Day by Day (20 page)

His eyes widened. “Is that what you thought?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “You don’t need to apologize. I didn’t give you much reason to think otherwise.” He paused and pointed toward the window. “Look. There they are.”

She watched with him as Ruth and Micah crossed the street. Hand in hand, the couple walked down the avenue together, just an ordinary couple who quickly blended into the shoppers milling along the avenue. “I wonder what they’re thinking,” he murmured.

“Or how they’re feeling,” she added. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your only child run away from home and spend years looking for her in vain, only to discover you’d become grandparents without even knowing it.”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“I’m glad we had more than one child. With Steve gone
now, having Rick is even more of a blessing…even if he isn’t married,” she teased, hoping to lighten the mood.

He chuckled. “I guess I deserved that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“I guess I was being a little…controlling,”

She grinned. “A lot controlling.”

“Maybe even a little paranoid.”

“That, too.”

“You could cut me a little slack here, any time you’re ready.”

She laughed out loud. “Don’t count on it. Not unless you take me to lunch.”

“Lunch? That’s all it’s going to take?”

“A very expensive lunch. That will be a good start,” she teased, but her heart told her that they had taken the first steps on the long journey back to the loving relationship they had always shared.

If that had been the only blessing this day, it would have been blessing enough, but she had the distinct impression that the meeting today held the promise of even greater blessings for them all.

T
wo heavy snowfalls in early December blanketed everyone’s dreams for ideal conditions for Christmas, at least for this year.

Owners of businesses along the avenue wailed about losing holiday sales. Working parents scrambled for day care when the schools closed down and used up all the snow days budgeted in the calendar before winter had even officially arrived. Other residents sat trapped in their homes, unable to prepare for the holidays. Swamped by heated complaints about inefficient snow removal, town officials offered proof of their efforts: the mountain of collected snow along the river quickly dubbed Mount Miserable by discontents.

Ten days before Christmas, nature relented, at least temporarily. Under sparkling sunshine and clear blue skies, the last of the snow finally melted before a cold snap returned, bringing frigid air back to town, but no forecast of more
snow. Shoppers once again hustled along the avenue and children were back in school, while parents tried to get ready for the fast-approaching holiday. Town officials quickly turned the town meeting for that month into an event to honor all the township employees who had worked so hard during the snow emergencies.

But not everyone looked forward to Christmas this year.

Exhausted by the extended hours she had been working at Sweet Stuff, Ginger lay awake at night and worried about how she and Tyler would mark their first Christmas with Vincent. After another troubled, sleepless night, she struggled out of bed that Monday morning, got Tyler off to work and Vincent off to school. She sat at her kitchen table, stirred her coffee and tried to give herself a little mental pep talk, but failed.

True, there were a whole host of reasons why she was feeling so anxious and conflicted. Their daughter, Denise, had recently been reassigned to overseas flights in the Eastern Hemisphere. She would be spending Christmas in Japan. Mark was on tour as the opening, opening, opening act for some aging country music singer who had taken Ginger and Tyler’s son under his wing. With his dreams still alive, Mark would celebrate Christmas somewhere in the Bible Belt.

But maybe it was better that neither Denise nor Mark were coming home, or that keeping contact these days meant occasional messages on the answering machine as they played telephone tag. Lily, her wayward, lost child, had done exactly as she had promised and had virtually severed all contact with her son, save for sending a monthly check that Ginger and Tyler deposited in a special
account for him. Apparently, the notes Ginger had written to Mark and Denise had not softened their anger and disappointment with their sister, and they would have no doubt spent much of the holiday denouncing Lily, hardly the mood Ginger wanted to pervade her home over the holidays.

That left Ginger, Tyler and Vincent to fend for themselves here in Welleswood for Christmas—hopefully, a peaceful Christmas.

With few physical and emotional resources left, she felt so overwhelmed, she had to grab hold of herself before she slid from worry into depression. She took a good, long sip of coffee, made two telephone calls before work and set up a meeting for seven that night at her house. She called Tyler on his cell phone, and he agreed to take Vincent to his art lessons at six-thirty and out afterward for a treat, so she crossed that obstacle off her mental list.

Feeling rather satisfied with herself, she showered, dressed and headed out the door to get to work by nine o’clock. She did not quite have a bounce to her walk, but her steps were lighter, her heart was hopeful, and she mustered up all the Christmas spirit she could manage to make it through the day.

At two-thirty that afternoon, the amount of Christmas spirit Ginger had left would not have filled half a thimble. She had used up all her good cheer satisfying rude, demanding and snippy customers who either had crawled out from their homes on Mount Miserable or had no inkling of the real meaning of Christmas.

She checked the clock. Two-thirty. Finally, it was
almost time to leave and pick up Vincent from school. Kristen Smith, one of the college students Charlene had hired as extra holiday help, was waiting on the last customer who had a long shopping list to fill while Charlene was busy loading up gift baskets for late-after-noon deliveries.

Grateful for the first lull in business that day, Ginger started to untie her soiled apron. When the door opened and she recognized Miss Grumley, one of the seniors from the Towers, she quickly retied her apron. Not this customer. Not now. Miss Grumley was sweet enough, but she rarely bought anything and usually just stopped in for a little conversation that might last for the better part of an hour, and Ginger reminded herself that Charlene had opened her shop precisely for women like Miss Grumley.

Nearly crippled with arthritis, the elderly woman shuffled slowly toward the display of vintage candy. Ginger got to the display first and studied the octogenarian who was slowly walking toward her. The frail woman wore a long, matted raccoon coat that seemed too heavy for her and a pair of cracked leather slippers, molded to her misshapen feet, from which a big toe poked through. A purple plumed hat that had seen better days was perched on her head.

Quite a fall from glory, as infamous as it must have been, assuming the rumors about Miss Grumley were true. For the past score and a half years, she had lived at the Towers, but local gossip held that she had been known at one time as Bubbles. According to what Ginger had been told shortly after moving to Welleswood, as the woman’s stage name implied, she had been a striptease artist at The Palace in Philadelphia, although the term for what she did
on stage today might be exotic dancer. No one dared to ask Miss Grumley if the rumors were true, especially since the rumors also claimed she had been saved and born again when a local minister appeared in the audience one night during one of her performances.

No one could identify the minister or explain why he had been at The Palace in the first place, of course. But not a single soul in Welleswood these days doubted Miss Grumley’s faith or her dedication to living a faith-filled life every day by visiting the sick and spending long hours at their bedsides when they had no one else to keep them company during their final hours.

“I’m sorry. These old legs don’t move so good anymore,” she apologized when she finally got to the display. When she caught her breath, she pointed to the carton holding the Mary Jane sweets. “It just wouldn’t seem like Christmas morning without finding one of those tucked under my pillow.”

Ginger smiled, took a handful of the individually wrapped candies, slipped them into the woman’s hand and wrapped her gnarled fingers around them. “We all wish you a blessed Christmas,” she whispered.

“Dear, dear. Just one will do. There’s only one Christmas morning,” she insisted. One by one, she managed to put all of the candy back into the display except for the one she slid into her coat pocket. “There. Now you’ll be sure to have enough for everyone else.”

Rather than start a discussion about whether or not parents put something under their children’s pillows on Christmas Eve, Ginger simply smiled. “Is there anything else I can get for you? A piece of chocolate, perhaps?”

Miss Grumley leaned so close that Ginger could smell the mustiness of her coat. “I’m not too fond of chocolate, but don’t tell Charlene. I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings,” she whispered.

Ginger motioned across her lips with her index finger, silently zipping her lips closed.

“Good girl. We’ll make this our little secret.” A twinkle suddenly appeared in pale eyes clouded with age. “On second thought, maybe I’ll take a piece of fudge. I’m going to spend some time sitting with Mrs. Thompson later today. She loves fudge.”

“The fudge is right over there,” Ginger said and pointed to the case in the front of the store. “Why don’t you pick out what you want for Mrs. Thompson?”

“You go ahead. I’ll meet you there. Just wrap up a piece of vanilla fudge. No nuts. She can’t chew so good anymore, but she’s too sick to care much about that, I suppose.”

Ginger went behind the case and put on a pair of disposable plastic gloves. After cutting a piece of fudge hefty enough for the two women to share, she wrapped it in waxed paper, put it into a tiny pink bag, and handed it to Miss Grumley. “I hope the fudge makes her feel better. Wish her a blessed Christmas, too.”

“I will, but if the doctors are right, she’ll have the best Christmas of all of us.”

Ginger cocked her head. “Really?”

Miss Grumley leaned close again. “She’ll be Home by then.” Her gaze grew wistful. “Imagine the glory of being Home for Christmas. The angels singing songs of praise. The heavens themselves trembling with the joy of another soul safely returned Home. Oh, to be in the very presence
of God and surrounded by nothing but the very essence of His never-ending love…”

She sighed and shook her head. “If we try real hard, we can almost have that kind of Christmas, too, but most folks these days get so caught up with buying gifts and going to parties, they forget what Christmas was meant to be. A time for joy. A time for praise. A time for us to be quiet ourselves, so we can feel His love.” Smiling, she patted Ginger’s hand. “Thank you for your kindness. Make sure you have a quiet Christmas,” she whispered before she turned around and shuffled out of the shop, leaving Ginger alone with a message that snuggled deep within her heart.

With little time to ponder the message, Ginger tore off her apron, got rid of her plastic gloves and grabbed two large shopping bags with the supplies she needed to keep her promise to Charlene. “I’ll see you Monday, Kristen,” she cried and hurried out of the shop to get Vincent from school.

When the doorbell rang just after seven o’clock that night, Ginger answered the door. Both Barbara and Judy were waiting outside together, and she ushered them in from the cold. After hugs, Ginger stored their coats in the closet and led them into the kitchen where she had set out a box and two large bowls in the center of the kitchen table. The box held ten-dozen candy canes. One bowl held precut pieces of silver ribbon; the other held tiny jingle bells tinted red, blue, green, gold or silver.

They each sat down on different sides of the table and Ginger grinned. “I’m really glad you could come, but I hope you don’t mind working, too. I promised Charlene I’d try to get these done by Monday.”

“Show us what to do,” Judy prompted.

Ginger took a candy cane and held it upside down so it looked like the letter
J.
“It’s easy. Watch.” She wove a piece of ribbon through the jingle bell, tied it at the top of the candy cane, and held it out for Barbara and Judy to see.

“Charlene is donating the supplies to the church for the children at the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve so they can each jingle a
J
when they sing Happy Birthday to the baby Jesus. Unfortunately, there isn’t any group at church with enough time to get them made before the pageant. Everyone’s behind schedule, thanks to the early winter storms.”

Barbara nodded, but looked skeptical. “How many are we making tonight?”

Ginger giggled. “There are ten dozen in the box. I have two more boxes, but we don’t have to finish them all tonight.”

“That’s 360!”

“But I already made one, so we need 359 more. What we don’t finish tonight, I can get Tyler and Vincent to help me do over the weekend.”

“That’s 358,” Judy announced and put her first completed one on the table in front of her.

Barbara laughed and started making one of her own. “This looks like a good job for the teenagers in the youth group, but I’m not going to complain. At least we’re not sitting here gorging ourselves on chocolate or caramel apples. I’ve eaten my way through too much of December already.”

Judy added another one to her finished pile. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing with you, Barbara, but between the
clients at the salon and the seniors at the Towers, I’ve already consumed most of next year’s allotment for sweets.”

Ginger shook the candy cane she had just finished decorating to make sure the bell jingled. “No problem. I’ll save what’s leftover from the dessert I made for tonight for the weekend. Tyler and Vincent won’t have any trouble polishing off your shares.”

Barbara’s hands stilled. She sniffed the air, laced with cinnamon, and looked around. “That’s not the scent of a candle burning? Oh no, is that what I think it is over there on the counter?”

“I took it out of the oven right before you got here,” Ginger admitted. “It needs to cool down a bit more.”

Judy looked over at the counter and groaned. “I give up. I’ll never be able to sit here and watch you pull that cinnamon cake apart and eat it all by yourself.”

“Me, either,” Barbara admitted. “We really do have to think about getting together more often, but definitely somewhere safer, like the new ladies’ gym that just opened on the avenue.”

Judy tied another jingle bell into place. “What gym? Not the one that just opened up next to McAllister’s Bakery, I hope. Talk about silly. We’d end up at McAllister’s either before or after we got together.” She put the candy cane down in her finished pile. “We’d be better off meeting at the library.”

Ginger shook another candy cane and made it jingle. “That’s a great idea,” she teased. “We couldn’t eat in the library, but we couldn’t talk there, either.”

“Which brings us back to why we’re getting together
tonight,” Barbara reminded her. “Didn’t you say you needed to talk about something tonight that was troubling you?”

Ginger put both hands on the table and explained how she and Tyler would be alone with Vincent for the upcoming holiday. “When it was just Tyler and me, we’d either host a big open house or spend the afternoon going from one friend’s house to the next. With Vincent here this year…I’m not sure what we should do, but filling the house with people who are mostly strangers to him or dragging him around with us just doesn’t seem right. I guess I needed to know I wasn’t the only one anxious about how to celebrate the first Christmas with our grandson.”

“You’re not alone,” Judy insisted and put her unfinished candy cane down on the table. “I’m not sure what Brian and I are going to do, exactly, but I think we’re just going to keep it simple.” She paused and toyed with a piece of ribbon. “I wish I could say I wasn’t worried that Candy might show up on Christmas Eve or Christmas itself and ruin everything, but I am,” she murmured.