by Nancy Naigle
“No-oo. You said you’d take me home to our regular Santa on Saturday.”
That she had, although boy did she regret it now. It would be a long drive all the way back to Atlanta, but at the time she’d felt so guilty about the move that she’d have promised RayAnne anything. “Right.” Guess her wish that RayAnne would forget wasn’t going to come true.
Santa held a pose as the elf took another picture. Anxious parents loomed nearby, waving at their child to look in the direction of the camera.
Sydney remembered the first time RayAnne had climbed into Santa’s lap. No crying. No fussing. No fear. She was still pretty fearless.
A light flashed, and another moment had been captured. Someday that child’s grandchildren would probably look at that picture and talk about how Christmases used to be.
Somewhere in her old photo albums there was a picture of her and Jon together on Santa’s lap, before they were married. They were so carefree then. Things changed over the course of a marriage. She wondered if he and his girlfriend were sitting on Santa’s lap somewhere, grinning for a candid shot this year. It knotted her gut to think about it.
She turned and headed toward the tree lot. RayAnne walked a few steps ahead of her. Sometimes she seemed so grown up for her age. But like the weather here in the south, that was unpredictable and could change at any moment.
They walked into the tree lot and meandered through the trees.
“Dad would have liked this one,” RayAnne said, tugging on a tall, thin, long-needled tree.
“Yeah, looks just like what he’d pick out.” Sydney kept walking. She didn’t give a hoot what Jon liked anymore, and keeping those comments to herself was sometimes not the easiest to do.
A sign held a grid of flag colors and prices. Even the cheapest trees were more than she cared to spend for a window display for a part-time job, and Bea had been clear she had no budget. Every dollar had its place in the budget until Sydney started her new job at the beginning of the year.
She let out a heavy sigh. She wanted the store window to be wonderful. For Bea. For RayAnne. But as wonderful as a live tree would be, it didn’t make sense to tap her savings to buy one. There had to be another option.
She swept a glance around Santa’s Village. They had more decorations in this one small space than many businesses would garner in a lifetime.
With the theme at The Book Bea being “O Christmas Tree,” it only seemed natural that there had to be a tree in the window display. But that dingy artificial one seemed like such a downer. All the decorating in the world wasn’t going to transform it. The one in her attic was too tall. That wouldn’t work, either.
The decorations on the street lampposts caught her eye again.
The fringy garland gave her an idea. She’d seen someone post something last year on Pinterest that was cool, and very different. And really perfect for a bookstore, too. Could she pull it off? Only one way to find out.
“RayAnne. Where are you?” Sydney backtracked until she found her still standing next to the tree that she’d said her dad would like. “We’re going to try something different for the tree.”
“But I like this one.”
“I know you do, but it’s not money well spent. Come on.” Sydney had taken at least ten steps before she realized RayAnne wasn’t following her. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know why we can’t buy this tree. It’s perfect.”
Sydney felt her calm losing its hold. “It’s not perfect, RayAnne. It’s way too big for the window at The Book Bea. And we’re not spending that much money on something for two weeks.”
“So that’s how it’s going to be from now on. Dad gets to do whatever he wants with all the money and you’re going to be, like, broke all the time. This sucks.”
Sydney spun around. “Don’t take that tone with me, RayAnne. Just stop it. I’m sad. You’re sad. But this is the hand we’ve been dealt. And yes, your dad will always have more money than me but he will never love you more than I do.” Sydney wished she’d held it in. Her jaw was tight but her lip trembled.
RayAnne was right. This did suck.
She didn’t bother to wait for RayAnne. She headed straight to the car, got in, slammed the door, and cradled the steering wheel, hoping like heck she wasn’t going to cry.
And maybe that’s what happens when you hold it all in for too long with no one to talk to. Everything comes out in one big blubbering mess. And not an easy one to clean up.
RayAnne opened the door and slipped into the passenger seat. Sydney had no idea how long it had been.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“You’re right. It does suck. I don’t know who I’m fooling.”
“We’re going to be fine,” RayAnne said.
Her daughter laid a hand on her shoulder, and that just made the tears fall again. Maybe she should’ve let RayAnne stay with Jon. It’s what she’d wanted. It had been completely selfish of her to think RayAnne would be better off with her just because she was her mother. All she’d wanted was to show RayAnne they could be happy together. They didn’t need all the monetary things that Jon so easily provided.
“Mom, tell me the idea for the window.”
“It probably won’t even work,” Sydney said. Besides, she was exhausted now. All that pep and vigor she’d felt earlier today had drained like someone had pulled the plug. She knew better than to overpromise and underdeliver, but that was exactly what she was about to do. She hated that. She wanted so badly to do a good job, but she had nothing to decorate with, and RayAnne’s heart wasn’t really in it.
“Let’s try it. I’ll help. Besides we don’t want to let Miss Bea down.”
“How’d you get to be so smart?”
“Lucky, I guess.” RayAnne hugged her and then put her seatbelt on. “I love you, Mom. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
Sydney dug for a napkin in the console and blew her nose. “Okay, let’s start over.” She twisted the key in the ignition and pulled out onto the street, heading for The Book Bea.
* * *
This time of night it was easy to get a parking spot right out in front of The Book Bea.
Sydney and RayAnne walked up the steps, and Sydney used her key to unlock the door. Inside she waved her hand along the wall through the darkness, searching for the light switches.
Being in this place renewed her strength and confidence.
Finally, she flipped the switch and the lights flickered on. “Okay. Here’s what I need you to do,” she said to RayAnne. “Take the book cart over there and go down each aisle and pull books that have red or white or green spines on them. I say we start with sixty and see where we get. Twenty big ones. Twenty medium and twenty small books if possible.”
RayAnne’s face lit up. “Cool. Okay. I can totally do that.” She took off like she was on that show with the shopping cart races. Down one aisle and heading toward the next, the clunk of books hitting the cart breaking the quiet.
Sydney grabbed a round end table from beside an overstuffed chair near the children’s section and carried it to the display window.
The deep bay window was four feet deep at the widest spot and probably close to eight feet wide—her best guess without a tape measure. Plenty of room. She cleared out the books that had been displayed on three different risers in the window, saving the books with red, white, or green spines to add to the collection RayAnne was rounding up.
She lifted the table into the display area, then wiggled it into the center. Things were starting to take shape in her mind. She began to hum “O Christmas Tree,” then stepped down from the window and went to sort decorations into three piles.
1. What they could definitely use
2. And what they maybe could use in an emergency
3. What really should be tossed
Sydney went to the boxes stacked like one giant wedding cake next to the counter.
One of the boxes was full of brand new miniature LED Christmas lights. J
ackpot!
Maybe someone had sprinkled a little Christmas magic on them while they’d been at Santa’s Village. Feeling renewed hope, she sat on the floor opening four boxes of lights. One by one she strung them together, plugging one end into the next. It wasn’t so hard to do.
“Got the books,” RayAnne said, sliding to a stop just in front of her. “What are you doing?”
“I found twinkle lights. I think this should be just enough lights to frame the front window. I hope they work.”
RayAnne said, “Crossing my fingers!”
Sydney squeezed her eyes shut and plugged them in. Luckily, the glow of the blue lights was so bright she didn’t have to open her eyes to know they worked.
RayAnne squealed in excitement. “They’re pretty. So much prettier than the lights we always had on our tree back home.”
“Indeed,” Sydney said. Only what was really going through her head was I don’t need you, Jon Ragsdale. Okay, so maybe it was a tiny win when kept in perspective, but it felt huge today. Jon had always handled the Christmas lights. A task that he’d always made seem so daunting, and it had turned out to be quite doable.
He’d always insisted on those big multicolored bulbs, too. So that’s exactly what they’d had. Every single year. She’d always thought these teeny LED lights were so pretty, and she was right. She loved the way they glowed.
She was starting to realize that she’d made an awful lot of concessions in their relationship. She could get used to being completely independent.
Sydney draped a long strand of lights across her outstretched arms then handed the rest to RayAnne to hold.
“Hold this hammer and nails while I climb up.”
“You’re going to hammer?” RayAnne looked at Sydney like she was planning to walk into an MMA match.
“Sure.”
“Do you know how?”
“Sure.” Certainly she had hung a picture or something over the years. Stepping up onto the red metal step stool, she draped the strand of lights over her neck and reached toward RayAnne for the hammer.
“I don’t think this is a good idea. What if we break the window?”
Sydney froze for a millisecond. “Oh, it’ll be fine.”
RayAnne reluctantly handed over the hammer and two nails. “Here you go.” Then she stepped back.
“Where are you going? You don’t trust me?”
RayAnne pulled her lips together and giggled.
“I see how you are. We’re a good team. Trust me, we’ll be fine.”
Sydney pinched a nail between her finger and thumb and held it in place against the frame of the window, then lifted the hammer and swung it. The nail sailed across the room.
RayAnne laughed out loud and raced over to retrieve the shiny nail.
“Whoops.”
“Three strikes and you’re out, Mom.”
“Funny.” Sydney put the other nail in the same spot and pressed it into the wood just a little to hold it steadier this time. The first three whacks landed nicely, then confidence overcame her and she swung one last time a little harder, landing right against the glass window.
Her heart sank. She was almost afraid to look.
RayAnne sucked in a breath and raced to the window. “Did it break?”
Sydney winced and took a close look at the glass. But no, the window hadn’t broken. “We got lucky.”
“We? You got lucky. This wasn’t my idea,” RayAnne said.
“Got a better one?”
RayAnne walked over to the window and pressed her finger against the inside frame of the window. “How about these?”
Sydney lowered herself to see what RayAnne was talking about. Tiny adhesive-backed hooks lined the window at about eighteen-inch intervals. They’d probably been there for years.
“Why didn’t we notice those before?”
“Because they’re like see-through.”
“True,” Sydney said. “I think we’ll go that route.” A much better plan, because as much as she hated to admit it, RayAnne was right. This could’ve ended in an embarrassing and expensive mistake that she couldn’t afford. “Let’s try those hooks.” It only took a few minutes to hang the lights.
The day’s hot weather was now being pushed out by evening rain. She felt sorry for all those people who had been standing in line to see Santa, because it sure looked like things were getting ready to be a complete washout.
The drops splattered against the porch roof, creating a melodic background to their project. The forecast called for colder temperatures soon. That could mean snow. She’d never been here for a Christmas though, so she really wasn’t all that sure what to expect.
If these raindrops had been snowflakes, they’d be socked in tomorrow for sure.
Stringing the lights, she remembered how when Gram passed and left the property to her, she’d dreamed of her little family spending white Christmases here in Hopewell. Jon chopping wood for the fireplace, then holding RayAnne on his shoulders to decorate the high parts of the tree, because of course they’d buy a tree that rose all the way to the tippy-top of those old twelve-foot-high ceilings. All three of them wearing new Christmas pajamas and sipping hot cocoa by the fire after they’d decorated the tree. Of course, none of that had ever happened. Jon had never agreed to spend even a weekend here, much less a whole holiday.
She stepped down from the stool and guided the last inches of lights into place around the side of the window. She could still hear Jon saying, so matter-of-factly, that Christmas should be spent at home. But then he was the one sweeping their daughter off to some lodge in West Virginia.
In hindsight, what he’d really meant was that it would have been harder for him to squeeze in visits with that girlfriend of his had they ventured away for the holidays. And when Sydney’s former best friend told her that Jon had taken that girl to the Arts Council Holiday gala the last two years, when she still thought they were a happy family, it had about broken her. Jon knew her interest in the Arts Council events, and so had her friends. She’d even helped create the co-branding logo on the corporate sponsorship with the Arts Council. If it hadn’t been for her, Jon may never have landed their account. He’d always been so adamant that he didn’t want to go, but really he just hadn’t wanted to go with her. Everyone knew, but she’d never suspected a thing. That still stung.
She swallowed back the bitter taste that left in her mouth.
The dark thought threatened to dampen her mood. It still made her mad that she’d had no idea that Jon had been carrying on for over two years before he’d up and left her.
Good thoughts. New life. Positive focus. Better things are ahead, she chanted to herself.
That mantra had kept her sane … so far.
She pulled the wire tight so the bulbs lined up in a straight row.
“That looks perfect!” RayAnne danced below her as she reached her hands in the air, feeding more lights to her.
The tiny lights cast a heavenly glow against the wet glass—raindrops reflecting the light in a way that reminded her of the warm blue waters of the Caribbean. This time of night back in Atlanta would be bustling, but it was quiet here. Or maybe all hours were slow in a town this size.
Easier to decorate without a crowd anyway, she thought.
Working here part-time with Bea was a huge stroke of luck. She hadn’t felt this capable in a long time.
The Book Bea was where she’d found her love for reading, and if she could do that for someone else, wasn’t that reason enough to dedicate her time to it? She felt like she belonged here in The Book Bea. And she needed that more than anything right now.
For the first time this year as she grappled for a hold on to something, anything, she felt like she was in the right place at the right time and that what she’d reached for was in her hand.
“Go out front and tell me if they look good,” Sydney said.
RayAnne unlocked the door and ran outside, holding one hand above her head like that was going to protect her from
the light rain. Squinting, she gave Sydney the thumbs up and ran back inside. “Man, that rain is cold.”
“They said it was going to cool off.”
“Didn’t think it would cool down that fast. It was warm when we were at the tree lot.”
“Guess the weather is a little less predictable here,” Sydney said.
“Won’t that be weird if Dad takes me to go skiing somewhere with snow and you have it right here anyway?”
“Could happen.” She wasn’t going to let the mention of Jon ruin her mood again. Better to shift the topic. “Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s start stacking all of the books you’ve collected by size. Big ones first.”
With the two of them, it didn’t take long to split the inventory into three piles of similarly sized books.
Sydney climbed back into the window and then reached toward RayAnne. “Start handing me books. The big ones first.”
“I still don’t know what we’re doing.”
“If it works, you will in just a few moments.” Sydney laid a row of books flat, spine out, in a circle. Then another overlapping the previous row.
RayAnne kept a steady stream of books coming Sydney’s way.
After a few rows of stacking RayAnne hollered, “Cool! It’s going to be a tree out of books.”
“Yep.” Sydney stood, inching back against the window for a better look. The red, green, and white books did give it a nice holiday feeling, and it was actually starting to take the conical shape she’d been hoping for. “Before we get too far, go grab that strand of big colored bulbs over by the counter and bring it to me.”
RayAnne came back carrying them like they were boa constrictors.
“Plug them in and see if they come on.”
She plugged them into the wall, but nothing happened. “Ruh. Roh,” RayAnne said.
“Hmm,” Sydney said. That was the problem with those old lights. One bad light and nothing lit. “Hand me the other end.”
She started wiggling each of the bulbs, and RayAnne took her lead and started at the opposite end. All of a sudden the strand came to life.
Sydney cheered.
“Awesome!” RayAnne leaped into the air. “Now what?”