The Christmas Sisters (15 page)

“When did Sam become an old family friend?”

“All right then, a new family friend.” Bert placed a kiss on her cheek and gave her an affectionate shake. “I worry about this choice of yours, Nicolette. If you sell your home, where will your heart come when it needs a rest?”

Nic's heart did need a rest. Aunt Bert was surely right about that. As a girl misguided, a woman trying to head both a business and a single parent family, and the mother of a child who might always need an advocate, Nic's heart did need a home.

“But a home is not a house, Aunt Bert. A home is not a place.”

“No, a home is where the people still love you no matter how unlovable you’re acting.”

Her throat closed with emotion, Nic could only nod.

“Do you really think you will find those things for Willa at that fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year school?”

Sam's truck pulled into the lot and stopped. For an instant he looked up and caught
Nics
eye. He smiled.

Nic’s heart fluttered.

“Do you think you can find those things for yourself with Willa gone off somewhere else?”

Nic swallowed hard.

Willa bounced on the seat next to Sam. He leaned over to help her out of her safety belt then opened the door for her with the tenderness and care of someone releasing a mended bird back into the wild.

The December air stung deep into Nic's lungs as she held her breath. “Aren't you going to tell me I can't find those things without a husband, Aunt Bert?
Without a father for Willa?”

“Me? Meddle like that?” Bert snorted. She settled into the lawn chair slowly, carefully,
then
looked up with a squint. “Can't imagine where you'd get an idea I'd ever do a thing like that.”

Nic laughed softly. “Yeah, go figure.”

“Get
yourself
on over here, Reverend,” Bert called out, motioned to Sam to hurry things along. “Nic can't manage things all on her own, you know.”

Before she could chide her aunt, Sam was at her side and Willa had her by the hand. She was outflanked and outnumbered and out and out unsure of what she should do next.

Ten

They had reached the eleventh day of Christmas in the

old
carol when the wheels of Sam's truck bumped over the dirt road and into the gravel drive of ‘the Old Dorsey Homestead” as Collier Jack Dorsey liked to call it.

“Eleven la-la, hmm-hmm,” Willa bellowed. She did not let the fact that they'd all forgotten what gifts arrived on what days after five golden rings get in the way of her carrying on with the song.

The Old Dorsey Homestead
.
Driving up to it, even after the short trip from the Christmas tree lot, gave Nic a feeling no other place on earth could rival. If she had never come back for this last visit, if she'd never agreed to spend one last Christmas here, if she hadn't listened to Aunt Bert, maybe she could have sold the house without so much as a backward glance. But she had done all that and more, and now she knew she could not just let this house go without the input of her sisters. That was a conversation long overdue and it could not wait another minute.

Their feet had not hit the ground before Nic started barking out orders. “Sam, will you go out and check around back in the garden shed for a wash-tub or the like to set that tree in once we get it inside? We need something big enough to hold the root ball but not so big that the tree tips over.”

“Can do.”
He gave a little salute.

“And, Willa, honey, you go with him and see if, between the two of you, you can find the dark green, long-necked watering can.” Nic added descriptive hand motions to her request, hoping that would help her child focus on the simple but important task.

“Dark-necked, long green water can.” Though she didn't get the words verbatim, Willa's hand copied her mother's gestures to a tee.

“We'll need that inside, too, so we can reach under the branches to water the tree without knocking decorations off.” Nic looked to Sam as a backup, to make sure he understood what she wanted.

“Not to worry, we won't let you down.”

Of the half dozen or so things she might have replied, all Nic could murmur was a hoarse, “I know.”

Sam extended his hand in her direction.

She braced herself for his touch on her shoulder.

At the last instant he withdrew and tucked both hands in his jeans pockets. “And while we're unearthing the necessities from the darkest recesses of the garden shed, what will you be doing on the Christmas tree prep front?”

“Nothing.”

“Aha!” Sam gave Willa a conspiratorial look. “She gives the orders, but she doesn't carry out the orders, just like a—”

“A benevolent despot?”

“I was going to say like a Dorsey woman but six of one, half a dozen of another.” He grinned.

“Go!” She feigned an authoritative scowl. “And take your time, please. I need to have a talk with my sisters.”

“Big confab on what to do in the house with a live tree?”
He hesitated, half turned in the direction of his task, half honed intently in on her.

She set her jaw and squared her shoulders.
“Big confab on what to do with the house, period.”

“Oh?” He cocked his head. The morning sun glinted off his thick, truck-ride tousled hair. It added to the feeling of mischief in his single syllable question.

“Don't look smug.” Nic lowered her chin and looked up at him slyly. “I haven't changed my mind about selling it. I just realized I never talked it over properly with
Petie
and Collier.”

“Then you're right, you should.” He nodded his head. “Personally I value the opportunity to talk things over with people I trust, to get feedback and an honest exchange. It often works wonders to help me see where they are coming from and for them to appreciate my point of view.”

“Point taken, Mr. Obvious.”
She held her hands out and stepped back.

He turned her way and smiled, only slightly. “Maybe this evening you and I can finally have that private talk in my office?”

“Maybe.”
She retreated backward another step. “But first, I really need to spend time with my sisters. I need their special insight, to seek their guidance.”

Sam raised his gaze skyward and pointed. “You do realize that you should take this—”

“Yes, yes, of course I realize I should take this all to God. Don't think I haven't. But I also need to see eye to eye and come heart-to-heart with the people who will always love me and put up with me no matter what.”

“Always a smart move, but I meant…” He looked up again.

“You know my sisters are my lifeline.” She shut her eyes to dismiss his nagging. “They are both so well grounded and levelheaded. They really care what happens to me and Willa, and they are—”

“On the roof,” he filled in for her with a much calmer tone than a statement like that would usually warrant.

Nic’s eyes flew open. “I beg your pardon?”

Sam pointed upward again. “Your levelheaded, well-grounded sisters are both, at this very moment, climbing out the attic window onto the roof.”

She turned in time to see Collier regain her footing just seconds before she would have gone sliding on her backside down the steep pitch of the gabled roof.

“Those blockheads!”
Nic threw her hands up, not sure whether to run towards them or away.
Far, far away.

“So much for wise and caring advisors to the headstrong, dominant Dorsey daughter.”
Sam chuckled.

Petie
flicked a string of Christmas lights trailing out of the window high in the air to hook over the weather vane on the very top of the single attic dormer.

“I'd cook up a scathing rejoinder to that, Sam, but I haven't got the time right now. This benevolent despot has got to go knock some sense into her beloved subjects.”

“What are you thinking crawling out onto the roof when both Sam and I are gone?” Nic climbed out the window without a moment's hesitation to confront her foolhardy sisters. “What if you had fallen off and broken your silly necks? Who would you
have
come running to for help then?”

“If we broke our silly necks, we wouldn't come running to anyone, least of all
you
.”
Petie
jabbed Nic in the shoulder with one perfectly manicured fingernail, then plunked a bundle of tiny lights into her hands. “Now either make yourself useful or go back inside.”

“I am making myself useful. I'm trying to keep you two from...” She inched along behind her older sister as Collier draped lights down the side of the dormer in no particular pattern. Nic stood back, frowned, then reached up to slip the green wire into the tiny hooks their father had put up two decades ago to hold the lights in place. “I am trying to keep you two from hurtling yourselves off the roof and crashing into Mama's rosebushes. Do you know how long it took her to get those filled in like that? One careless misstep by you two and
splat
, years of good gardening squashed.”

“We're not going to fall anywhere.”
Petie
guided the heavy strand of larger ceramic lights into place outlining the front eaves of the house. “And if we do that's our problem, not yours.”

“Oh, sure, like I wouldn't be the one stuck with the messy cleanup detail.” She pointed to a spot her younger sister had missed, causing the string of lights to droop.

“Your concern is too touching.” Collier took the last of the small lights from Nic's hands and squeezed past her. “But if the only reason you came out on this roof was to nag us...”

“Will you listen to what you're saying? What are you two doing out here anyway?”

“Irish step dancing.”
Petie
didn't even look her way. “What does it look like we're doing?”

“
Petie
and I decided that if this was our last ever Christmas in this house, we wanted to do it up right. We haven't hung the lights on the roof since Daddy died. It just seemed the right thing to do this final time.”

A tumble from the rooftop probably would have had less impact on Nic than Collier's words and the sad, longing look in her eyes. She had come back to talk to her sisters about their home and ended up yelling at them instead. Aunt Bert was right; she was bossy and tyrannical to the people who loved her most, and not so benevolent when things did not go her way.

“We ought to put the star up, too,” she said softly.

Petie
and Collier exchanged glances.

“I'll go get it.” Collier started back inside the window.

Nic stopped her with one hand on her arm. “No, wait. Sit with me a minute.”

“On the roof?”
Petie
shifted her feet on the grayed shingles and crinkled her nose as if she had just realized where they were.

“Yeah, on the roof.”
Nic settled herself down and patted the spot next to her. “It's a nice view up here. Really gives you a sense of the big picture, and that's what I want to talk to you two about.”

“The view?”
Collier sat cross-legged at Nic's side.

“Uh-huh, the view.
Your view and
Petie's
.”
Nic looked up at her older sister. “It's coming a little late, but I want to hear what you think about my plans, about these decisions I took upon myself to make for everyone.”

“Oh,
this
I have to sit for.”
Petie
lowered herself slowly,
then
situated herself with her elbows braced on the windowsill behind her. “You want to start first or shall I?”

“You've heard my side.” Nic held her hands up. “Cut loose on me.”

Petie
put one hand on her head, flattening what little poof her hairstyle still held. “I don't even know where to begin.”

“I do.” Collier straightened her back. “I don't want you to make us sell our home. And I don't want you to send Willa away to some school where—I don't want you to send her away.
Period.”

“Okay.” Nic tried to keep any reaction she had to her little sister's directness under control.

“I don't think it's good for her and I don't think it's good for our family.
Plain as that, Nic.”

Nicolette bent her head until the rough weave of her blue sweater scratched her chin. She looked to her left and a little behind her to catch
Petie's
eye. “Is that how you feel, too?”

For the first time in forever her sister would not meet her gaze.

Nic sighed. “I never even asked, did I? Just told you I needed the money for Willa and you both were willing to make the sacrifice.”

“We love you and our sweet Willa more than any old house.”
Petie's
lips trembled but finally formed a faint smile. “It's just wood and glass, some furniture and mementos, and a whole lot of stuff that's just a yard sale waiting to happen.”