Love Finds You in the City at Christmas

by Anna Schmidt

  “Sarah Peterson,” she replied, accepting his firm, warm handshake. “My family lived—”

  “Next door to my folks—I remember. You and Gracie used to play together before we moved. It’s nice to see you again, Sarah.”

  “Michael, did you speak to your mother?”

  “I did. I said, ‘Hi Mom, we’re home for Christmas,’ and snatched a cookie.” He actually winked at Sarah.

  “Dad’s going to the game with Jack and me, Mother,” Max said. “Molly has apparently scheduled you and the rest of the females to decorate a bazillion Christmas cookies.”

  Marilyn Wolzak frowned. “I don’t know why Karen is so late making her cookies this year. How on earth is she expecting to get them distributed by Christmas? I mean we have the Christmas Eve party for your father’s partners to prepare, and Rosanna is going to need all the kitchen space just to put that together, never mind preparing for our open house on Christmas Day and . . .”

  “We’ve given Rosanna the rest of the week off,” Max said.

  “We?”

  “Me, Gracie, and Gramma Karen. And the plans for this year have changed, Mom.”

  “Grace was telling me all about Molly’s party for the homeless people,” Max’s father said, ignoring the fact that not only did his wife seem to be speechless, she looked as if she might need to sit down.

  “Are you all right, Mrs.—Marilyn?” Sarah asked, glancing around for a chair or bench just in case the woman actually felt faint.

  Max’s mother ignored her. “But people will expect . . .”

  “We’ll still have the open house. We’ll just do it in a new venue. Instead of coming here for the open house, we’ll tell them to go to the church.”

  “But—”

  Mike Wolzak put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Gently and tenderly he spoke to her now as if they were alone. “Come on, Marilyn. Molly has planned this whole thing. I, for one, am glad to see a kid thinking about something besides what she might find under the tree on Christmas morning. Let’s get on board and give her our full support, okay?”

  “I suppose one year won’t matter.”

  “That’s my girl,” Mike said and gave her bottom a slight slap.

  Marilyn blushed but she did not chastise him or pull away. Molly appeared at the top of the stairs. “Nana? I can’t find your slippers. Will these do?” She held up a pair of lime green flip-flops with rhinestone flamingoes etched into the straps.

  “Those will do just fine, darling girl,” Mike said. “Bring them here.” He led his wife to a bench upholstered in rich burgundy brocade. Once she was seated, he bent on one knee and carefully removed her high heels. Then, chuckling the whole time, he placed one ridiculous flip-flop and then the other on her bare feet. “Perfect fit,” he murmured. “Just like Cinderella.”

  “Just like us,” she murmured.

  He kissed her then, and Sarah found the whole scene so very touching that she had to look away. She also had to wonder why Max was frowning.

  * * * * *

  On Christmas Eve morning, Max woke early. He was nervous—not about the concert but about the conversation he had decided to have with Sarah. Obviously he couldn’t ask her at this late date to abandon her work and the trip overseas. But he had decided that what he could ask was if she felt as he did that there was a chance they might have a future together. If she agreed the possibility existed, then he would use all his time while she was away to get his life as a civilian back on track, so when she returned . . .

  But what if she did not agree? Grace had confided that Sarah had once been badly burned in the romance department. He also knew that he’d never met anyone more dedicated to her work than Sarah. How could they build something together if she was always pulled away by work? Besides, she had been the one to lay out the ground rules—the boundaries—for their relationship. “Just friendship.”

  In the kitchen below his room, he heard sounds of cabinets opening and closing and water running. He checked the clock. Too early for Rosanna to arrive. Maybe Gramma Karen was the one making the coffee—the scent that now drifted up the back stairs to his room. Gramma Karen had always been the person he turned to at times like this, and with his parents still sleeping, this might be the perfect time to seek her advice. He got up, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and walked barefoot down to the kitchen.

  To his surprise, it was his dad rustling around.

  “Good morning,” Max said.

  “’Morning, son. Do you have any idea where we keep the sweetener?”

  “I think it’s the loose stuff in the sugar bowl.” Max poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “You still on Paris time?”

  His dad chuckled. “That and I need to get to the office. Couple of projects that won’t wait until after the holidays.”

  Max watched as his father added cream and sweetener to his mug of coffee. He was about to make some excuse and take his coffee back to his room when his dad surprised him by quietly asking, “So what’s the plan, Max?”

  “Well, the concert is at four and—”

  “Not for the day. For your future—your civilian future, I hope.”

  “I’m not going back, Dad.” He was a little taken aback to realize that indeed he was firm on his decision not to reenlist a fourth time.

  “Good. Your mother and grandmother will both be relieved to hear that.” He took a long time stirring his coffee before adding, “Where does Sarah fit into the picture?”

  “She’s . . . We . . .” Max shrugged. “I’m not exactly sure. We’ve been spending a lot of time together. It started out as just a way to get Grace and Gramma Karen off my back about how I was handling the holidays. But then . . .”

  His dad grinned. “Yeah. That’s kind of the way things went when your mother and I hooked up. She’d been getting some threats from a stalker and her dad wanted to hire your grandfather as her body guard. Dad offered me as the person for the job instead. I was just finishing up my degree, and the very last thing I was looking for was a relationship, but the money was great and I knew it would give me a head start on paying off those student loans.”

  “And the rest was history.”

  Dad laughed. “Well, eventually. Suffice it to say your mother was furious with her father. She called me her incredible hulk of a babysitter. But then over time . . .”

  “Too much info, Dad,” Max protested.

  “No, hear me out. Once we realized that we had this chemistry, the real problem became that your mom was raised possibly the most class-conscious person I had ever run into. She actually thought loving me was wrong—that it couldn’t possibly work out because of the differences in our backgrounds. I told her we should just go with the flow, but she thought her parents—especially her father—would lock her away in a convent if he thought there was anything going on with us. So we played this game—acted like we could barely tolerate each other whenever he was around.”

  “And when he wasn’t?”

  “Magic, pure magic.” His dad sipped his coffee. “So you and Sarah? Is that magic? ’Cause I gotta tell you, son, if a girl like that comes along, you do not want to let her go.”

  She’s going anyway. “Day after tomorrow she’s off to Syria for six months on a relief mission. The timing doesn’t work.”

  “Make it work. You of all people know how fragile and unpredictable life can be. The fact is that your mother was saying just last night how for once you seem almost content to be back home. She also believes that Sarah might have played an important role in that.”

  “I would hardly think that Sarah Peterson would be her choice for me.” He immediately regretted the snide comment. “Sorry, but you know what I mean. Mom can be a little . . .”

  “Max, you were little more than a kid when you enlisted—a teenager who was finding himself and thought his parents were boring and impossible. Practically from the day we left Brooklyn, you blamed your mother.”

  “Yeah. You’ve got a point.”
>
  His dad stood up but then lingered at the table for a moment. “Well, you’re not that kid anymore. You’ve pretty much been absent from the family for over a decade now. It’s time you stopped looking at your mother through the eyes of that angry boy and appreciated the fact that I was the one behind our move to this part of town. Mostly because I wanted to impress her parents. So how about considering that she didn’t have great role models for parenting like I did and cut her some slack?”

  He stood for a long moment staring out the kitchen window before continuing. “She loves you, Max—you and Grace. Grace knows that and accepts that your mom’s always done the best she could as a parent. Try letting her into your life some and you just might be surprised.” He carried his mug to the sink, dumped the last of the coffee, and rinsed out the mug, then he grasped Max’s shoulder. “Got to get to work. Good to have you home, son.”

  Max watched his father climb the stairs. He couldn’t help noticing that the man was a step slower than he remembered, and he felt the passage—and the wasting—of time.

  * * * * *

  The small church near Sarah’s loft was packed for the concert. Sarah waved to Grace and Jack and Molly as they hurried down the center aisle to claim seats in the pews that had been reserved for family of the choir members. Then she saw Max escorting his grandmother down the aisle and was surprised to see his parents following. So they had come after all. She wondered if his mother’s change of heart pleased him. Marilyn Wolzak had insisted on the need to stand with tradition at least in terms of Christmas Eve dinner with her husband’s business partners. Yet here she was.

  Sarah watched Max make his way upstream against more people crowding in to fill the pews. He glanced up at her and smiled. Next to her she heard Mary breathe a sigh of relief.

  “He’s late,” she muttered, “but he’s here.”

  “He is not late,” Sarah insisted. “And stop worrying. Everything is going to be fine.” But she understood Mary’s case of nerves. In the end, Frank Stover had declined to sing the solo and others in the choir had suggested Max. He’d reluctantly agreed. The solo—an a capella rendering of the opening words to “O Holy Night”—would start the evening’s performance. This had been Ned’s last-minute suggestion, and everyone had agreed the idea was inspired. The sound of one voice singing without accompaniment would quiet the audience and set the tone for the entire concert. And at concert’s end, everyone—choir and congregation—would raise their voices in song.

  Max ran up the narrow stairway and squeezed into his place in the front row. “Show time,” he said softly as he grinned at Mary and Ned.

  Below them two children moved to the altar, each carrying a lit candle that they used to light a single larger candle situated on a tall stand below a beautiful stained glass window depicting the Nativity. A hush fell over the audience and Max stood, waiting for the signal from Mary.

  There was a marked difference in the sound now that the church was filled with people. Max’s lone voice seemed to resound throughout the space, and Sarah wondered if this was what Scripture meant when it spoke of the voices of the angels resounding throughout the hillsides that holy night so long ago. She felt a tear trickle down her cheek as Max sang, “It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.”

  Now the whole choir joined him in singing the remainder of the beloved carol, and when they had finished there was a moment of silence that rang throughout the church almost as powerfully as the music had. After that, the time seemed to fly by as they performed song after song until they reached the finale—“Silent Night.” While the choir hummed the tune, the children came forward once again and lit tapers from that center candle. Everyone attending had been given a small candle upon entering the church. Now, one by one, neighbor turned to neighbor to pass the light until the whole church glowed with the light of their candles.

  As the soft light spread throughout the darkened church, Mary made her way down from the loft and up to the front of the sanctuary, where she invited all to join in the singing of the much-loved carol. During the last verse, the entire choir filed down the choir loft stairs to the main floor, where they stood along the aisles as Ned moved from “Silent Night” to “Joy to the World.” Then the choir members led those in the audience from the church, still carrying their lit candles as they gathered on the steps of the church and let their voices fill the cold night air reaching out to everyone in the neighborhood.

  Above them Sarah saw windows raised as people leaned out and joined in. Patrons from those restaurants and other businesses that were still open crowded in doorways and pressed against shop windows to enjoy the moment. Sarah knew that if Mary and Ned had their way, a soft snow would begin falling, but above them the skies were clear and filled with stars—a much better setting to Sarah’s way of thinking.

  They sang the last verse of the carol and then extinguished their candles as in unison they all shouted, “Merry Christmas!”

  Sarah blew out her candle and turned, surrounded by the excited chatter of others. Max was standing right behind her. Their eyes met and she realized that for the first time since they had begun seeing each other, his had lost that haunted look of a man who had been too long in a world of pain and misery. In his eyes she saw joy . . . and hope.

  She reached up and cupped his cheek, and he caught her hand in his and pressed a kiss to her palm. In that moment she understood why she had been feeling so out of sorts and disoriented about leaving on the latest relief mission. She did not want to leave Max—ever.

  Chapter Seven

  • • • • • • • • • • • •

  After the concert, Max’s parents went back home to host their dinner party while everyone else in the family headed uptown to yet another church to set up for Molly’s party. The minister, Stan Baker, had agreed they could come in following his congregation’s Christmas Eve service and reception to get everything ready for the following day. To Sarah’s delight, several members of Stan Baker’s congregation stayed to help and told her they planned to return the following day with family and friends to assist with the party as well.

  The men arranged tables and chairs as the women organized the kitchen for the meal they would serve their guests. They had decided on a kind of turkey stew since they had no way of knowing how many people might show up, and with stew they could stretch the donated food as far as possible.

  “Loaves and fishes,” Grace said.

  “More like biscuits and turkey stew,” Jack teased.

  They had decided to bake the biscuits ahead of time and then warm them up for the meal. Meanwhile Molly and a few of her friends were filling small cellophane bags with cookies, a peppermint stick, and an orange. These would be the favors each guest would receive. In addition, there were large plastic bins of decorated cookies, which would be served with scoops of vanilla ice cream for dessert. The ice cream had been Max’s idea, and Sarah smiled, knowing that if he had his way, the confection would have included a ladle filled with hot fudge. But his grandmother had squelched that idea.

  “For the money you might spend on hot fudge—even if we made it ourselves—you can give them a small token. Something they can keep as a reminder of this night.”

  “Like what, Gramma?” Molly had asked.

  “I don’t know—something that they can look at and remember.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Max assured her, and now as she worked alongside the other women, Sarah could not help but wonder what he had come up with. He certainly was being mysterious about it.

  “The place is beginning to look like a party,” Max said as he came into the kitchen carrying more bins of his grandmother’s cookies. “Where do you want these?”

  They were running out of counter space, so Sarah pointed to a table in the corner. “Stack them there. Tomorrow we can fill the platters from them and store the empty containers under the table.”

  He did as she directed, then instead of heading back out into the community hall, h
e lingered. “When we finish up here, are you up for a walk?”

  “Sure, but aren’t you wiped out after the concert and now this? And what about your family? It is Christmas Eve after all.”

  “My parents’ dinner with the partners will go until well past midnight, and the truth is I’d like to spend some time with you.” He glanced out toward the community hall, where Mary and Ned were putting up more decorations. “Unless you have plans . . . I mean, you’re right—it is Christmas Eve and most people have their traditions and . . .”

  Sarah smiled. “I’ll call my parents tomorrow. Mary and Ned are catching the last train to Westport tonight to be with their family. Besides, I thought we were all about starting new traditions, thanks to Molly,” she said with a wave of her hand to encompass all the preparations for the next day’s party. “I would love to take a walk with you.”

  “I think we’ve done about all we can do before tomorrow,” Grace announced. “Shall we call it a night? I know one little girl who needs to get to sleep if she expects Santa to come calling.” She ruffled Molly’s hair.

  “Ah, Mom, it’s early.”

  “Get your jacket,” Grace said, and then she turned to Max. “Jack and I will take Gramma Karen home. I mean, I figure you and Sarah . . .” She actually winked at her brother.

  “Thanks. See you tomorrow, okay?” He leaned in and kissed his sister’s cheek. “Merry Christmas, Gracie.”

  “I think it just might be a special one,” she replied. “For all of us.” This time she winked at Sarah and then laughed as she hurried to the exit.

  Once everyone had left and Sarah and Max were alone on the deserted street, she suddenly felt shy. “What a beautiful clear night,” she said, gazing up at the stars just visible between the high-rise apartment buildings surrounding them.

  “Ready to head downtown?”

  “You mean walk all the way to Chelsea from here?”