Bluegrass Christmas

by Allie Pleiter

  “You have no idea how much I was hoping you’d say that. Name your price. I’m prepared to pay anything.”

  Those creamy arms wrapped around his neck again, and Mac thought there wasn’t a single thing she couldn’t ask of him. “A potluck dish, one perfect performance and maybe a few more of those kisses.”

  Mac leaned in, delighted to oblige. “Wow. Best bargain ever.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was after midnight, and very few people showed any signs of wanting to leave the MCC basement where the Christmas Eve potluck was still going in full swing. As a matter of fact, cries of “Merry Christmas” rung out at midnight, and only those with young children had gone home. Everyone else stayed eating and chatting and singing every verse of every Christmas carol until voices were hoarse. The whole evening had the happy charm of an old Bing Crosby movie, and Mary soaked in every minute of it as if life had started all over again this morning. Then again, perhaps it had. Was everyone’s first Christmas as a new believer like this? Or had she been given some special gift?

  Pastor Dave came up and gave her a big hug. “Howard asked me this morning if I regretted hiring you. I told him ‘not one bit’ then, and I feel doubly glad now. Well done, Mary. Well done.”

  “Thanks,” she responded and hugged him right back. “For everything.”

  “You know,” Pastor Dave said as he saw Howard making his way across the room toward Mary, “I think you succeeded on all fronts. We may have taken the long road to unity, but I have a feeling we got there all the same. Course there’s really only one man who can tell you if that’s true….” The pastor stepped back to allow Howard his say. He didn’t look as cheery as some of the other guests, but he didn’t look ready to run her out of town, either.

  “I’m not known for keeping my opinions to myself, Miss Thorpe,” he began. “And I still wish you’d have been upfront about your résumé.”

  “I think I agree with you, Howard, for what it’s worth. It was a mistake not to bring it up.”

  “Speaking of mistakes, you’ll be surprised to know I don’t mind them much.” He tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Mistakes are life’s best teachers, if you ask me. It’s folks who don’t own up to their mistakes that get under my skin. But I reckon you already knew that.”

  It wasn’t hard to know what got under Howard’s skin. He made no efforts to hide it, ever. “I figured it out pretty quick.”

  “So I’m going to own up to mine and say you did a good job here. This potluck thing was a good idea, and I was wrong about it at first.”

  He was going out of his way to say she’d done well, and that made her feel good. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Howard. It means a lot.”

  “Ah, yes, votes,” Howard said with an odd tone of voice. “Tricky things.”

  “Mac pulling out of the race pretty much hands you another term as mayor, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.” His comment was carefully neutral, but not all together comfortable. “Unfortunate business, all of it. I actually think MacCarthy has promise.” He smiled and offered her a cookie from the table they were standing near—one of Dinah’s gingerbread menagerie. “He was running for half the right reasons.” He raised a suspicious eyebrow at Dinah’s gingerbread hippopotamus before taking a healthy bite. “Besides,” he went on, “that fellow had better find a longer fuse to his temper if he’s going to last ten minutes in my shoes.”

  Mary stared across the room where Mac was having a warm conversation with his parents. It had been a tough evening—not everyone was ready to give Mac a second chance, or quick to forgive him for his youthful faults. The room still contained its fair share of cold shoulders, despite the holiday glow. “Mac says he’s still sure God wanted him to run, but now it wasn’t to be mayor, it was to learn a lesson.”

  “And do you think he has?” Howard asked, following her stare and giving out a sigh. “Learned the lesson, that is?”

  “I do.” She gave Howard a grin. “He may actually be less trouble to you now.” She pointed at the last bit of yuletide hippo as Howard popped it into his mouth. “Maybe we should talk Dinah into running for mayor. She still loves to give you the business.”

  “Young lady, that is an absolutely hideous idea. Keep it to yourself.” His speech was dark and formal, but his eyes twinkled. “Merry Christmas, Mary.”

  “Merry Christmas, Howard.”

  Epilogue

  Mary was staring into the roaring fire at the MacCarthy house when Mac caught her by the elbow from behind. “Come here, quick,” he whispered. “You need to see this.”

  Mac’s parents’ house was brimming with MacCarthys of all shapes and sizes, from infants to grandparents. From the moment they’d arrived, the house was bursting with enough noise and chaos that Mary could understand Mac’s need for peace and quiet before weathering this familial storm.

  “What?” she asked, only to be “shushed” by Mac as he led her through the house down to what Mrs. MacCarthy called “the rumpus room,” which was basically a finished den currently overrun with grandchildren.

  Grandchildren who were singing.

  As Mac and Mary hid at the top of the stairs, Mary saw a gaggle of children gathered around Mac’s nephew, many of them reaching out to touch the Bippo Bear she’d supplied. Uncle Mac had indeed “come through” with the gotta-have Bippo Bear by raiding Mary’s private stash. As such, Robby was the envy of his peers. As they stroked and pawed and fussed with the bear, tiny voices broke out repeatedly in the jingle. Her jingle. Only it wasn’t that whining, pleading version the news stories ran or the sugary, chirpy version on the commercial. It was sweet children’s voices singing out of sheer Christmas happiness. She’d never heard anything like it in her life. Mary felt like her heart had, as Dr. Seuss so aptly put it, “grown three sizes that day.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” said Mac softly into her ear. “I thought you needed to see this. You did this.”

  She looked back at him, affection for him flooding her triple-sized heart. “I did, didn’t I?” She listened for another wondrous moment. “I’ve never heard kids singing it before. I mean really singing it, not whining it.”

  Mac looked at her. “You weren’t there when they had the kids singing it for the commercial?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Mac, kids don’t sing on commercials. We hire actors who can sound like kids.” She remembered the days when things like that sounded perfectly normal to her.

  Mac’s expression told her it sounded ridiculous to him. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “No,” she said, allowing herself the delightful luxury of setting into this arms as they slipped around her waist. “It’s true.”

  “I’ll never trust another television commercial as long as I live,” he teased into the back of her neck, making tingles run down her spine. “Now I know the ugly truth about you ad people.”

  “We’re not all bad. Just some. Same as people who do anything for a living. Like engineers. Or mayors.”

  “Or former mayoral candidates/engineers?”

  “No,” Mary objected. “Those are looking pretty good right now.” She reached up and let one hand wander through his sandy hair. His eyes fell shut and his head swayed involuntarily toward her touch.

  “When are we going to let people know?” Mac asked.

  “When I’m ready, and not a moment before. Got that?” Mary gave him as serious a look as she could manage under the circumstances. There would be no more breaches of confidence between them. She was strong enough to demand that now. She also was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to hold it in for long. “Like when you’re thirty.”

  Mac rolled his eyes and groaned. “I’ll never last five days.” The playfulness left his eyes, replaced by a promise that he’d never betray her again. “But I’ll find a way.” Mac’s voice was low and alluring. “How about five minutes? I’m an impatient guy.”

  She laughed softly, enjoying the sway she hel
d over him. And that it didn’t feel anything like manipulation. It felt more like a gift from God. “Maybe four. You know us advertising types. We’re always open to negotiation.” She leaned in and gave him a gentle kiss in the shadowed privacy of the den stairway, serenaded by the Bippo Bear song, which had just become her favorite piece of music, ever.

  Dear Reader,

  I’ve gotten sucked up in the Christmas “gotta have” machine as much as any living human being. I love celebrations, even if the preparation can rob me of every shred of peace I once had. We’ve all had wonderful Christmases, and holidays we’d just as soon forget. This side of heaven, we’re going to muck it all up on a regular basis. As Pastor Dave puts it, it’s why Christ came in the first place. And the first place in all our Christmases should always be the Christ child whose coming we celebrate. Some deep part of us knows that when we get that focus right, the rest will fall into place. If only we’d tune out all the hubbub and listen to that deep part. I hope this story helps you to seek a deep and meaningful Christmas, no matter how the details spin around you. I would love to hear from you at alliepleiter.com or P.O. Box 7026, Villa Park, IL 60181.

  Blessed Christmas to you all!

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  What’s been your “Bippo Bear”? Did you have a time when you went crazy over a particular gift for someone? Did you regret it later?

  Would you have run against Howard? Why or why not?

  Is there something about your current life that “chafes” at you the way Mary’s job did? What can you do about it?

  Mary chose a drastic option in moving away from her home and job. Would you have done the same? Why or why not?

  What do you think really drove Mac to run for mayor?

  If you sat on MCC’s council, would you have voted for mounting the Christmas drama? Do you think it was a good solution to Middleburg’s “mayoral malaise”?

  Emily channeled her anxiety about being pregnant into holiday decorating. Have you had an experience like that in coping with a stressful situation? Did it work? Or did it cause more problems?

  Could Middleburg have avoided this whole conflict? How?

  Is Mac right or wrong to resist a relationship with a fellow Christian who he feels is in “a different place” than him spiritually?

  What—emotionally and spiritually—has it cost Mac to keep his secret? Would he be a different man now if he had come forward when he was younger?

  Have you ever had a secret you felt would change the way people viewed you? What’s the risk—spiritually and emotionally—in revealing it? What might you gain?

  Why are we so easily drawn into the holiday frenzy? Are there things you can do to keep your focus in the right place? Pick one of your ideas to implement this Christmas season.

  Mary receives many acts of kindness from Middleburg residents. What act of kindness can you do to brighten someone’s holiday season?

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4163-7

  BLUEGRASS CHRISTMAS

  Copyright © 2009 by Alyse Stanko Pleiter

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Steeple Hill Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Steeple Hill Books.

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