He lifted a strand of her hair, spiraled it around his finger. “Bridge, we all need saving. Why else did I come back to you?”
“But she left everything of hers to you. That proves how much she loved you. I wasn’t even mentioned in her will.” She couldn’t hide her hurt.
“She’d already given you half.”
“Are you kidding me? I bought out her half. Yes, it was on easy terms, but I earned my title. I considered it fair, but she used my money to help you. That’s a fact. I see that now. She loved you. Loved you way more than my blood mother ever loved me.”
Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Tell me,” he said.
Bridget felt her memories, already shaken loose by his revelations about Auntie Penny, begin to tumble out.
There was a scuffle on the stairs and Deidre, ghostlike in a long white dressing gown, appeared on the stair landing. “I don’t care if this house belongs to the two of you. Both of you, to bed. To your own beds.”
Jack and Bridget exchanged squelched smiles. He sneaked in a kiss on her cheek before leaping from her bed. Deidre let him pass before launching a look of reproof at Bridget. “And you. Get to sleep. You’re already running on fumes.”
Bridget did as she was told. It felt delicious to have Deidre go all mother bear on her.
* * *
INTO BRIDGET’S MIXED-UP DREAM of burnt cinnamon buns and oven mitts for Christmas stockings crept a tickling across her cheek. A small voice penetrated her sleep. “Bridgie? Bridgie, you awake?”
Sofia. Bridget pried open her sleep-gummed eyelids. She fumbled for her phone. Fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off. “I am now.” She turned from her side onto her back, and Sofia snuggled right in, her head on Bridget’s shoulder.
“The Christmas miracle is beautiful,” Sofia whispered in perfect English.
After Jack had gone upstairs, Bridget meant to turn off the lights but had fallen asleep. Now she was glad, if it meant waking up to Sofia cuddled tight against her.
Sofia turned her head. “Isabella. Come on.”
Bridget hadn’t noticed Isabella sitting on the stair. “There’s plenty of room,” she said and flipped back the quilt invitingly.
Isabella left the stairs but not to get into bed. Instead, under the low shine of the lights, she prowled about the living room, examining the tree ornaments, the little figurines in the Christmas village, the Christmas books. She touched each thing with a kind of hesitancy, as if she might disturb its peace and it would crumble or fly away. Bridget wished that she could get inside Isabella’s mind, if only for a bit, to see what made her tick, to find a way to let her know that she didn’t need to fear for her life or her sister’s ever again.
The release from that base fear was the greatest gift a damaged child could receive. Bridget knew that for a fact.
There was a heavy tread on the stairs and Jack appeared. “There you two are,” he said in English.
“It’s okay,” Sofia said. “Don’t worry.”
“Be happy,” Isabella said in a dead serious tone.
Jack sat on a stair. “Kinda hard when you two aren’t in your beds when I wake up.”
Isabella squeezed beside him on the stair and he scooted over for her. “Thank you, Jack. For the Christmas miracle. It is very interesting.”
Jack looked over at Bridget, a smile playing at the edge of his mouth. The exchange between parents when their kids say something cute or memorable. Bridget could get used to this, for sure.
Sofia stretched up and kissed Bridget on the cheek. “Thank you, Bridgie.”
Her first kiss from Sofia. Bridget looked over to see if Jack had noticed. His small smile had broken into a very large one.
Isabella had also noticed, but she wasn’t scowling. In fact, her gaze drifted to the open spot in the bed.
But then Bridget’s alarm went off, and the moment, like so many others in her life, was gone.
* * *
“READY FOR CHRISTMAS?”
Jolene’s question startled Bridget from her discreet bit of shut-eye outside of Sofia’s kindergarten class.
“I’m sorry, were you napping while standing up?” Jolene said. She studied Bridget. “You do look tired.”
She was. Decorating the living room and then her late-night conversation with Jack followed by her early, though welcome wake-up call by the girls had left Bridget an exhausted combo of wired and wiped, like having an adrenaline rush and crash at the same time. Jolene’s makeup was perfect—she had that deliberately casual look going—and her kids, one on the hip and another bright-eyed in the infant car seat, were dressed as if ready for a fashion shoot. “I admit my days are full. Busy getting other people ready for the holidays.”
“Right, the restaurant and Bridget’s Brigade. It’s working out?”
“For another couple of weeks. I think you’re scheduled for early next week. Music system in garage, right?”
“Yes. Quinn’s home next Wednesday and I would love to have it there when he rolls in. I’d do it myself but I’m writing the test for my bookkeeping course next week.”
“How do you manage?”
Jolene’s mascara-enhanced eyes widened even more. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Melanie Lever rounded the hallway corner. “Ah, there you are,” she said to Bridget. “I was hoping to catch you before you left.”
Was Isabella in trouble again? Had a kid gotten sick from the buns? Had it started an entire classroom fight? Ms. Lever must’ve interpreted her expression. “All’s good. Just a word about a separate matter.”
The kindergarten door swung open, and the class began to spill out. “Do you have time to meet in my office after you’ve gathered the girls?” Ms. Lever said.
No easy matter to agree to. Isabella had to be cautioned that she’d have to wait for her treat. She’d glowered, but had trailed behind Bridget cooperatively enough. On the way into the principal’s office, Isabella stopped at the main office counter.
“Excuse me. I would like two bags of cereal, please.”
The front staff didn’t waste time fulfilling her request. Part of Bridget wanted to refuse this small act of charity. The other part told her to shut up and let Isabella experience what a generous, abundant place she now lived in.
Once Isabella and Sofia were settled on the principal’s sofa with their snacks, Bridget sat across from Ms. Lever who said, “Everybody loves, loves, loves your buns.”
That was from left field. “It’s hard to go wrong with sugar and cinnamon on bread.”
“That’s what we were thinking,” the principal said. “In the past, teachers have decided what they’d like to do to spread the festive season into the community. We have our traditional holiday concert, of course, but each classroom usually does their own thing, too.
“Our staff meeting yesterday was to bring it all together, but teachers are struggling this year. The sing-along at the seniors’ center was canceled, the shoeboxes for the annual campaign weren’t shipped for whatever reason and on it goes. Your Christmas Crates campaign came up and we thought we’d partner as a school with you.”
Way, way out in left field. “What did you have in mind?”
“We were thinking of a straightforward sales campaign. The kids take order forms home and sell your cinnamon buns. As the orders come in, you fill them with all proceeds going to the campaign.”
“That,” Bridget said, “would be wonderful.” Absolutely, mind-blowingly wonderful. “How many do you anticipate selling?”
“We don’t have much more than a week to sell, but that added urgency might work for us, and among a student population of four hundred and fifty... You sell them by the half dozen?”
“Individual, in fours and a baker’s dozen, thirteen.”
Ms. Lever scrunched her eyes in mental c
alculation. “I’d say...one or two thousand.”
“Two...thousand?”
“It’s Christmas. And even with the economy, everyone wants to eat treats. And your buns are yummy. It’s for a local cause. I don’t think I’m being overly optimistic.”
Bridget did her own mental calculations. Her Christmas minicinnis, iced and decorated, were priced at four dollars. Subtract out the costs—not including the labor—and the profit was three-fifty. Two thousand at an average of three-fifty a bun would bring in seven grand, which could easily finance Christmas Crates.
Bridget refrained from jumping up and down. “Let’s get started, then.”
“We’ll have to work out some kind of financial tracking system,” Ms. Lever said.
“I have a separate account already in place,” Bridget said. “Parents can write checks out to Christmas Crates. And the school will have copies of the orders to make sure the cash balances out.”
“School policy requires another person to make deposits generated here at the school straight into the account. Signing authority isn’t even required because it’s solely for deposits. We just need anyone, really. I’ll see if there’s a volunteer.”
Someone already committed to the cause...like Jolene.
Bridget smiled. “I happen to know of a parent perfectly qualified to help.”
Wow. She actually knew people at the school now, thanks to the girls. She’d hoped to show the girls her world, and here they’d stretched hers.
* * *
“TWO THOUSAND!” KRISTA squealed so loud Jack swore his eardrum nearly burst. Beside her, Deidre dropped her fork to the plate. “That’s about, let’s see—”
“Seven thousand dollars,” Bridget said. “As much as eight, depending on the size of the orders.”
Everybody around the dinner table, even the girls, jabbered about all that could be done with the money. He seemed to be the only one who noticed the big picture. He caught Deidre’s eye. Maybe the only two.
“Who’s going to make these?”
“Me,” Bridget said instantly.
“On top of all the work you do at the restaurant, on top of our evening service, on top of keeping up the display case, which, by the way, will take a hit in sales, because of the school kids making sales for the Christmas Crusade.”
“Brigade,” Krista corrected.
“Feels more like a crusade to drive everyone in this house into the ground. We’ll be so wiped we’ll sleep through Christmas Day.”
Sofia waved frantically. “If we sleep through the day, when will we open presents?”
“We won’t,” Deidre said, deadpan. “We’ll put them all away until next year.”
“How about I help Bridgie?” countered Sofia.
“Thanks, Sofia,” Bridget said. “I’ll need help to put labels on the packages. Also, you and Isabella need to remind me to pick up the orders daily from the principal when I come to get you at school.”
Bridget would fill those orders or die in the attempt. Since there was no talking her out of it, he’d have to see her through to the exhausting end. “Fine. I’ll pick up the girls. I’ll pick up the orders.”
She paused. “If it’s no trouble.”
She didn’t want to trouble him about picking up an envelope when he was there, anyway, but had no trouble wearing herself out to make sure an entire town got her cinnamon buns so she could turn around and give away the profits. But he couldn’t deny that between these sales and proceeds from the Brigade, he might put to rest his debt to the Spirit Lake donors.
“Bridge, I’ll help.”
“You’re already—”
“Busy. We all are. Just accept help. Okay?”
Bridget nodded reluctantly, as if agreeing to painful, unavoidable surgery. Was it all help, or just his that she couldn’t accept?
“So then,” Deidre said, “that leaves you and me, Jack.”
“And me,” Sofia reminded her.
Deidre tugged Sofia’s braid. “And you. How about you and Auntie Dee take care of the labeling, and packaging, while Jack and Bridgie make the buns?”
“Deal,” Jack said before Bridget could interrupt.
“And I’ll help when I can, wherever I can,” Mara said.
“Ditto,” Krista said. “Providing I don’t eat the buns first.”
“There are two thousand,” Isabella cautioned.
Krista shoveled in another forkful of lasagna. “It’ll take a while, for sure.”
“Jack’s help is all I need,” Bridget said and then looked cross.
He got distinct pleasure from seeing her annoyed at needing him. “Only I have mastered the correct insertion of toothpicks into cinnamon buns. Without me,” he mock-boasted to Isabella and Sofia, “the whole production line would grind to a halt.”
“Honest to Pete, Sofia could do your job.”
“Promote me.”
“Fine, can you count by twos, fours, sixes and twelves?”
“If I can’t, my calculator can.”
“Tomorrow, then, you are in charge of making the order form and getting it to the school by noon so it can go home with the kids.”
“How much are we charging?”
The question launched a debate between them. At one point, Bridget’s attention switched to Krista, who was mouthing something to Mara. Jack didn’t catch it all but he thought the last bit was tri-ckle. Bridget looked ready to pop a vein. Krista’s message clearly involved Bridget and likely him, too. Only what was going on between them was far more than a trickle.
* * *
FRIDAY AFTERNOON BRIDGET stopped at the house to drop off Isabella and to change for the dinner service.
Mara was at the kitchen island alone, frowning at paint chip samples. Isabella dropped her pack and shed her outerwear and headed downstairs, off to get Sofia for their minicinnis.
“Where’s Deidre and Krista?”
“Picking up a donation and at work. I’m trying to make a decision about neutrals.” Mara held up three samples. “Okay, what do you think?”
Bridget wondered if Mara couldn’t distinguish between the shades, and that’s why she was asking. Mara had been here for a month now, and Bridget hadn’t found the time to have a serious talk about her eyes. She hoped Krista was being a better sister than her.
But she could find the time to choose a color. “This one. You really should take them to the unit and see what the light does to them there.”
Isabella surfaced from the downstairs and ran upstairs.
“I know but I wanted to narrow it down a bit. Who knew there were so many?”
“I remember going through the same pain when renovating the restaurant. What have you decided about flooring?”
“Krista’s pushing for planking, and I can’t decide. It’s easier to maintain but carpeting might make clients feel more comfortable.”
Isabella appeared beside Bridget. “Where’s Sofia?”
“She’s not downstairs?”
“No.”
Bridget pointed up. “Upstairs?”
“No.”
Bridget looked at Mara who frowned. “I don’t know.”
Panic rippled through Bridget. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I—”
“Sofia!” Bridget yelled. “Tell us where you are.”
Nothing.
“Did she go outside?”
“I didn’t see—”
“Of course, you didn’t see.”
Guilt spread across Mara’s face.
Bridget turned away. “I’ll check the backyard.”
It was empty. Bridget flung open the garage door. The inside was filled to bursting with Christmas Crate stuff. No Sofia. In snow boots and a thin shirt, Bridget tore around to the front, calling out Sofia’s name.
; “Hi!”
“Sofia! Where—”
“I’m up here.”
Bridget looked up to see Sofia, all smiles, peering over the edge of the roof. How had she—Of course. The ladder was still there from when Jack had strung up outdoor lights. Bridget was going to kill him, though likely he’d beat himself up, anyway.
“I’m making snow angels,” Sofia said. “Angels on high. Come see them.”
Later, Bridget amazed herself by how she climbed the ladder without giving a second thought to her fears.
“See?”
Snow angels covered every available white space of the roof. “Wow. You’ve been busy.”
“I made some on the other side, too. Want to see?” Sofia scrambled up the side as easily as if she mounted a grassy slope. Bridget crawled after her, desperate to keep within arm’s length.
“Wow,” Bridget repeated at the angel-patterned snow.
“Is everything okay?” Mara called from below.
“Yes,” Bridget said. “We’re just looking at Sofia’s snow angels and then we’ll be right down.”
“Sofia!” Isabella’s angry voice tore upward like a launched rocket. She yelled something in Spanish and it wasn’t good, because Sofia shouted back.
Sofia sighed. “She’s so bossy.”
“She’s worried,” Bridget said. “She came home looking for you and couldn’t find you. You scared her. You scared all of us.”
Fear, not the breeze off the lake, chilled Bridget. The mere mention of the word scared made it so. They’d better get off this roof fast. “How about we go down now?”
“Take a picture of it, so we can show everyone.”
“I don’t have my phone with me.”
“Okay, I’ll get Jack to do it. Let’s go.”
Terror immobilized her arms. “You go first, Sofia. Carefully. Tummy against the roof. Okay?”
Sofia shimmied to the top of the ladder.
“Mara?” Bridget called. “She’s coming down now.”
“Okay, Sofia,” Mara said. “Isabella and I are holding the ladder. One step at a time.”
All They Want for Christmas Page 14