A Magical Christmas

by Heather Graham

  “You’re worth your weight in gold, Jack,” Julie told him.

  “Maybe Pearson’s had a heart attack or something,” Millie mused.

  Jack arched a brow, staring at Millie. “He sounded fit as a fiddle.”

  “Must be the wife,” Millie said. “Women always do seem to suffer the most.”

  Jack arched his other brow. “Millie, you need to wear that beware of bitch sign your realtors bought for your desk. Maybe,” Jack suggested to Julie, “the Pearsons are just running late.”

  “I don’t think so,” Julie said warily. They could set time by Dan Pearson’s schedule, so something must have come up. “But thank God for small mercies!” she added. She started around Jack’s desk to reach her own small office. She paused long enough to shrug at Millie and plant a kiss on Jack’s snow-white head before hurrying into her office to snatch up the phone receiver and hit the fifth button.

  “Mr. Pearson, hi, it’s Julie. Is something wrong?” For a moment, her heart thudded painfully. What if nothing was wrong? What if he had just decided she wasn’t a good enough realtor to handle his needs?

  “Julie, I’m sorry, I know your mornings are busy, and I hate to ask for a postponement, but are you available right after lunch? Rita had a toothache last night and the dentist agreed to see her right away this morning.”

  Julie eased into the chair behind her desk. There was a God. “Mr. Pearson, just let me check… yes, yes, this afternoon will be fine. Say one o’clock?”

  “Perfect. Again, my apologies.”

  “Think nothing of it, Mr. Pearson, nothing at all. Toothaches are absolutely terrible. And if this afternoon doesn’t work out, I’ll understand as well. I don’t want Rita suffering through a showing if her mouth is killing her.”

  On the other end of the line, Pearson sighed. “I really wanted the perfect place by Christmas, you know?”

  “And Mr. Pearson, the Trendmark property could be just perfect. But don’t worry—I won’t show it to anyone else until I’ve gotten you out there this afternoon.”

  Pearson thanked her. She set the receiver back into its cradle. She glanced up. Jack was standing in her office doorway, smiling. She grinned ruefully in return, shaking her head. Jack was a godsend himself. Seventy, tall, slender, extremely dignified, he was always like the Rock of Gibraltar. He’d been in banking, and was incredibly knowledgeable about real estate. Despite the fact that he was woefully overqualified for his job, he appeared to enjoy it very much. He’d bailed Julie out of problem situations a dozen times, and he’d constantly refused to accept the most minimal percentage on one of her properties.

  “See, you do have some kind of a heavenly guardian looking over you,” Jack said.

  She lifted her hands. What the hell. Maybe sometimes people really cared. And wanted the truth.

  “A guardian? Now that’s amazing,” she said. “Because so far, you can’t imagine how badly this morning has sucked.”

  “Wow. And it’s only nine-fifteen.”

  “And I’ve won a reprieve.”

  “Want coffee?”

  “Sure. It should be de—”

  “Mrs. Radcliff, I wouldn’t think of offering you anything that wasn’t completely decaffeinated.”

  Jack left her doorway. Julie glanced down at her desk. The advertisement her husband had been insisting she read was on top of a pile of stats on property values she’d drawn from the computer right before going home last night. She frowned, not remembering that she’d left it on top of everything else. She’d been arguing with him about going away; for the first time in all the ups and downs of her married life, she’d made an appointment with a divorce attorney. She hadn’t exactly made the decision as to what she wanted to do, but she did want to know her legal options.

  Going away for Christmas seemed like putting a Band-Aid on a gushing artery.

  Still, Jon’s one argument did make sense. “You can give the kids a last family Christmas. Surely, two more weeks won’t matter in your plan to destroy everything.”

  Bitter. They were both so bitter. Blaming one another for every little thing that went wrong.

  “Enjoy Tradition!’ the ad in the historical magazine blazed boldly. Julie picked up the advertisement and eased back in her chair. “Worn out by the bustle of a modern, commercial Christmas? Come to Oak River Plantation for the most special family Christmas of a lifetime. Yuletide carols, chestnuts on an open fire. We guarantee snow, sleigh rides, and an absolutely unique holiday experience.”

  There was a picture of the house. Oak River Plantation. Small, as such places went, but very pretty, and certainly picturesque. Snow settled around a porch bordered by Greek pillars. Horses ambled about in a paddock in front of the house. A fire could be seen blazing behind the panes of a front room window. Its warmth seemed to radiate from the picture.

  Naturally. It was an advertisement.

  Jack came back into her office, setting her coffee on her desk.

  “Husband Jon, line four,” he said.

  Julie stared down at her cup quickly, wincing. She nodded. Jack left her office; she picked up her phone line.

  “Yes?” she said curtly.

  He was silent so long she thought she’d picked up the wrong line.

  “I take it you made it in close to on time, despite the fact that you were overburdened with our daughter?” Jon said at last.

  “I’m not overburdened with my daughter. I’m overburdened by the fact that my husband somehow manages to avoid morning traffic on a daily basis.”

  “Julie, I had to be in court—”

  “And yesterday, you had to be in a meeting with Tom. The day before, you had to be in a meeting with Harry—”

  “Julie, it isn’t the driving,” Jon argued quietly. “Right. Maybe it’s the fact that you never fill out the chocolate sales sheets.”

  “We don’t sell the chocolates. We buy them.”

  “I still have to make up a bunch of lies on those sheets. Then, what else? You never fill out the school forms, you come to Jordan’s ball games when you’re ready, not an hour before for practice. You—”

  “Julie, I can drive the kids tomorrow.”

  Tears stung Julie’s eyes. “Well, you won’t need to take Christie. Her boyfriend is picking her up.”

  “You allow that? She’s still a minor, and she may think she’s an adult, but she’s only seventeen, just barely seventeen at that, and he’s—”

  “He’s from a broken home and lives in an apartment complex that should be condemned. Fine—you tell her she’s not allowed to see him. I wanted her to date a kid already determined on a career in medicine rather than one who may still be innocent himself but lives between crack houses. But I’ve got news for you. One year is damned close to eighteen, and if you want to have any influence with your daughter when she is a legal adult—”

  “What is my influence going to matter then if you’ve already killed her?”

  Julie drew the phone from her ear, stunned. She hung up the receiver. Half the buttons on her phone were lighting up. She laid her head on her arms.

  Jack came back into the room.

  “Jon again, three this time.”

  “Tell him—”

  “Julie, I’m not a good liar,” Jack said apologetically. “Talk to him. You kids will work it out.”

  “That’s just it, Jack. We’re not kids.”

  But she picked up her receiver again.

  “Yes?”

  “Julie, I’m sorry.”

  “Are you? I think you meant what you said. You think I’m too permissive, and I’m going to kill one of our kids.”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  She was silent.

  “I called to see what you’d decided about the Virginia vacation. It might be just what we need.”

  “Jon, we can’t fix things by running away from them.”

  “But it would be nice to clear our heads just a little bit, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think t
hat I can clear out what’s in my head.”

  She heard him groan. “Julie, I can’t pay for one mistake forever.”

  “One mistake. And years now in which we’ve been strangers.”

  “Look, when we get back, you can do what you want. Hell, I can’t stop you anyway. But this close to Christmas, for the love of God, let’s give it one shot—for the kids, even if that is a cliché. Let’s take Christmas away from both our jobs, from killer traffic, from school fund-raisers, boxed lunches, faulty plumbing, and everything else.”

  Julie hesitated. “It’s an historic mansion, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So how do you know the plumbing won’t be faulty?”

  He was silent a minute, then he laughed. A pleasant sound, a laugh with no anger, guilt, or bitterness. “Okay, so I can’t really guarantee the plumbing. We’ll get away from the traffic—it’s supposed to be really rural.”

  “What if it’s too rural?”

  “We won’t be that far from D.C. We can see what the Capitol is like for Christmas.”

  She hesitated. “No phone calls, Jon. No clients with the phone number.”

  His turn to hesitate. “All right, then, here’s the deal. I’m completely out of touch for the holiday, and the same with you. No Mr. Pearson in the middle of the night with something else to add to his list of requirements.”

  Julie hesitated. “I don’t know, Jon.”

  “You can’t give up Mr. Pearson?” he demanded.

  “No, no, it’s not that—–” She hesitated, shrugged, then said bluntly, “I just wonder if it’s going to be worth my giving up Mr. Pearson.”

  “I see.”

  Julie winced. Maybe she was wrong. Just a little bit wrong, but she was angry, deeply angry; she’d been betrayed. And she couldn’t give up the anger, even if he had said that he was sorry a million times, even if it had all happened in the past.

  “I have the advertisement right in front of me. I’ll think about it today, I promise. And if I think we can give it a shot, I’ll make reservations.”

  “All right, I guess that’s fair.”

  “Good.”

  “Julie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I—I—never mind. I’ll see you tonight at dinner.”

  “Right.”

  She hung up. She picked up a pencil and tapped the eraser against the advertisement. It would be nice. Once upon a time, it would have been a dream vacation. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… for a kid born and bred in the deep, deep, dead end of the South, the very concept was wonderfully romantic. Sleigh rides. Blanketed against the cold with someone you loved, feeling the wind, feeling the warmth… The kids, of course, might be horrified. No video games, no long phone calls—for Christie, no Jamie Rodriguez. She’d want Jamie to come, of course. She’d try insisting they invite him—after all, they’d invited friends for her before, why not this friend? Hadn’t they always taught her not to be prejudiced?

  Why was it that everything good they tried to do backfired?

  Maybe it just seemed that way.…

  Jack was standing at her door again. She looked up at him.

  “Well?”

  “Well?” She stared at the coffee she hadn’t touched. “Oh!” She took a sip of it. “It’s great.”

  Jack laughed. “Not the coffee. The trip. Are you going?”

  “Eavesdropper!” she accused him.

  “Not on your life. I just know that you’ve been wrestling with this.”

  “So what’d ya decide, honey?” Millie asked, ducking beneath Jack’s arm to enter Julie’s office with a cup of fresh-brewed coffee herself, taking one of the handsome office chairs in front of Julie’s desk. “Jack, take five, have a seat,” Millie invited, patting the spousal or significant other seat next to her own.

  Jack obliged. The two of them stared at her. “If the two of you are in here, who’s going to be answering the telephones?” she asked politely.

  “Casey Edwards is in—she doesn’t mind,” Millie said. Her eyes were as gray as her hair, very stern at the moment. “Now, you should go on a Christmas holiday.”

  Julie wasn’t certain whether she should be resentful of her employer’s busybody and dictatorial attitude, or grateful that she did have such a warm and personable place to work.

  She decided on the latter.

  “Selling to the Pearsons is really, really important to me,” she said. “Quite frankly, I’m afraid to leave.”

  “Jack, comment, please,” Millie commanded. “God, I wish I still smoked.”

  “You don’t wish you still smoked,” Jack corrected her.

  “The hell I don’t. I could really use a cigarette now.”

  “Maybe you could really use a cigarette, but you’re getting up there in years now, and you don’t want ugly, disgusting black lungs to do you in early.”

  “Why did I hire you?”

  “Because I’m cheap and brilliant.”

  “You need this holiday,” Millie said to Julie.

  “I need the Pearson sale,” Julie said quietly. Jack leaned forward. “You’re a good realtor. You work a fairly light schedule, but you keep your family going. You’re married to an attorney, Julie. You don’t actually need the Pearson sale.”

  “Especially if you’re planning a divorce. Community property state, you know,” Millie said.

  “Millie!” Jack admonished, appalled.

  “The writing is on the wall,” Millie said. “Take him for all he’s worth!” she exclaimed.

  “I thought you liked Jon,” Julie said.

  “She does. She’s just a nasty old witch in the middle of menopause,” Jack advised sagely.

  “That’s right, men-o-pause,” Millie snapped. “And it’s no fancy Latin name or the like; it means what it says—men make me pause. I hate them, and they give me lots and lots of desire to pause—before shooting the suckers all off the face of the earth and letting God sort them out.”

  Even Julie lifted a brow.

  “Well, I didn’t exactly mean that, but I am having a bad day,” Millie acknowledged. “Now as to Jon—trust me, honey, men do come much worse. Not that he’s perfect; who is? I don’t even claim that for myself. But you go on that trip, honey. It could be really important for you right now. Go—and I mean it.”

  “But the Pearsons—”

  “You can sell to the Pearsons today,” Millie advised. “You’ve got the perfect property for Dan and Rita; I can feel it in my bones.”

  “And I can do your follow-up work until you get back,” Jack said.

  “Jack, that’s not fair. You won’t take a percentage—”

  “Julie, my wife died in ’91, my son is an architect, and my daughter is a plastic surgeon. We’ve done all right. I’ve got grown-up kids—decent enough as kids go, but they’ve got their own lives. My financial status is just fine. I enjoy picking up some of the work—I like feeling alive and useful. Old and used up is no good, and with my wife gone, well, time hangs heavy. This sounds like a fun trip. Like a good time to take a damned good look at things before you take drastic steps, or set things into motion that you can never stop once started.”

  “He’s right, honey. If you’re going to take him for all he’s worth, you’ve got to let him go down fighting first,” Millie said.

  Julie stared down at the advertisement. “Well, they might be booked already.”

  “Won’t know till you give it a try,” Jack advised. “I’ll buy a chocolate bar if you give it a go.”

  “Ouch!” Millie protested as Jack elbowed her. “Oh, all right, all right. I’ll buy a chocolate bar if you try, too. Hell, I’ll buy a few of ’em.” Julie found herself smiling.

  Millie stood, staring down at Jack. “Jeez, Jack, what am I paying you for? The phones are ringing off the hook.” She lowered her voice. “That Casey is a downright flibbertigibbet. You just can’t get good help these days!” She sighed.

  Jack stood, groaning. “She doesn’t need to wear that bitch s
ign. She needs the words tattooed all over her body.”

  “That’s sexist!” Millie snapped, prodding him out of Julie’s office.

  “I didn’t say it ought to be tattooed on your breasts or fanny or anything,” Jack protested.

  Millie was out of the office first. Jack turned back, winking at Julie. “Her fanny’s been dragged down a bit too much and too long by gravity for a decent tattoo anyway,” he whispered.

  Then the door to her office closed.

  She sat in silence for a few minutes.

  It just didn’t feel like Christmas. She’d been going through most of the motions, of course. She had children. Christmas was definitely important to children.

  But…

  What was one more Christmas?

  Especially, as Millie had said, if she was planning on a divorce. She didn’t know what she was planning. She only knew that she was tired. And hurt.

  She sat another minute.

  Then she picked up the phone and dialed the 800 number listed on the advertisement.

  One more Christmas.

  For the family.

  Maybe the place would be completely booked. She was calling so very late. She’d hang up after another ring.…

  But someone answered.

  “Hello? Oak River Plantation.”

  The voice was feminine, soft, nicely modulated.

  Just a bit impatient.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?”

  “I—yes!” Julie said quickly. “I’m calling about your Christmas holiday plan. I suppose I’m too late, but I thought I’d like to give you a try—”

  “Actually, we had a cancellation just this morning,” the woman said pleasantly. “Your timing is wonderful.”

  “Oh—oh, great. Except that… well, we’re a family of five. Two adults, three children.”

  “Girls or boys?”

  “My children?”

  “Yes.” The female voice sounded slightly amused. “Well, perhaps I’m being presumptuous in this day and age, but the way you said family… I imagined you meant your husband and yourself, and naturally I assumed your husband to be a boy. I’m sorry, a man.” She sighed, struggling to get her meaning out right. “Male!”