A Christmas Hope

by Stacy Henrie

  He gestured to Johnny’s injured hand, still clutched in a tight fist. “Can I have a look at that finger of yours?”

  Johnny hesitated another second, then stuck out his hand for Dale’s examination. He uncurled the boy’s fist as he asked him, “How old are you, Johnny?”

  The mint shifted to one side of the boy’s cheeks as he answered, “Seven.”

  “Seven? Are you sure? I thought you must be at least nine.”

  Johnny’s small chest puffed out with pride. “I’ll be eight next month.”

  “That must be it.” Dale studied the bloodied tip of the boy’s index finger. “You looked like you were about to turn a year older.”

  The boy’s mother shot Dale a grateful smile, one he didn’t seem to notice in his inspection of the hurt finger, but Maria saw it. And it both thrilled and saddened her.

  Dale did have a way with people, especially when doing what he loved most—helping to heal their hurts. Being a bank manager wasn’t what he was meant to do. Maria could see that so plainly now. No wonder his words were tinged with bitterness whenever he talked about being a doctor. And yet he was trying so hard to do his new job. Even when it meant denying a large part of himself that would never go away.

  “I believe your finger will be just fine, Johnny.” Dale sat back on his heels, his arms loosely draped over his knees. “He might lose the nail,” he informed the boy’s mother, “and the skin will likely be black and blue for a while, but he’s going to be fine.”

  The woman stood as Dale did. “Thank you, again, Mr. Emerson. Can you tell the man thank you, Johnny?”

  “Thank you,” the boy managed to say around his slobbery Life Saver.

  Dale nodded and tucked his hands into his pockets. “You are most welcome—and quite brave, young man. I would’ve put up a real fuss had that been my finger.”

  The boy grinned.

  “If you’ll excuse me now, ma’am. Johnny.” He tipped his head at each of them. “Miss Schmitt here can help you with your banking needs.”

  “My window’s the one on the far left there,” Maria told the woman before she hurried after Dale, a new idea forming in her mind. While she was powerless to help Dale return to his real calling as a doctor, she could do all in her power to make his new life easier.

  “I have someplace I want to take you after closing,” she said, catching up to him.

  “Does it involve another store?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He pushed out a sigh. “I can hardly wait.” But his sarcasm didn’t quite match the light in his gaze. Making Maria wonder if he was looking forward to this next outing for more than what it might mean for his job.

  * * *

  Warm air, scented with sugar and happiness, wrapped itself around Dale as he entered the candy shop behind Maria. More times than he could count during his summer visits to Uncle Lester and Aunt Evie, he’d pressed his nose to this very store window to watch the taffy machine or brought in a handful of sweaty pennies and nickels to buy a treat.

  Dale stepped to the display case, its shelves and top lined with every sweet imaginable. “If I’d known this was the store you had in mind, I wouldn’t have spent the last hour in anxious agony.”

  Maria rolled her eyes, but a smile lit up her windblown cheeks. “That would have ruined the surprise. Is this where you buy all those Life Saver rolls you keep in your pocket?”

  He ran a finger across the smooth glass surface of the display case. The colorful confections made his mouth water, even though he’d eaten a late lunch. “My mother had already acquired a stash of the Pep-O-Mints before I came home. But I frequented Morley’s shop when I visited my aunt and uncle as a kid.”

  At that moment Quinton Morley himself entered the shop from a side door. “May I help y—” His eyes doubled in size as they alighted on Dale. Excitement at seeing the shopkeeper overrode his typical uneasiness about his eye patch. He grinned at the old man.

  “Dale?” The man continued to gawk at him, causing the smile on Dale’s face to slip. He fisted his hand inside his trouser pocket. But Mr. Morley’s next words had him unclenching his fingers. “Why, if it isn’t little Dale Emerson. Back in my shop after all these years.” The gray-haired man extended his hand across the counter.

  Smiling once more, Dale shook the man’s hand. “Good to see you, Mr. Morley. I didn’t know you and your wife were still running the place.”

  A shadow crossed the man’s face. “Only me now, Dale. Mrs. Morley passed away last year. The influenza took her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Memories of Mrs. Morley’s fresh-from-the-oven samples and even warmer smile filled his thoughts. “But you kept the shop going?”

  “That I did.” His somber expression softened. “Eleanor made me promise not to forget to give out the caramel morsels on Tuesdays that all you kids loved.” His gaze flitted past Dale and came to rest on Maria. “Hello there. Are you with Dale?”

  “I’m Maria Schmitt.” She stepped forward to shake his hand. “Dale is the manager of the bank where I work.”

  “Manager? Is that your uncle’s bank?”

  “Yes.” Dale returned his focus to the display case, bracing himself for questions. Morley and his wife had known Dale had gone to medical school.

  “Well, what do you know? The dark-eyed imp with a penchant for peppermints is now a bank manager.” Pride colored Morley’s tone, and Dale relaxed once more. “Now what I can get you two?” the man asked as he retied the ends of the apron covering his clothes.

  “How much for your candy canes?” Maria tapped her finger lightly against a large jar of the striped sticks.

  “Two cents apiece,” Morley recited.

  “I mean how much for the entire lot, including the jar.”

  Dale laughed at her request. They didn’t need an entire jar of candy canes.

  Morely’s eyebrows rose to his gray hairline. “You want the whole jar?” When Maria nodded, he shrugged and scratched at his stubbled chin. “I’ll sell you the whole lot of them, for say…four dollars?”

  “We’ll take it.” She threw Dale an expectant look, her eyes gleaming with equal parts victory and mischief.

  “I’m buying?” He halfheartedly balked, though he was already pulling out his billfold.

  “Better do what your lady there says, Dale.” The man winked conspiratorially at Maria. “That’s something I learned in nearly thirty years of marriage.”

  Dale wanted to correct the man’s mistake about Maria being his, but she was already hefting the heavy jar herself. He paid Morley, promised to return soon, then took the jar from Maria’s grip as they left the heat of the shop for the biting cold outdoors.

  He allowed a minute or two of silence to pass between them, waiting for her to explain the reason for the odd purchase. But Maria simply matched his strides down the sidewalk. After another minute, he stopped. “All right. Will you please tell me why I am now the owner of an entire jar of candy canes? What does this have to do with helping me as the bank manager?”

  Maria drew her coat collar tighter around her scarf, her lips curved into a smile. “Buy me some hot chocolate at the coffeehouse down the street and I’ll tell you.”

  “Do you always get what you want?” he remarked with amusement.

  Instead of deepening her smile as he’d hoped, his words seemed to steal the merriment from her face, replacing it with an uncharacteristic seriousness. “Not always.”

  Regret filled him, though Dale wasn’t sure why his teasing had saddened her. “Come on, then. This jar is getting heavy.”

  He offered her his elbow by way of apology. After a moment of hesitation, Maria linked her arm through his. Even though she wore a hat snuggly over her hair, she walked close enough to him that the tantalizing scent of flowers filled his senses. He had to force himself not to investigate the smell further by burying his nose in her dark curls.

  When they reached the coffeehouse, he released her to hold open the door. The windows inside were
foggy from the warm, coffee-fragranced air. After selecting a table, Dale placed the enormous jar at his elbow and shed his coat and hat. Maria removed her winter things as she settled into the seat across from him.

  Once they’d ordered two mugs of hot chocolate, Dale gestured to the candy canes. “How is this candy is going to help things at the bank? Are you planning on using them to decorate your tree?”

  Maria shook her head, making her curls sway. “A wonderful idea, but no. You’re going to give the candy to the children who come to the bank.” She bent forward over her folded arms. “And talk to their parents.”

  “I do talk to their parents.”

  “I know.” Her look seemed to imply something deeper than agreement. “I meant more like you did with Johnny today. All those questions you asked him about himself.”

  Dale tapped his thumb against the edge of the table. “I was only trying to make him less frightened, so he’d let me look at his finger.”

  Maria’s face lit up as if he’d promised her all the Christmas trees in the world. “Exactly. You can do the same with all the bank patrons, whether they’re young or old. Just talk to them as if they were that boy. Ask them questions about their lives, put them at ease.”

  He stilled his hand as he considered her suggestion. Easing the boy’s discomfort today had been second nature, as it had been when he’d helped Maria at the ice-skating pond. He’d seen a need, knew he could meet it, and jumped in, oblivious to what anyone thought of his missing eye. Could he do the same with someone who wasn’t in pain or frightened?

  “It’d be easier if they were hurting,” he half joked.

  “Most of them are,” Maria countered, her voice somber once more. “Even if we can’t see it.”

  What hurts did she harbor behind that perpetually optimistic outlook and biting wit? Dale wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure she would answer truthfully. At least not yet. “Where did you learn so much about people?” he asked instead.

  Some of the gloominess fled her expression. “I like studying them, finding out what makes them happy, what’s important to them.”

  She eyed the nearby window, and Dale followed her gaze. A woman moved past the coffeehouse, her body bent into the cold wind, her eyes turned down.

  “For instance,” Maria observed quietly, “that woman is in a hurry. Maybe she’s rushing home after a long day of work, at a job she may not have in a few months when all of the soldiers return. She hates the winter weather and something is troubling her. Possibly money worries, since her coat is looking threadbare and a little outdated.”

  “Hmm.” Dale met her eyes when she turned from the window. “I’m impressed.” He’d assumed Maria’s friendly interactions with the bank customers stemmed from a desire to be seen as charismatic, but he was beginning to realize he’d been wrong. “What about me?”

  “You?”

  “What has your study of me revealed?”

  Their cocoa arrived at that moment, and Dale wondered if she’d use that as an excuse not to answer. A possibility he found rather disappointing. He found he was quite curious to know what she thought of him.

  They both took a sip of the sweet-smelling liquid, then Maria set down her mug. “You really want to know?”

  He feigned a frown, hoping she couldn’t tell how much he did. “That bad, huh?”

  She chuckled. “Not all bad.” He raised his brow at her, making her laugh again. “Let’s see. You were an exceptional surgeon and working at a bank isn’t something you ever saw yourself doing.” She wrapped her long fingers around her cup and examined its contents. Dale braced himself. Her next words would likely be as difficult for him to hear as they clearly were for her to say. “You think people only see you for your injury, which is why you often spend so much time in your office.” Her voice came out low, earnest. “But when you smile or feel like you’re really helping someone or talk to people like you did with that boy today, you’re yourself.”

  Maria lifted her chin. “I can’t think of anything greater to be than that.”

  Her accurate assessment blindsided him, piercing through his defenses and leaving him at a loss as to how to respond. To hide his discomfort, Dale took a long swallow of cocoa. And burned his tongue in the process.

  “Can I get some water?” he announced hoarsely as the waitress moved past their table. She nodded and turned back toward the kitchen. “Have you always been this good at reading people?” he asked, hoping to cover his embarrassment over his scalding mouth and her truthful opinion.

  Unexpected sorrow lined her pretty face. She sipped more hot chocolate, as if to delay answering as he had moments ago. “I think it may have been a gift I always possessed, but I didn’t use.” Her mouth lifted in a regretful smile. “Up until this year, I don’t know that I cared too much for what others thought or felt, unless it impacted me.”

  “What changed that?”

  She blew out a sigh and shifted in her seat. “I was…in love. Or so I thought. It was a very painful revelation to find out I wasn’t the one he wanted. But I had the chance to do something to help him, really help him. Even though it meant letting go of any remaining hope I had for us.”

  Dale studied her, momentarily caught up in the beauty of her open and vulnerable expression. There was so much more to this woman than he’d suspected on first acquaintance. She was compassionate and strong, and possessed an innate ability to put people at ease, making them laugh or smile or feel understood.

  When she paused, he said simply, “But you chose to help him anyway.”

  “I did.” She sat upright, her shoulders squared. “Only then did I realize how selfish I’d been, how blind to what was going on around me. That’s when I decided to make a difference in people’s lives. No matter how small.”

  The waitress returned with his water and Dale took a good, long gulp before asking, “And the young man?”

  “He chose someone else.” Maria gave a nonchalant shrug, but her voice resounded with pain. “I may not have been who he wanted in the end, but I was grateful to finally win his respect.”

  Dale recalled her words from the other week when she’d revealed her feelings about being the baby of the family. Maria craved respect as much as he craved acceptance. No wonder she’d been upset at his innocent remarks that first day. He hadn’t taken her position at the bank seriously.

  Reaching across the table, he encircled her wrist with his fingers. She glanced at his hand, then up to his face. “You are amazing woman, Maria Schmitt. And any man who doesn’t have respect for that is a fool.”

  She licked her lips, drawing his attention to them—again. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  He rubbed her wrist with his thumb and felt her pulse quicken beneath his touch. The urge to kiss her, to fully remove the sadness still clinging to her, filled him to near distraction. With great effort, he banished the notion. They were not alone, and he wouldn’t take advantage of her vulnerability.

  Needing a diversion, he reached into his vest pocket and pulled out his Life Savers. He extracted two mints from the roll. “Want one in your cocoa?”

  A genuine smile lifted Maria’s mouth, as he’d hoped. “Why not?” Dale plunked a mint into each of their mugs. “You really are obsessed with that candy, aren’t you?”

  He grinned as he lifted his cup to his mouth and drank a long sip of the mint-laced chocolate, his burnt tongue forgotten. Who would have thought his love of Pep-O-Mints would actually prove comforting and helpful to someone else, like that boy today?

  He watched Maria sample her peppermint cocoa and smiled when she breathed a contented sigh. Surely there was something he could do to show her his appreciation for all she’d done to help him. He just had to figure out what.

  Chapter 6

  Pine needles scratched her cheek and the strong scent of fir filled her nose as Maria wrestled the Christmas tree through the door and into the bank lobby. She’d eaten her lunch quickly, then walked to the tree lot down the block, a few d
ollars from Dale tucked into her coat pocket, to finally purchase a tree.

  Customers still filled the main room as she propped the fir tree into a corner. Things had been overly busy the past two weeks, but she wasn’t convinced the rapidly approaching Christmas holiday was the sole reason. She suspected the changes in Dale had far more to do with the steady stream of patrons than the time of year.

  Instead of sequestering himself in the back office, Dale had begun to venture out into the lobby more, speaking with regular customers as well as those needing to visit with him personally. Their supply of candy canes had nearly been depleted from him offering the treats to nearly every child and adult who walked through the door. But Maria couldn’t fault him too much. His smile matched those of the ones receiving the sweets.

  His outward demeanor had changed, too. Though she’d considered him nice-looking when she’d first met him, she couldn’t help being a little in awe of him now. With his new suits and open manner, he exuded confidence. The self-assurance combined with his tall physique and already handsome face made Dale Emerson an attractive force to be reckoned with. One who’d begun to make her heart trip faster each time she saw him.

  “Maria.” Lawrence motioned for her to join them behind the teller windows.

  A flicker of frustration leapt through her at having to abandon her tree until all the customers had been helped. A small price to pay, she reminded herself, to have things going so well for the bank, and for Dale.

  “One moment,” she called to him as she took off her gloves. “I need to find a pail for this tree.”

  She pushed through the gate and hurried to the storage room to find a bucket. Her melancholy lingered, though, like the cold on her cheeks. She’d helped Dale as she had promised, and they’d made a good team. There was no reason to feel anything but happy.

  But she did. She missed helping Dale, missed talking with him alone, missed doing things outside of the bank. If only she could think up some other task for them to do together.

  She located the bucket, then filled it with water from the bathroom sink. Hopefully there’d be time later for her to run to the grocers and buy a few things to decorate the tree.