My Only Christmas Wish

by J. M. Jeffries

  “Thanks for the insight into Bennett’s,” Eli said.

  “Darcy isn’t going down without a fight,” James said. “Are you prepared to break her?”

  Eli took a breath. “Yes,” he said.

  James laughed. “Good luck, Eli Austin. You’re gonna need it.” He walked away whistling as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

  Eli headed toward the elevators. He needed to map out his plan. The sparkle from the wreath hanging in the rotunda caught his eyes. Rainbows flashed as the overhead lights caught at the precious stones embedded in the jewelry. He felt as though the wreath had just mocked him.

  The doors to the elevator opened and old Silas grinned at him. “Going up, sir.”

  “Fifth floor, Silas.”

  * * *

  Darcy fitted her key into the lock that opened the stairs going up to her apartment. She loved the old building. The bottom floor was a realty office, now closed for the day, the second floor was her apartment and the top floor was James’s apartment and studio.

  She and James had been married less than a month when they’d found this building and she’d purchased it. James loved it as much as she did, which was why she let him convert the top floor into a living space and studio for himself after the divorce.

  Darcy hadn’t wanted to live in a McMansion somewhere. She loved being near Bennett’s and near her family. She loved this area of Atlanta where so many artists had settled. James fit right in. Despite her own art education background, she would never be the artist James was.

  She wondered if he was in. She thought about buzzing him, but she was tired. The day had not gone smoothly.

  She fitted her key in the lock to her apartment and discovered her door was already open. She stepped into the foyer and immediately caught the whiff of her mother’s perfume. The scent from Guerlain’s Shalimar hung on the air as Darcy removed her coat and hung it neatly in the closet.

  “Mother,” she called.

  “In the kitchen, Darcy.”

  Marilyn Bennett Foster sat at the island in the center of the kitchen, perched on a stool with a very expensive bottle of merlot, almost empty, sitting on the butcher-block top in front of her. “Sit down,” she said with a wide gesture at her daughter. “I have another bottle.”

  She stood and went to the wine cooler and opened it. She searched for a wineglass in the cabinet and poured Darcy the last few ounces in the bottle before she picked up a cork puller and opened the second one.

  “What are you doing here, Mom?” Darcy tried not to the let the surprise she felt show.

  “Can’t I just visit my daughter?”

  “You’re supposed to be touring the Caribbean, one luxury resort at a time.” On the money her husband had brokered for the sale of Bennett’s, Darcy thought to herself.

  Marilyn’s left eyebrow rose in a look that used to make Darcy cower when she’d been a child. The look didn’t work for Darcy anymore. Darcy stared her mother straight in the eyes and didn’t flinch.

  “A person can only luxuriate so much,” Marilyn replied vaguely after another long sip of the merlot, her face as bland as her tone.

  “Okay,” Darcy said as she took the glass her mother held out to her, thinking her mother and what’s-his-name must be fighting. “Where’s your husband?”

  Marilyn sat back down on the stool and contemplated the empty bottle. For the first time a shiver of emotion crossed her face. “I have no idea where he is.” Marilyn’s voice caught on a sob.

  Darcy sat down next to her mother. Marilyn hooked a Jimmy Choo-clad foot around the leg of the stool. Her Dolce & Gabbana shift fit her slim figure to perfection. Her hair was styled in the latest coiffure and her makeup was flawless.

  Marilyn Foster was still beautiful and Darcy knew why her father had loved her so much. She had been the perfect wife and the perfect hostess. The loss of her husband had been hard on her. She’d floundered for two years before meeting Simon Benedict and marrying him after only two weeks.

  Darcy wanted her mother to be happy, but even she could see that Simon Benedict had an agenda only he knew about.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Darcy said, her heart aching for her mother.

  “Me, too.” Marilyn poured more merlot into her glass from the second bottle. She rose, glass in hand, to look inside the refrigerator. “You don’t have much to eat in here.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to shop. Today was Black Friday and everything needed to be perfect,” Darcy said, seeing the change of subject as a delaying tactic. Darcy had questions and her mother didn’t want to answer them.

  “Of course.” Marilyn pulled open drawers and bins and finally pulled out a carton of eggs, milk and butter. She opened the freezer and found some vegetables. “I can make an omelet.” She opened cabinets searching for bowls and plates.

  Darcy watched her mother putter around the kitchen. Marilyn was an excellent cook. Darcy remembered waking up on cold winter mornings to a bowl of delicious oatmeal made from scratch with brown sugar, raisins and a mug of delicious hot chocolate. It was the kind of breakfast that would keep her warm all day.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?” Marilyn asked. “Why am I here? Why am I cooking? Why is my husband not with me?”

  “Any of those,” Darcy conceded, “but basically, why are you here in my home?”

  Marilyn paused. “I’m making you dinner.”

  Darcy resisted the desire to grind her teeth. Marilyn never came right to the point. “I can see that, I just don’t understand why.”

  Marilyn started cracking eggs into a bowl. She set a frying pan on the stove to heat and dropped butter into it. “You have to eat.”

  “You’re avoiding my question. Again, Mom, why are you here?”

  Marilyn sighed. “I wanted to visit you.”

  “That’s not much of an answer.”

  “I’m your mother, Darcy.”

  “So did you leave him, or did he leave you?” Darcy hated to ask that question, but she was starting to get an inkling that her mother’s world was not going the way she’d planned.

  Marilyn chopped the veggies along with some onion and dropped them into the pan to cook. She turned to her daughter with a sigh. “I just needed a little break.” She pushed the veggies around the pan with a wooden spoon.

  That was her mother trying to put a positive spin on whatever situation she wasn’t ready to face. “Okay, you needed a break.”

  Marilyn took another long sip of her merlot. “If you must know, I made a mistake.”

  Darcy waited patiently. Talking to her mother was never easy. Marilyn always talked around the subject in the vaguest terms before narrowing it down. Which made dealing with Eli a refreshing change. He came to the heart of the matter and hadn’t tried to make Darcy guess how he felt.

  “A mistake marrying him, or a mistake selling Bennett’s?” Darcy tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, but some of it seeped out.

  Marilyn paused in the act of pouring the eggs over the veggies. “I knew you’d get around to that.” Not quite answering Darcy’s question and certainly not explaining what mistake she thought she’d made.

  “Mom, one day you were here and the next you were gone. And then I get a registered letter and a phone call from some snarky lawyer saying you had signed a letter of intent to sell Bennett’s to Eli Austin. You’ve been avoiding me for two months. I’ve called you ten times a day and you never answered. I’ve sent you emails and you never answered. When were you going to get around to telling me why you wanted to sell Bennett’s to Eli Austin?”

  Marilyn turned back to the eggs and watched them cook as she sipped her merlot.

  “Why did you sell Bennett’s?” Darcy persisted. “When you knew Grandpa and Dad intended for the store to come to me.”

 
Marilyn sighed and turned to face Darcy. “Because you could have been so much more than a shop clerk.”

  “A shop clerk!” Darcy said in surprise. Did her mother think she spent all her time on a register ringing up sales?

  “I had my reasons, Darcy,” her mother said.

  “Give me one,” Darcy said.

  For a long time, her mother didn’t say anything. “I wanted to save my marriage.”

  Darcy took a deep breath. She’d known her mother’s marriage had been rocky, but this wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  “Simon wanted the money,” Marilyn went on. “I thought… I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I knew I wanted to be rid of it, too.”

  “But, Mom!” Darcy said. If only Dad hadn’t died so quickly after Grandpa. Things would have been different.

  Marilyn turned to her. “Once upon a time you wanted to be an artist, a painter. I watched you give up that dream to run Bennett’s after your father died.”

  Darcy jumped up, agitated. “I didn’t give up anything to run Bennett’s. I wasn’t a very good artist.”

  “You had the best art education at the best schools. Of course you were a talented artist.”

  Darcy poured herself a little more wine. “Mom, I didn’t love it, not the way I loved Bennett’s.” And not the way James loves his art. “Daddy always told me to live my passion and Bennett’s was always my first passion. Art wasn’t. It was just fun. I’m sorry I can’t be more Bohemian, I’m a much better business person than an artist.” Darcy felt the heat of tears in her eyes.

  How could her mother not know her? How could her mother not understand that Darcy’s art came out in the way the store displays were set up, the window displays, and the seasonal decorations? Her art showed in so many ways that wasn’t a collection of paint on a canvas. She looked at Bennett’s and saw a huge canvas waiting for her to shape.

  “Mom,” she said, tamping down her irritation. “I didn’t waste my education. I use it all the time, especially when I go to a meeting on store displays or Christmas decorations. All the knowledge I gained in my design theory classes, my painting classes, are being put to as much use as if I had a paintbrush in my hand. Daddy used to just hire people to do it and hope it got done right. He didn’t know anything about space and proportion. He got lucky with finding the right people.”

  “Darcy, that store consumed your father and your grandfather. They lived it, they spent every day there, they talked about it constantly. I listened to store crap every day of my life with your father. I refused to allow the store to consume you.”

  Darcy sat back down and drew a deep breath. “So you’re saying my father was a lousy husband and a lousy father.”

  “No, I didn’t say, nor did I intend to imply it,” Marilyn explained. “I just didn’t want you to be as obsessed as your father was. I watched your marriage fall apart because—”

  “Mom,” Darcy held up a hand. “You never liked James. You thought he was beneath me.” And told me every chance you could. It didn’t matter that James was so much more talented than Darcy and was making a strong name for himself in the art world, his background was not one Marilyn approved of despite the scholarships he received that allowed him to pursue his dream.

  Her mother’s mouth pinched tight and small wrinkles radiated outward as though she’d just bitten down on the sourest lemon in the world. “What a terrible thing to say, Darcy. I’m your mother and I just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy. Running Bennett’s makes me happy.” How could her mother be so blind? “Just because it wasn’t the dream you wanted for me doesn’t make it anything less. It’s the dream I want for me.”

  She thought of all the people who made Bennett’s a success. Had her mother given them the vaguest of thoughts when she’d decided to sell? Mr. Eli Austin wanted to cut jobs to improve the profit margin. Darcy considered so many of these people her family. That her mother could be so callous about the futures of those loyal employees made Darcy want to scream. Their hard work had kept her mother in designer clothes. She had her hair done at the most expensive salon in Atlanta. Didn’t she ever wonder where the money came from to support her lifestyle?

  Her mother filled her wineglass yet again as she flipped the eggs expertly onto plates and dropped bits of cheese over the top. She pushed one plate across the butcher-block top of the island toward Darcy and handed her a fork. Marilyn sat down opposite Darcy, fork in hand, and stared at her daughter.

  “I wanted you to have more,” she said with the gravity of announcing something truly important.

  “More of what, Mom?”

  “A family with a loving husband and children. A life away from the store.”

  “You make it sound like I’m a hundred years old with my life behind me. I’m thirty-four and I have plenty of time to have children and find a husband.” Not in that order. Her thoughts jumped to Eli. She pushed them away. No, not Eli. James had been a good husband. He’d cared for her, supported her, but somewhere along the way they realized they had no real passion for each other. “Mom, I don’t need you to micromanage my life.”

  “I do not micromanage your life.”

  “Most mothers want their children to get respectable jobs that are safe and secure. Being an artist is a not safe and secure job. It’s feast or famine. Bennett’s is safe and secure.”

  Marilyn played with the omelet and then pushed her plate away. “I wanted to be a writer and live in Paris and live the life of an expatriate, but my parents were solid, intelligent people and they guided me into being conventional. I wanted you to be a part of something greater than yourself and I thought art was the right choice for you.”

  “I am part of something greater than myself, Mom,” Darcy argued, anger rising, trying not to sound bitter again. She loved being a part of her father and grandfather’s accomplishments. “I’m part of a legend. Grandpa took a five-and-dime and made it into the best department store in the world. I can go to Outer Mongolia and hear people talk about Bennett’s the same way they talk about Harrods or Bergdorf Goodman’s. Every top designer in the world has me on speed dial. If they have to choose between Angelina Jolie or me for a power weekend in Paris, I get the invite. Do you realize how much influence I wield in the business world? Three weeks ago I went to Washington and sat on a panel at a business summit with the President of the United States. I’m not a shop clerk, Mom. I’m not a worker bee. I belong to something important and unique and nobody is going to take that away from me.”

  Darcy’s anger grew and she knew she needed to get away. After sliding off the stool and picking up her purse, she left her mother staring at her omelet. She walked out of the apartment and up the stairs, needing to talk to James.

  Chapter 7

  Eli entered the warehouse Bennett’s used to store excess and damaged inventory. A sign on the roll-up door announced a job fair. A line of people stood outside the loading bays, many of them obviously homeless.

  “Is this safe?” he asked Darcy once he was inside and had found her. He indicated the people who seemed to be wandering aimlessly around the huge warehouse.

  “I’ve never had a problem,” she answered. Instead of her everyday suit, she wore jeans, a black sweater and a scarf around her neck.

  Eli felt seriously overdressed in his Savile Row suit. What he thought of as a job fair was orderly rows of people waiting to fill out job applications. This seemed more like controlled chaos.

  A line of men and women stood near the locker room. They held towels and toiletries as they waited for the showers. Several tables had been lined up with the names of various Atlanta stores on placards.

  “I’ve never seen a job fair like this before.”

  “Maybe if your company ever showed up after an invite, you would.” She grinned at him. “Did I sound a little snarky?”
r />   “I’ve never heard of this job fair. Explain it to me?”

  “Four times a year I open the warehouse as a quick way to liquidate old, and some irregular, stock we can’t move. I provide a place for people who can’t afford a place to live with showers, haircuts, clean clothes and new shoes. I invite various companies who have open positions to take applications. We used to get mostly homeless people, but now I get jobless people, too.”

  “And all these people want jobs.” There must have been several hundred people in the warehouse.”

  “Most of them want jobs,” Darcy said. “Some have problems that keep them from staying employed but that doesn’t mean they can’t take a shower and get some clean clothes from our overstock. I don’t turn anyone away.”

  A family consisting of a man and woman with several children bent over a box of toys. A toddler girl clutched a doll and gave her mother a pleading look. Another box behind the small family held children’s shoes and the father was patiently going through it, occasionally taking out a pair of shoes for his two little sons to try on.

  “But—” Eli said.

  Darcy held up her hand, her face tight with annoyance. “You are looking at the face of Atlanta. The real one, the one no one wants to see or acknowledge exists. If we don’t help them, no one will. If you want to help, you can grab an apron and help feed these people.”

  Eli backed off, knowing for the first time he’d made a serious misstep. As he walked off toward the food line, he realized that all the Bennett’s employees who weren’t working the store were here in the warehouse helping people.

  Eli pulled his phone out of his pocket and found a quiet corner and dialed his general manager.

  “Mr. Austin,” Arnold Koch answered on the first ring.

  “Arnie,” Eli said, “I’m in the Bennett’s warehouse right now watching a job fair. McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Home Depot are here taking applications. Why aren’t we here as well?”