been at first appalled, then secretly envious, when the three ladies decided to abandon suburbia, consolidate their resources, and buy an old mansion in the Shenandoah Valley together. They’d called the place Ladybug Farm, and spent the next year refurbishing the interior, restoring gardens and shoring up outbuildings.  By the time Paul and Derrick made their own move to the country several years later, the ladies had even revitalized the vineyard and had begun operating a winery.  Cici’s daughter Lori had married Bridget’s son Kevin, and the two of them had moved into the big old house. Lindsay had adopted a teenage boy, Noah, who was now a Marine stationed in Washington, DC, and had married Dominic Duponcier, the vineyard manager.  What had begun as a simple house restoration had turned into a big, colorful, noisy, mismatched family.

Ladybug Farm was twenty minutes down the highway from the Hummingbird House, and Paul and Derrick visited often—most often, as they both were painfully aware, when they needed help of some sort.  Their friends were generous with their advice and their time, not to mention their homemade cookies and pies, and the two men tried very hard not to take advantage of them.  But somehow they always suspected they were.  This time, at least, they had each had the presence of mind to grab a poinsettia from one of the boxes on the back porch, hoping that might make this seem like more of a social call than yet another imposition upon the ladies’ collective good nature.

The Ladybug Farm sign at the end of the drive was already decorated with red bows and bright holly bouquets, and someone had festooned the winery sign with cedar swags and more red bows. The drive that led to the winery was lined on either side by quaint split-rail fences, and these, too, were lushly adorned with the bounty of nature—cedar boughs and pine cones—accented by more red velvet bows.  Above the door of the winery was a huge grapevine wreath highlighted by a single giant red bow and lined with white lights. As Paul stopped the car in the circular drive in front of the house, they noted wreaths on every window, and swaths of bow-studded garland looping the railing of the wraparound porch.  More garland—as well as lights, no doubt—climbed each of the white columns, draping artfully over the arch of the front door.  The front door displayed one of the most elaborate holiday wreaths either of them had ever seen, complete with dried hydrangeas in breathtaking hues of lavender and pink, silver ribbon, miniature birds, and tastefully arranged glass spheres in shades of pink and purple.

Paul turned off the engine and looked uncomfortably at Derrick.  “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I feel a bit like a beggar at the feast.”

“And we haven’t even gone inside,” agreed Derrick glumly.

The moment they started to open their doors a black and white terror in the form of a border collie charged around the corner of the house, teeth bared, voice raging, and flung himself at their front right tire.  They closed the doors and waited, as anyone who had ever visited Ladybug Farm was trained to do, for someone to come along to control the beast.  That someone was Lori, who came from the back in jeans, scuffed green rain boots, and a quilted red vest over a flannel shirt.  Her copper curls escaped a knit cap with yellow yarn braids, and she wore matching yellow knit gloves.  Seeing her, Paul could not prevent a great sigh.

“Once she was a fashion diva,” he said.

“At least the gloves match the hat,” Derrick offered, although he, too, looked pained.

Lori, struggling with the contents of a gallon bucket, planted it by the corner of the porch and rushed forward, shouting, “Rebel, no!”

She grabbed the dog by the collar and dragged him away from the car, calling happily, “Hi, Uncle Derrick!  Uncle Paul!  What’d you bring me?”

They held up the poinsettias hopefully.  “Flowers?” Paul called back through his barely opened window.

She wrinkled her nose.  “A Victoria’s Secret gift card would be better.”

Paul said, “Love you, precious!”

She grinned. “Love you back!”  She hauled the dog away from the car and added, “Everybody’s in the kitchen.  Except Dominic, who’s in the winery, and Kev, who’s at school.”  Her husband, Kevin, taught business at the community college while working on his PhD from UVA.  In his spare time, he also helped run the winery.  She gave the dog a swat on the bottom that sent him racing off toward the meadows and said, “Got to feed the chickens. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas to you, sweetie!” They both called back, but waited until she was gone and the dog was well out of sight before they got out of the car. 

They walked around the wide porch to the kitchen door.  It was wrapped like a present in red and green calico and tied with an enormous red velvet bow—Lori’s idea, no doubt, who could always be counted on for a whimsical touch. A garland of cedar boughs outlined the door frame, decorated with tiny silver bows and sparkling red, lime green and silver Christmas balls.  Rustic milk cans filled with bright red berries and greenery decorated with more of the red, silver and lime green ornaments flanked the door, and beside the steps there was a stack of boxes wrapped in more colorful calico and tied with bright floppy bows, as though Santa had just dropped them off.  Lori, again.  The white wicker table where, during the warmer months, the ladies often had breakfast, was now decorated with a red and green plaid tablecloth lightly shot through with silver, and bright red cushions adorned the chairs.  There were playful felt Santa placemats and a runner of cedar boughs studded with more red, green and silver balls.  Two white pillar candles stood on that bed of greenery, flanking a centerpiece of—what else?—red poinsettias.

“A bit over the top, don’t you think?” Derrick murmured, and Paul shifted his gaze upward in silent agreement.

“It’s not as though
they
have every room booked with paying guests who are coming from all over the country expecting the quintessential holiday experience,” he said. “Although,” he admitted reluctantly as he gave the table decor a closer look, “that really is quite charming in its own Ladybug Farm way.”

Clutching their poinsettias before them like badges of honor, they approached the door where, from the kitchen beyond, they could hear the voices of women raised in a discussion which, while it might not be described as heated, was certainly not conversational.  Paul glanced at Derrick.  Derrick gave an uncertain shrug.  Paul knocked on the door and then pushed it open.

The big country kitchen was in a state of mild chaos, and not necessarily the cheerful, busy kind that is welcome during the holidays.  Cookbooks, recipe cards and manila folders filled with stained and dog-eared magazine clippings were scattered across the soapstone island that dominated the room.  Cici, a tall, athletic-looking woman with deeply freckled skin and spikes of honey-blonde hair spilling from a messy topknot, was on a ladder pulling things out of the top cabinets. Bridget, as neat as a pin in her platinum bob, gray slouch boots and a bright Christmas apron over her crisp white shirt and black jeans, looked very close to exasperation as she thumbed through the contents of the manila folders on the counter.  Ida Mae, their aged and intractable housekeeper, looked like a ferocious elf in clunky work boots, green-and-white knee socks, and a long red cardigan over a gray wool dress.  Her mouth was set grimly as she pulled open drawers, scrambled though them, and slammed them shut again.

Bridget exclaimed impatiently, “Honestly, Ida Mae, if I had seen it, don’t you think I’d tell you?  I really don’t know what you expect me to do!”

And Cici added, “What makes you think it would still be here after forty years, anyway? Somebody probably threw it away when they cleaned out the house to put it up for sale.”

“
I’m
the one that cleaned out the house,” Ida Mae replied testily, her iron gray curls bobbing with repressed frustration as she slammed shut another door.  “And I ain’t about to throw away something that valuable.  Do I look like a fool to you?”

Paul and Derrick exchanged another uncertain look, but it was too late to back out now. “Yoo-hoo!” Paul sang out.  “Company!”

Cici looked down from the ladder, her expression delighted and surprised.  “Boys! I didn’t know you were coming over!”

Bridget’s expression was intensely relieved as she opened her arms to embrace them.  “How wonderful to see you!”

Ida Mae just scowled at them.  But from her, it was a warm welcome.

There were quick hugs between Cici and Bridget and the two men, while Ida Mae demanded, “You all staying to eat?”

“No, ma’am,” Derrick assured her quickly, and thrust his ivory-colored poinsettia at her with a smile.  “We just stopped by to bring you this and wish you happy holidays.”

“A whole shipment of them arrived this morning,” Paul added, presenting his pale pink-colored plant to Bridget.  “Naturally we thought of you.”

“How sweet!” Bridget exclaimed.  “And what lovely colors!”

“Ivory and blush,” Derrick said.  “Our theme for the entrance and dining room.”

“Right pretty,” admitted Ida Mae gruffly, holding the plant out to examine it.  “Of course, I’m partial to red myself.”

She shuffled off to place the plant in the big bay window on the other side of the room, her steel-toed boots clacking on the brick floor. Bridget placed her plant in the center of the hickory table that sat beside the raised fireplace.  A fire crackled merrily in the grate beneath a colorful mantel display featuring a wooden sleigh carrying loads of Christmas presents and a string of painted alphabet blocks spelling out “Merry Christmas.”  The table was set, naturally, with red and green Fiesta ware and casual red plaid napkins.

“Do stay for lunch,” Bridget urged.  “I think we have some Brunswick stew in the freezer.”  She knew it was Paul’s favorite.

“Then you have to stay,” Cici said.  “Otherwise, all we’re having is crackers and tomato soup.  From a can.”  She made a face as she gestured around the kitchen.  “We’ve been a little distracted.”

Lindsay pushed through the swinging door then, the sleeves of her sweatshirt pushed up, smudges of dust on the knees of her jeans and across her forehead. There were a few stray cobwebs clinging to her auburn ponytail, which she plucked away in annoyance. “I give up,” she declared.  “I’ve opened every box in that attic and …”  She broke off with a smile as she noticed Paul and Derrick.  “Hi, guys!  What brings you over?”

“They’re staying for lunch,” Cici said.

Derrick protested, “No, really, we can’t.”

And Paul said, “What on earth are you looking for?”

“Ida Mae lost a recipe,” Bridget replied.

“She’s been driving us crazy about it for the last week,” added Cici.

Derrick looked surprised as he turned to Ida Mae.  “Ida Mae, I’ve never known you to even use a recipe.”

“Precisely,” declared Lindsay.

Ida Mae gave Lindsay a dark look.  “Shows what you know, Missy.  Everything starts with a recipe.”

“But I’d think you’d have them all memorized by now,” Paul said.

“She hasn’t made it in forty years,” confided Cici.

“That ain’t got nothing to do with it,” Ida Mae said harshly.  She took a stew pot out of the cabinet and clattered it down on the stove.  “Some recipes you can mess with, some you can’t.  This here’s the Christmas Angel Cake.  It’s only got seven ingredients, and if you don’t get ’em just right, the angel won’t come.  And I promised to take it to the church supper Christmas Eve, so all I can say is y’all better keep on huntin’.”

Bridget gave a small shrug of her shoulders and a roll of her eyes.

“Did you try an Internet search?” Paul suggested helpfully.

“First thing,” Lindsay assured him. 

“Dozens of hits,” Cici said. “None of them was the right one.”

“I keep tryin’ to tell you,” Ida Mae said from across the room, “there wasn’t no dad-blamed Internet when this here recipe was invented.”

Again Bridget rolled her eyes, and started gathering up the cookbooks and papers strewn across the island.

Ida Mae said, “I’m starting my cornbread.  If y’all ain’t stayin’, speak up before I crack the eggs.”

Paul demurred, “Well, if you insist …”

But Derrick interrupted firmly, albeit with genuine regret, “As much as we’d love to, we really must fly. ’Tis the season, and all that.  We really just wanted to drop off the poinsettias, and to, um …” He cast an urgent look at Paul for help.