Christmas Comes to Dickens

by Nancy Fraser

  Nothing much changed in Dickens. The town always looked like a movie set. The first pictures he’d ever sold were ones taken during the winter holidays. The shots and the cozy stories he’d written to go with them had gone into a travel book that made him a nice nest egg and was still on the shelves in New England bookstores. There had been a few times when its royalties had made the difference between ramen noodles and hamburgers for dinner.

  He’d left town in that first heady rush of success, taking his camera and laptop and following floods and tornadoes and hurricanes. He’d shot disasters for adventure, beauty pageants for the money, and things of incredible beauty because everyone needed beauty in their lives. He found it in people who’d suffered and been shunned because they were scarred, in areas that were scarred as well, in places stark with pain and broken hearts.

  He’d never looked back, only come back for fleeting family visits. But he couldn’t deny the ache he often felt when he thought of the redhead who’d disappeared into a store on Cratchit Lane. A part of him would always wonder what it would have been like if she’d gone with him.

  Although he was anxious to get to the camp, he was also hungry. Lunchtime had been a couple of hours before, and he’d missed it altogether. He drove back into town, parked in the municipal lot, and got out of the car, an instant shiver making him dive back inside for his coat. Oregon had been cold when the plane had left it sometime in the middle of last night, but New England’s cold was...colder. He slipped a little bit on a sidewalk and grinned wryly. Whiter, too, with some ice hidden under the snow just to trap a guy who’d forgotten to be careful.

  “Watch your step, young man!”

  The husky voice, laced with laughter, got his attention. Good grief, it was Mrs. Withers, the woman who’d taught geography and gotten him interested in both photography and travel. She’d aged some, but she’d done it well, still standing a straight and angular six feet, still wearing a sweater, pearls, and a skirt that reached her calves.

  “I can’t believe that’s you, Mrs. Withers.” He gave her a hug, wondering if it was an omen of some sort that the second person he’d seen that he knew was one of his favorites in a lifetime of them. “It wouldn’t be my first time to land wrong side up.” In more ways than one. He looked up at the storefront where she was sweeping snow from the entryway. Miss Amelia Crumpton’s Tea Emporium. Was that new? He didn’t remember having seen it on previous trips back to Dickens, but he couldn’t recall what had been in its picturesque building on Main Street, either. Maybe things changed more than he thought.

  “Call me Edna—you’re not in class anymore. You look cold,” said Mrs. Withers, beaming. “Won’t you step inside and warm up? I have some gingerbread still warm from someone’s oven. Not mine—I just look like I should be able to bake gingerbread.”

  He really wanted a beer and a sandwich and a whole platter of French fries, but thirty seconds later, Jed found himself in a store full of—every kind of tea known to man and a few that probably weren’t. Pots, both modern and traditional, filled shelves. Gift sets of cups with saucers, tea, and teaspoons were tucked into empty spaces.

  Virtually everything had to do with the upcoming holiday. Themed Christmas trees were everywhere. “This is a lot of Christmas,” he said, blinking.

  “’Tis the season,” she said cheerfully, handing him a plate that looked a whole lot like real crystal with a perfect square of gingerbread on it. “Coffee, too? Or would you like some tea?”

  “Coffee, please. Just black.” About a quart of it might keep him awake long enough to settle in at the camp.

  “Go ahead and look around,” she invited, handing him a cup a moment later. “Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  He wanted to thank her and leave, but the coffee smelled rich and the gingerbread was quite possibly the best thing he’d ever eaten. So he walked around carrying the crystal plate and vintage blue-and-white cup and looked at more Christmas stuff than he’d ever seen in one place. And more tea stuff than he’d seen in a whole bunch of places.

  Near the back of the store, he stopped in front of a green tree covered in 1950s-era glass ornaments and remembered the ones his mother had wrapped and unwrapped carefully every year. They’d belonged to her parents and Jed thought his sister had them now.

  How many years had it been since he’d had a Christmas tree?

  He walked on, coming to a stop in front of a small white tree covered with red ornaments. Bells and cardinals so realistic he could almost hear their beckoning chirps.

  A few minutes later, he carried his empty plate and cup back to where Mrs. Withers was rearranging things on the counter. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Not that he was going to have a Christmas tree this year, either, but walking around the store with its creaky floorboards and wonderful smells had made him long for...something. He passed the photography tree with its myriad of miniature cameras and tripods, paused at another one with dozens of different snow people gamboling over its branches, and returned to the one with the red birds on it.

  He loved cardinals, had spent hours at the camp photographing them and even more time just watching them. While he had a ton of pictures of them in all seasons and situations, they were glorious against a backdrop of snow. He hoped the fresh stuff falling out there now would hang around for a few days. Winter shoots were among his favorites. He took one of the feathered ornaments off the tree, admiring the artisanship in its construction. If he let his mind wander enough, he decided with a mental eye roll and full realization that he was way too tired, he could feel the little heart beating under his fingers. And he remembered...

  He put the bird back on its branch, stroking its feathers with a forefinger, and stood and looked at it for a long moment, taking a couple of deep breaths. Why would a thirty-nine-year-old man get emotional about a bird? A bird that wasn’t even real, for God’s sake.

  Never mind. He knew, but he didn’t want to think about it right now. No, he’d just buy an ornament because his former teacher had always been so nice to him and then be on his way. He’d get one of those glass things to go with the collection his sister had. Then he needed French fries and a beer and sleep, in that exact order.

  But when he handed his debit card to Mrs. Withers, it was the bird she wrapped carefully in tissue paper and placed in a decorated brown paper bag. She handed it to him, leaning toward him on a soft wave of peppermint and gingerbread. She searched his gaze, her expression concerned “There’s magic in Christmas, you know, Jed. All you have to do is find it.”

  He smiled his thanks, feeling another rush of the emotion that was both unusual and not quite comfortable. “Could you tell me where to get some more of that gingerbread?” he asked. “It’s a little magic all by itself.”

  “Certainly.” She grinned at him. “Silver Threads & Golden Needles is the quilt shop on Cratchit Lane. Just three doors from here heading toward the Common. You can’t miss it. The proprietor offers homemade gingerbread as well as the best fabric selection in town.”

  FEE REFILLED THE COFFEE urn on the antique sideboard and restocked the cookies and gingerbread inside the small pastry display case she’d found in the back room when she bought Silver Threads & Golden Needles. The Klatchers, the traditional quilting group, came when she left at six. She used to close the shop and hover in the background when the quilters came, but had soon learned they were perfectly able to run the group without her. Even if they bought fabric or notions, they left everything just as they’d found it and put payment with purchase details in an envelope in the drawer of the cutting table.

  She felt as if she’d been running all day. The morning had been busy in the store—customers who gave handmade holiday gifts bought fabric and sewed right up until Christmas Eve. People who loved sewists bought gift certificates with generosity, always grateful for the free package of hand-quilting needles included with the present. Fee had even opened the shop early one Christmas mornin
g because a customer had ruined a quilt block by laying the fabric’s pattern the wrong way and hadn’t had enough to replace it.

  In the afternoon, Ailey had minded the store while Fee went to the post office, stopped at home to get the baked goods she’d forgotten that morning, and sneaked into the tea shop for a cup of Earl Grey with Edna, leaving a pan of gingerbread with her.

  With less than a half hour before official closing time, Fee straightened the bolts, smoothing her fingers over the fabric and noting which inventory needed to be reordered. It was one of her favorite things to do—the crisp and clean texture of new fabric offered hope. Always. It was something most people probably didn’t understand but every person who sewed did. She straightened the rulers on their hangers, secured new pictures of projects on the bulletin board, and took care of the day’s end accounting.

  The bell over the door got her attention, and she looked up with a smile when a tall man in a dark blue coat came in. “Welcome to Silver Threads & Golden Needles,” she said. “May I help you find something?”

  He didn’t look at her, just at the vast rainbow of colors that filled the room. “This is a great looking place,” he said. “Edna told me I could get some gingerbread here. Am I too late?”

  Fee hadn’t heard that voice since she was eighteen and its owner a year older, but it was as familiar as if it had only been yesterday. I have to go, Fee. You understand, don’t you? I won’t have a chance like this again. Why don’t you go with me?

  She wanted to tell him, as soon as she recognized his voice and the loose-limbed grace with which he moved, that she’d wished a thousand times she could have gone with him, but the secret she’d held close had been stronger than wishes. She hadn’t felt as if she had a choice. She may have wrecked her own life—a huge exaggeration if there ever was one—but she wasn’t going to take him down with her.

  She’d loved him too much.

  “Jed?”

  His head swung, the silky light brown hair still shaggy, still straight. How she’d envied him that hair. His eyes, the same blue as an afternoon storm cloud, met hers. “Fiadh.”

  Only he and her mother had called her by her full name, and she still loved the way the Fee-ya came off his tongue. “You’re here,” she said. Nothing like stating the obvious. She shook her head at her own inanity and stepped out from behind the table. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  He met her between the flannel and the fleece, and there was no question that they would hug each other. He had stolen her heart and then broken it all those years ago, but he’d also uncovered courage in her she hadn’t thought she possessed. She’d understood when and why he’d left. The secret had kept her from looking for him later, from seeking a new beginning from the place they had stopped.

  “You look wonderful.” The squint lines she’d always told him he’d get from looking through viewfinders had materialized, but he wore them well. He was broader than he was as a kid, but still built like the basketball player he’d been. She’d kept up with him, buying the travel books and coffee table books he contributed to or wrote and copies of magazines that featured his photography. She’d even gone to a book signing once, for The Other Side, his book on bridges, but had left when he entered the room with a tall blond woman on his arm.

  She’d known he married, and even hoped for a chance to meet his wife, but when the time came, she couldn’t do it. Her relationship with Jed Healy was something so personal and private she couldn’t share it with anyone. If there was a part of her that mourned the fact that he’d fallen in love with someone else, she chose not to acknowledge it.

  “So, do you.” He held her hands, spreading her arms so he could look at her. He didn’t seem to notice the silver threading through her red hair, the waistline that seemed to be disappearing no matter what she did to retain it. What he did notice, though, didn’t surprise her at all.

  When he touched the tea stain near her collarbone, the texture of his fingers warmed her right through the fabric of her green cotton sweater. “I’m glad to see not everything has changed,” he said, laughter crinkling the lines around his eyes. “You still enjoy what you’re drinking.”

  “Fully,” she said solemnly. “I don’t have a single article of clothing that hasn’t enjoyed it with me.” She slapped lightly at his fingers, then held them in hers. “It’s so good to see you. Are you staying out at the camp over the holidays? Is your family coming?”

  His smile slipped a little. “I’m staying at the camp, but no one’s coming. Can we have dinner while I’m here, though, and catch up?”

  “Of course. I’ll even cook if you can get your courage up, Healy.”

  “Count on it.”

  He still held her hand...or she held his. She couldn’t have said which. And his smile...she loved that smile as much as she had a lifetime ago. She wondered where his wife was, if they had children—

  “Mom?” Ailey’s feet on the stairs at the back of the shop announced her entrance into the room. “Mrs. Lindstrom’s quilt is done, but it’s still on the quilter. I’m meeting the girls for tacos at Los Tres Caminos, okay? I won’t be home late.”

  “Sure.” Fee stretched her free hand toward her daughter. “First, I want you to meet Jed Healy, a real blast from the past you never knew I had. Jed, this is my daughter Ailey.”

  Chapter 2

  HE’D KNOWN IT WAS POSSIBLE, of course. He hadn’t seen Fee since he’d left Dickens, hadn’t even heard anything about her beyond the fact that she’d left soon after he did, moving with her parents somewhere in the Midwest. He’d thought she might be married, or thought she might have kids. But not one as grown up as Ailey was, or as beautiful.

  Not one with Roger Kroft’s brown eyes and wide cheekbones. Even with her mother’s hair, there was no doubting who her father was. No denying that at some point Fee and Roger had gotten together. Even after the going-down-in-flames their only encounter had been. Even after a rape that had nearly culminated in Jed’s getting arrested for beating the hell out of Roger on school grounds.

  Surely not. Surely to God, no.

  He withdrew his fingers from Fee’s and smiled at her daughter. “Hello. It’s nice to meet you.” Truth be told, he’d love to photograph her.

  “Hi.” Her smile was all Fee, he was relieved to see, and although her eyes were like Roger’s, her face had none of the hardness of his. She extended her hand, and he took it, appreciating the firm handshake he’d bet she learned from her mother. “I knew Mom went to school here, but I haven’t met anyone she knew then except Joanna, who works here. As far as I knew, she was born when I was.”

  “You’ve been in college ever since we moved here,” said Fee, rolling her eyes at her daughter. “You hardly know anyone from Dickens at all.”

  “Where do you go to school?” asked Jed, accepting the container of gingerbread Fee handed him.

  “Michigan State. We lived there until Mom got the chance to come here and open this shop. I’m going to be a veterinarian, but I get to spend the next year in Ireland on a work-study program. I’ll be right in the county where my grandmother grew up. I’m so anxious.” Ailey’s face was wreathed with excitement. “Mom’s not,” she added, her eyes sparkling so that she looked nothing like Roger. Nothing at all. “She’s afraid I’ll take up Irish dancing and major in Guinness.”

  Jed laughed, and Fee shook her head at him in mock sternness. “Don’t encourage her,” she said. “It’s hard enough letting her go without worrying about Guinness and dancing.” She leaned to kiss her daughter’s cheek. “Have fun. Be careful.”

  “You, too.” She left in a twirl of the plaid cape she was wearing.

  He watched her go, thinking that if things had just been different...

  Fee spoke into the silence that followed her daughter’s departure. “I’m sure you have questions.”

  He did. There was no denying that, but— “It’s not my business.” He looked at the clock. “It’s time for you to close, isn’t it? Let me pay for thi
s and I’ll get out of your way.”

  “No pay.” She shook her head. “It’s a welcome-home gift.”

  “Would you have dinner with me tonight? No need for you to cook.” What was he saying? He was so tired he could barely stand up, but he couldn’t bear the idea of losing this thread of connection. Not yet.

  She was putting on her coat, the teal parka he’d seen hurrying up the sidewalk earlier. She stopped, one arm in, and met his gaze. “How about tomorrow? You look ready to drop.”

  “I am, but I’m hungry, too. Is Antonelli’s still out on the lake?” The Italian eatery had been a favorite.

  “It is.” She hesitated, then pulled her coat the rest of the way on. “I’ll meet you there. Are you going to stop by the cottage first?”

  “No. The people next door turned the heat and water on.” He knew if he went into the house, he wouldn’t want to come out until he’d slept.

  “Okay. Twenty minutes? I walk to work, so I’ll need to get my car.”

  “Great. Let me take you home, though.” He stopped. “Unless you’d rather I didn’t know where you live.”

  She laughed, pulling on gloves and picking up a purse. “Why would I care about that?”

  He was surprised. “That’s part of dating now. You don’t let anyone know where you live.”

  She punched him lightly on the arm. “This isn’t dating, Healy. This is two very old friends having pizza and a beer. Which you’re paying for—the gingerbread, you know.”

  “Yeah, right, Brady. I offered to pay for the gingerbread, remember?” He stopped, suddenly embarrassed. “What is your last name now? Do you have a husband who might not appreciate old friendships?”

  “Still Brady. No husband. Never a husband.” She grinned at him, although there was a certain tightness to it. “There, we got that out of the way. My turn now, where is your wife, and are there little Healys running around somewhere I haven’t seen?”