“Keep our phones charged in the meantime,” Eric said.
“Good. Have candles at hand. And stockpile what wood we can for the stove against the boiler going bust.”
“What’s a boiler?” Molly asked.
“It’s like a furnace. Or like the stove in the corner we’d best keep stoked.”
Part of Bexley’s brain was still stuck on how Kiernan’s accent turned There’s naught we can do into something lovely, seducing— No. No seducing. Absolutely not. Not even of her ears.
Besides, there wasn’t even a free bed, much less privacy— No. No.
“No, what, Bexley?”
She blinked back to the reality of Lizzie’s innocent question and the realization she’d spoken one of her Nos aloud. “No, we shouldn’t use our phones unless we absolutely have to. I already called my family and the Curricks—” She ordered her eyes not to shift toward Kiernan. “—about what happened, that we’re safe, but stuck.”
“We called to let my hosts in Chicago know I wouldn’t be there before you two arrived.” Pauline stood. “There’s the timer on the cookies. No. You all stay here. I think this is a one-person job.”
“We don’t have phones, so we can’t text. We can’t afford them.” Molly spoke with a cheerfulness Bexley doubted Dan shared, judging by his sour expression, or that the girls would feel in a few years.
“I’ll call my family, then no more calls,” Kiernan said. “Or connecting to the Internet. Trying, anyway. Even if we stay connected, calling and surfing take more power. We’ll keep our phones charged and not use them unless we must. Agreed?”
The others nodded.
“Agreed. Though I already did some Internet surfing so there’s no sense not using what I learned.” Bexley focused on the two girls. “But the first project I didn’t need the Internet for, because I did it as a child. Do you know how to make snowflakes?”
Their eyes widened. “No.”
“All we need is some paper and scissors.”
Bexley turned toward Gramps and so did Molly and Lizzie.
“What? What do you want from me now?”
“Paper and scissors.”
“What for?”
“To make snowflakes.”
“Ain’t got enough o’ those by looking out a window?”
“We can’t see any of those snowflakes,” Lizzie said. “The windows are too high.”
“And covered over. Besides these snowflakes won’t melt,” Molly added.
“Aw, hell.” He levered himself out of his chair. “I don’t know where I’ve got scissors. Little kids shouldn’t be using them anyway. They’ll get all cut up.”
“I’ll watch them.” Bexley winked at the girls as they all followed in the wake of his grumbles.
“Suppose you want white paper, too. Don’t know I’ve got any of that. Not like I’m writing poetry ’n such.”
“Oh! We can make multi-colored snowflakes,” Molly said.
And that’s what they did. White on one side and multi-colored on the other from colored flyers and throwaway advertisements.
“You fold the paper over, then over again, and again.” Bexley demonstrated. “As many times as you want. And then each cut you make shows up over and over. The more times you fold and the more cuts, the lacier it will be.”
“I want to do it.”
Gramps found one pair of scissors in a jar of pens behind the checkout counter for Molly.
When the rest of them started toward the bar room, Kiernan remained in the store area, saying he’d look for candles.
Bexley dashed back for one more piece of paper she’d see on a bulletin board over the microwave. If it wasn’t stained…
Kiernan was near the front, talking on his phone, presumably to his family.
She snagged the paper. As she turned to go, the sound of the storm swelled and he raised his voice over it.
“Uh-huh. Freak storm. Before the main event. … Safe enough. … What? Oh. They did? … Yes. She’s fine, too.” His voice picked up speed. “In fact, there’s a group here. Four kids, who—”
Bexley cut off the rest with a quick return to the bar room.
Kiernan returned with two large candles and a dozen tea lights, plus a lighter. He put them on the work area behind the bar.
Pauline brought back a plate of cookies and reported she put in the next round.
Bexley used an oversized pair of scissors she’d seen behind the bar. Lizzie wielded a pair of nail scissors Bexley contributed from her toiletries kit like a surgeon, creating delicate paper lace.
Everyone tried a cookie. Gramps had three. Dan ate four.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Molly’s snowflakes reminded Bexley of her childhood attempts, while her own — thanks to the clunky scissors, of course — resembled something an uncoordinated giant might have created.
While they made these masterpieces, Kiernan and Eric, with assistance from Dan and supervision by Pauline, strung a wire over the bar.
“Do you want this any higher, Bexley?” Eric asked from his position standing on a stool to reach the ceiling at one end of the bar. Kiernan held the same position at the other end.
“That looks good where it is. How’re you guys doing up there?”
“It’s craic,” Kiernan muttered, adjusting his stance on the stool’s uneven seat.
Molly assessed him with a clear look and said what several of the adults might have been thinking. “You talk funny sometimes.”
“I don’t,” he said with false indignation.
“Yes, you do.” Lizzie broke it to him gently. “Like when you said boiler instead of furnace. And whatever you said just now.”
“Craic?”
“What does that mean?” Molly asked.
“Fun, I suppose. Good times.”
The girl frowned. “You didn’t really mean that, huh?”
He was saved from answering when Lizzie asked a different question. “Do you use weird words because you’re from that place near Boston? Where you were trying to get to for Christmas.”
“Gloucester? Ah, some from Gloucester do speak in an amusing way. They’re particularly haphazard with their ‘r’s’, drop them here, add them there. Perhaps I have picked up a bit in the years I’ve lived there.”
Bexley shook her head. “It’s the brogue.”
“Brogue is it? I’ve naught, woman.”
The girls giggled at his broad pronunciations.
Pauline said, “It’s because he came from a place called Ireland.”
“Is that near Massachew—whatever?”
“No. Massachusetts is another state in the United States of America, like Wyoming is. Ireland is a separate country across the Atlantic Ocean.”
The girls’ eyes widened identically. Molly asked the questions. “You’re from another country? Don’t you want to go there for Christmas? How did you get here? What’s it like being from another country? Are there ranches in Ireland? Do you have horses and dogs and cows there? What—?”
“Hold up. Take a breath, if you want any answers a’tall. I came here from Ireland to go to college and because my older brother had moved here, and I’ve stayed on, so now I’m a citizen as well. As for Christmas, no, I don’t go back to Ireland, because my mother moved here shortly after I did, so Gloucester is where we’d all be together, along with more who are my family now. How I got here? By an airplane. Quite boring, I know.”
“Not to me,” Dan muttered.
“Indeed there are horses and dogs and cows there. You’re more apt to hear them called a farm or a lodge than a ranch, though, and they’re considerably smaller than what you’re familiar with.”
“That’s weird they have different names for things.”
“There are lots of words for familiar things. Words from all over the world,” Kiernan said.
“And lots of folks who live here now came from someplace else,” Bexley added. “Or their parents or grandparents did.”
“Your great-great-grandm
other was from Ireland.”
Gramps’ words were so abrupt and so unexpected, they all turned to look at him.
“County Mayo. That’s where my grandmother was born. And my grandfather was the first of his family born here. Before that, all born in Ireland. My dad’s line had some Irish, too. So’d your grandmother’s people. We’ve got enough sprinkled in here and there, probably more than half.”
“We’re Irish?” Molly asked wide-eyed.
Dan said, impatiently, “We’re Americans. It’s where you’re born and where you live. The rest is just history.”
“It’s interesting to know the history,” Bexley said. “To find out about the people who made decisions — like coming here from far away — that contributed to what your life’s like now. Our country has people who came here from all over the world. Sometimes people like to remember, so they’ll say they’re Italian-American or Swedish-American, Irish-American or—”
“Native American,” Molly said. “But they were already here.”
“Where’s Daddy from?” Lizzie asked.
The adults all looked toward Gramps.
“Don’t know about his family.” His rough voice said he didn’t much care, either.
“He’s from Wyoming,” Dan said firmly. “Just like us. And our mom. What happened before that doesn’t matter.”
“I like it,” Molly said determinedly. She tipped her head, testing out the next words. “I’m Irish.”
Her brother started to speak again, and she said, “Irish-American.” She shifted her focus to Kiernan. “Does that mean I can say words funny like you do?”
Bexley leaned toward her. “You better not, or some people will think you’re from Massachusetts.”
Lizzie and Molly giggled and began re-applying their scissors.
With the wire strung over the bar, the others cut wire of varying lengths and attached individual snowflakes to them, then hooked the opposite end over the cross wire.
But Molly wasn’t done with her questions. “Where does the name Bexley come from? Is that from another country? I never heard anybody called that before.”
“You don’t know anybody,” Dan muttered, loud enough to be heard from behind the bar.
“Do, too. I know the kids at school and from when we used to go to church and from town.”
“Wow, what? A couple dozen?”
“And I’ve read lots of names—”
Recognizing a sibling battlefront brewing, Bexley intervened while she still could. “Bexley’s the name of where I was born, Molly.”
“Where is Bexley? I never heard of it.”
Giving Eric a grateful look for backing up her diversion, she said, “It’s near Columbus, Ohio. My dad was finishing a master’s degree at Ohio State and he and Mom drove to Bexley to pick up a check for yard work he’d done for people there to supplement their income. He did that and Mom worked two jobs as long as she could because they were poor students. They were only supposed to be there for a few minutes, long enough to pick up the check, then get back to campus.”
Eric said, “So if you’d arrived earlier or a little later, you’d have been Columbus?”
Everyone chuckled. Even Gramps.
What caught Bexley’s attention was Kiernan’s chuckle. She felt a hitch of surprise at him joining in with this reaction to her story.
No time to examine that if she was going to keep Molly and Dan from starting again.
“The couple Dad had done the yard work for were terrific. Took Mom right inside, called 911, and I was born in their front hallway. Mom and Dad thought about naming me after them, but which one when they were both wonderful? And their last name was Gunderhausen, so I’m glad they weren’t that grateful.”
Molly and Lizzie giggled as they continued to cut out snowflakes.
“I used to remind myself being named Bexley dodged not only the Gunderhausen bullet, but a couple others. Before I came a couple weeks early, Mom and Dad planned to be back in Wisconsin before I was born. If I had been born in Wisconsin, when I was scheduled to be, I could have been Baraboo.”
“Baraboo?” Lizzie repeated, laughing.
Molly asked, “What would they have called you? Bare? Boo?”
Bexley squeezed her eyes shut. “I can’t even imagine. Think of what the kids in school could have done with Baraboo. And that’s not even the worst. Mom and Dad had planned to go for a couple days to a lake in Wisconsin when they got back, as a break before I was supposed to arrive. Mom always said later she couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, planning to go to a lake so close to her due date.”
“Oh, no,” Lizzie said. “The lake must have an awful name.”
“Well, if they named me after the lake I might have been called Winnie. Because the name of the lake is Winnebago. We used to go there when I was a kid.”
Pauline said, “You could have been Van,” producing another spurt of amusement.
But Gramps said loudly, “Winnie’s a nice name.”
The momentary hush as everyone absorbed Gramps sticking up for someone — at least for a name — was broken by Molly. “Gramps, did you know someone named Winnie?”
From the corner of her eye, Bexley thought she caught heightened interest from Pauline.
Above his beard, Gramps’ cheeks reddened. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.”
“Who is Winnie, Gramps?” Bexley asked it gently, though she half expected to hear it had been the name of his favorite dog. Or, considering what his personality said about what kind of pet he might have had, his favorite porcupine.
“Best damn waitress this bar ever had.”
“Waitress,” she repeated.
“Server, bartender, drink-slinger, whatever the heck you young people call it these days. She was the best. Made folks feel at home. But not mushy. Sharp — her tongue and her mind. Worked here seventeen years. When she passed on … Well, it wasn’t worth the trouble keeping the place running.”
“How long ago was that?”
He scrunched up his face. “Must be nearly ten years or so.”
Did that explain the state of the place … and the bathrooms? “Were you and Winnie…?”
“What? No. Don’t go thinking such stuff. I had more’n my fill with the girls’ mother. After she took them and left, I got to have the girls for a few weeks each summer and sometimes other times when their mother wanted to be free of them. Those were good years. Only Trudi got to be an age when she wanted boyfriends and parties, not fishing and dancing parties with neighbors in a little bar by a gas pump. She went crying to her mother and there was a set-to, judge ’n all, and her sister—” He jerked his head toward the girls. “—Angie turned against me, too.”
Bexley said, “That must have been difficult.”
“Yeah, well. It happens.”
He wasn’t as inured to it as he’d like others to think or he wouldn’t still be so hurt by it.
“But you must have seen Angie again.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Dan named you Gramps.”
“Oh, that. There were a few years there when she and Hall brought him to see me for a day now and then, and have me down to the ranch to Christmas dinner.” He slanted a look toward her, then away. “Hall Quick’s doin’. Notions of what’s right and due a father. Angie… She wasn’t the girl she’d been. When she started having kids, it wasn’t like they say some women get sad and depressed after babies. It was more like she’d created a world by having those babies and she didn’t want anybody else in it. Not me and not even Hall.”
He jerked as if someone stuck a rod in his ribs. Or as if he suddenly realized he’d been sharing his thoughts and feelings.
The girls watched wide-eyed. Dan scowled.
Gramps resumed. “None of that’s here nor there. Water under the dam and dried up in the desert.”
For an instant, Bexley’s gaze met Kiernan’s.
She yanked her thoughts back to Gramps, still looking awkward, and — strict
ly to relieve the older man’s discomfort — she took back the reins of the conversation as she delivered more snowflakes to the wire hangers. “I would have been proud to be named Winnie.”
“Really?” Kiernan doubted.
“Well, once I was grown up I would have been. But I never would have gotten over the other name they could have chosen if they named me for where we stayed when we went to Lake Winnebago.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened. “What would you have been named?”
Bexley looked from face to face, drawing out the suspense.
“Buttes des Morts.”
“Huh?” came in a chorus.
Bexley printed the three words on a scrap of paper. It was passed from hand to hand.
“That’s not what you said,” Molly objected. “This says Butts des Morts.” She enunciated each letter.
“I gave it the French pronunciation because that’s what the French fur traders called it when they first came through the area. Or, I should say it’s the Wisconsin version of the French pronunciation, because the place has been Wisconsin a lot longer than it was French.”
Dan, the last to receive the scrap of paper, frowned at it. “Buttes of the Dead?”
She nodded at his translation. “That’s right, Dan. You could say Butte or Hill. Hill of the Dead. They were referring to burial mounds Indians had there for a long, long time.” In the spirit of the season, she skipped the story about a conflict between French fur traders and members of the Fox tribe in the 1730s that added another historical layer to the name.
“Your parents wouldn’t really have named you Hill of the Dead, would they?” Lizzie asked.
“I don’t know,” Bexley said with an exaggerated long face. “After all, they condemned me to a lifetime of saying Bexley, not Becky.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“We’ve filled up this wire,” Eric announced.
“Ohhhh,” the girls breathed in unison. The snowflakes twirled from white to colors and back, fluttering between the chill of the windows and the warmth of the stove.
“But what will we do with the other snowflakes?”
Making Christmas Page 7