And then she climbed up the stairs to Margaret’s room.
She saw a mound of CD’s on the bed. A mound, not a mountain. Not nearly as many CD’s as Ruby had feared she might find.
She let out her breath. “Okay,” she said. “How should I alphabetize them? By title?”
Margaret, who was standing in the doorway, shook her head. “By the artist’s name.”
“Artist …” repeated Ruby.
“The performer,” Margaret explained.
Ruby set to work.
An hour later, she opened the door to her house. She was as tired as she had ever been, but her pocket was stuffed with bills and she was quite pleased with her first day as the Doer of Unpleasant Jobs.
“Ruby!” Min called from the kitchen. “You have just enough time to eat a quick dinner before your rehearsal.”
Rehearsal. Ruby had completely forgotten that she had a chorus rehearsal that evening — the final rehearsal before the Thanksgiving concert.
“Um,” said Ruby as she entered the kitchen. “Um, I don’t really need to go to the rehearsal.”
“Don’t need to go? What about your solos?” asked Min.
Ruby blew hair from her face. She was grimy. She was starving. And all she wanted to do was fall into her bed.
“I know my solos,” said Ruby. She opened the refrigerator. “Only one is really important anyway, and I know it like the back of my hand.” She peered around the door of the fridge and met Min’s eyes.
“Are you certain?” asked Min.
Before Ruby could answer, the phone rang and Min lunged for it. “That’s Allie, I think,” she said.
Ruby knew that the subject of rehearsal was over. She told herself she could practice her solos by herself anytime she felt like it. She had an entire day and a half before the concert.
“Nikki?” said Mae Sherman. “On the first Thanksgiving, didn’t the Pilgrims freeze?”
“What?” replied Nikki. She took her sister’s hand and together they walked along the lane to their house. It was one-thirty on the day before Thanksgiving. School had let out early, and Nikki had been given only minimal homework. The holiday weekend stretched ahead of her deliciously.
“Didn’t the Pilgrims freeze on the first Thanksgiving?” Mae repeated.
“I don’t understand,” said Nikki. “What do you mean?”
“Well, all the pictures show them having Thanksgiving dinner at a big picnic table outside, in the woods or someplace. But Miss Drew said the Pilgrims lived here in New England, like we do. And it’s freezing here by Thanksgiving time.” Mae held out her mittened hands to indicate just how cold it was.
“Maybe —” Nikki started to say.
“And,” Mae barged on, “in the pictures, the Pilgrims are always just wearing their regular Pilgrim clothes. They aren’t wearing coats or mittens, and anyway, how could they cut their turkey if they were wearing mittens? So what I’m asking is, weren’t they freezing?”
Nikki considered Mae’s questions as they approached their house. She wished mightily that Mae had gone to her after-school program as usual, but there was no program on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so Nikki was stuck with the Pilgrim problem. “I think,” she said, “that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated earlier in the fall, when it was warmer. But maybe you should ask Miss Drew about that on Monday,” she added delicately.
“That means you don’t really know the answer!” Mae sounded gleeful.
“True. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know lots of answers. Do you know all the answers?”
“No, but I’m only seven,” replied Mae. “You’re twelve.”
“Well, I guess that just goes to show that twelve-year-olds don’t know all the answers, either.”
“Maybe eighteen-year-olds do,” said Mae. “I’ll ask Tobias when he gets home.”
“Oh, don’t bother him with that. Let him relax a —”
“Bother him!” cried Mae indignantly. “That is not a bothery question. It’s a perfectly good one.”
Nikki sensed tears and hastily changed the subject. “Remember what we’re going to do this afternoon,” she said. “First thing. Well, first thing after we let Paw-Paw out.”
Mae brightened. “The baskets! We get to fill the baskets! But shouldn’t we wait for Tobias? Won’t he want to help us?”
“Do you want to wait for him? He might not be home for another hour.”
“I want to wait,” said Mae firmly. “He shouldn’t miss out on the fun.”
“Actually, he doesn’t even know about our secret project yet.”
Several weeks earlier, Nikki and Mae and their mother had begun to plan a Thanksgiving surprise. It had started when Nikki had said, “Remember all those years when we found baskets of food on our doorstep at Thanksgiving? We got turkeys and everything.”
“Who left the baskets?” Mae had asked.
“Well, charity,” Mrs. Sherman had replied.
“Who’s Charity?”
“Not who, what,” Nikki had said, and then she and her mother had tried to explain “charity” to Mae.
Finally, Mrs. Sherman had said, “But this year we don’t need any charity.”
“You know what?” Nikki had exclaimed. “I just had a great idea! This year we could give baskets away. I mean, not with turkeys. I know we couldn’t afford to do that. But we could put together baskets of cookies and stuff.”
“Who would we give them to?” Mae had asked.
“To people who need them. People who are lonely, like Mary Woolsey.”
“Or to people who have been nice to us in the past,” Mrs. Sherman had said. “Like Mrs. DuVane. She may be a little forward, but she’s been very generous to our family for a long time.”
And so it had been decided that on the day before Thanksgiving, Nikki and Mae and Tobias would secretly deliver baskets of goodies to several people in Camden Falls.
“I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait!” chanted Mae now as Nikki unlocked the door to the house. Paw-Paw rushed outside the moment the door was open, nearly knocking Mae over in the process.
“Wow. He must really need to poo,” Mae remarked.
Nikki decided to let the comment go. “Come on. Put your school things away. Let’s at least get the baskets ready to be filled. We can make an assembly line while we wait for Tobias.”
“What’s an assembly line?”
“Like in a factory. I’ll show you.”
Nikki cleared the kitchen table. “We’ll put all the baskets on this end,” she said, “and then piles of the things that will go in the baskets. We’ll stack the dish towels here and the bags of cookies here, and then make a pile of the candy boxes here, and put the Pilgrim candles over here” (Nikki sincerely hoped that the mention of Pilgrims wouldn’t rekindle the question of the first Thanksgiving’s weather) “and the dried flowers here, and all the autumn leaves you found here. See? And then we’ll take something from each pile and put it in the basket.”
The assembly line had just been or ga nized when the front door burst open and in walked Tobias.
“You’re here!” squawked Mae.
“You’re here early!” cried Nikki.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” said Tobias, dropping a bulging bag of laundry on the floor.
He hugged his sisters, and before he had even let them go, Mae was exclaiming, “You have to see our project! You can help us with it. We’ve been planning it forever, and today we get to give the baskets out. It’s a secret. It’s going to be so much fun!”
“What?” said Tobias.
Nikki explained the project to him in a more orderly fashion, and presently, she and Mae and Tobias began filling the baskets. They lined each one with an autumn dish towel, filled it with the treats, decorated it with the flowers and leaves, and tied an anonymous Happy Thanksgiving card to the handle.
There were six baskets in all.
“So who are they for?” asked Tobias as they worked.
“One i
s for Mrs. DuVane,” said Nikki. “That was Mom’s idea. Because of everything she’s done for us. And one is for Mary Woolsey.”
“That’s nice,” commented Tobias.
“One is for Miss Drew,” said Mae blissfully.
“Her teacher,” Nikki informed Tobias.
“He knows that,” Mae said and then added, “I love Miss Drew.”
“One is for a woman named Mrs. Bradley. You don’t know her, but I met her last year when Mr. Pennington took Flora and Olivia and Ruby and me on his Special Delivery route. We were handing out Christmas baskets, and Mrs. Bradley …” Nikki paused, thinking. “Well, it just seemed like there was no one else in her life at all. She needs a walker to get around and I don’t think she ever leaves her house. She was so grateful for our visit that she almost cried, and she told us we were her Christmas angels and gave us chocolates.”
“Chocolates?” said Mae with interest.
“Do you remember where she lives?” asked Tobias.
“Yup,” said Nikki. “All right. Let me see.” She counted on her fingers. “Okay, that’s four baskets. The fifth one is for Willow Hamilton and her family. They really need cheering up. Mrs. Hamilton probably won’t be out of the hospital until February. Plus, they’ve only lived here for a few weeks and they don’t know many people.”
“Paulie’s family really needs cheering up, too,” said Mae. “The last basket is for them.”
“Who’s Paulie?” asked Tobias.
“He’s in my grade but in Mr. Hawthorne’s class. He has … what’s it called, Nikki?”
“Leukemia,” she replied.
“And his hair fell out and he’s always absent. He only went to four days of second grade and then he got sick. I mostly remember him from first grade.”
“He’s an only child,” added Nikki, glancing at her brother.
“Wow,” said Tobias softly.
“I know.”
“Well, it sounds like you guys chose people who will really like the baskets. All right. Let me think about how to get to their houses. Do you know where Paulie lives, Mae?”
She nodded. “Near school.”
“What if these people are at home?” asked Tobias. “You want to deliver the baskets in secret, don’t you?”
“Like elves,” replied Mae.
“If anyone’s at home …” Nikki started to say. “Well, hmm. I don’t know. We’ll play that by ear.”
“Okay,” said Tobias. “Everyone grab two baskets and let’s get going.”
They started with Mrs. Bradley.
“This one will be easy,” said Nikki as they parked outside of her house. “Not to be callous, but seriously, it will take her so long to answer the door that we could ring her bell, run back to the car, and be gone before she’s even on her feet. We have to ring the bell,” she added, “because otherwise she might never find the basket.”
“I’ll sit here with the engine running,” said Tobias. “You guys run as fast as you can — and just hope she doesn’t see you out the window.”
Laughing, Nikki and Mae rushed to Mrs. Bradley’s door. Nikki rang the bell and then whispered, “Run!” She and Mae sped back to the car and Tobias drove away.
“I wanted to watch her find the basket!” cried Mae.
“Nope. Too risky,” said Nikki. “That might spoil the surprise.”
“Elves wouldn’t stick around to watch,” added Tobias.
Mrs. DuVane’s house was next. It was large, lights were on inside, and three cars were parked in the circular drive in front. Tobias came to a slow stop on the road. “What do you think?” he asked Nikki.
“We could come back,” she said.
“No. We’d better leave the basket now.”
“I could tiptoe up to her front door with it,” said Mae, “and just leave it. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
In the end, that was what they decided to do. And it worked. Mae flew triumphantly back to the car, minus the basket, and said, “Floor it!” to Tobias, who left in a hurry but did not floor it. “I don’t think anyone saw me,” Mae added.
The next two houses — Willow Hamilton’s and Mary’s — were easy because Nikki knew no one would be at home. The baskets were left on the front doorsteps to be discovered later in the afternoon.
“Miss Drew is next!” exclaimed Mae as Tobias pulled away from Mary’s house. “Oh, she is going to be so surprised. For days and days she’ll wonder who mysteriously left a Thanksgiving basket at her door.”
“Are you sure you’re going to be able to keep the secret?” asked Nikki suspiciously.
Mae nodded solemnly. “Elves don’t tell.”
Tobias drove across Camden Falls to the small house that Mae swore belonged to her teacher.
“Looks like no one is home here, either,” said Nikki. “There’s no car in the driveway.”
“Well, just in case,” said Tobias, “Mae, you duck down and hide, and Nikki, you run the basket to the door. That way even if Miss Drew sees you, she won’t know who you are.”
“But she does know me,” said Nikki. “You go, Tobias.”
“Me? No way! I have to drive the getaway car.”
In the end it was decided that Nikki should take the basket after all, and she hustled it to the front door, feeling the same anticipation and excitement she’d felt when she ran to Mrs. Bradley’s house. Being the keeper of a secret, the bearer of a gift, sparked a warmth in her, a rare kind of joy that she had experienced only a few times in her life. She returned, grinning, to the car.
“One last basket,” said Tobias.
“Paulie’s,” said Mae. She directed her brother to Paulie’s house.
“We might not be able to deliver this one in secret,” remarked Tobias as he parked the car. “Look.”
Several people were standing on Paulie’s front porch, and Paulie and his mother were talking to them at the door.
“Well, we’ll come back later,” said Nikki.
But Mae said, “No. You know what? This one doesn’t have to be a secret.” And in a flash, she opened the car door and dashed along the walk to the porch.
“Hi, Paulie,” Nikki heard her sister say. “Happy Thanksgiving. This is from me and my family.”
Nikki watched Paulie, who was indeed bald and was wearing pajamas and slippers, take the basket from Mae.
“Thanks!” he exclaimed. “Look, Mom.”
Paulie’s mother turned to Mae. “Who are —” she started to ask.
“Just a Thanksgiving elf!” Mae replied, and ran back to the car. She slid in next to Nikki and said, “Thanksgiving’s not even here and I feel like we already had a holiday.”
On the drive home, Mae’s head drooped against Nikki’s shoulder. Before she fell asleep, she said, “Let’s do this again next year.”
There was nothing like New York City during the holidays. Allie was convinced of that. She had lived in New York for many years, and while she had grown tired of it and found that she was now happier in tiny Camden Falls, there were things she missed about the city, and one of them was the way the old town got dressed for the holidays. And Allie felt that it got dressed as surely as an actor put on a costume to play a role on the stage. Decorations — some brand-new and some decades old — were brought out, and slowly New York was transformed from a grimy gray labyrinth into a sparkling magical kingdom. A giant tree appeared in Rockefeller Center near the end of November, and by the beginning of December had been decorated with thousands of tiny lights and was heralded by two rows of twinkly angels. Allie found that if she squinted her eyes and looked at only the grand tree and the skaters on the rink below, she might be a visitor in Old England.
Then, thought Allie, there was the enormous lighted snowflake that would be suspended above Fifth Avenue, and the blazing trees up and down Park Avenue, and another lighted tree at Lincoln Center, and the windows at Tiffany, Saks, and, best of all, Lord & Taylor. Each year she marveled at the way a single plain window could become a scene from a Victorian Chris
tmas or a sleigh ride through the woods or the start of Santa’s enchanted flight around the world.
On Wednesday afternoon, while Nikki and Tobias and Mae were delivering their baskets in Camden Falls, Allie was looking out the window of the apartment in Manhattan, drinking in the sights of the city as it put on its holiday garb. She hadn’t heard from Mrs. Prescott, and while she knew that this was actually a good thing, since it meant that the baby was staying put and growing bigger and healthier before the birth, she found that she felt, as Min would say, antsy. She couldn’t sit still. All she could think about were the baby and the mom and whether they would be okay and whether the parents would want their baby to be adopted after all and how bringing a baby home to Camden Falls would really feel. The thoughts tumbled around in Allie’s head until she was so antsy that she decided to take a walk. She checked to make sure her cell phone was on, set the ringer to the opening bars of “Jingle Bells,” turned the volume up high, and slipped the phone into an inside pocket of her coat. There. No matter where she went that afternoon or what she decided to do, she would hear her cell phone if Mrs. Prescott called with news.
Allie left the apartment on 12th Street, turned east, walked to Fifth Avenue, and then decided to walk all the way to Midtown. She could stay on Fifth Avenue, she told herself, or she could make detours. What did she have but time? She was crossing 23rd Street and thinking about a children’s clothing store in the neighborhood that she might peek into when “Jingle Bells” blared so loudly from within her coat that she jumped, nearly stumbling over an indignant dachshund being walked by an elderly man.
“Sorry! I’m sorry!” exclaimed Allie as she fumbled for her phone. To her surprise, since she thought she had set the volume as high as it would go, the sounds of “Jingle Bells” grew even louder (and somewhat frantic) as she struggled to unbutton her coat and reach into the pocket.
She didn’t bother to check the caller ID. “Hello? Hello?” she said breathlessly.
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