Holiday Magic

by Fern Michaels

  “What are you talking about?” I dropped the garlic press on the counter.

  “Well, Meredith, everyone knows that you two have been seeing each other. It’s a small town you know. People have been talking about how sweet it was that the two of you were dancing in front of the cathedral and how Logan always smiles at you, even when you’re not looking at him, and how he comes in so often to have breakfast and the two of you end up sitting down together for coffee and laughing. We all think you’re a fabulous match! If there’s a wedding, can I do your flowers? I already have the dinner menu in my head. Mary’s so excited, she wants to sit down with the three of us, have some orange mango tea, a few scones, like your mother would enjoy, maybe she can fly in for the planning?”

  I couldn’t speak. People knew? This shock was only secondary to the first one. The first one being: Logan was gone.

  “I have to go, Martha.” I hung up.

  Dark, dark sadness settled over me, about as dark as the darkness was after the accident.

  Two days after Logan left, Maly brought me an exquisite gingerbread house decorated with white icing. Tiny green candies formed a walk to the front door, which was surrounded by a string of red licorice. Mints covered the roof. “For you, Meredith. Because you seem so sad.”

  She set the house down, then gave me a hug as my eyes flooded. “He come back, I know it. He come back. You perfect wife for him.”

  “My friend, Meredith, please.” Chinaza indicated the chair across from his in my dining room. I glanced around at the other diners; they were all fine for a few minutes.

  “Thank you for making elegant swan in my coffee latte this morning. You are fine woman.”

  “You’re welcome, Chinaza.”

  He leaned forward, his dark eyes sad, earnest, and took my hand in both of his. “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what, Chinaza?”

  “Logan has broken your tender heart. Let us, you and I, talk about it. I will offer you my solace and friendship. Remember, hold true friends with both hands. I am your friend, Meredith. I will help you.”

  He knew, too. Did everyone know?

  “Friend, Meredith, I am so sorry. Life is full of these challenges, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, we have a saying in Nigeria. ‘However long the night, the dawn will break.’ Your night will break, friend Meredith. I know you and Logan will be together again soon, I feel it.”

  “Good morning, Simon,” I said, standing by his table after talking with Chinaza who had insisted on bringing me his favorite Nigerian dish for my dinner that night.

  Simon dropped his hands in his lap and twisted his napkin. He had eaten his eggs; he had eaten three of five apple slices; he had drunk his decaffeinated coffee. “Good morning, Meredith.”

  “How was everything?”

  “It was perfect. As usual. Your cooking skills are impeccable.”

  “Thank you.”

  “However, I feel that you’re upset, which is bringing me some indigestion. My stomach is uneasy. Is there a problem?” His brow scrunched.

  Don’t cry! “I’m fine, thank you.” Oh, Logan, how I miss you. I want you back. I want you here for the concert. I want you here so I can see you, be with you. “Well, I wish my concert directing skills were as good as my cooking skills.”

  “I am positive that the Christmas Concert Series will be hugely successful.”

  “Thank you, Simon, but I don’t know.” I cleared my throat and tried not to feel too guilty about a sudden inspiration and perhaps a wee white lie. “It’s not coming together right. We so need the concert to be a success, to attract people to Telena, what with the economy being so bad. We need to add some class, a high caliber performance. Simon, would you like to play your violin?”

  Simon went pale. His shoulders slumped, his breathing became labored.

  Of course I felt terrible. We needed him to play at the concert. What a gift his presence would be. On the other hand, wouldn’t playing again help him, too? He was a world class talent. Surely he didn’t want to hide forever?

  “I can’t do it….” He closed his eyes, blew through his mouth. “I can…I can’t…I could try…one song…perhaps…no no…I could try to be brave…A favorite Christmas carol.”

  “Great!” I leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Rehearsal is tonight!”

  I quickly spun on my heel and darted toward the kitchen before he could say no.

  For a moment, my gloom lifted.

  Norm called out, “Well done, young woman. Well done.” Then Davis counted down and all the Old Timers yelled, “Merry Meredith!”

  The next week passed in a painful, wrenching blur, and I cried for each and every reason.

  I cried when I watched snowflakes drift down and when the bells of the cathedral rang. I cried sitting in front of the pink angel Christmas tree. I cried when carolers came to our door and when I wrapped Sarah’s and Jacob’s presents. I cried thinking of the chicken feathers I found underneath the house because someone must have kept chickens there years ago and I wondered if her life had a lot of tears in it. I cried when I decorated the trees at the Community Center with white lights.

  I cried when Mary put my hand on her stomach and I felt the baby kick and she said, “Do you think I’m having quadruplets? That’s how huge I feel. I will never be sexy again,” and burst into tears. “I will be frumpy. A frumpy Mary mommy!”

  I hid the tears from Sarah and Jacob, but they knew I was sad. Sarah said, “You know, Aunt Meredith, I have decided that Logan is pretty cool except when he keeps telling me to respect myself and that I’d better get good grades or I won’t have a future. He’s a dude.”

  So, as I figured other women in this house had done, I brushed off the tears and kept on keeping on. I had kids to raise, a business to run, a concert to put on, presents to wrap, carols to sing, eggnog to drink.

  No time for tears. Buck up, Meredith, I told myself. Buck up and Merry stupid Christmas.

  I thought I felt a pat on my back. I turned. No one was there, of course.

  “Okay, everyone, we’re running through this rehearsal one more time,” I shouted. “Everyone in place…choirs on the wings. Mary and Joseph! There’s Joseph, where’s Mary?”

  And that’s when I had to stop and get all choked up and everyone else stopped and stared at who I was staring at, which was Sarah.

  Sarah, the girl who used to dress like a street-walker with black makeup was transformed. No low cut shirt, no tight pants, no rebellious, sulky expression on her face. No, this was the new Sarah, dressed as Mary would have dressed, complete with a simple cotton shift, her hair covered, sandals on her feet, and no makeup.

  Who had gotten her to accept the role as Mary? Logan had. “No one’s perfect, Sarah, but you would make the perfect Mary.”

  Joseph, a top athlete and academic at Sarah’s high school, waved at me. “Mary and I are ready to have our baby!” he called out as everyone laughed. “We need our donkey, and we’re off to Bethlehem to get ourselves checked into a five-star hotel!”

  I glanced over at Jacob. He was at the piano, ready to play. Who had gotten him here? Logan.

  Logan had encouraged him, told him his was a talent to be shared, that Christmas was a time of new beginnings, that it didn’t matter if the kids at school called him “a piano geek,” which Jacob said they would.

  “You can get past that, Jacob,” Logan said. “What you’re not going to be able to get past is declining to play in the concert your aunt is directing even though I think you want to and your aunt needs you. Real men don’t worry about what other people think, except for the people they love. Real men act with integrity and honesty and keep working hard, they keep going even when the people around them are trying to knock them down. Don’t let anyone knock you down, son.”

  Jacob ran those talented fingers over the keyboard, then he looked up at me and grinned. I grinned back. I was so proud of him.

  At that very second, Simon walked in with hi
s violin. He was greeted by several people. I could tell he was scared to death. But he was there.

  Christmas has many miracles.

  If only my heart could breathe.

  “Everyone says a terrible rehearsal is a sign of a stupendous opening night, right?” I tapped my cowboy boot. Dark green, silver details. Christmassy.

  “Sure, Aunt Meredith,” Sarah drawled in her pregnant Mary outfit. “One of the kid angels refuses to wear her halo and wants to wear her devil mask instead. Those teenagers playing ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ have dyed their hair pink. The choirs are off-key and sound like hyenas. Anybody know when to come up on stage?”

  “Meredith,” Martha said. “The prop with Rudolph collapsed, Lee can’t find the extra microphones, Juan wants to know where the elf costumes are, and the cradle for the baby Jesus has mysteriously disappeared.”

  I ran my hands through my hair. Think, Meredith, think.

  I strode to the middle of the stage that Logan built. I stared out at the milling, chatting, jolly people who had all made new jolly friends and felt so jolly living in jolly Telena.

  “People!” I yelled. They kept up their jolliness. I pulled a microphone toward me, “Mrs. Claus is going to start throwing meringue cookies if you don’t listen!”

  I knew that would do it.

  “Here’s what we gotta do, right now…”

  The next morning Mary said to me, “I am going to explode.”

  “Mary, please,” I told her, exhausted from another nightmare last night, the car accident in glowing, Technicolor, 3-D detail, as if I was watching it from a tree. “Please, I have told you to go home, you shouldn’t even be working, I told you I would pay you to stay home.”

  She patted my arm. “I want to be here, though. I like you, Meredith, and I want to be here for you in your time of need. You’re my friend.”

  Martha kept bustling around the kitchen, busy, busy, busy.

  “Please go home,” I told Mary. “I’m tired looking at you. You’re humongous.”

  “I told you, I am going to explode.”

  “Meredith.”

  I whipped around in the darkness outside the Community Center, then sagged with relief.

  Logan.

  He was back.

  The relief was replaced by anguish and roaring pain. I wanted to fling myself on him and wrap my legs around his waist.

  “Hello, Logan.” I was the last to leave and, after running through the program twice, I thought maybe, maybe, we were ready for tomorrow night. “You’re back.”

  Logan took a few steps closer, walking through the shadows, and I felt my breath catch. The angels should not have blessed this man with such wondrously sexy looks. It was almost sinful.

  “Yes, I’m back.”

  Don’t cry, Meredith! Buck up! “Is everything okay?”

  He scoffed, then crossed his arms, that cowboy hat low on his brow. He looked like he’d lost weight, in fact, he didn’t seem that…well, he was pale under the tan, his face drawn. “What, specifically, are you referring to? My business? My life? You?”

  “You left abruptly, and I thought there might be a problem.” In the distance I could see the tip of the town Christmas tree, bright, shiny, colorful. That made me want to cry, too.

  “With my business, there are no problems. With my life, with you, there is a problem. It’s a big problem.”

  He was not going to let this, to let us, go. I don’t know why I thought he ever would. I hadn’t known him long, but I knew him. I knew the depths of this man, how he felt, how he lived. I sure loved him.

  Yep, I sure loved him. I wanted to reach out, hug him close to me, strip off that beige jacket, flick off that cowboy hat, and follow him down onto his bed with the perfect view of the pink and gold sunsets. Ah, these womanly emotions, they can wrangle you into nothin’.

  “The problem, Meredith, is that I am never going to be able to forget you.”

  I tried to breathe in and out like a normal person.

  “I went to California to work, to check on my business down there, and I could not,” he snapped his mouth shut, and looked away, “I could not get you out of my head for a single damn second and you know what? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get you out of my head, and here you are, in Telena, breaking off our relationship, breaking off us, and I have no idea in hell why you did it. None.”

  “Logan, I—”

  “You what?” He glowered down at me, that frustration, that raw hurt emanating from him. “You want to throw out what we have? You are driving me up the wall. No woman has ever hit me in the heart like you have, but you want to go back to your bed and breakfast and hide, Meredith, from me.”

  “I don’t think you understand—”

  “I understand, Meredith, that you keep pushing me away, but you don’t have the courage to be honest about why. What’s between us is normal, it’s natural, and I adore you and your cowboy hats so why are you cutting me out of your life?”

  I felt hot tears spring to my eyes and I blinked quick, told myself to suck it up, be a strong cowgirl, and deal with the blow I knew was coming. This would be it. I knew he would not want to see me after this. I knew that. I heard the voices of those other men and my sister in my head, that black cape of pain settling on my shoulders.

  I couldn’t bear it. I ran a hand through the white streak in my hair, pushed all my black hair back, then wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling him in tight. I wanted one last hug.

  He hesitated for a minute. I knew he was fighting with himself, but then those strong arms were around me again, tight and loving. “I have never met anyone as troublesome and as difficult as you, Meredith.”

  Within a minute, though, he was pulling away, hands on his hips, inhaling deeply. “Okay, I can’t do this, Meredith, I can’t get thrown into all the passion between us only to have you walk, or run, away from me. Is it me? Are you afraid of getting hurt? I will never hurt you. Are you still afraid I want some short fling? I can assure you that’s not what I want.”

  Those tears dropped out on their own accord. I probably resembled a menopausal porcupine. What had happened to my tough girl demeanor? My strength and fortitude? What happened to the woman who could break a horse? Who could belt a drunken sea urchin? Where was she?

  “Meredith, tell me now. I thought things were going great, I can hardly resist you, but if the feeling isn’t mutual, tell me, and I will go away this time. I will. It’ll kill me, but I will.”

  “No, Logan, it’s not that.” I adored him, too. So much. “It’s that…. I don’t think you’re going to like me after I tell you…something.”

  “Babe, I will like you. I don’t care what you tell me, I will like you. I will never stop liking you. You are the most likable person I’ve met…What is it?”

  “I…” I hated this. I hated this moment. So, I blubbered some more and tried to get control.

  “Aw now, honey, honey,” he pulled me close, and I clung to him. I knew after I told Logan about my leg he would pretend it didn’t matter; that was the kind of man he was. But I knew it would matter. It had mattered to everyone else. He would not want to sleep with me. He would not want to be with me. He would not want to ride horses and fly fish and eat my strawberry crepes anymore. He would make his excuses, and he would be gone, and these last holiday weeks, which had been so…magical, so fun and warm and happy…gone. All gone.

  “I have to tell you that…” I about choked, the top of my head under his chin. “I…Logan, I…I haven’t wanted to get close to you…physically because…because Logan, I don’t have…I have a right leg, but I only, my left leg was amputated below the knee.” I closed my eyes and more tears slipped through. “I wear a prosthesis. I was in a car accident when I was younger….”

  Harsh, screaming images of that night flashed through my mind.

  “I know.”

  “What?” I pulled away to stare into those green eyes. “You know?”

  “Yes, I know.”

 
I wanted to conk myself in the head. Of course he knew. It was a small town. Who was I fooling? You were fooling yourself. Yes, I was. I didn’t want him to know, so I hoped he didn’t. “Someone told you. A lot of people told you, didn’t they?”

  “No, honey. No one told me. They kept your privacy. The reason I know”—he cupped my face with one warm, strong hand—“the reason I know is because I was there with you the night of the accident.”

  I tried to form a word, but couldn’t.

  “I was the one who put a tourniquet on your leg with my T-shirt. I ripped your sweatshirt in half and gave you CPR. I stabilized you until the paramedics and your parents came.”

  I held tight to his shoulders so I wouldn’t collapse. “That was you?”

  “Yes, it was. When I saw you in Barry Lynn’s, I recognized the white streak in your hair. You were critically hurt that night, and I didn’t think you would remember me, plus it was a long time ago. I didn’t tell you before this, Meredith, because I didn’t want it to be something odd, something heavy between us. I didn’t want you to feel obligated to me. I wanted us to be built on us, not that event, or any other misplaced emotions surrounding that tragedy. I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you before.”

  “I…I…” I was shocked.

  “Sit down, Meredith. Let’s talk.” I collapsed on a bench, and we talked about the accident, my sister’s reaction, my medical trauma, and how he left for California the day after the accident for work but called the hospital to get a report on me. “I felt terrible for you. Just terrible, and I worried about you. You have no idea how often I’ve thought of you over the years and wished you well, hoped that you were happy.”

  When the nerve-blowing shock of sitting next to the man who had literally saved my life waned so I could think again, we got back to my leg.

  “My prosthesis doesn’t bother you, Logan?”

  He looked utterly confused and more than slightly ticked off. “Why in hell would it bother me, Meredith?”