He might become helpless in the face of the enormous power of that thing called love.
If there was a word that had not appeared in a Hathoway vocabulary for several centuries, it was that one.
Helpless.
But that’s exactly what he felt as he pushed open the door to the jewelry shop, walked in and went to the counter.
A perky girl in a Santa hat came and smiled at him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
Last chance to break and make a run for it.
Helpless.
“I’d like to see that ring,” Nate said, surprised by how strong his voice was. How absolutely sure. “The one in the window.”
He felt a breath on his neck. He whirled and looked around the store. He was the only customer in it.
It must have been the bells in the mall that made him think he had heard Cindy laughing. That made him think he had heard her breathe, yes.
Morgan McGuire was not sure she had ever experienced a more perfect or magical night.
The whole town seemed to have gathered at the Old Sawmill Pond for the skating party that welcomed Wesley Wellhaven to Canterbury.
Wesley was the antithesis of his wife. There was no hiding that he was a shy and self-effacing man. His manner was so mild that Morgan wondered if he could really produce the voice he was so famous for.
She voiced that doubt to Nate in a low whisper when they skated off after being introduced to Mr. Wellhaven, who had thanked them both effusively for their hard work on The Christmas Angel project.
“It’s probably some trickery of the brains of the outfit,” Nate said. Despite the miraculous progress Mrs. Wellhaven had made with the children’s choir, Nate had never quite forgiven her their initial encounter.
And then they laughed, and Morgan marveled at how easily they laughed together, and how often, and at how the hard lines seemed to be melting from Nate’s face, one by one.
“What are you looking at?” he teased.
“You. You’re a handsome man, Nate.”
“Stop. You’ll make me blush.” And then he bent and brushed his lips to hers, and threw back his head and laughed.
Morgan knew it was partly Nate’s hand in hers, his easy affection, that made the evening so completely magical. A huge bonfire burned beside the pond, vats of hot chocolate were kept warm, and trays and trays of Christmas cookies sat on tables that had been set up beside the pond.
It was a true community event. Everyone was there, from the mayor to the waitresses, from grandmas and grandpas to small babies being pulled around the ice in sleds.
There were cameras filming some of what would be inserted into the moments right before the commercial breaks of the television special, but after a few minutes of self-consciousness everyone seemed to forget they were there.
But all of this was only a backdrop for what was unfolding inside of her. Nate’s hand was always in hers, or his arm around her waist. He would tilt his head to listen to her, or to laugh at something she said.
They were a couple, Morgan realized. Everybody knew it. He seemed proud of it and of her.
It came on her suddenly, a delicious sensation of belonging. Not just with him, but in this community.
She did not miss the small smiles people exchanged with them, or the liking and enormous respect these people had for Nate.
She did not miss how much they had hoped for him to be what he was tonight: energized and laughter-filled, mischievous and fun-loving. And because they saw her as part of what was bringing Nate back to them, they accepted her.
Maybe it wasn’t even going too far to say that they cared deeply for her, their grade-one teacher, Nate Hathoway’s girlfriend.
Girlfriend. She savored the word, like a caramel melting on the tip of her tongue.
Morgan glided across the ice with Nate and a single word formed in her mind. Belonging. It was a whisper of something she had waited her whole life to feel.
Morgan had not skated very much, but she soon found she loved the sensation of gliding along the ice, especially with Nate, a strong skater, beside her.
The children were racing around on their skates, shouting with exuberance, playing games that Ace seemed to always be at the center of.
Nate followed his daughter for a moment with his eyes, then smiled, satisfied. “You’ve worked a miracle, there, Morgan McGuire,” he said. “She’s happy. To be truthful? I did not think we could have a happy Christmas ever again.”
In the past days, he had told Morgan all about growing up with the Three Musketeers, about the closeness of their friendship, about David and Cindy loving each other so much. And then David going away and not coming back.
He told her how for the longest time he had thought he would lose Cindy, too. She had pined, not eating properly, not going out, the light gone from her eyes. Every day he had gone to her, made her eat, made her get out of the house.
They had become a habit for each other. It came to a point that he could not imagine life without her.
And he felt they’d had a good marriage. Solid. Based in respect and friendship.
And then Nate told Morgan about the accident that had taken his wife, about that final errand she had gone to run on Christmas Eve and never come back from.
How even in excruciating pain, she had something that he could never hope to have. A simple faith. A belief that somehow everything, even this, was unfolding according to a larger plan.
And then Nate told Morgan about his own black days after. There was no one to come rescue him from that feeling of sinking into a mire that he could never get out of. He had told her the worst of it was a sense of having failed.
“A man wants to believe he can protect those he loves from harm. But he can’t. Not always. Learning that,” Nate had told her, “has been the hardest lesson of my life.”
But for a man who had learned hard lessons, he seemed only at ease now as he guided her around the firelit surface of the frozen Old Sawmill Pond. Nate Hathoway seemed only enormously sure of himself and his place in the world.
Morgan wanted the night never to end, but of course, all good things had to end.
As the magical evening drew to a close, Wesley Wellhaven left no doubt about the genuine gift of his magnificent voice.
As far as Morgan knew, what happened next was completely unscripted. Wesley Wellhaven stood by the fire, facing toward all the people skating on the pond, and he began to sing.
No televised concert, no CD could prepare a person for the pureness of his voice in person. It cut through all the chatter, and it soared above the shouts of children. It rose above the skate blades hissing on ice, and climbed above the crackle of the fire.
It inspired silence. The chatter and laughter died. Even a crying baby stopped its caterwauling.
Everyone drifted across the ice to where Wesley stood in front of the fire, his eyes closed, more than his voice pouring out of him.
His spirit. For such a mild man it was so evident his spirit was gigantic.
“His voice must make angels weep,” Morgan whispered, and Nate’s hand tightened around hers.
It was one of those moments where time stood still, it was a moment that shone with an inner light, that moved with the life force itself.
He sang the oldest of the Christmas songs, but the way he sang it, it was brand-new.
Morgan felt as if she had never heard it before.
Silent night, holy night,
All is calm,
all is bright…
It felt as though Wesley was describing this night in its calmness, in its brightness, the hope that was buried in the stillness.
And as he finished, and the people of Canterbury stood in the stillness left by his voice and the winking stars above them, Morgan knew what she felt was more than belonging.
She glanced up at the man who stood beside her, at the strength in the lines of his face, softened only slightly by the flicker of the fire.
And she knew what she felt
was love.
Love. Terrifying. Electrifying. Comforting. Calming. It was both breathlessness, and the deepest and most steady breath of all.
Wesley allowed the silence to envelope them, but after a subtle prod in the ribs from his wife’s elbow, he cleared his throat, humbly, sweetly uncomfortable being the center of attention.
“And now I have an announcement that many of you have been waiting for,” he said. “Mrs. Wellhaven and I have agreed on the child who should sing the final song in the concert, a song called ‘Angel of Hope.’”
Morgan knew she was not supposed to hope it was one child above another. And she knew for the one she did hope to be chosen it would take a miracle.
“That child is Brenda Weston.”
Though Morgan had known Brenda was likely to be chosen, and though she loved all her children equally, she could not help but feel deflated. Her eyes sought out Cecilia in the crowd.
“Well, I know at least one angel that will be weeping now,” Nate said, his voice gruff and hard.
But when Morgan saw Ace, she wasn’t weeping. She was hugging her friend with the exuberance of a secondplace finalist in a beauty pageant.
“See?” she told Nate. “She’s taking it fine.”
But Nate was watching his daughter, too, and he said, “If you think she’s taking it fine, you don’t know the first thing about her.”
She looked at his face. Something had hardened in it. She was not sure what, but it made her shiver.
She felt as if he had left something unspoken. You don’t know the first thing about us.
Morgan was so aware something had shifted ever so slightly, changed. The car ride home was silent, Cecilia exhausted, nearly asleep in her car seat.
Nate dropped Morgan off at her house first.
“No, don’t get out,” Morgan said, when she saw him opening his door. “Just take Cecilia home and get her to bed. It’s a lot of excitement for a little girl.”
And a lot of disappointment.
She opened the back door, leaned in and touched Cecilia’s arm.
“I’m sorry you weren’t chosen as the Christmas Angel, sweetie,” she said. “I thought you would have made a wonderful Christmas Angel.”
And she meant it. It was too bad the world could not see outside the box. With just the tiniest bit of imagination a child like Cecilia could have easily been the Christmas Angel.
Not that Mrs. Wellhaven had ever looked as if she was burdened with an abundance of imagination.
Cecilia smiled sleepily at Morgan. “But I am going to be the Christmas Angel,” she said.
“No, honey,” Morgan said carefully, “you’re not. Mr. and Mrs. Wellhaven chose Brenda.”
“I know it seems like they did. But, Mrs. McGuire, I’m going to be the Christmas Angel. I just know it.”
This was announced with such certainty and with such sunny optimism that Morgan was taken aback.
“Stop it,” Nate told his daughter sternly. “It’s over. And you are not going to be the Christmas Angel.”
Cecilia didn’t say a word, but she pursed her lips together in a look of stubbornness that at least matched her father’s.
And then Nate, not missing the fact Cecilia was not “stopping it” even if she had chosen silence, gave Morgan a dark look that she interpreted as somehow making this her fault. And maybe it was. Should she have better prepared Ace? The girl obviously had had unrealistic hopes that she was now unwilling to let go of, even in the face of evidence it was time to let go.
And maybe it was her fault.
Because as she watched them drive away, it seemed to Morgan she had developed quite a few unrealistic hopes of her own. What had happened to the woman she had been when she had first arrived here in Canterbury?
A woman absolutely committed to leaving her fantasies and fairy tales behind her?
“What happened to her?” she murmured to herself. “The Purple Couch Club can’t hold a candle to what I’ve felt the last few weeks.”
But what if she was guilty of passing a silly desire to hope for things that were never going to happen on to the children she taught? They trusted her and treated every single thing she said as gospel, treated every single thing she did as an example of how to live.
In a split second, because of one dark accusing look from Nate, Morgan’s night had gone from magic to misery.
And she felt as if she had failed herself.
Because somehow, somewhere, when she’d let her guard down, when she wasn’t looking, she’d let herself be swept off her feet.
Morgan McGuire realized the truth. She had fallen in love with Nate Hathoway.
Chapter Eight
NATE SCANNED the newspaper. And there it was, one more blow for Ace. His name was not among the three hundred names, listed alphabetically, that had received one of those coveted tickets for the rows and rows of uncomfortable chairs he had helped set up in the auditorium. He would not be part of the live audience that got to watch The Christmas Angel.
“Buy the newspaper right away, Daddy,” Ace had told him when he had dropped her at school. “The names are coming out today. I just know you’re going to get one of the tickets, Daddy. I just know it.”
It had meant a lot to her that he be there, at The Christmas Angel, in person. After her disappointment about not being chosen the angel, he had hoped to at least be able to give her his presence as she sang along with the rest of the angel choir. Especially since his little girl was being such a good sport. It hardly seemed like a glitch on her radar that she hadn’t been chosen.
She had just switched her optimism, now it was all focused on Nate getting one of those tickets.
What had it been about her certainty that had almost convinced him that he would get one of the tickets?
He was becoming a dreamer, that’s what. Had he actually started to feel, like Ace, as if an angel maybe was watching over them?
Nate, you’ve been my angel. Now I’ll be yours.
It was so unrealistic. So fantasy based, instead of fact based. It could not be a good thing.
His phone rang. He hoped it was Morgan, even though he knew she was teaching school. He hoped it was her, even though he had not called her since the skating party. Holding back. Proving to himself he did have control. That he wasn’t helpless.
The caller was the set designer for The Christmas Angel. In a panic. Nate had noticed the people who flooded the town, The Christmas Angel production team, were always in a panic about one thing or another.
Today, it had been discovered one of the props wasn’t working. A window on the cottage was supposed to slide open, and Mr. Wellhaven was to lean out that window to sing his first song. The window was stuck.
For a minute, the Nate who could already feel his daughter’s disappointment that he had not received one of the tickets, wanted to tell the set designer to stuff it. To stuff the whole damn Christmas Angel. To stuff himself while he was at it.
But he didn’t.
Instead he asked himself, Where is all this anger coming from?
Was it because he had bought that damned ring? Or was it because ever since that announcement at the skating party he could feel his hopes dissolving, disappointment circling him and Ace, waiting, like vultures, for the inevitable. As if their very optimism had set them up for the kill.
But he thought of Wesley singing that night at the frozen pond, and he thought of how that voice had eased something in him. Maybe it could do something for the rest of the world when they watched it live.
So, instead of telling the set designer to stuff it, Nate took a deep breath, looked at his watch, said he’d be there as soon as he could to have a look at the window.
He hung up the phone. “Nate saves Christmas,” he told himself sarcastically, but even his customary sarcasm felt funny, like a jacket that no longer fit.
No one was on the set or in the auditorium when Nate got there. It was unusual. Usually the whole area bustled with electricians and light people and s
ound people. But now it was down to the finishing details. Most of the work was done, and Nate had a rare opportunity to stand back and look at what they had accomplished.
It was amazing. The humble school stage had been transformed. It looked like the set for a highly polished and professional production.
The illusion that had been created was nothing short of magical. The cottage, dripping snow, looked amazingly realistic. Suspended snowflakes that actually moved and changed colors dangled from the ceiling. The tiers the grade-one choir would stand on looked like banks of snow.
And the huge Christmas tree, sent from Canada, a Frasier fir, was stage right. It was filling the whole auditorium with its scent, and it was finally magnificently decorated.
Nate went to the cottage, and went behind it, tested the window. It was sticking. He pulled a screwdriver from his belt, did an adjustment, tried it again. It slid a little more easily, but he wanted it to glide.
The door to the backstage opened and shut, but he paid no attention to the sound of footsteps.
A curtain moved and a shaft of light fell across him. Nate looked up from where he was crouched below the window, and frowned.
Ace?
What was she doing here by herself? He almost called out a greeting, but some instinct stopped him.
Her intensity, her single-minded focus on something.
So instead of calling out a greeting, Nate pulled back into the shadows behind the cottage and stood frozen and silent, watching his daughter tiptoe across the stage.
She went behind the tree, and with the familiarity of someone who had done this a million times, she climbed the staircase, hidden from the audience, that allowed the angel to get to the top of the tree.
Once there, she stood for a moment, radiant. From her lofty height advantage, she smiled out at the empty auditorium.
And then she began to sing.
It was an awful sound, reminiscent of alley cats meeting and greeting under a full moon. And yet, despite how awful it was, Nate was transfixed.
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