Wishing for Wonderful: The Serendipity Series, Book 3

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “Lindsay’s gonna love you,” he whispered in the dog’s ear.

  Again the dog cocked its head to first the right and then the left.

  “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?” Matthew murmured. It was a rhetorical question directed more to himself than the dog, but at precisely that moment the dog moved forward and licked his face. He laughed. “Lindsay’s right, you are trying to tell us something.”

  Eight days and counting. Matthew had eight days to hold on to this secret, and after seeing the look on his face I had to question whether he’d be able to do it.

  That evening as they sat on the sofa, even Lindsay noticed how Matthew’s face seemed to be fixed in a grin. They were watching an episode of Criminal Minds, a particularly gruesome one at that, certainly nothing to smile about. Lindsay glanced over a number of times then turned her eyes back to the television. Something was up, she was sure of it. When the third murder victim was found in a dumpster, Lindsay looked at Matthew again. He was still wearing the same silly grin, and she could stand it no longer.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked.

  “No,” Matthew answered. “Why?”

  “Well, you’re acting very strange.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You seem awfully happy about something.”

  “I’m just happy to be here with you.”

  A puzzled look settled on Lindsay’s face. “Maybe so, but you’re not usually this happy.”

  “It must be the Christmas season,” Matthew answered.

  “I know what you mean.” Lindsay snuggled deeper into his arm and switched the channel to TBS, because they were featuring a holiday movie marathon. “Oh, Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street,” she said. She settled back into Matthew’s arms with a grin that was a reflection of his.

  ~ ~ ~

  Humans think Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday; it’s not. Christmas is. Valentine’s Day is a farce, a joke. It’s a single day of sharing love. But Christmas…well, there’s just no measuring the amount of love that stirs up. Humans of all sizes, shapes and ages start walking around with a smile on their faces and wishing others Merry Christmas. You know how many do that for Valentine’s Day? None, that’s how many. On Valentine’s Day most humans are lucky if they walk away with a greeting card or a little box of chocolates—and don’t get me started on the number of males who neglect to do even that much. Don’t they realize that such a slight will end up in an argument that stretches on for weeks?

  Personally, I think Valentine’s Day deserves the same measure of love and happiness as Christmas, but The Boss thinks otherwise, so for now things are going to remain exactly as they are. He said Christmas was all about celebrating His Son’s birthday, and of course I came back with, “How about celebrating my birthday?”

  He raised an eyebrow and asked, “Are you willing to give your life to save the humans?”

  I had to answer no, which pretty much ended the discussion.

  ~ ~ ~

  Lindsay’s cast came off four days later, and although her right leg was thinner and weaker it was definitely cause for celebration. That evening she and Matthew again had dinner at Bistrot La Minette and even though the December night air had a nip to it, they strolled through the park afterward. They walked a short way then sat on a bench gazing at a white moon through the bare branches of trees. The snow flurries began a few moments later.

  Lindsay dropped her head onto Matthew’s shoulder. “This is all so perfect,” she murmured, “being here with you, the restaurant, the snow…it’s as if God arranged this especially for us.”

  She wasn’t too far from wrong.

  ~ ~ ~

  Christmas morning Matthew arrived in time for breakfast. Just as John had promised, the side door to the garage was unlocked. Matthew carried the crate in, then returned to the car for the dog and the shopping bag filled with presents. He sat the bag on the floor and placed the dog in the crate.

  “It won’t be long,” he whispered, “but you have to stay here and be quiet.”

  The dog cocked its head to the right and whimpered.

  “Shhhh. No noise.” He put his finger to his lips and repeated the shushing sound. For the past eight days he’d worked on teaching the dog not to bark when he walked away. Ever so slowly Matthew backed away from the cage, and the dog sat silently. He turned, walked out the door and listened for a few more seconds. Silence. Matthew gave a sigh of relief, then circled the house and rang the front doorbell.

  Lindsay opened the door. She wore a Santa hat with a sprig of mistletoe pinned onto it.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said and pointed to the mistletoe.

  Matthew set his shopping bag down and kissed her. “You didn’t need the mistletoe,” he whispered in her ear.

  “I know,” she whispered back, “but I figured it was a call to action.”

  They were halfway through breakfast when Lindsay heard the yelp. “Was that a dog?”

  Eleanor said nothing but gave Matthew a questioning look.

  “What? I didn’t hear anything,” he said.

  “Shhhh,” Lindsay said and listened for it to come again, but of course it didn’t.

  “Must’ve been the wind,” John suggested.

  “I guess,” Lindsay said and went back to the conversation they were having.

  Minutes later she heard it again. “Anyone hear that?” she asked, but all three of them immediately shook their heads. Lindsay turned to Matthew. “Did you ever get any response on that poster I put up in the office?”

  Before she’d finished the question, Matthew shoved a chunk of ham into his mouth and began chewing.

  “Mumph.” He gave a gesture indicating he couldn’t talk with his mouth full.

  Eleanor jumped in. “Goodness gracious, will you look at the time! I wonder what’s keeping Ray and Traci?” She followed the question with a lengthy oration on how much having the family together meant to her. Her voice was loud—much louder than normal.

  “Are you okay?” Lindsay finally asked.

  “Okay? Well, of course I’m okay. Why would you think otherwise?”

  “Well, you’re talking awfully loud,” Lindsay said.

  Fortunately Eleanor didn’t have to respond, because the doorbell chimed.

  Beyond the noise of people wishing each other Merry Christmas, Eleanor heard it again: the dog. Matthew had said he could keep her quiet, but apparently the dog disagreed and Eleanor didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

  “I think we could use a little Christmas music,” she said and slid a disc into the player. She cranked the volume up three notches.

  “Isn’t that kind of loud?” Traci said.

  When everyone began shouting to be heard above the strains of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, John ejected the disc.

  “I think we can do without the music,” he said. Only after Eleanor glared across at him did he realize why she’d turned the music up so loud.

  Seconds later they heard it again—a sharp high-pitched bark.

  “Is that a dog?” Traci asked.

  John, who by now had caught on, said, “Dog?”

  “See, it is a dog,” Lindsay said, “Traci heard it too.” She turned to Traci. “You heard it right?”

  By then the barking had stopped.

  “I thought I heard a bark,” Traci said, “but now I’m not too sure.”

  No one noticed Matthew slip back through the dining room and out the kitchen door. He came from the garage carrying a bundle of white fur, but before he got to the archway of the living room he set the dog down on the floor and pointed her toward the living room.

  “Go find Lindsay,” he whispered, and off the dog went. Hopefully his plan would work.

  Since Lindsay had been looking for this dog for over four months, you might wonder why she wouldn’t recognize it right away, but don’t forget, the dog has been bathed, clipped and groomed, so it looks different. The only part of the dog that loo
ks exactly the same is the eyes. Eyes never change. Eyes tell the truth of a person, and it’s no different with dogs. Of course, Lindsay may find it difficult to catch sight of her dog’s eyes in the frenzy of running and tail wagging.

  Everything happened in a flash. The dog bounded into the room and ran from one person to another sniffing. First it was John—sniff, sniff. Nothing. The dog moved to Lindsay—sniff, sniff. Yep, that was who he’d been searching for. One leap, and the ball of fur was in her lap.

  Lindsay took one look at the dog’s face and squealed. “You found my dog!” By then the dog was licking her face and reaching for the mistletoe on the Santa hat.

  “It really is your dog,” Matthew said, “but how’d you know?”

  “Her eyes,” Lindsay answered.

  Matthew walked over and looked at the dog’s eyes. Despite his years of veterinary practice, he could not see what Lindsay saw.

  “I’ve been looking for this dog for a long time,” Lindsay said, nuzzling her nose up against the fur of the dog’s face. “And it’s obvious that she’s been looking for me too, haven’t you, sweetie?”

  Matthew said nothing about how he’d trained the dog to recognize Lindsay by smell, how for the past eight days the dog had slept cuddled in the sweater she’d left in the office.

  He smiled. “Yep, she’s definitely your dog.”

  A barrage of questions followed, most of which were about how he’d finally located the dog. I noticed that when Matthew told the story, he left out the how Jayne and Gerald were sad to see the dog go. Not that I blame him for doing so; some things are best left unsaid.

  After several minutes of frolicking with the dog, Lindsay noticed the tiny red velvet pouch tied to her collar. “What’s this?” she asked, looking at Matthew.

  He answered with the same look he’d given her that first night in the park, the look that caused her to fall in love with him—the look that promised forever. Her fingers trembled as she untied the silk thread that fastened the pouch to the collar.

  No one spoke. Traci stopped halfway through opening a package and sat waiting.

  Lindsay eased the tip of her finger into the pouch and loosened the drawstring. Even when the pouch was fully open it was too small to reach into, so Lindsay turned it over and shook the contents into her lap. It was a tiny square of paper that had been folded over countless times. Slowly she began to peel it open.

  The paper was a pale blue color, and she could see bits of writing. The first fold revealed parts of a word ar…The next fold revealed a y; the third fold revealed wil. Lindsay thought she had it figured out until the next fold attached a mo to the y…ymo? She opened the last three folds, but with all the creases it still wasn’t readable. Lindsay smoothed the paper out and read it aloud.

  “Will you join me for a honeymoon in Paris?”

  For a moment she sat there too stunned to speak. Then she looked over at Matthew and with tears in her eyes answered, “Yes.”

  Matthew crossed the room in three long strides and scooped her into his arms. “I love you, Lindsay,” he said, and before she could answer he covered her mouth with his. When the kiss ended Matthew brought his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Read the other side.”

  “Read the other side?” she repeated, looking at him quizzically.

  He nodded. “Read the other side of the paper.”

  Lindsay looked down at the paper in her hand then turned it over. On the other side were a few words printed in such a small size that it was barely readable. She brought the paper closer to her face and stumbled through the words. “Look on the tree.”

  “Look on the tree?” she said.

  He gave her a mischievous grin and nodded.

  “I’m supposed to find something that’s on the tree?”

  He nodded again.

  Everyone’s eyes were on Lindsay as she moved toward the big tree standing in the corner of the room. At one time she’d known every ornament on the tree, but now Eleanor had added several and there seemed to be more shiny balls than she remembered. First she found a white porcelain dog that seemed unfamiliar. “Is this it?”

  Matthew shook his head.

  Eleanor and John were squeezed together in the oversized chair, and Traci made no move to finish unwrapping the present she’d been holding. Even Ray’s eyes were fixed on whatever Lindsay might pull from the tree.

  “This one?” Lindsay dangled a tiny silver oval with the picture of a baby inside.

  “No.” Eleanor laughed. “That’s Ray when he was just a month old.”

  “Me?” Ray walked over to check out the picture.

  Lindsay fingered a porcelain dollhouse that looked suspicious, but then she remembered her mother giving it to her when she was five years old. She stepped closer to the tree and circled around one side and then the other. She nosed her way into a clump of pine branches then backed out and scanned the tree.

  “I can’t really see anything—” That’s when she spotted it hanging on a branch a third of the way down from the top: a ball different from the others, smaller and not glass. She reached up and plucked it from the branch. “This?”

  Matthew smiled and nodded.

  A lacquered wooden ball? What was special about… Lindsay noticed the seam where two halves joined together. Handling it gingerly, she twisted the top half in one direction and the lower half in the other. The pieces moved. She did it again, and they moved a bit more. When Lindsay twisted the ball open, a diamond engagement ring dropped into her hand.

  Cupid

  And Now, the End of This Story

  Now that I’ve done what I came to do, it’s time to be moving on. Harriet Hornsby has been waiting for over three months, but this very afternoon she’ll meet the plumber who lives two doors down and they’ll fall madly in love. And there’s Willie Jenkins. Since his wife passed on some five years ago he’s been raising three girls all by himself, but today he’ll meet Mariah, a lovely woman with a daughter of her own. Before summer they’ll be a blended family living in a restored house over on Chestnut Street. Yeah, I know I said I was going to take today off, but I figured why waste a love-filled day like Christmas.

  Since you’ve been with me throughout this whole affair, I’m going to give you a peek into the future so you’ll know how things turn out—which, believe me, is something I rarely do. In March, Eleanor and John get married. It’s a relatively small affair, with Lindsay serving as the maid of honor and Ray as the best man. The week before their marriage, Eleanor will speak directly to The Boss several times a day and ask if he can arrange it so that no one is in an argumentative mood on that day. I guess the lady’s got pull because from what I see, He came through for her.

  Before Eleanor and John celebrate their first anniversary, Traci and Ray will present them with their first grandchild—a girl named Ellie, because according to Ray “Eleanor” was too long a name for a baby. Ray, although he will never be Mister Sunshine, is a far better man than he once was which, needless to say, makes everyone happy.

  Lindsay and Matthew are married in the first week of September, and, yes, they’ll honeymoon in Paris. In fact, they’ll rent a tiny studio apartment two blocks from the Sorbonne and spend an entire month there. Although they won’t realize it until six weeks later, that’s where they’ll start their family. As for Lindsay’s job at Genius Advertising, it never materializes. At the last moment the dog food client backs out and when Morrissey calls to say she’ll be working on a building supply account instead, Lindsay decides against taking the job. By then she’s certain she has a calling for veterinary work. Not long after their honeymoon, she’ll enroll at the Manor College to study veterinary medicine.

  The dog…well, they named her Holly, in honor of Christmas. What else? I was hoping for something like Valentine, but it never happened. From what I can see, that pup has already had two litters of puppies and is still going strong.

  Now for the most interesting news. Remember the 684 unhappy couples? Well, in every single
case their love has been re-ignited and passion abounds. I’m not one to go around tooting my own horn, but in this case it’s warranted. I know I told you working with Lindsay was a true test of my patience, but I also learned something. For nearly a decade I’d been complaining to The Boss about people using a computer to find love, but He refused to listen.

  “Get used to it,” he said, “it’s the future.” When I pursued the argument, He said not to expect any sympathy from Him because the humans have even converted His story into an e-book.

  That’s when I got smart. Instead of fighting technology, I started using it. Lindsay’s dog was the first instance, but it worked so well I tried it again. Although no one could account for exactly how it happened, every major cruise line sent out a flood of e-mails offering a seven-day getaway to the Caribbean for $100. Those e-mails went to exactly 684 households, and every one of the recipients took advantage of the offer.

  Maggie Grossman was the first to click on the notice, and after she’d read it through five times she banged on the bathroom door and told Sidney to hurry up so he could start packing.

  “Packing?”

  “Yeah, we’re going on a cruise!” Maggie yelled.

  “We can’t afford—”

  “This one’s a hundred dollars,” Maggie said. “We can’t afford NOT to go!”

  It took Sidney less than three minutes to fold up the newspaper he’d been reading, flush the toilet and pull two suitcases from the top shelf of the bedroom closet. The next day they were on a cruise ship headed for Nassau. And when they arrived home a week later, they were as starry-eyed as newlyweds. Although Sidney had been calling his wife Mag for well over ten years, he came home addressing her as Sweetie Pie.

  The same thing happened with the Beckers. In fact Emily Becker reached into the bottom drawer of her dresser and pulled out a black lace trousseau nightgown that she’d never worn and packed it into the suitcase. She wore it on their first night at sea and…well, I don’t need to tell you what that led to. Sam Becker, who was somewhat of a skinflint, promised Emily that they’d be going on cruises twice a year from now on.