Special Delivery

by Ann M. Martin

  Mary Woolsey buttoned her bathrobe as she padded into her kitchen. She could hear Daphne and Delilah padding along behind her, and she turned to them and smiled. “Funny old girls,” she said. “Actually, if we’re going to be honest, you two are decrepit old girls. In cat years, you’re at least a hundred and five.”

  Daphne opened her mouth and yawned, as if this bit of information bored her tremendously.

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” added Mary. “Look what a beautiful day it is.” She peered out the window and into her backyard. Frost glittered on the stone wall, on the stubbly remains of her gardens, on every blade of grass, even on the woodpile. “A perfect sunrise,” said Mary, looking to the sky. The clouds that skittered along behind the trees had turned a bright pink, the color of the hyacinths that, years ago, Mary had planted by her front door.

  “Come look, girls.” Mary held first Daphne, then Delilah, up to the window. Daphne squirmed from her grasp, but Delilah appeared to scan the yard and sky appreciatively.

  Mary started the coffeemaker and then turned her attention to the cats’ breakfast. She spooned wet food into identical pink dishes, the bottoms of which were adorned with the letter D. The dishes were a tiny extravagance Mary had allowed herself one day. Money was scarce, but Mary had never had to borrow a penny, not once in all the years of her long life. Her mother had taught her to budget and to live within her means, and Mary had learned the lessons well.

  She was about to fix her own breakfast when her eyes fell on the basket in the center of her dining table. A smile crossed her face as she remembered the previous afternoon.

  “Mary?” Min Read had called from the checkout counter at Needle and Thread. “Gigi and I are going to close up early for the holiday. Why don’t you go home? You can have a nice long evening if you leave now.”

  “Thank you,” replied Mary, and she had begun to tidy up her worktable.

  “You’re sure you won’t join us at Three Oaks tomorrow?” asked Min. “There’s room for one more at the Willets’ table.”

  “Thank you,” said Mary again. “But I think I’ll stay at home.” The idea of eating in a dining room the size of the one at Three Oaks had made her breath catch in her throat.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” added Gigi. “It’s our big family celebration. We’re a little on the noisy side, but …”

  Mary smiled and shook her head. “I appreciate the offers. I really do.”

  Gigi had looked expectantly at her old friend, but Mary said nothing further. She pulled on her coat.

  “Happy Thanksgiving, then,” said Gigi.

  “Happy Thanksgiving to you. Bye, Min,” added Mary as the telephone began to ring.

  Min, still at the checkout counter, smiled and waved and reached for the phone. As Mary slipped out the door, she heard Min say, “Allie? Is that you? What was that?” And then, “My stars and garters. I’ll spread the word.”

  Mary made her way through the darkening streets of Camden Falls. She had always liked the day before a holiday, the hours when the town was still expectant and excitement buzzed in the air. As she’d passed houses, lights flicked on, shades were pulled down, children sprinted onto porches and burst through doorways. She’d watched a UPS driver hop out of his van and hurry along the path to a small house where the door was flung open and a man exclaimed, “Oh, wonderful! I’ve been waiting for this!”

  Mary paused, smiling. How thrilling it would be to answer her bell one day and find the UPS driver waiting there with a box for her — a surprise birthday package, maybe.

  Mary turned the corner to her street, admiring the wreath of chrysanthemums that hung on the Lewises’ lamppost and the pumpkins that still marched up the steps to the Golds’ house. She walked through the gardens, now brittle and brown, to her cottage, grateful for the streetlights that lit her way, and had unlocked her door and swung it open before she noticed the basket at her feet.

  “What’s this?” she said aloud, and stooped to pick it up. A card was attached to the handle of the basket, but she couldn’t make out the writing in the dim light, so she carried the basket inside, feeling every bit as lucky as the man who had received his UPS package.

  Mary turned on a light and set her pocketbook on the floor. She sat in an armchair and admired the basket. It was made of wicker and lined with a soft dishcloth. She reached for the card again. It read, Happy Thanksgiving, Mary!

  Mary turned the card over. That was it. Nothing on the back.

  “Well, it is a happy Thanksgiving,” said Mary.

  She turned her attention to the contents of the basket. A bouquet of delicate dried flowers had been arranged on one side. Nestled among brightly colored maple leaves were a small cardboard box, a cellophane bag containing cookies, and a pair of candles shaped like a Pilgrim girl and a Pilgrim boy.

  Mary reached for the box and withdrew it from the leaves. She sniffed. “Chocolate,” she said with plea sure, and opened the lid. Sure enough, six chocolate candies were inside. Mary replaced the box and opened the bag. “Gingersnaps. How lovely. Look, girls,” she’d added as Delilah and Daphne jumped onto the arm of the chair. “A Thanksgiving surprise. But who is it from?”

  Now in the pale light of Thanksgiving morning, Mary looked fondly at the basket again. She had several thoughts about who might have sent it, but she was enjoying the mystery and didn’t really want to solve it.

  The morning unfolded in the slow, delicious way of holidays. Mary began to prepare her solitary Thanksgiving dinner. She lit a fire in the fireplace. She put a small turkey in the oven, promising Delilah and Daphne that they would get samples with their suppers that evening. She had just fixed a pot of tea when her doorbell rang.

  “Now, who could that be?” Mary asked Daphne, who was sitting on the kitchen counter. She wiped her hands on her apron and made her way to the front door. “Flora!” she exclaimed.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” cried Flora.

  “What a surprise! Come in. I just made tea. Can you stay?”

  “Long enough for tea,” replied Flora. “I have to meet Min and Mr. Pennington at the community center soon. But guess what. The baby is on the way! Aunt Allie’s baby.”

  Mary clasped her hands together.

  “It will probably be born today,” Flora went on. “And Ruby and I will have a new cousin, and Min will be a grandmother again, and Aunt Allie will be a mom. And we can stop calling the baby ‘it.’”

  Mary laughed. “What a wonderful way to celebrate Thanksgiving.”

  Flora left half an hour later, and Mary decided to read before the fire for a while. Early in the afternoon, she sat down to her turkey dinner, which she ate with two cats staring intently at her. “I told you I was going to give you turkey tonight,” Mary reminded them, and then fed them bites of turkey anyway.

  She was clearing her dishes when the telephone rang. “Min,” said Mary to herself. It could only be Min. She picked up the phone. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

  There was a brief pause at the other end of the line before an unfamiliar voice said, “Well, happy Thanksgiving. Is this … is this Mary Woolsey?”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “Who’s this?”

  “Well, you don’t know me. I mean, you sent me a letter….” The voice trailed off. “My name is Catherine? Catherine Landry?”

  Mary frowned. The name sounded familiar. “Catherine.”

  “Yes. Well, the thing is, I think we’re related.”

  Mary dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh,” she said, and her voice came out as a squeak.

  “I didn’t mean to take you by surprise, but you did write —”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “And I’m pretty certain that I’m your half sister.”

  “My half sister,” Mary repeated. “I thought maybe cousins or …”

  Mary remembered the day the previous summer when she’d found the courage to write the letter. She had recently learned the truth about her father — that he had a sister, for one thing,
and more important, that he had not died young, as she had believed for most of her life, but instead had left Mary and her mother and started a new life somewhere far from Camden Falls. Mary had been brought up believing that she had no relatives at all, and then she had discovered that her father had had a sister. That sister might have children — they would be Mary’s cousins. But this — a sister of her own — this was more than Mary had hoped for.

  Catherine was speaking again. “I know this must be a shock. Your letter was sent along to me by someone who knew your aunt, our father’s sister, decades ago. Probably fifty years ago. I gather you were trying to find out about your aunt’s family. I’m sorry to tell you that she died in, I think it was nineteen sixty.”

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” said Mary, “but I have to ask you this: Did you know that your father — I mean, our father — had been married before?”

  “I didn’t find out until after he died,” replied Catherine. “And I had so little information that I didn’t know how to find you. But then you found me.”

  Mary drew in her breath. “Do we have any other sisters or brothers?” she whispered.

  Catherine began to talk again. The minutes ticked by. An hour passed. Mary had a brother. She had nieces and nephews. And she did indeed have cousins as well. The pieces of her life, all the missing pieces, were falling into place. Mary asked questions and Catherine answered them. Catherine asked questions and Mary answered them.

  Catherine lived less than an hour away. Two of Mary’s nephews lived even closer.

  Mary closed her eyes. “Could we meet?” she asked.

  “I was hoping you would say that!” exclaimed Catherine. “Yes. Yes, I would very much like to meet.”

  “I haven’t left Camden Falls in years,” admitted Mary. “I don’t even have a car. Do you think you could come here?”

  “Not only that, I’ll come with my sons, my daughter, and my niece. And my granddaughter,” she added proudly. “Ellen Hayley. She’s two months old.”

  “Goodness!” said Mary.

  She had never known such a Thanksgiving. When she finally hung up the phone, she wandered into the kitchen and caught sight of the mysterious basket.

  “You brought me luck,” she said to it. “You must be magic.” And for the rest of the day she eyed it both gratefully and suspiciously.

  Ruby Northrop woke up on Thanksgiving morning with the uncomfortable feeling that she had forgotten something. Or that she had lost something. She sat up and looked around her room. She didn’t see any schoolbooks, but that was okay because she hadn’t been given any vacation homework. She saw her tap shoes, which was good because they were very expensive and Min had told her that if she lost them again, Ruby would have to replace them herself.

  What could be wrong?

  The answer came to her in the next instant and left a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  She had forgotten to rehearse her solos (the little one and the important one) for the Thanksgiving concert. She had missed the final rehearsal and she had forgotten to rehearse on her own.

  “Oh, well,” said Ruby aloud, hopping out of bed. She pulled her sheet music out from under a pile of papers on her desk, unwrapped a piece of bubble gum, popped it in her mouth, and scanned the music. “I know this,” she said. She snapped her gum and dropped the music back on the desk. Nothing to worry about. Not to mention that this was Ruby’s second Thanksgiving concert with the Children’s Chorus.

  “Been there, done that,” said Ruby, and she opened her wardrobe to choose an outfit for Thanksgiving dinner at Three Oaks.

  The concert was to begin at ten o’clock in the morning in order to give everyone plenty of time to tend to their feasts afterward. The members of the Children’s Chorus were to arrive at the community center at nine-fifteen sharp, wearing white tops and navy skirts or pants. And they were not to have their sheet music with them. The concerts were traditionally given from memory. No music allowed.

  Ruby was just a teensy bit anxious about not having her music. She thought back to the previous Thanksgiving concert, which had been her very first concert with the chorus. She had not had a solo then — none of the brand-new members had been given one. But this concert was different. Ruby was now a second-year member.

  Feeling quite responsible and grown-up, Ruby had laid a green velvet dress out on her bed that morning. It was to be her outfit for Three Oaks. Then she had reached for the white blouse and navy skirt that were hanging, freshly pressed by Min, in her wardrobe. She put them on carefully. They remained wrinkle free. And Ruby was quite pleased that she had had the forethought to lay out her dress ahead of time so she wouldn’t have to worry about an outfit later.

  “I’m all organized,” Ruby announced to Flora and Min when she entered the kitchen that morning. “I’m ready for the concert, and I chose my outfit for this afternoon. So in case we don’t have much time after the concert, I can get dressed really fast.”

  “That’s admirable, Ruby,” said Min. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Now, if I can just eat breakfast without spilling anything,” said Ruby.

  “Why don’t you wear a bib?” suggested Flora.

  “Ha-ha,” said Ruby. “Min, who’s going to drive Lacey and me to the community center?”

  “I am. We should leave at nine o’clock, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Min looked at her watch. “It’s quarter to eight now. You’ll have time to practice your solos before we leave.”

  Ruby removed her wad of bubble gum and stuck it on the edge of her plate. “Don’t need to. I’m ready.”

  “I haven’t heard any rehearsing.”

  Ruby shrugged. “We’re singing these songs from the nineteen forties — I’m not sure why —”

  “Didn’t Ms. Angelo explain why she chose the songs for the concert?” interrupted Flora.

  “Yes. I mean, she must have,” said Ruby dubiously. “Well, anyway, both of my solos are in ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ That’s a song made famous by the Andrews Sisters. First I have just one line, but at the end I have —”

  “I still didn’t hear you rehearsing,” said Min.

  Ruby squirmed in her seat. “These are really tasty sticky buns,” she remarked.

  Min sighed. “Be ready by nine.”

  At exactly nine-fifteen, Ruby and Lacey arrived at the community center. The outside air, which was very cold, smelled of fallen leaves and wood smoke and pine needles. The sky was clear and blue.

  “Remember last year?” said Ruby. “Remember how beautiful the community center looked during the concert?”

  Ruby hadn’t known, when she’d entered the center the previous Thanksgiving, that the spare wooden hall, which was vast and dim, would be decorated for the holiday, or that the room would be infused with color and warmth. Now she opened the door eagerly and peered inside.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed under her breath. She was pleased to see that pots of live chrysanthemums had been placed at the ends of the first four rows of seats and that large gourds tumbled from a bushel basket at each side of the risers, on which the members of the chorus would stand. Around the windows were looped ropes of greens, and bouquets of lush red and orange and yellow flowers stood at either side of the doors. The room once again felt warm and cozy and festive.

  Ms. Angelo, the chorus director, clapped her hands. “Good morning, everyone!” she called. “Happy Thanksgiving. I know you’re excited, but please take your places on the risers for one quick rehearsal before the concert begins.”

  Ruby and her friends warmed up, rehearsed the two most difficult pieces (which did not include “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”), and practiced filing into and out of the hall and finding their spots on the risers.

  “Remember,” said Ms. Angelo, smiling, “we are not elephants. Please enter as quietly as possible. Without actually tiptoeing, of course.”

  By ten o’clock, when Ms. Angelo and the chorus were waiting patiently outside the great hall, almos
t every seat had been filled. Ruby could hear hushed, happy voices, and she tried to picture Min and Flora and Mr. Pennington sitting in a row near the front, dressed in their best clothes. The Morrises would be there, too, and maybe Olivia and her family. She wished Aunt Allie could hear her solos, but then she thought of the baby (please be a boy, please be a boy) and felt a shiver of plea sure run along her back.

  “Children,” said Ms. Angelo, after peeking through the doors, “it’s time. Are you ready?”

  The members of the chorus fell into place behind the director and followed her into the assembly room, which was now silent. Ruby breathed in the scent of the flowers and thought about “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” When she was standing in her spot on the risers, she looked out at the expectant faces and almost immediately found Mr. Pennington, her grandmother, and her sister. They smiled discreetly at her. She looked around and spotted Lacey’s family, Olivia and her family, and then saw Nikki, Tobias, Mae, and their mother. She caught sight of Frank, the owner of Frank’s Beans, and Jackie from the post office, and other people from stores and businesses up and down Main Street.

  This was great, thought Ruby. The whole town had turned out to hear her solos.

  Ms. Angelo faced the audience, smiled warmly at them, and said, “Welcome to our Thanksgiving concert. We’re pleased that so many of you are here this morning, celebrating our day for giving thanks. The Camden Falls Children’s Chorus has been working hard this fall, and we’re eager to share our music with you. We thank you for coming and hope you enjoy the program.”

  Ms. Angelo turned back to the chorus. She nodded once, played a single note on the piano, and raised her hands. This was when Ruby suddenly recalled that not only was no sheet music allowed, but the singers were to have memorized the order of the songs to be performed. So she was a beat late getting started since she couldn’t remember whether the first song was “When the Lights Go On Again” or “Sentimental Journey.” Lacey, who was standing to her left, glanced curiously at her, but once the song was under way, Ruby was fine.