by A M Heath
Minutes later, I whipped into my driveway, then stormed through the house from the back door, but my restless energy sent me straight out the front door, stomping the whole way to the mailbox. I jerked the door open but found nothing inside. I slammed it shut and stuffed my hands into my pockets.
The warm lights glowing next door at my grandmother’s house were a contrast to the dark structure just up ahead. Beside me, the twinkling Christmas lights practically sang carols to all who passed by, but there wasn’t a scrap of proof from my house that we were anywhere near the Christmas season.
Movement from Granny’s kitchen window caught my eye, and I turned to it before I could stop myself. The moment I locked gazes with the woman through the window, I scowled. There were two women, besides my grandmother and deceased mother, who owned every corner of my heart. And both of them had betrayed me in the end. I had already had it out with Kelly, and I had no desire to deal with the one staring at me.
Jerking my head away, I stomped into the house and slammed the door shut behind me. With my fists set on my waist, I eyed my space, once my parents’ house before they had passed and left it to me.
It no longer looked like the cozy home Mom had decorated and left behind. Time had seen to those alterations.
It no longer carried the touches of an eager bride-to-be. Pain had seen to those alterations.
It now looked like a bachelor’s home. My one worn leather couch and almost matching leather recliner. Old take-out boxes peeking at me from the kitchen counter. Remotes strewn about the end tables.
But there were exactly three boxes left in this house that wasn’t mine. And it was past time for them to go.
Natalie:
“Sanford Stone,” Mia said with a shiver. “His name just gives me the chills.”
I paused my stirring and angled my head to view Mia at Ms. Carol’s counter and bit back my snicker. Sanford’s name gave me the chills too … but of a different sort.
“How is the strawberry jam coming, Natalie?” Ms. Carol asked, sidling up to me.
I sent her a wide grin. “Just fine. It’s almost finished.”
“Good. I have the jars prepped and ready.” Ms. Carol turned to Hunter and Mia. “Enough cookies, you two.”
Hunter grinned around the cookie he had stuffed in his mouth just as she was speaking.
I returned to the jam, my gaze snagging the sight of Sanford Stone as he trudged up his sidewalk from his mailbox to his front door, his hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward. I frowned. I could see why Mia associated his name with hostility, but it wasn’t always that way, and I ached to see his heart so unmoving.
Just then, he peered at his grandmother’s house, his hard stare colliding with me. My heart froze in my chest. Even from this far away, even with that scowl on his face, Sanford was the most handsome man I knew. He always had been.
Mia gasped at my elbow, pulling my thoughts away.
“He looked right at us,” Mia whispered. “I hope I don’t die of frostbite.”
I sent her a look of correction, but she shrugged it off and walked away.
“I feel bad for him,” Hunter proclaimed, stopping just behind Mia’s shoulder. “I tried to get him to come over, but he wouldn’t. Again.”
“Christmas is a tough season for him, but he wasn’t always so angry all the time,” I said.
“I highly doubt it.”
“No, it’s true, Mia. He used to be such a happy young man.” Ms. Carol walked to the stove and set a tray of canning jars on the counter.
My heart twisted inside as I thought back to those days.
“Well, he’s not happy now, and he certainly hates Christmas,” Mia countered.
“He doesn’t hate Christmas,” Ms. Carol said with a shake of her head. She lifted the ladle and began spooning piping hot jam into the jars.
I watched and moved the funnel from jar to jar as she filled them.
Mia laughed. “Oh, yeah. Well, explain that then!”
Together, we all whipped around and looked out the other window where Mia pointed to Sanford’s backyard.
I craned my neck to see and blinked back my surprise.
“Those sure do look like Christmas decorations. Boxes of them,” Hunter said.
“They are. I watched him throw them out the back door.”
We all stared at her, mouths agape.
Mia reared back, scrunching up her nose, her thick curls swaying. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the Christmas hater who threw out decorations.”
“But why would he do that?” I asked in a whisper, knowing no one in the room could answer for him.
Just then, his backdoor opened, and a long rectangular box shot out, hitting one box and falling over onto its side.
“Well, there went the tree!” Mia shouted.
Hunter wagged his head. “I didn’t realize Uncle Sanford was that bad off.”
Mia crossed her arms. “I don’t see why it matters. He’s only hurting himself.”
I bit my lip and hung my head, my heart pinching inside. “That’s not true, Mia. He’s hurting those who love him most.”
Hunter backed away from the window, running a hand through his hair. “I wish we could sign him up for a Scrooge treatment.”
I chuckled.
“That’d be a great idea! The ghosts would straighten him out in a single night.” Mia laughed, and we all joined her.
Ms. Carol went back to filling up her jars, but I could see that she was thinking about her grandson. We both were.
The idea lingered in my mind, tickling something as if there was more to the notion than the out-of-reach comment it was intended as. Christmas Ghosts. Christmas Ghosts. A smile and an exercise. A rush flowed through me at once. “Then let’s do it!”
Everyone stared at me.
“Do what?” Hunter asked, giving his head a jerk to reposition his bangs.
“Let’s send him Christmas Ghosts.”
Mia faced me with both hands propped on her hips and all the sass she owned. “And … umm … where exactly do you expect to find Christmas Ghosts?”
“Think about it.” I looked from person to person. “We could be the Christmas Ghosts. We could help show him what he’s missing. It would be like an intervention.”
“So, like,” Hunter started and stopped. “We’d what? Sit down and talk to him while wearing bed sheets or something?”
“No, no, no. It’s like … like the exercises at work. When someone comes in, they tell us what is hurting them, and we create a custom plan just for them. We determine which exercises will help without reinjuring them.”
Still, I only got open stares and quiet blinks out of them.
“What if we were his Christmas Ghosts, but we didn’t tell him? And what if … what if you,” I said, turning to Ms. Carol, “were to challenge him? Sanford loves a challenge. He’s competitive and he doesn’t like to lose. So, if you challenged him to … do these exercises, one each day, that forced him to celebrate Christmas, then … well, then he’d have to do them, and maybe along the way, he’d come out of this funk he’s in.”
Ms. Carol grinned from ear to ear. “That just might work,” she whispered in awe.
“So, are we supposed to come up with three exercises, since there were three ghosts?” Mia asked.
I wagged my head. “No. It’s too short.”
“Thirty-one days,” Ms. Carol said with a snap of her fingers. “Tomorrow is the first, it’ll be perfect.”
“But what are we going to do?”
I eyed Hunter. I had the answer of Christmas things on the tip of my tongue when Ms. Carol said, “You just leave that up to me.” She gave my arm a squeeze.
This was it. I could feel it. The exercise, the plan, we needed to win Sanford back.
As Ms. Carol slipped out the back door to extend our challenge, my stomach twisted inside. Oh, Lord, let this work.
Sanford:
I set my phone down and flicked on the TV. There was a
knock on my back door that couldn’t have been the Chinese food I had just ordered for dinner. Drawing in a sustaining breath, I opened the door.
Granny stood at my doorstep with a grin and a box in hand. One of the very boxes I had just sent out the door minutes ago.
I stepped back so she could enter.
“I found these.”
“You can take them.” I crossed the kitchen and jerked the fridge door open, snagging a bottle of water. Turning to Granny, I held up the bottle. She shook her head, so I kept it for myself and closed the fridge.
She dropped the box on the table. “How’d they end up outside?”
I shrugged and took a long drink, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before answering. “I threw them out.”
Granny eyed me with a head tilt. “Why?”
I drew in a deep breath through my nostrils. “Because I needed the closet space.”
Her brows furrowed. “But they’re yours.”
“Not really. Kelly bought them. She said my place needed Christmas cheer.”
“She wouldn’t be wrong,” Granny muttered.
I ignored the remark. “She spruced the place up, then broke our engagement two weeks later. I don’t have any need for them, and she clearly doesn’t want them.”
I didn’t tell Granny how I had stored them away after Christmas that year, in the hopes that she’d return for them and return to our lives together. But she didn’t. And I didn’t decorate again. And six years later, I finally snapped and tossed them out into the yard.
Granny watched me for a long moment. The kind of moment that stretches out so long that the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
“Do you wanna know what I think?”
“What?” I chewed the side of my lip, ignoring the uneasy feeling.
“I think you’re bitter at Kelly, and she’s the reason you hate Christmas.”
I snorted. “No.”
Granny grinned. “Oh, yes, you are. You’ve been this way around the holidays since Kelly walked out.”
“No, I haven’t. I’m over it, and this has nothing to do with those Christmas decorations. That junk needed to go. And just because I was blowing off some steam by tossing it out, doesn’t mean I hate Christmas.”
“Yeah? Then prove it.” The challenging glint in Granny’s eyes made me narrow my own.
“I don’t have to prove anything.”
She waved both hands in the air and started for the door. “It was just as well. You would never do it.”
I exhaled. “Do what?”
She smoothed down an already straight strand of gray hair that was bobbed close to her ears and eyed me. “I was going to extend a Christmas challenge, but you’ll never be able to go through with it, and then you’ll have to confirm that Kelly has caused you to hate Christmas.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned against the counter. “You do realize that Christmas is meant to celebrate Jesus coming to earth, right? I don’t hate that. I rejoice in it, even.”
Her silver brows shot up. “Rejoice in it? Sanford, you can’t be serious. Nothing about your attitude shows that you rejoice in anything.”
I leaned forward. “Keep Christmas your way and allow me to keep it in mine.”
“Spoken like a true Scrooge,” Granny muttered with a frown. “Keeping Christmas like a bitter old hermit has people thinking–”
“I don’t really care what people think. What business is it of mine? Or of theirs, for that matter?”
Granny’s shoulders slumped, and she looked so heartbroken by my words that I was swamped with guilt of my own.
“Son,” she said, stepping closer. “It’s your business how you represent our Lord. You say you love Him, yet it’s not easy to see by your attitude. I left you alone that first year when Kelly walked out. And then the next year and the next … But it’s been six years. I thought you would have handled it by now.”
“I have.”
“I’m not so sure about that, and I don’t think your way of celebrating is honoring Christ, do you?”
“What, just because I’ve given up all the commercial things attached to Christmas doesn’t mean I’m not celebrating in my heart, because I am.”
Granny winced. “You think this is celebrating? Sanford, if it was only about setting aside the commercial side of the holiday, I’d be fine with that. But it’s your entire attitude. You’re sulking. You’re hostile toward anything that represents Christmas. And you’re bitter.”
I folded my lips together and gnawed on them from the inside.
“Just because you spend all your time away from me doesn’t mean that I haven’t noticed, because, honey, I have. And I’m worried about you.”
“I already told you, there’s nothing to worry about. So what if I don’t celebrate like I used to. I’m not a kid anymore.” The pit of my gut burned. “And thanks to Kelly, I don’t have any kids to enjoy all the extra stuff with.”
“Thanks to Kelly?”
A new heat blazed behind my face, and the newly formed image of her pregnant with someone else’s child socked me in the stomach. “I didn’t break off our engagement.”
Worn and weary eyes stared into mine. Granny let out a sigh. “It’s been six years, Sanford. Is it really still Kelly’s fault?”
“Yes,” I ground out. What did she think, that ideal women were mailing themselves to my front door?
“You know I love you.”
“Yes,” I muttered.
After a long pause, Granny lifted a single brow. “So I challenge you, Sanford Justin Stone, to celebrate Christmas every day. And to be sure that you do, I invite you to celebrate it with me in my home every day in December.”
I inhaled a deep breath. “Celebrate how?”
She gave an innocent shrug of her shoulders. “Oh, in different ways. But if you really don’t hate Christmas, you won’t mind any of them.” She ended with a sly grin that had me exhaling in defeat.
“Alright, Granny. I accept your challenge.”
She patted me on the cheek. “I knew you would, dear.” She started for the door but turned back to me. “Oh, and tomorrow is the first. Be at my house after work.” With one last triumphant smile, she added, “And bring those boxes with you.”
With my jaw hanging open, I watched her trot across the yard, singing “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” As Granny neared her home, I looked up and caught three faces peering back at me: my nephew, his friend, and a woman I had rarely spoken to in the last six years.
Stave Two
“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, “remove me from this place.”
“I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they are what they are, do not blame me!”
“Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed, “I cannot bear it!”
Sanford:
I slammed a folder down onto my desk, then rubbed the bridge of my nose.
“How did practice go last night?” Viola asked, her non-slip shoes softly patting the tiled floor as she circled into the office and stopped before me.
I paused my rubbing and glared at her from over the fingers still pinching my nose.
A frown pulled on her face as she leaned into the door frame, arms crossed over her chest. Her silent study flipped from the desk then back to me. “So I did hear you slamming things around in here.”
I let my arms flop down to my side. “Maybe,” I challenged.
Viola sucked in a breath and let it out. “The truck order was put in yesterday. The floor has been running smoothly all day.”
“Isn’t it time for you to go home?”
She bobbed her head. “I clocked out already.” A slow smile spread across her face. “And it’s time for you to leave too. Is that the trouble?”
I only glared back at her.
She pushed off the wall, her eyes narrowing. “You didn’t answer my question. How are things going with your new team?”
I h
ated the way my pulse kicked up. In answer, I only clamped down and continued my glare.
Viola’s face fell. “Sanford,” she whispered in a breathless way. “What happened? You’re normally glowing when I bring up your team.”
In and out. All I could do was breathe.
She winced. “Is it really that bad?”
I forced myself to answer. “The boys are great.”
I turned in search of my jacket.
“But?” came the soft whisper from behind.
I pulled in a deep breath and eased it out.
“Is it her?”
Viola knew enough to know there was once a her in my life, but she didn’t know it all. I didn’t answer and let her prattle behind me.
“You coach eight and nine-year-olds, right? Surely, it’s not … It couldn't be.”
I loosened clenched jaws. “One of the boys is her stepson.”
Her gasp added to the fisting in my chest.
I flinched when she touched my arm from behind. “You weren’t expecting her, were you?”
I wagged my head.
I could almost hear her thoughts, her questions, but thankfully she remained silent.
She gave my arm a squeeze followed by a pat. “Would you like to come for dinner? Roger and I can–”
I cut her off with a quick shake. “Thanks, but I have plans.” I stepped away and snatched my coat off the hook, then turned to her. “Real ones. With my grandmother.”
A genuine smile beamed back at me. “Oh, that’s great, honey.”
I snorted and sent her another scowl. At her questioning head tilt, I added, “It’s a Christmas … thing.”
Viola’s grin twisted, and I could practically hear the bless your heart that she was holding back.
I rolled my eyes and wagged my head, tossing my coat across the back of my chair.
“Well, I think it’s great.”
“Spare me.”
She cackled. Actually cackled. “This is great, really. And it’s past time. So was it this woman who made you hate Christmas?”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”