“Yes. Legend has it that he was all shot up; he had tried to reach his folks when the bullets were flying a million miles an hour. Some of his men tried to get him away from the action, and they brought him to the cemetery with a company surgeon. He died on one of the graves. He’s still supposed to be there, of course,” Mary said with a smile. “But he hasn’t talked to me yet!”
“Clarissa gets the nights, they say, for all those nights she waited up, cold and alone, for her man to come home. Women waited, so she waits with her daughter,” old man Wainscott told them. “The girl was shot and afraid, and she tried to crawl up to safety.”
“Up—to the attic?” Ashley whispered.
“Why, yes. She was mortally wounded, and died there,” Mr. Wainscott said, surprised that Ashley had guessed such a place.
“But the good part is that once a year, on Christmas Eve, they’re all allowed to come back together. Because they were all wrong, you see, to let the outside world intrude on their love for one another. Stall, that love existed. So they get their one night a year to dance the hours away. It’s a great legend,” Mary said.
The Radcliffs and Jamie Rodriguez just stared at Mary. She smiled a little uneasily. She must have thought, at that moment, that the people alone with her in this tiny place with her precious babies were awfully damned strange.
“Great legend,” Christie echoed.
Julie suddenly swung around on her bar stool, still a little white. “This was wonderful stew. What do we owe you for it?”
“Well, now, it’s nearly Christmas…” he murmured, scratching his chin. “Don’t think I can charge you folks.”
“You have to charge us!” Jon insisted, laying some bills on the table. “You’ve got—” He paused. “A cemetery to keep up.”
“Oh, rest assured that cemetery will always be kept up!” he said, and winked at Mary.
Julie managed to thank him; the kids all choked out something of the same.
They offered weak good-bye smiles to Mary and her family, walked numbly from the restaurant, and piled back into the van.
“It’s a conspiracy!” Jordan exclaimed as his father revved the engine and brought them back out to the road. “That’s it! In the Cold War—”
“In the Cold War?” Christie interrupted incredulously.
“Maybe…” Jamie said thoughtfully, “maybe your brother has something there. There could be a group of people out here who want to be on one of those television programs about the occult, or legends or the like, and so they staged it all.”
The Radcliffs just stared at him.
“Well, I was just trying to offer an explanation!” he exclaimed.
“The Wainscotts are ghosts, and I told you so!” Ashley said determinedly. “Nice ghosts, special ghosts. And we got to see them because… I guess because we needed them!”
Julie had been sitting in silent shock. She suddenly realized that she was staring at a stopped car on the side of the road, where a man was struggling to change a flat tire in the cold and snow. She reached out and touched her husband’s arm. “Jon, wait! Look, those people are in trouble. They’ve a flat. They have two little kids—the baby is crying. We have to stop.”
Jon nodded, still a bit dazed himself, and pulled off the road. Again, the entire family piled out of the van, and approached the stopped vehicle.
“Can we give you a hand?” Jon called.
The man struggling with the tire was young, but he looked very tired. His wife was standing at his side, trying to rock the screaming baby. A four- or five-year-old child was kicking up the snow around them.
“I told you to bring another bottle!” the man was saying with exasperation.
“You told me to breast-feed!” the wife replied, her tone conveying that she was at her wit’s end as well. “Michael, damn you, stop that now!” she cried. “I told you to get the tire fixed before we left!” she admonished her husband. She was both angry and very close to tears, and when she looked up and saw the Radcliffs coming near her, she was embarrassed as well.
“Hi, folks, we thought you could use some help,” Jon called.
The husband stood, wiping his right hand on his jeans before accepting the handshake Jon offered. “Jon Radcliff, my wife Julie, son Jordan, daughters Christie and Ashley, and friend Jamie Rodriguez.Between us, we should be able to help with that tire.”
“Let me take a look,” Jamie offered. “I’m good at this; I’ve worked with cars a lot.”
“Thanks. I don’t know if you can help or not—that bolt there seems to have stuck.”
Jamie was on the ground with the tire. “Hand me that wrench, Mr. Radcliff, please?”
Jon did so. Jamie began getting the tire situation under control.
The woman with the crying baby had long auburn hair and big green eyes. She was pretty, but thin and frenzied. The baby was still crying. Julie reached out for the child. “May I?”
The young woman’s relief was evident. She just needed to put that baby down for a minute.
And the baby… maybe she needed to not feel so much tension in the arms holding her. She quieted down with a little whimper in Julie’s arms.
“Thanks. Thanks. I—” the woman began, then paused, growing a little red as she looked at Julie’s children. “I’m breast-feeding, but in a car all day it’s just impossible, and she hates the bottles, so I wind up having to get rid of her milk before she gets full. Oh, I am sorry. I’m Lauren Granger, my husband Mark, Michael there,” she said wryly, indicating the restless, snow-kicking youngster, “and the baby is Sarah.”
“Sarah is adorable,” Julie assured the woman. “We have those little boxes of apple juice in the car, if you’d like to try that.”
“Yeah, thanks—”
“Doesn’t she get sick on juice?” Mark demanded of his wife. His voice was like a growl, but he immediately seemed to hear his own tone, and regret it.
“Only when you bounce her around, Mark,” Lauren said.
“Wow, folks, I’m sorry. You’re being so helpful, and I’m so rude,” Mark said. He lifted his hands and let them fall to his side. “We’d like the juice very much. Thanks.” He shook his head, seeking some kind of explanation for his mood. Or maybe for life in general. “We’ve just been driving forever. The kids have been screaming the whole way. My boss nearly bit my head off for leaving.” He glanced at his wife reproachfully. “You know how it goes. Bah, humbug. Merry Christmas. And we’re just as lost as can be.”
“I know the area fairly well,” Jon said, hesitating as he felt Julie’s stare. He stared back at her with a little frown. “Where are you going?”
“Some place Lauren found in a magazine advertisement.It’s called Oak River Plantation. It’s supposed to offer this really wonderful, old-fashioned Christmas. It—”
He broke off, because Julie had started laughing. “What is it?” he demanded.
Julie quickly sobered, looking at Jon. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry. It’s a wonderful place.”
“You’ve been there?” Lauren said, glancing at her husband with a sigh of relief. “So it does exist?”
Julie hesitated just a second, looking around at her family. Her eyes focused on Ashley’s. She smiled. “Yes, it exists. We could drive all night and never find it again, but if you just go straight down that road…” She indicated the way, along the road with the old cemetery shrouded in the trees to its left. She looked back to Lauren and Mark, their crying baby and cantankerous son. “You’ll find it. In just a matter of minutes.”
“Tire’s all set!” Jamie said, rising cheerfully.
“Thanks… thanks, young man,” Mark said.
“My pleasure.”
Christie, who had run back to the van, brought a handful of little boxes to Lauren. “Juice!” she pronounced.
“I guess I’d better give the baby back,” Julie said. “Congratulations. She’s lovely.”
“Thanks,” Lauren whispered. She started walking around her car, looking back at them.
“Thank you. Really. Thanks so much.”
“Our pleasure,” Julie said.
“You’re a godsend,” Lauren told Jamie.
Jon set a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. “He is a great kid, huh?”
Jamie shrugged uncomfortably.
Lauren smiled, and turned away.
The Grangers drove off into the night. Jon reached out for Julie’s hand. She reached out in return, and their fingers entwined together.
“Get in the van!” Jon said suddenly. Tugging at her, he dragged her along.
“Where are we going?”
“That big grocery store back toward D.C.”
“A grocery store!”
“We have to hurry! It’s getting late.”
“Jon, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
Christie stared at her mother as the car shot onto the highway. Jordan stared at Christie. Even Ashley seemed to think that her father had finally completely lost his mind. Jamie had the good sense to remain silent.
The ride took about fifteen minutes—Jon was definitely exceeding the speed limit. But no matter how they questioned him, he had no answers—until they reached the store. There, he found a clerk, demanded to know if they had any kind of flowers anywhere in the store, then rushed to the aisle where the clerk said they could find what was left.
Flowers were in the produce section.
The lettuce looked much better.
The pickings were poor. It didn’t matter. Jon was determined to buy as much as he could, the very best that he could find.
Then they were back in the car. And Julie wasn’t surprised when she found that their return trip brought them back to the old Wainscott family cemetery.
“Place the flowers everywhere,” Jon said, laying exorbitantly priced roses on Aaron Wainscott’s grave. “Everywhere.” At last, he looked at Julie. Really looked at her. “All right?” he asked softly.
She smiled and nodded. In a few minutes, the flowers were all laid upon the graves.
“I need another rose over here. For Clarissa!” Jordan called.
Christie decided to throw him one. She threw a bunch of snow as well.
Jordan retaliated.
Suddenly snow was flying everywhere. Jon was pelting Julie. She pelted him in return, then turned to run. She was laughing hysterically when she tripped over a broken footstone and fell into the soft cushion of snow. Jon fell on top of her. She looked up at him and smiled. And she kissed him in the snow, and it was cold all around, but it was very warm, and very good, to be kissed.
“We had to thank the Wainscotts. For Christmas,” he told her.
“I agree. Do you think that the Grangers will find Oak River Plantation?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m certain of it. All the right elements are there. They’ve just been so busy living that they…” He shrugged. “They forgot how to love.”
“And it’s really, really wonderful to remember, isn’t it?” Julie whispered.
He nodded, lying beside her in the snow, in the dark, heedless of the gravestones around them. “Wonderful!” he whispered.
“The Grangers will make it,” Julie mused. “That baby of theirs is just adorable.”
“Yeah?” Jon said, arching a brow. Then his eyes narrowed. “Were you thinking…”
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe. What do you think?”
Jon raised himself over her again, and his smile was rueful and deep. “Want to go back to the hotel and fool around and see what we get next Christmas?”
Julie laughed. “Sure!” she told him.
He rose, then helped her out of the snow. “Hey, kids! What are we, a bunch of crazies, having a snowball fight in a graveyard? Let’s get back to some warmth.”
“And video games,” Jordan said agreeably.
Ashley took her father’s hand as they started out of the cemetery.
Julie paused, just a few steps behind the others. She saw a tall figure leaning against one of the trees, wearing a slouch hat and old-fashioned frock coat.
Union style.
He lifted a hand to her and waved good-bye.
It couldn’t be. It really couldn’t be.
“Merry Christmas, Aaron Wainscott,” Julie whispered. “Merry Christmas. And thank you!”
Again, he waved.
Then he seemed to fade into the night. Julie waited just a second longer, then smiled and followed her family back to the car.
A Magical Christmas Page 21