Christmas on Mimosa Lane (A Seasons of the Heart Novel)

by Anna DeStefano

  “What exactly do you do every weekend?” Daddy asked, his hand rubbing Polly’s back, causing her to lean even closer because it felt so good. “No one around here has a clue where you disappear to between sunup Saturday and sunset on Sunday. Why is that?”

  “I…”

  Mallory had to be out of her mind.

  Pete had already taken leave from his job. He was reconnecting more with his child with each passing second. The Lombards were going to be fine, even though Polly’s determination to escape her grief by obsessing about saving Christmas would take more than today to sort itself out. Pete had practically given Mallory his blessing to back away gracefully.

  Except she’d stood in the dining room and heard the pain in his voice when he’d talked about Emma. And she’d felt Polly’s second meltdown of the day deep inside, then had watched her excitement bloom at Mallory’s impulsive suggestion that she could leave some of her worries here for a while if it would help her and her daddy sort things out.

  What if you don’t have to remember for a while…

  Mallory stared down at Emma Lombard’s pin. The metal cat glinted under the overhead light, winking at her. Her mind flashed with memories of her own mother all but throwing Mallory away, then with images of Mallory struggling each Christmas since to feel the same joy and excitement everyone else did.

  Her gaze shifted to Polly’s expectant smile, then her father’s teasing grin. He looked like a cat himself, ready to pounce. Because he wanted to know more about the life Mallory had kept separate from Mimosa Lane for a reason. This wasn’t supposed to be how her reboot worked. From now on, she was keeping the two halves of herself in separate worlds. She needed clear boundaries. There would be no more confusion about who and what she was each time she left behind the work she did away from Chandlerville.

  But Polly finally wanted something Pete could give her. It was a breakthrough Mallory couldn’t squash. Maybe if Pete knew the truth, he’d decide for himself that he and his daughter were better off hanging in the burbs this weekend than trailing after Mallory.

  “I volunteer at several midtown assistance shelters,” she said, a weight she hadn’t been fully aware of releasing with the admission. “They need someone with basic medical skills. I help out as often as I can.”

  “All weekend?” Pete asked. “Every weekend? Is that where you were over Thanksgiving?”

  “Homeless and assistance services need volunteers the most during the holidays, especially in this economy.”

  “What’s services?” Polly asked. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, her upturned nose red and running. But she’d relaxed against her father in a beautiful way that made Mallory want to give Pete a high five.

  “It’s how people help people,” she explained. “Except these people don’t have family and friends who can step in and take care of them. So they have to depend on strangers for a while. People who’ll be there for them until they can do more for themselves.”

  “Like you’re helping me and Daddy?”

  “Sort of. Except we’re not strangers anymore.” A reversal Mallory hadn’t a clue how to deal with any more than she did the admiration that was consuming Pete’s teasing grin.

  “We’re friends, right?” Polly blinked between Mallory and Pete, her green eyes solemn.

  “Making new friends is one of the best parts of all my jobs,” Mallory said, nodding her agreement. “And working with people who need the kind of help I can give them makes it seem less like work, especially this time of year.”

  “So when you’re done helping kids at school, it makes you happy to help more people all weekend?”

  Mallory pushed Polly’s bangs out of her eyes, wiping at the last of the moisture on her face. “It makes me happy when people learn how to help themselves again after they’ve had a hard time. Lots of people go through bad things, sweetie. We all have to figure out how to come back from that. Even grown-ups can’t sometimes, when things have gotten really messed up and it’s the holiday and it seems like you can’t deal with anything. We all do our best. But some people need a little more help than others do. Those are the people I see on the weekends.”

  “Then I’ll help you help people have their holiday.” From the look of wonder spreading across Polly’s face, you’d have thought Mallory had just described a trip to Disneyland. “And then Daddy won’t feel so bad about you helping us have ours. That way we’ll all feel better.”

  “I’m not sure your dad would want you in town in the middle of the places I work in.” And Mallory was certain she didn’t want a family from Mimosa Lane venturing into the world she identified with far better than she did Chandlerville. “We should figure something out for after school instead. If you promise to catch up on your sleep and eat better, then I bet your daddy would rather you come over and—”

  “No,” Pete said. “We’ll be there Saturday. Maybe I can find a way to make myself useful after everything you’re doing for us. And besides, don’t tell me you’re actually capable of disappointing Polly, because I’m not buying it.”

  “I don’t know…” Mallory hedged.

  “I’ll figure out a new meal plan,” Pete reasoned, “one both Polly and her doctor can live with. We’ll spend this week settling into a new routine that suits us better. By the weekend, we should be ready for a break. She can come see you anytime she wants after school, as long as it’s okay with you. But give me the address, and we’ll be there Saturday to pitch in for as long as you need us.”

  “Yes!” Polly bounced up and down in her daddy’s lap, squeezing and kissing his neck. “Will they have a Christmas tree?”

  Pete looked a bit startled at her rush of happy enthusiasm. Then he grabbed his daughter even closer. His chuckle was a warm, inviting vibration that rushed through Mallory, full of wonder and patience and unconditional love.

  He and Polly were going to be okay. One way or another this Christmas was going to bring them the healing they deserved. And Mallory wanted to be part of that, she accepted, more than anything she’d wanted in a long time. But was she willing to expose them to a part of herself that she didn’t think she could handle them seeing?

  “If…if you’re sure…” Mallory’s heartbeat skipped as Pete’s gaze met hers and held. His unreadable expression pulled her in deeper until she found herself wondering if she ever wanted to find her way out. Because she felt at home there, suspended in time, connected through their concern for a motherless little girl neither one of them would allow to give up.

  He kissed Polly’s cheek and smiled down at her, wiping out the last of Mallory’s misgivings. Pete’s love for his child was a drug she could find herself addicted to.

  “I’m sure there will be a tree,” he said. “We’ll bring presents to put under it, okay? I bet there will be lots of kids wherever Mallory’s going this weekend, and they’re all dying to have a good Christmas, just like you.”

  Polly nodded her excitement, the grief that had driven today’s meltdowns gone. For now there was only a father and daughter committed to a week of getting to know each other again, and now they had a Saturday adventure to look forward to. Right there in the middle of the kitchen Mallory had filled with ridiculous colors so she’d feel less lonely.

  “O-okay, then,” she said, agreeing to spend an entire day with a child who reminded her too much of herself at the same age and a deeply feeling man Mallory had to tear her eyes away from before she started drooling.

  She took Emma’s vintage pin to the Mickey Mouse cookie jar she kept on the counter by the toaster. There were no treats inside—she was never home long enough to keep snacks from going stale. But she hadn’t been able to resist purchasing the chipped thing, along with a collection of Smurf juice glasses she’d found at a downtown flea market one weekend on her way home from work.

  She lifted Mickey’s head and carefully placed Whiskers inside, then closed the lid and patted the mouse’s tubby belly. She turned back and found Polly watching her with inquisitive ey
es.

  “This’ll be your special place,” Mallory promised—committed now, regardless of the temporary insanity she’d clearly succumbed to. “Whatever you want to put in here is okay by me. I won’t look unless you want me to. We won’t talk about any of it until you say it’s okay. You can forget whatever you put in here for as long as you need to. And I’ll keep it all safe until you’re ready to take your things back home.”

  A safe place. A place to stop running from the things that were damaging her. An open-ended place totally removed from limits and rules and conditions, where Polly couldn’t shock or disappoint anyone with whatever she needed. That would be Mallory’s Christmas gift to this family.

  Polly and Pete could work out the rest on their own, she promised herself.

  “You can come over,” Pete added, “as long as Mallory’s here. And as long as you knock and let her know you want to visit, and I know you’ll be here. That’s what big girls do. You’ve got to help me out here, Polly. I couldn’t take it if anything happened to you. We’ll figure out school and friends and what you like to eat and even Christmas. But you’ve got to stop running away from me. You don’t have to talk about or feel anything you don’t want to, I promise. But I don’t want you to forget us or Mommy, either, not even if it hurts for a while. You’ve got to give me a chance to work through this with you. Okay? Please let me help you.”

  Polly nodded, her bottom lip trembling. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean to be mean to you or Mrs. Davis or the kids at school. I just…”

  “You needed someone to listen.” He pulled her close. “And we’re going to make sure you have that from now on.” His voice caught on his promise, making Mallory want to wrap her arms protectively around them both. “Then you and I are going to help Ms. Phillips out to pay her back for being so nice, right?”

  “Right.” Polly stared up at her father as if he’d just slain every last one of her dragons.

  Mallory knew just exactly how the kid felt.

  “So we have ourselves a deal?” she asked, pushing her dangerous thoughts aside. We…There’d been a time when being part of a we would have been Mallory’s dream come true. Now it felt like yet another opportunity to learn how much of an outsider she’d always be. “Let’s shake on it, and then you only have to promise to do one more thing for me. I really can’t handle hearing Ms. Phillips all the time at home. When we’re here, we’re friends. And my friends call me Mallory. Deal?”

  “Deal!” Polly nodded and shook, her ponytails swinging beside the charming set of dimples she’d inherited from her father.

  “Thank you,” Pete said. He kept his tone light. But in his expression Mallory saw his silent acknowledgment of the precarious path they’d set themselves upon.

  “Save your thanks for Saturday,” Mallory warned. Lying to herself only made things worse for everyone. Big girls learned that as soon as they were old enough to stop believing in fairy tales. “I’m betting none of us realizes what we’re getting ourselves into.”

  Chapter Seven

  We grow accustomed to the dark,

  When light is put away…

  “Mama, we have to get some help.” Mal sat next to her-mama on a tattered cot in a run-down shelter, in a run-down town she didn’t know the name of somewhere outside of Memphis. “You’re too sick this time. The medicine’s not working.”

  “It’ll be warmer tomorrow,” Mama said. Then she coughed for another minute, or maybe two, the way she’d been coughing for days. Weeks. Almost a month, actually, getting worse every day. “Then we’ll head out again. I just need you to be a big girl for one more night. Don’t be scared, Mal. You promised you’d stop being so scared.”

  It had been Thanksgiving since Mal hadn’t cringed every time Mama started coughin’, worrying that it would get as bad as last winter. Now it was nearly Christmas, and this year’s flu was making Mal wish it were last year again. Or the year before that. Because then she’d still believe this wasn’t the way it was always gonna be.

  Turned out her mama hadn’t wanted Mal as much as she’d wanted to keep goin’. Otherwise, they’d have found someplace to stay by now. They wouldn’t still be invisible, with nothin’, in a world with no colors and no real Christmas and no home of their own.

  Mama’s next cough lasted so long Mal patted her back, then rubbed it the way Grams used to. The way she’d wished Mama had rubbed her back their first year on the streets, when it had been Mal who’d felt so bad. She’d been such a baby back then—six forever years ago—dreamin’ of Christmas trees and the perfect kind of holiday she’d always wanted with Grams and Papa, when hers was always gonna be cold and rainy and searching for some way, any way, to get out of the weather. Like a baby she’d thought she was gonna die that first Christmas if she didn’t get what she’d wanted.

  This year was their worst Christmas yet, and Mama needed her more than any of the others. She’d been getting sicker since last winter. She was never gonna be right in her thinking or in the way she spent what little money they had that Mal didn’t hide on drinkin’ stuff to make her feel better, only it always made things worse once she ran out.

  That’s what had landed them on the streets in the first place, because Mama wouldn’t go to the hospital that Grams and Papa said she had to, or take the medicine that would make it where she didn’t have to drink to get by. She’d said it was to keep Mal. But it hadn’t been.

  People went to the thinkin’ kind of hospital when they didn’t see the world right and couldn’t live like other people—that’s what Mama always said while she drank. And who wanted to live like other people, anyway? So she’d run instead of going there, and she’d loved Mal so much she couldn’t leave without her. And that kind of love was the most important thing in the world. It made her and Mama richer than everyone else, Mama said, no matter how little they had. It was why Mal had to be a big girl now, so they could stay together.

  But Mama had needed Mal more than she’d loved her, Mal had figured out when Mama wasn’t thinkin’ right and when she was drinkin’ and when she was sick. Without Mal’s help, Mama never would have made it this long. Which meant to keep their family together, Mal had to stop dreaming about the baby stuff she’d wanted when they’d first run. Even if they always had nothin’, even if they stayed invisible forever, if Mal kept goin’ she’d still have her mama.

  But six years of not staying anywhere long enough to find a place of their own, or to get clean for more than a few days at a time, or for Mal to go to school or see other kids hardly any at all—it felt like forever. Especially after it started snowing again this winter.

  Mal used to love snow. It hardly ever snowed in the South. This was only the second time in her whole life she’d ever seen it, and walking around in it the last few days should have felt like living in a snow globe. Like a Christmas dream she could have for real, where everything was fresh and perfect, and they were finally gonna have a magical holiday.

  Only they were stuck inside now, where Mama never wanted to be. And they were so dirty, Mama was so sick, that even in a shelter everybody kept staring at them like they wanted them to go away. And if Mama’s cough didn’t get better, a volunteer might get too close, wantin’ to help, and start asking questions and maybe notify the people Mama said would take Mal away and put Mama in one of those places for people who didn’t think right.

  That’s why they couldn’t go to a free clinic or an emergency room no matter how sick Mama got. Free stuff, even medicine, wasn’t really free. You had to sign papers and explain who you were, and kids like Mallory weren’t supposed to be on the streets wandering from one place, one season, one year to another, hiding from the world because that’s the only way she could stay with a mama everyone thought was crazy.

  Nowhere was safe—not anywhere there were normal people. So they’d stuck to smaller towns with nice churches and local shelters that weren’t connected to anyplace else. And Mal got to keep her mama, which was all the safe she had left.

>   But Mama’s cough was worse than ever. They’d heard the people at the last place they’d moved on from say that people like them with nowhere to get dry and warm and better were dyin’ of the flu this year. On the streets you got used to not feeling so good. It was no big deal, until it was. Until it was life and death, and you forgot about havin’ no holidays or birthdays or school days or summer breaks or grandparents—because what did any of that matter when you couldn’t breathe your chest hurt so much?

  No matter how much food and medicine she stole this winter, it hadn’t been enough. Mama’s fever wasn’t goin’ away, and she hadn’t really eaten anything Mal had found for her, not for days. Then it had gotten too cold for Mama to keep walkin’. Mal had found a shelter in an old church where so far nobody was looking too close at them. But it wasn’t helping. Mama was already talking about goin’ outside again, saying over and over that people were too close and they would take her and Mal’s clothes or the other stuff they were dragging around.

  Six years of stuff—treasures, Mama called it, even though they didn’t have much, not really, just a pile of tattered nonsense that smelled as bad and looked as shabby as they did.

  Mama refused to part with any of it. They had a bag of clothes they washed whenever they found a bathroom with soap and a lock on the door. Another bag held trinkets they’d mostly pulled from other people’s trash, except for Mal’s one and only possession that was all hers—a doll a nice lady volunteer had given her the week after that first Christmas, when Mal had been crying because she’d realized she’d never get another present again. The lady had said it had been left there special, just for Mal.

  For some reason this year, Mama was obsessed about someone taking it most of all—a doll Mal had never even let herself name. It was like keeping the doll was more important to Mama than Mal or getting better had ever been—more important even than not dying of the flu because she wouldn’t let Mal take her to a doctor.