by Donna Ball
“Anyhows,” she said, “what I wanted to ask you was what’re you going to do with all them boxes of flowers and stuff still sitting on the back porch in the cold where the UPS man left them. Didn’t you say that woman was in charge of the decorations?” That woman was Purline’s preferred way of referring to Harmony.
“The poinsettias and evergreen garlands,” Paul explained to Derrick. “I was so excited when I saw the boxes of ornaments I forgot about them. We’d probably better get them into the storeroom. And let’s not forget to leave a huge tip for the UPS driver this Christmas.”
Derrick looked uneasy. “That’s right,” he said, glancing back toward Harmony’s room. “Harmony was in charge of the floral decor. I assumed that meant actually arranging everything, not just ordering it.”
“We always had a crew do the decorating at home,” Paul remembered, sounding a little concerned himself. Sometimes they still referred to their former house in the suburbs—and, in fact, their former condo in Washington—as “home.”
“I didn’t see ‘hire a decorating crew’ on Harmony’s project board,” Derrick said.
Paul looked worried. “I didn’t see it on anybody’s board.”
“And that’s another thing,” Purline said, oblivious. “I wish to high heaven somebody would explain to me why you’ve got to order pine branches from some fancy florist in Washington, DC, when you’re sitting smack dab in the middle of a forest, practically.”
“Well, Purline, it’s really not quite that simple,” Paul started to explain in a faintly condescending tone, but she waved him away.
“Whatever,” she said. “Just go on and get them things off the porch so I can get out there and sweep. By the way,” she added, “just so you know, I’ll be bringing the kids with me tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll keep them out of the office.”
“Kids?” Derrick echoed. “Your kids?”
And Paul added quickly, “Purline, I’m afraid that’s simply not appropriate …”
“No children under twelve are allowed at the Hummingbird House,” Derrick put in. “It clearly states so in our policy. No pets, no smoking, no children under twelve.”
Purline snapped her gum. “My kids don’t smoke.”
“Purline, seriously …”
“It’s just till my mama gets back from Arizona,” she interrupted impatiently. “You won’t even know they’re here.”
“Your mother?” Derrick seemed to be able to do little more than parrot her words. The thought of children running amuck in the Hummingbird House had completely stripped him of his nerve.
“She usually takes care of them while they’re out of school,” Purline explained, “but my sister’s having gallbladder surgery so she had to go out and stay with her, didn’t she? It being Christmas and all. Speaking of Christmas, when are you all going to put up your tree?”
“Trees,” corrected Paul. “The Hummingbird House will have multiple trees on display. Each room will be a different vignette, which is another reason we simply can’t have children …”
“Well, I’d get to it if I was you,” she said. “Fifteen days till Christmas and all. I know a place you can cut your own for twenty dollars, any size. Just let me know.” She grasped the handle of the vacuum cleaner and started to turn back the way she had come, then caught sight of the check that was still in Derrick’s hand. She peered closer. “Lord have mercy,” she said, “just look at all those commas. You folks really don’t know when to count your blessings, do you? I’ll be back after lunch,” she added, straightening up, “and I’m cleaning that office whether you like it or not.”
The two men stood in the corridor for a moment after she was gone, Derrick gazing down rather guiltily at the check in his hand, and Paul staring at Derrick. Paul said, “Did you hear what she said?”
Derrick nodded. “She’s right. We really do need to stop and count our blessings.”
“No,” Paul said impatiently. “Not that. Christmas is only fifteen days away!”
Derrick lifted his eyes slowly to Paul’s as understanding dawned. “Oh good heavens,” he said. “We haven’t put up a single vignette.”
“And if Harmony’s not going to be here to hang the garland and arrange the flowers …”
“Not to mention the tablescapes …”
“Or the outdoor lighting …”
“Or the Christmas trees!” Derrick took a single deep sobering breath. “We have got to get busy,” he said.
“We have to get help,” clarified Paul.
Derrick gave a decisive nod. “We have to talk to the girls,” he said.
THREE
The Sunflower Room
“Miracles,” intoned Geoffery Allen Windsor, “are usually identified as supernatural events, divine intervention on the behalf of human beings in crisis. And as you’ve seen from some of the examples in this book, this is very often the case. But another way to define a miracle is when you find exactly what you need when you need it. If you look at it like that, I think you’ll start to see miracles all around you, every single day.”
He took off his glasses, looking over the lectern at the small clutch of people gathered in the back room of the bookstore. He was an aging, slightly stooped-shouldered man with thinning hair who had said those same words a thousand times, taken off his glasses just like that a thousand times, and smiled that same smile a thousand times before. “Thank you for coming. Each and every one of you is certainly a miracle in my life. I’ll be happy to sign copies or answer any questions you have.”
A handful of people came up to ask him to sign copies—most of them purchased from a used bookstore, he couldn’t help but notice—or to tell him their own amazing story of the sister whose ten-pound tumor disappeared or the dog who came back home after five years. He listened with a polite smile and glazed-over eyes, and signed his name with a simple “Happy holidays” inscription. “I love the story of the angel at the Twin Towers,” one plump, middle-aged woman confided. There was always at least one. “Do you think it really happened?” He told her, as he always did, that he only collected the stories, he hadn’t witnessed them, but that he believed all things were possible with faith.
In his line of work, it was important to be able to tell a good lie.
Eventually the room cleared and he walked out with Bobbie, who was waiting at the back of the room dying for a smoke. He knew he should stop to thank the store manager, but she was busy at one of the registers, ringing up wrapping paper and stereo headphones and DVDs of the latest zombie apocalypse movie. Besides, thank her for what? She hadn’t sold a single copy of his book, although why that should surprise him he didn’t know. The last things bookstores were interested in selling these days were books.
He pulled on his coat and gloves and he and Bobbie pushed out into the dull gray light of a crowded mall parking lot just outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. Bobbie snatched a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her stylish black leather coat and lit up almost before the door closed behind them.
“You’re the last person in America who still smokes,” he observed.
She blew out a long satisfied stream of gray smoke. “At least I’ll be remembered for something.”
He shot her a dark look and she patted his arm in casual reassurance. “Not that you’re not enough to be remembered for, darling. After all, thirty-six weeks on the Times list is nothing to be sneezed at.”
“That was six years ago.”
“Well.” She inhaled deeply and blew out smoke. “There’s that.”
He nodded toward the coffee kiosk that was arranged beneath a cluster of naked Japanese maples strung with white lights just outside the entrance to J.C. Penny, and they turned their steps in that direction. “So let’s have it,” he said. “You didn’t come all the way out here just to listen to that speech again.”
Bobbie Banks had been Geoffery’s representative at the prestigious Leeman Literary Agency for over ten years. In the beginning, she had been there to help kick off
every book tour and personal appearance, and had made it a point to be in the audience when he appeared on Oprah or Regis and Kelly. And why shouldn’t she have been? He was making her—not to mention the agency—a fortune. These days he was lucky to get her on the phone once or twice a year, and he knew for a fact that the only reason she had been at the reading today was because she was in town for the same writer’s conference he was. He had been invited to be on a panel about writing non-fiction; she was scouting for new clients.
They took two paper cups of coffee and sat on an iron bench beneath the display of white lights. A gaggle of teenage girls in boots and colorful striped scarves walked past, giggling and texting and sharing Instagram photos on their phones. Bobbie blew out a last stream of smoke and stubbed out the cigarette on the side of the bench. “It’s not that I didn’t try, darling, you know that. But the publisher has decided not to go with the second Miracle book. You surely can’t be surprised. They feel the material has run its course and the audience just isn’t what it used to be. The entire book industry isn’t what it used to be, you know that. Hell, I’m not what I used to be.”
Geoffery sipped his coffee and said nothing. Bobbie lit another cigarette.
“What I need from you,” she said, blowing out smoke, “is something new, fresh, dynamic. Something I can get excited about. I mean, this stuff was hot back in oh-nine when the country was in a nosedive and everybody was running scared, but we’ve moved on since then. Do you know what I mean?”
He nodded slowly, taking another sip of his coffee. “It’s a lot easier to sell hope during a recession.”
“Precisely! But we’re all driving new cars now, everybody’s back to work, and nobody’s interested in that sentimental drivel these days.” She cast a quick look at him. “Sorry, darling, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. You know what I mean.”
He gave a small grunt of mirthless laughter. “Of course I do. I’m the one who has to read that sentimental drivel to old ladies in the backs of bookstores and blog about that sentimental drivel three times a week and talk about that sentimental drivel ad nauseum every time somebody asks me out to dinner. And I’ll tell you something else.” He drank from his cup. “There was no damn angel at the Twin Towers.”
She nodded her understanding and drew on the cigarette, giving his knee a single reassuring pat. “As long as we’re on the same page.”
She smoked in silence for a moment, and he sipped his coffee. “What you need is a good celebrity exposé, or a true crime. They’re short-lived, but big bucks. I could get you six figures today for a behind-the-scenes exclusive with a mass murderer.”
“I don’t know any mass murderers.”
“God knows there’re enough of them to choose from.”
“Still don’t know any of them.”
She glanced at him. “Well, you didn’t know anyone who’d ever seen an angel until you started looking, did you?”
“Still don’t.”
“Just think about it.”
“I will.” He took another sip of his coffee. “God knows I’m not going to be able to live off what I’m making much longer.”
She snorted laughter, blowing smoke through her nose. “Baby, I already can’t live off what you’re making.”
They shared a smile, and she stubbed out her cigarette. “Well, I’ve got to get back. I’m interviewing five more wannabes this afternoon, and I haven’t been able to make myself read even one of their proposals. Talk about your miracles. That’s what it would be if I can find a semi-literate sentence in that pile of dreck. Walk me to the shuttle?”
“Sure.” He stood. “I guess I’ll head back to the hotel, too. I think there’s an episode of Castle on television this afternoon that I haven’t seen, and happy hour starts in the Kingfisher room at 4:00. They have free pigs-in-a-blanket.”
She looped her arm through his, and they walked back toward the parking lot, her high-heeled boots clicking on the sidewalk. “What are your plans for the holidays?”
“Actually, I’m doing a reading at a B&B in Virginia. Four days, five nights in the middle of the woods, stargazing by night, reading beside the fire during the day. And I only have to work for one afternoon.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds ghastly.”
“It was that or an inside, below-decks, eight-by-ten cabin on a cruise to the Bahamas, seven days of making nice with eighteen hundred people, three readings and one night of leading the conga line. It seemed to me there was less chance of listeria at the B&B, and besides, they’re offering a stipend. It’s Paul Slater’s place,” he added. “You remember him, from the Washington Post?”
“Oh, so that’s what he’s doing now. Come to think of it, I do seem to recall reading he’d bought a place in the country after he left the Post. Now, there’s a man who knows how to make money hand over fist. Three best-sellers, three years in a row? Please. And I still have his coffee-table book. Do me a favor, will you?” She stopped and plucked a business card out of a side pocket in her purse. “Give him my card. Ask if he’s happy with his representation.”
Geoffery hesitated, then took the card with a resigned quirk of his lips and tucked it into his pocket. “Right.”
They edged past a Christmas topiary display outside the Sears entrance, where animated elves tossed an endless supply of artificial snowflakes over a garden of lighted trees. It seemed to be a popular place for mothers with children in strollers to stop and point and make baby talk.
Geoffery asked politely, “So what are you doing for the holidays?”
She lit another cigarette and waved away the smoke. “Oh, please. I lost my religion decades ago, and I’m a lot happier for it. I don’t even celebrate Chanukah any more. Thought about the Hamptons, but they’re dead this time of year. Probably I’ll just watch the parade from my window and catch up on some work. Ah, screw the parade. It’s just a bunch of freaky little men in worn-out elf costumes dancing around, anyway. I mean seriously, I ask you, aren’t we all tired of Christmas by December twenty-fifth anyway?”
“Bobbie, can I ask you something?”
He stopped and looked at her seriously. She started to take another drag on the cigarette, then changed her mind, waiting.
Geoffery said, “There’s never been a publisher in the history of the world who rejected a book because it was based on a tried and true formula. Why did they really turn down the second book?”
Bobbie dropped the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her boot. She returned a steady gaze to him. “It’s you, Geoffery,” she said. “Your writing. They thought it felt like you were phoning it in, rehashing old stuff. What made the first book so powerful was the way you told it, the way you convinced us, the way you, I don’t know, cared. Hell, you almost had me converting once or twice.” She tried for a smile and failed. “But when Liz died,” she went on, “I saw something go out of you. I kept expecting it to come back, but it never did. So the truth is … maybe this isn’t your genre anymore. Things change, you know?”
For a long moment, he didn’t reply. And then he said, quietly, “Yeah. I know.”
They walked back to the shuttle without speaking.
FOUR
Ladybugs and Angel Cakes
Paul and Derrick’s friendship with Bridget, Cici and Lindsay dated back to the time they had all lived on Huntington Lane, a tony neighborhood in the suburbs of Baltimore. Between the five of them, they’d practically run the Homeowner’s Association, the Gardens and Beautification Committee, and the Thursday Night Supper Club. They’d gone to the theater together, taken the train into Washington for shopping trips and gallery openings together, and every autumn they made a sojourn into the country to pick apples together. At least the ladies picked apples; Paul and Derrick preferred to have their baskets filled by professionals and waiting for them at the gift shop at the end of the day. They took turns trying to outdo each other by giving the best parties in town, and they always celebrated Christmas together.
Paul
and Derrick had been at first appalled, then secretly envious, when the three ladies decided to abandon suburbia, consolidate their resources, and buy an old mansion in the Shenandoah Valley together. They’d called the place Ladybug Farm, and spent the next year refurbishing the interior, restoring gardens and shoring up outbuildings. By the time Paul and Derrick made their own move to the country several years later, the ladies had even revitalized the vineyard and had begun operating a winery. Cici’s daughter Lori had married Bridget’s son Kevin, and the two of them had moved into the big old house. Lindsay had adopted a teenage boy, Noah, who was now a Marine stationed in Washington, DC, and had married Dominic Duponcier, the vineyard manager. What had begun as a simple house restoration had turned into a big, colorful, noisy, mismatched family.
Ladybug Farm was twenty minutes down the highway from the Hummingbird House, and Paul and Derrick visited often—most often, as they both were painfully aware, when they needed help of some sort. Their friends were generous with their advice and their time, not to mention their homemade cookies and pies, and the two men tried very hard not to take advantage of them. But somehow they always suspected they were. This time, at least, they had each had the presence of mind to grab a poinsettia from one of the boxes on the back porch, hoping that might make this seem like more of a social call than yet another imposition upon the ladies’ collective good nature.
The Ladybug Farm sign at the end of the drive was already decorated with red bows and bright holly bouquets, and someone had festooned the winery sign with cedar swags and more red bows. The drive that led to the winery was lined on either side by quaint split-rail fences, and these, too, were lushly adorned with the bounty of nature—cedar boughs and pine cones—accented by more red velvet bows. Above the door of the winery was a huge grapevine wreath highlighted by a single giant red bow and lined with white lights. As Paul stopped the car in the circular drive in front of the house, they noted wreaths on every window, and swaths of bow-studded garland looping the railing of the wraparound porch. More garland—as well as lights, no doubt—climbed each of the white columns, draping artfully over the arch of the front door. The front door displayed one of the most elaborate holiday wreaths either of them had ever seen, complete with dried hydrangeas in breathtaking hues of lavender and pink, silver ribbon, miniature birds, and tastefully arranged glass spheres in shades of pink and purple.