“No, there is a storm coming from the coast. I need to get to the ranch to tend to some things. Mercer and Babe will be worried about their stock.”
“Oh, Greg, I—”
“It’s all right, Niokska. You are not ready for the conversation I want to have.” He paused. Grace wasn’t sure what to say. He was right. She wasn’t ready for that conversation. “You may never be. But you know where to find me, Grace.”
There was a sweetness in hearing her name from him. While there might be no romance in her towards Greg, still he would be out there, thinking of her from time to time. “Thank you Greg.” It was all she could offer him.
“Niokska, look inside your front door, I left a gift for you there.”
“But—“
“I left one for all the sisters. But do not worry, yours is special. A token of friendship.” There was a smile in his voice.
“Be safe, Greg. Let us know that you arrive, okay?”
“Always safe, Niokska. Otherwise, who will see to Mercer and your Babe when they have their wars?” He was laughing.
“Merry Christmas, Greg.”
The hum in the line faded away to silence. She had lost him on a back road leading to the highway.
The box was not very large. In Grace’s experience, a small gift meant only one thing, something she couldn’t accept from a man she would only see once or twice a year.
As she had feared, it was jewelry. And what a piece of jewelry. A long length of liquid silver held a small cage of Black Hills gold, woven into twining leaves. Inside the cage, but visible on close examination, a rose-colored pearl, the same burnished tint as the rose gold leaves. It was beautiful, unusual, and no doubt expensive. She held up the strand and pulled it over her head and around her neck. She would have to give it back. But maybe . . . it was lying so beautifully against her sweater. The urge to keep it was overwhelming. Maybe she would wear it tonight, just to show Granny. Granny Stillwell would know what to do.
They sat together later, unpacking Grace’s gifts to put around the tree. Grace started a fire in the soapstone stove and the room was practically glowing with Christmas cheer. Granny brought a tea tray in from the kitchen and moved it near the stove.
“Santa come early to your house this year, I see.” She peered at the necklace. Grace slipped it off and handed it to her. “From Gregory?”
“I don’t know if I can keep it, Granny. Just look at it.” Granny’s small fingers traced the twining gold of the egg.
“Oh, you’ll keep it honey, you have no choice. Look at this.” Grace squinted at the small tag of silver on the bottom of the fragile piece. “Niokska” was carefully engraved there. Granny laughed as she poured the tea. “That’s a smart man, that Gregory is. He’ll go far. You know he owns his own land out there, out west, don’t you, Gracie?”
“Does he?” Grace was still blinking at the jewelry.
“Given any thought to a trip out that way or—even moving out there with your sister? You know she would love to have you.” Granny was probing gently.
“Granny, I just got back to you! I am not moving to Montana. And Greg. Well, I can’t get my head around it.” She was resigned to finding Greg Ten Horse attractive. Granny’s eyes were piercing. Grace squeezed her hand and dropped a kiss on her head before moving to rearrange the multitude of gifts under Granny’s small tree.
“I’ve got a gift basket going to the Rodwells. Mostly food and clothes. We did some shopping for toys, also.”
“We? You and Ellie or you and Gabriel?”
“You just don’t give up, do you Granny?” She busied herself with arranging the gifts by name, refusing to look her grandmother in the eye. Granny laughed.
“Where has the day gone, Gracie? We should have something to eat. It will be dark soon enough.” They ate bowls of soup with crusty bread and talked about the wedding. They talked about Granny’s surprise at seeing her own wedding dress on Babe’s slight frame, Babe using her full baptismal name, seeing Katy in tears (a rare event) and how Mercer had beamed when he brought Babe back up the aisle.
“You know your mother let me name that child, don’t you, Gracie?”
“You did? We thought Mother had. Well, we always just thought it was something crazy that mother blessed Babe with.” She saw Granny wince at the expression but let it pass. Any reference to crazy had been taboo for a long time around Granny Stillwell.
“She did. I loved your grandfather’s mother very much and she was Victoria, you remember. But there were her sisters and your great-grandfather’s sister, too. I couldn’t decide. So I didn’t. Your mother, because of her craziness, maybe,” she frowned again, but continued, “let me use them all. It would have been Victoria Alice Elizabeth Jane if I had my way but we shortened the Elizabeth to Eliza because it wouldn’t fit on the form at the hospital.” Her eyes were distant, remembering Babe’s birth, no doubt. “I think the nurses thought the grandmother was as crazy as the mother when we filled out the birth certificate. And Babe was such a small thing to have such a big name. All wrinkled. And a crying baby! You’ve never seen such a crying baby! Your mother was nearly gone by then. I always thought of Babe as a gift she gave me before she left us. She was never the same after that. And then your father took to leaving for days at a time. You could say we lost him, too.”
Grace had heard stories of the decline of Marjorie Phillips. It had been a long, dark tunnel of mental illness and she had never found her way out. Aunt Mary had told Grace of coming to see them, only to find the girls unfed and unwashed. Marjorie Phillips had not been to work in days, staying in bed from morning until night. The girls’ father was gone again. The unspoken thought in the family was that he had another wife somewhere and had gone to spend time with her, away from Marjorie Phillips’ unprovoked tantrums and fits of unjustified anger.
Aunt Mary had taken one look at the trash-ridden rental house and quickly realized that her sister was completely immersed in a landslide of neglect. Neglect of her job, her home, herself and her small girls. She found little Ellie trying to give the smaller girls bologna sandwiches, which were all she could think to make at the age of eight. Babe, a toddler, was crying that she did not want bologna, stomping her bare feet in a soiled romper and a playpen that reeked of urine. It was all a blur for Grace. She had thought vaguely, in her child’s way that it was strange that her mother let her wear the same favorite dress to school every day for a week. None of the other girls in her class were allowed to do so. Finally, on seeing the child with uncombed hair and a dirty face for the fifth day in a row, her teacher asked her if her mother was ill. But what happened from there was lost somewhere in the haze of childhood experience. When Grace asked Ellie about the incident years later, Ellie, with her sharper, clearer memory and sharper, clearer pain, had only commented quietly, “Do me a favor, Grace. Don’t remember. Just remember that Aunt Mary was there and that eventually Mother took us to Granny’s to live. That’s the best way to remember it, if you think of it at all.”
Grace, not liking the shadow in her sister’s eyes, dropped the conversation, only hugging Ellie in response. Some favors were easy to give and Ellie had earned anything Grace could give her.
“But we’ve always called her Babe. Granny, didn’t you ever mind?”
“Oh, no, honey, not at all. Your grandfather loved that nickname and he gave it to her. She was the last baby we had in this house so it was fitting, now wasn’t it?” Granny sipped her tea. “Can I count on you to watch the house for me and feed my birds when I take my trip?”
“Trip?” Grace sat back. “You’re going on a trip?”
“Oh, my lord. Gracie, you haven’t opened up that envelope Mercer and Babe give you at the church? Those two good-looking men have got you going in circles!”
“What does that have to do with you going on a trip, Granny? Grace automatically searched the room for her handbag. The envelope was tucked inside, forgotten in the wedding and Christmas madness.
“Well, child,
I’m finally going to get to take my vacation! Babe and Mercer are sending me to Hawaii!”
“What?! Granny, what on earth are you talking about?”
“The envelope, girl, go get your envelope! It seems that Mercer has been holding out on us. He’s no poor rancher, Gracie. Your sister has married a man who’s doing just fine! Better than fine. He’s sending Ellie, Timothy and the children to Hawaii with me, as escorts.”
“Oh, Granny!” She was astonished. Granny Stillwell had wanted to see Hawaii for as long as Grace could remember. She had planned a trip with Grandpa Stillwell twice before. The first time, Marjorie Phillips had chosen to kill herself and stopped the dream vacation.
Then Grandpa Phillips’ cancer had been diagnosed and while he insisted they go ahead with their trip, saying “Em, it won’t matter one way or the other. When your time has come, it’s come.” Granny Stillwell had just as calmly insisted that they stay at home so that he could receive the chemotherapy that would slow the cancer but send him to his bed. And so the longed-for vacation had never happened. But every year, the calendar on the kitchen wall showed the aquamarine of tropical beaches and brilliant pink hibiscus, Granny Stillwell’s dream.
“Ellie and the family, too? My goodness, Granny, what will that cost?!” Grace was stunned.
“Evidently that doesn’t matter, child. You see, Mercer’s family owned a copper mine. That boy is sitting on a small fortune. Now go open that envelope!”
Grace held it in her hands, almost afraid to see what lay inside. She had known last night that it was a key, she had rubbed her finger absently against the pattern of its cut when she tucked it into her purse. She opened the envelope, the key looking strangely familiar. It was the key she had given Ellie when she moved into the small Bouche house. The “just in case” key that they all exchanged to each other homes. She opened the note and read:
Gracie –
You have always been there for me. But you were there every step of the way when I took the risk and bought the ranch. Mercer and I feel like you brought us together by taking that chance. I knew you would help me even though I couldn't ask. Please accept this gift from us because of the great gift you gave Mercer and me by helping us find one another. We are holding the deed to the house in your name. If you decide to stay, the house is yours to keep. If Franklin Hill is not the place for you, the house will still be there if you choose to come back. We love you. Be happy.
— Babe & Mercer
“Granny! Granny, Holy Mother of God—you can’t believe this.” Her hands were shaking when she handed the note to Granny, who folded it without reading it and placed it back in the envelope.
“Child, do you want the old Bouche place? You know Norm and Ed will help you take care of it, but do you want to stay there?”
“I, well—How can they afford this? I mean—I thought Old Man Bouche wouldn’t sell.”
To live rent free, mortgage free. It was a concept out of her realm of thinking. She had pinched and scraped for so long. Even when the money flowed she still worried about having enough. The poverty of childhood stayed with her long into adulthood, it never left her. Her pantry was always stocked, her refrigerator full, in case family should need something. The concept of owning a home, and a home she loved like the little brick house. It was past all reasoning.
“Gracie, listen to me. Mercer is—well, I believe that boy is a millionaire. Babe didn’t know either until after he did the asking.”
“What?” she was back to astonishment. “But they are sending you to Hawaii? That’s not quite the same as buying a whole house, Granny. You should, they should give something to you, I mean.”
Granny shook her head, “I don’t need anything much. I don’t have a big bankroll, but I have your Grandfather’s pension, the little bit we saved, and my Social Security. I do fine, Grace. Mercer and Babe are fixing my back porch for me, too, though, isn’t that nice? All I need is to know that you girls are happy.” she continued, “Gracie, you gave your savings to Babe when she wanted to buy the ranch. And I know you gave it because you wanted to, that Babe didn’t ask you. The pride that girl has, she would never have asked. Did you co-sign the loan papers for her, too?”
Grace nodded distractedly. “Yes, I did and I’d do it again, but this? She paid me back, Granny. She doesn’t owe me anything”
“It’s not that she owes you, dear. It’s that she loves you.”
And it was as simple as that.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Christmas ham was ready to tuck in the oven, bourbon and brown sugar standing at the ready. Grace left Granny knitting the last of the mittens for one grandchild or another and headed for the far side of Franklin Hill, crossing the railroad tracks once again to the trailer of Gina and Derry Rodwell.
A familiar green pickup sat in the driveway, tailgate dropped. A dented and worn washing machine lay on its side in the bed next to a dryer in equally bad condition. Norm approached, taking the gift basket of food while Grace reached back for the presents.
“Got the washer and dryer all hooked up. At least that’ll get ‘em by for a while.”
“Is Mrs. Rodwell here?” Grace had known that Connie and Cindy had put their heads together to come up with the gift of used appliances for Derry’s mother but she was uncertain how the charity would be received.
“No, she’s taken the little ones to church. Derry left a key under the deck and we’ve been moving like Santa’s elves to get those things installed. Best leave your things under the tree. Such as it is.”
The living room was tidy, although the carpeting was very worn, but the most apparent feature was its size. It was small. Small for a woman with three children. A sparsely decorated, four-foot-tall plastic fir tree flashed colored lights in the corner. It was a Charlie Brown tree if she had ever seen one. Still, paper chains of green and red looped around it to serve as garland. Each child, she noticed, had their own name painted on a wooden ornament.
Norm pulled an envelope from the IGA out of his pocket and tucked it into the bow on the basket she pushed under the tree. “Young Gabriel wanted to give them a little something else to get them by.”
Grace smiled. Generous and thoughtful of Gabriel McAllister. She suffered a moment of shame for the opulence of the evergreen in her own living room. Next year, these children would have ornaments. Dozens of glowing, bright Christmas jewels. She would tell Cindy and Connie and they would see to it. The tree seemed to lean more to the left as she surveyed the scene.
But why wait until next year? She pursed her lips and looked at her watch then put her hands on her hips, thinking. Mass wouldn’t be over for another forty minutes. And it was only five minutes to the house and then five back. It could be done.
Ed stepped into the living room from the hall utility closet, whistling, wiping his hands on a rag. He turned to greet Grace, the notes of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” quickly trailing off into silence as he took in the calculating look on Grace’s face as she assessed the tree. He sighed. He knew that expression.
“Best go ask Connie for a box, too.” It was almost a grumble coming from the broad-chested man, but he held the door for her as she ran for her car. The trip back home, carefully picking and choosing from her mammoth Christmas tree those decorations which the children would most enjoy was finished in less than twenty minutes. Cindy and Connie sent selections of their own in a shoebox, along with a spare strand of evergreen garland and a velvet bow. Grace chose as many brightly colored unbreakable ornaments as she could find, thinking of young Willie and his reach up the tree. They set to work, Norm calling out the time in minutes as they rushed.
When the trio left the trailer park, they saw the headlights of the white Plymouth and heard the rumble of a rusted out muffler coming toward them. Small heads in the back window turned to gawk at the green pickup truck.
“Better hit it, Norman. You ain’t supposed to see Santa!” Ed braced himself against the dashboard the door handle as Norm floored the tr
uck and they raced away, wet snow splashing behind them.
Gazing at the small but sparkling tree, Helena Rodwell nearly fell to her knees. Gifts for the children: two apiece from Grace, another from Gabriel and a fourth from the brothers and their wives, filled the empty space over the worn felt tree-skirt. She had a toy hidden away for each child and an outfit picked from the local Goodwill store. But she was weary of them having so little. Heating the trailer was eating her small paycheck up as quickly as it came. The broken washing machine had made her cry when Derry told her it would not work. It was one more small catastrophe in an ocean of disasters, large and small, where she was treading water every day. It was true, she tried to put a smile on her face. But when she saw Derry fretting and Gina wearing clothes that did not fit and which no amount of sewing could ever repair, she wanted to break down and bawl like a baby. The school clothing swap had relieved some anxiety, at least for the short term.
But this. This was a Christmas miracle. An absolute gift from Heaven. She regarded the basket again, and in curiosity, opened the envelope that had been slipped into the curls of the red bow. She had expected a note or letter and so was speechless at the gift certificate, which would feed her family, with care, for a week or more. She closed her eyes for a moment to gather her emotions. When she opened them, they fell upon two booklets, rolled and tied with ribbon, lying near the gift basket. Curious, she picked up the roll and saw a tag, addressed “To the Rodwell Family, from Santa Claus.” Helena pulled the ribbon and saw that she held instruction manuals for a washer and dryer.
“Dear God in Heaven.” was all she could say. All the hours of work and all the worry for the children were set aside. She looked at the food basket, amazed that someone could know how she craved the Christmas hard candy she’d had as a child. Nuts and oranges, apples, herbs and spices, traditional holiday treats and cans to fill the pantry overflowed from the basket. “Dear God.” She repeated.
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