Under the Christmas Star

by Amanda Tru

  Ramon shifted behind her. Amused or nervous?

  A hint like that could backfire, so Lena waited, ready to claim the “language barrier” if necessary to protect Wayne from her frustrated gaffes. But, as she suspected, it worked beautifully. The woman pointed to the smallest arrangement, nestled in a pottery bowl that Lena had picked up at a garage sale in Brunswick.

  “That’ll have to do, I suppose. I don’t have the time or money to waste driving all over the countryside to save a few dollars. I was taught not to be penny wise and pound foolish.”

  The words made no sense. What did pounds have to do with pennies? Did she really weigh her coins? Why not just use dollar bills? So much easier. This Lena did not say, however. One didn’t insult a customer and then insult her again.

  “You have made a beautiful decision. This will last you for a week if you change the water…” All while she took the woman’s card, rang up the sale, and passed a receipt to be signed, Lena gave directions.

  Ramon waited until the door jingled behind the woman before laughing. “Oh, you are good—muy bueno! I am impressed!”

  “She just wanted me to make the price smaller. I will not do that. If I make it smaller today, she will tell her friend. Her friend will come in. How can I tell her friend no? So that bouquet is a smaller price, too. And in a few weeks, we must stop selling because we lose the money.”

  “You take good care of him.”

  “Who?”

  “Wayne Farrell.” Ramon shook his head with a disapproving wag. “He does not appreciate you. You made the right decision to break off with him.”

  Lena gave him a weak smile and filed the receipt in the drawer. “He’s a good man, Ramon. But if I can think he would do something like Alejandro, he is not the man for me.” She swallowed hard and tried to silence the weeping strings of her heart. “Or maybe it is that I am not good enough for him.”

  “He let you go. He’s a fool. That is everything to know.” Ramon leaned against the rose case. “And, of course, he’s a simple man. I talked to him this morning. Nice, yes. This is true. But so…” Ramon gave her an exaggerated wince. “So boring. No charm. No sophistication. No grace. He’s um… el granjero. Like a farmer.”

  Every nerve in her spine tingled. Her hands gripped the counter, and despite every effort to appear calm, it all exploded into a fiery ball of angst. One hand flew up in the air and slammed down, palm flat, onto the counter. “He is not a farmer. Not a bumpkin, is what I think you mean. He isn’t a dancer,” she conceded. “No! But he could be—if he learned. He just never did. Not every man is Ramon Merino.”

  His laughter, Lena did not expect. He shook his head, his teeth flashing with each new burst of mirth, and gave her a rather pitying look. “You talk a tango—first pushing him away, then coming close to protect him. Do you know your heart?”

  Lena didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

  Hands full of bags from the deli and one from Bookends, Wayne knocked at Jennie’s door. Children played somewhere if the shrieks and squeals that filled the neighborhood meant anything. He shuffled as he waited, peered around the corner and shuffled again.

  Jennie appeared, hair up in a messy bun, sloppy, oversized sweatshirt, and leggings. “Hey…” She rubbed the corner of one eye. “Sorry, overslept.”

  “Hungry?”

  A sleepy smile grew. “Yes.” The door opened wider. “I owe you, Wayne.”

  After weeks of more friendly than “datey” behavior, Wayne gave in just a bit. He leaned close and kissed her cheek as he entered. “You’re beautiful, Jen. Did you know that?”

  The hint of a blush—just enough that it could still be from sleep, he supposed—made her even more attractive. Still, he said nothing more. But if that wasn’t romantic and honest, I don’t know what is. It’s much better than those silly candles I bought.

  Silly or not, though, Wayne pulled out the candles and set the little things on her coffee table. “Pastrami needs candlelight—even at noon.”

  It sounded even more pathetic vocalized than it had in his head. Jennie didn’t seem to think so, though. She hopped up to retrieve matches and grinned as she fumbled with one until she had to blow it out. “It won’t light! Unromantic thing!”

  So much for Lena being wrong. Wayne reached over and scraped some wax off the wick with his thumbnail. “Try again?”

  It worked—just as he knew it would. The candles lit, and the pastrami on rye for him and on whole wheat for her filled the rest of the little coffee table. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her arms resting on the table as she bit into the sandwich. “So… when do you hit the road?”

  “I need to be at the airport by three, so soonish.”

  “Did you get any amazing flowers this morning?”

  He snatched up his phone and zipped a text message to Lena, asking her to push the submit button on his order. “No… weather wasn’t good, so I just ordered them this time. Easier for Lena, too.” He gave her an odd look. Would Jennie be jealous if she heard about the dancing? And why does that idea sound wonderful instead of awful?

  “Well, that saves some of the driving, too. Didn’t you say the airport is a ways from Crossroads?”

  “Yeah.” Mind made up, Wayne plunged into his new plans. “I have to say, though. I kind of wish I’d gone.”

  Jennie chewed two bites before she finally asked him why. “I mean, why do you wish you’d gone—for flowers, right?”

  “Yes. I was in the workshop—made a mess of things, too—when Ramon came down. That guy challenged me to learn the tango of all things. He strongly hinted that I owed it to Lena to do it so she could enter into some contest. I told him we weren’t dating anymore, but…”

  “That seems like a great way for people to see that you’re still friends, though. You know, that you’re not all broken up and incapable of interacting with her.” She giggled. “You dancing the tango.”

  Defensiveness welled up, despite repeated efforts to stifle it. “I’m not that bad.” He tossed the words out like a joke, but he also suspected that they’d fallen flat.

  Jennie became apologetic. “I wasn’t laughing at you, really. It’s more the idea of you dancing the tango—with Ramon.”

  A piece of pastrami lodged in his throat, and no amount of coughing would dislodge it. Jennie pounded. He coughed. She pounded more. He hacked and choked as he tried to force it down with water. It did go down… eventually. “You’re trying to kill me,” he gasped. “I wonder if Ramon will really do it…”

  “Sounds like it to me.” She caught his gaze and held it. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  And he was. Just sitting there eating a simple sandwich and talking about dancing with a dude of all things. “He won’t make me be the girl, will he?”

  “No.” Jennie winked at him. “That would be fun to watch, though.”

  They shared a smile—one that gave his heart a bit of a jolt. She’s right for me. I need someone calm and sweet. It’s nice not to have to deal with all the drama. Thank you, Lord, for that. His spirit revolted at the idea of the Lord taking away Lena because he couldn’t handle the drama. That’s not what I meant. Lena’s a good woman. She just wasn’t ready. And I am now. And I needed her to prepare the way. Yes, that’s more like it. We both grew.

  The prayer felt familiar—too familiar. Had he become repetitive? Redundant? He’d have pondered it more, but Jennie began talking just then.

  “You know, sometimes we feel like an old married couple, don’t we? Just sitting here eating pastrami with our little touch of candlelight. I half-expect a passel of kids to come out and tell us one of them puked or something. It’s…” She sounded a bit strangled. “Well, it’s like we’ve been married for the last twenty or so years.” A “bit” strangled became positively strained by the time Jennie finished.

  Poor girl. She’s probably embarrassed mentioning marriage like that. She’d kept talking—joking about something to do with getting in a rut before getting on the road if his ears pick
ed up enough to follow. His mind, however, couldn’t get off the idea of marriage.

  “Don’t you think?”

  By that point, he’d quit trying to follow her. “I’m sorry. I just had this mental picture of us in rocking chairs on the porch, criticizing the height of our neighbors’ grass. What did you say?”

  “I said,” she repeated with a weak smile, “—that it might be best not to start a relationship in the ditch.”

  Oh, no. Not romantic at all. There’s nothing romantic about a ditch. Desperate, Wayne stood and offered his hand. For just a moment, he thought she might not take it. Relief turned him into a puddle of desperation when she finally grasped it and pulled herself up.

  Every instinct demanded that he kiss her, but something held him back. Maybe she’s just hinting we should go slow but not crawl. Or maybe, the whole rut and ditch is a hint that she needs a quicker-moving relationship. I should ask.

  Something in her eyes disturbed him. He cradled her face in his hands, and she didn’t wince, didn’t move, didn’t… anything. She just gazed back at him as if waiting… for something. A kiss—a real one—wouldn’t do. He had to make it through a weekend without her. No use making that harder. Instead, he leaned close and kissed her forehead. “I don’t want to go.”

  Her hands gripped his arms, and for a moment, he thought she’d kiss him. And I’ll let her, too!

  Jennie didn’t kiss him, however. Instead, she squeezed his arms and stepped back. “You wouldn’t want to miss your flight.”

  His hopes crashed and shattered at his feet.

  Knocking on the door he’d burst through a dozen times an hour as a five-year-old always felt ridiculous. However, just barging into his mother’s house after decades of not living there—equally absurd. It had taken a few dozen visits to perfect it, but in recent years Wayne had learned to dash up to the door, ring the bell, and rush back for his luggage. It gave his mother a chance to make it to the door by the time he arrived there, suitcase and overnight bag in hand.

  She’d be beaming at him, and he’d kiss her cheek. It happened every visit. She fed him cookies while he told her at least one humorous travel story. And this time, he had a doozy for her.

  The door flung open, and his mother nearly ran down the steps and met him halfway up the walk. “Wayne! And—” She stopped short. “Where’s Lena?”

  Wayne’s first thought was whether his mother was too young for Alzheimer’s or whatever other dementia issues caused memory loss. When she glared at him and then at the car again, he shook his head. “I told you, Ma. She’s not coming. She broke up with me.”

  Had anyone told him it could even happen, Wayne would have bet everything he owned and ever would have against such a notion, but it did. It absolutely did. His mother, who had loved him so dearly that she’d occasionally been accused of having a favorite spun him in place and shoved him toward the car. “You go get her. Right now. You fix this.”

  “Mom—”

  “No, Wayne. Go get her back. She’s the best thing that’s happened to you since Jesus.”

  Well, I’m glad He made the list—Savior of the world and all.

  Wayne turned, shaking his head as if it would make any difference. “She’s not going to take me back. I tried. I did everything I could, and then I decided I wasn’t going to grovel forever when I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Right there, to Wayne’s utter disgust, his voice cracked. That was all it took. His mother snatched his overnight bag from his hand and half-dragged him into the house. “You go change—jammies and slippers. I’ll throw cookies in the oven. We’ll talk.”

  Jammies. At my age she still says jammies. Despite his objections, the coddling he’d hoped for after his still achy-when-it’s-cold ankle would be a thing now. And maybe, just maybe, that meant he’d really heal.

  Two pairs of sleep pants greeted him from the top of his suitcase. The plaid begged for wearing. Flannel, not too thick—they were perfect. Beside them, his Rockland Warrior fleece pants sat without bothering to vie for preeminence. They would win, and they knew it.

  At home, he didn’t care. Wayne wore what he wanted without much thought or consideration. At Mom’s house, you wore plaid sleep pants only after Thanksgiving dinner. She’d rather see you in white after Labor Day than to wear plaid before Thanksgiving. For the curious, Barbara Farrell was not, and never had been, Southern.

  Overheated in Warrior pants it would have to be. He compromised by leaving off the slipper socks he’d brought to appease her. A man must assert himself now and then—even with his mother.

  Cookies came out of the oven in perfect synchronization with Wayne’s arrival in the kitchen. His mother shook her head, popped a couple on a paper plate, and flipped the rest upside down on newspaper. “You’ve always had the best timing. Lydia never could get in on time, but you…”

  The dilemma before him—to stop her from reminiscing about his childhood all night or keep it going to avoid listening to her bawl him out for “blowing it” with Lena? Lena won out. His mother had more years of memories to rehash than he had days of knowing Lena. Self-preservation and a desperate need for sleep won out.

  “Ma?”

  She paused, cookie balanced on the spatula, and glanced over her shoulder. “Hmm?”

  “I’m concerned about you. I told you that Lena broke up with me. Why did you think she was still coming?”

  “You did not tell me, Wayne. I’m certain I would have remembered that.”

  He shook his head. “No… you called about Thanksgiving and said how excited you were that she was coming, and I told you she wasn’t.”

  His mother flung the spatula on the counter and popped one hand on a hip. “And what did I say when you told me that the only woman you’ve ever shown an interest in since—”

  “Don’t, Mom. Don’t.”

  “Aaah… I’m back to Mom. Concern’s gone now, is it?” She arched an eyebrow in that infuriating way he’d spent hours trying to copy as a kid of eight. He’d never managed, either. “So tell me! What did I say?”

  Therein lay the problem. He couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t he?

  Mom broke in with a sharp tone. “You didn’t talk to her, did you? You didn’t explain. You just let her keep thinking whatever it was. You let your pride—”

  “No. I tried. She won’t listen. I absolutely humiliated myself trying to get her to, but she wouldn’t.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me she wasn’t coming?” With each word, his mother’s voice scaled. “I told everyone—”

  “And I told you she wasn’t!”

  The oven dinged, likely saving him from a spatula shaking in his face. He saw it as she turned back to open the door—the tear. Oh, Lord. Don’t let me hurt her, too.

  In that moment of prayerful concern, clarity formed. He’d been interrupted. And since he’d been avoiding her calls for that long, he’d just continued to do it. He brushed the crumbs from his fingers and skirted the breakfast bar. The moment his mother set down the cookie sheet, he wrapped arms around her shoulders and squeezed. “Sorry, Mom. I didn’t know I hadn’t told you. I thought I did.”

  “Why didn’t you make her understand? She loves you.”

  It didn’t take long to share his theory, and it took even less time for his mother to shred it—one word, actually. “Hogwash.”

  “Mom…”

  “Don’t ‘Mom’ me. A woman like that, wounded by someone in the past, she needs patient, careful wooing. You have the heart for that, but you gave up.”

  The temptation to throw Jennie out there as an alternative presented itself, but Wayne had lost the confidence that she’d be so thrilled that he had another girlfriend that she’d drop it. I should never have let them talk on the phone. That was dumb.

  “Wayne?”

  Oh, how he hated that tone. He knew what it meant, but he couldn’t say. It would only make things worse. “Yeah, Ma?” Maybe using “Ma” would soften her a bit… distract her.

 
; “Promise me something?”

  And here we go… Wayne just nodded.

  “Pray about it—pray and see what the Lord shows you in His Word. Pray.”

  Barbara Farrell knew how to punish a guy. Throw prayer at him. How could he refuse? But every time… every time, the result came out all wonky. Still, he heard himself say, “I’ll pray, Ma. I’ll pray.”

  Just on the other side of Holly Circle, three “evergreen streets” lay at the edge of town. The farthest was Fir Street, and there Lena had purchased her tiny two-bedroom house with its single bath and eat-in kitchen with no dining room at all. Just five small rooms with itsy bitsy closets and a half-enclosed back porch that doubled as a laundry room when the pipes didn’t freeze.

  But it was hers. She’d even managed to pay cash for it, and every year she saved enough to do one more thing to improve it. So while most of America popped turkeys in ovens to roast all day, Lena planned for a simple, traditional Andalusian pescaíto frito—a fried fish dish. Ramon would come, and because he did, she’d also planned for polvorones—Christmas cookies.

  The doorbell rang just as she’d pulverized the roasted almonds. Lena hurried to the front door, wiping her hands on her apron as she went. “Ramon! You are early.”

  “Should I come back later?”

  Lena pulled him inside and scolded him like the little brother he was to her. “You will never make a girl happy if you arrive before she is ready for your date. Marta would tell you this.”

  His hug told her she’d made the right decision to bring Ramon’s wife into the discussion. Too many people ignored the dead as if they no longer mattered. It is wrong. I won’t do it to him.

  “Thank you, Magdalena.”

  “She was my friend, too. I miss her.” No other words would come—they refused. But it would be enough. He would be comforted by her love for the fairy-like girl who had been his wife.