Their First Noel

by Annie Jones

  She would have gladly volunteered to take on that task if she thought for one minute she’d still be in Vermont by the time the work on the inn was done. Christmas Eve? She’d be back in South Carolina, back at the bakery, back in the life she had always known.

  Corrie sighed.

  The microwave dinged.

  Andy took the second bag out and motioned to the door with a tip of his head. “I think it’s safest if we take this out into the lobby.”

  He could have been talking about protecting the gingerbread inn from Greer. Or that the light in the lobby was better so that it would be better for working with a needle and thread. But when Corrie agreed with the man she had so wanted to kiss her in the woods, she couldn’t help thinking it was the safety of their hearts he was referring to.

  Again her thoughts went to her mother and the life lessons she had tried to impress on Corrie. No one can be fully trusted. You will always be let down. In the end you only have yourself to rely upon.

  Corrie tried to repeat the worldly wise counsel over and over as she walked from the warmth of the cozy kitchen. But when she brushed against Andy’s shirt-sleeve, looked up and met his eyes, the memory of his voice drowned out a lifetime of warnings. You make the best of everything.

  Corrie strode into the lobby with a light heart only to find Greer standing there with her sock monkey tucked under one arm and her lower lip pushed out in an unmistakable pout.

  “What now?” Andy wanted to know as he came up to his sister and bent down, his hands on his knees to meet her eye to eye.

  “It looked so much bigger outside.” She pointed to the tree.

  Corrie stood back and took a long look. “She’s right, you know. That wall of windows does sort of dwarf the poor thing.”

  Andy scratched his jaw and frowned. “What if I drag one of the smallest tables in from the dining room and we put it up on that?”

  “I’ll help,” Greer said to show her approval.

  “If we do that we ought to have a tree skirt, or a reasonable substitute.” Corrie took a peek at the trunk in the cobbled together wooden stand he’d made for it earlier today. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare sheet would you?”

  “Ah!” He held one finger up, and gave a comically maniacal grin. “I may have messed up on the drapes and tablecloths but I more than made up for it on sheets.”

  Greer giggled. “Tell her what you did.”

  “I placed an order based on the number of bed linens needed sixty years ago.” He winced as he walked backward, talking to Corrie even as he followed Greer over to the dining room to get the table. “You know, back when the place had six guest cabins, each with two beds in them?”

  “Ouch!” Corrie called back to him. “So where are all the extras?”

  “Supply closet. Top of the stairs,” Andy hollered above the sound of the table’s metal stand scraping across the unfinished concrete floor.

  Corrie took off and in a shot she returned with a sheet and a question. “So, I take it you also ordered way too many of those, um, golden-colored bedspreads, too?”

  “Go ahead, say it.” He peered at her from the side of the tree as he lifted it up onto the table.

  “Say what?” She ducked beneath the branches to guide the base of the tree to the center of the heavy, dark wooden table.

  “Whatever word you wanted to say before golden-colored? Ugly? Weird polyester? Guest repellant?”

  Corrie laughed, backed out from under the newly settled tree and stood upright to admire their handiwork. “Tacky.”

  Andy came to stand by her side, his attention aimed in the same direction as hers. “The tree?”

  “The bedspreads,” she clarified.

  “Oh, yeah. Tacky or not, I have enough to last me through the next sixty years. So we’re stuck with them.”

  “Unless…”

  “They are nonreturnable,” he muttered.

  “I was just going to say, unless you tried something to jazz them up. What about letting the local ladies use them for quilt backing? Then you use some of their work on the beds and sell surplus quilts at the check-in counter.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Corrie never has bad ideas!” Greer grabbed Corrie around the middle and gave her a big hug. “I think we should keep her.”

  “Knock it off.” Andy gave his sister a light tap on the shoulder. “She’s not a lost puppy.”

  Strangely, Corrie felt exactly like a lost puppy. Only she felt that way when she thought of returning home, not here in the inn with Greer and Andy.

  Andy went out and got the spare twinkle lights and began winding them through the branches.

  Corrie showed Greer how to carefully poke a threaded sewing needle through the center of the popcorn and slide it along to the end. She left her with that and went to throw together some sugar cookie dough.

  When she had popped the first batch into the oven she came back to find Andy with the lights tangled into a ball and Greer with only three pieces of popcorn strung, throwing fistfuls of the stuff at the branches and crying.

  “I leave you two on your own for fifteen minutes and this is what happens?”

  “Maybe we really do need you to stay,” Andy teased then gave a sad smile and added, “Which means if I were you, I’d run for the hills while you still can.”

  Corrie gave him a shake of her head then went down on her knees by his sister. She scooped up the sock monkey left limp on the floor and offered it to Greer. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

  The child took Buddy Mon-Kay in both hands and curled him into a tight hug. “This isn’t working. The popcorn just breaks when I try to string it. I miss my mommy. If she was here, she’d know what to do to fix it.”

  Corrie lifted her gaze to Andy.

  He let the knotted-up lights fall away and came to their side. He put his hand on Greer’s back. “Hey, kiddo. You know Mom is off helping somebody else have a family of their own for Christmas. I got an email saying she’ll be back on Tuesday. That’s not too long for us to wait, knowing what good work Mom is doing, is it?”

  The little girl looked up at him and sniffled. The tears in her dark eyes beaded on her black eyelashes, but once she swiped them away with the back of her hand, they stopped. “No. That’s not too long. Families are important. I just wish…”

  Andy’s face went pale. His jaw tightened.

  Clearly, even people who didn’t have bitter, overprotective mothers sometimes wished their moms made different choices. A wall of conflicting emotions rose up in Corrie. She missed her mom. She wanted to comfort Greer. She had empathy for Andy. She felt in that one moment abandoned and comforted.

  She stood and cleared her throat. “You know, I have three big bags of miniature marshmallows in the trunk of my car. I bet those would string a lot easier and be just as pretty. Why don’t I go get those?”

  Andy turned his head to follow her flight as she gathered her coat and headed for the door. “But they’re for the contest entry, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s a quick way to make an easy fondant and I want to mix them with icing to make clumpy, shiny globs of snow. But they’re just marshmallows. I can buy more tomorrow.” With that she stepped outside and took a deep breath to collect herself.

  What was happening to her? she wondered. Maybe Andy had a point about sticking to the plan. If she let herself get carried away too much, she’d never find her way. She took a deep breath, steadied her resolve and went to get the marshmallows from her car.

  They did string up much more easily than the popcorn, especially after they decided to use dental floss instead of string. In almost no time they had wound the garland from the top branches to the lower ones. Andy plugged in the twinkle lights.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Corrie announced at the sight.

  “Somewhere boring,” Greer grumbled. “There’s no colors on this tree. That doesn’t look very Christmassy to me.”

  Corrie stared down at the very simpl
y shaped, pale sugar cookies on the tray in her hands. “She has a point. If I had food coloring, I could have whipped up some icing for these. But I didn’t bring any because I wanted all white accents on my piece.”

  “You know these cookies are kind of like your contest gingerbread.” Andy picked up one of the diamond shapes.

  “How so?” Corrie cocked her head, trying to guess what he had in mind.

  “They don’t have to taste good.” He looked over the cookie in his hand as if contemplating taking a bite. “In fact, they don’t even have to be edible.”

  “I did make them extra thick and less sweet than my usual Christmas sugar cookies, to stand up to being hung on the tree. So, what are you thinking?”

  He moved in close to whisper, “I have gallons of powder blue paint in the dining room. I don’t suppose the painters would miss enough to cover a few cookies.”

  She pulled back just enough to meet his gaze. “Andy McFarland, I do believe you’re beginning to think like me.”

  “I’d deny it but before I met you I can’t imagine a case where I’d ever have suggested using wall paint on cookies, then using those cookies as Christmas tree ornaments.” He shook his head and put the cookie back on the tray.

  She laughed and went to the cans stacked along the side of the dining room. She picked one up and read the label. “You sure you ordered powder blue paint?”

  “I don’t like the sound of that question. What’s wrong?” His boots scuffed over the concrete floor, pounding along until he was at her side. “What color is the paint?”

  She plunked the can down with a deadened thud. “Gunpowder blue.”

  His eyes went all squinty. “What exactly is gunpowder blue?

  Corrie used the can opener key to pry the lid off and peered down inside, concluding, “Gray.”

  “Gray?” He swept two fingers across the paint on the lid and smeared it on to the dining room wall.

  Corrie looked closely at the color, which was darker and maybe a hint bluer than the concrete beneath their feet. “It’s gray all right.”

  “No. This won’t do. I can’t…” His face went red.

  Corrie suspected that if the painters had been here instead of her and Greer, he’d have lit into them and taken a bite out of their backsides. He had been trying so hard to get this all right and here it was, another goof up like the bed linens and lack of curtains and workers who refused to work in bad weather. She wanted to comfort him. She wanted to counsel him.

  She wanted to take him in her arms and kiss him and make it all better, the way he had when she had bumped her head.

  Instead she tried to smile about it and said, “At least you hadn’t already wasted a couple of days getting it on the walls before you found out.”

  “Yeah, I guess there is that.” He took the lid from her and set it on top of the can. “Well, there’s no choice. I have tell the painters to hold off while I go to Daviston tomorrow to get all new paint.”

  Greer cocked her head and looked at them. “Does that mean we’re done decorating?”

  “We can find another way to get color on to the tree,” Corrie said. There was always another way, of course, and Andy needed to be reminded of that. “If you have any colored paper we could make a paper chain.”

  Andy shook his head and nudged the paint can with the toe of his boot. “I don’t know where I’d find any—”

  “I have some.” Greer ran off to the spot beside the front door where she had sloughed off her coat. Her small hand dove into the coat pocket and she wrestled free the piece of red paper she had brought home from Sunday school. “We can use this.”

  “That’s a start. If you can round up some more, plus a pair of scissors and some glue or tape, we’ll be in business.” Corrie took the page.

  “I have some tape in a box in my room and I have a magazine we could cut up, too. There’s scissors in the kitchen drawer because Andy won’t let me keep them upstairs.” Greer ran off to get the other supplies.

  “You know which drawer she means?” Corrie started off toward the other room with the paper in her hand.

  Andy raised each can of paint in turn, checking the labels and shaking his head as he said, “Considering I was hiding them from her and she knows where they are, my guess is she moved them, so…”

  “I’ll figure it out as I—” Just then she flipped over the page Greer had gotten in Sunday School, wanting to look at it before she cut it up. With every sentence she read there, her stomach tightened. “Andy? Did you know that the kids have to come up with their own costumes for the Christmas pageant?”

  “Huh?” He looked up from the paint cans at last and blinked as if he’d just woken up from a light nap. “What? Costumes? When?”

  Corrie closed the distance between them, her boots scuffing lightly over the hard surface of the floor with each hurried step. She extended the paper to him. “They have to bring their own costumes to the dress rehearsal Tuesday evening.”

  “No. Not possible.” He took the paper away from her, read it over. “A costume? With a halo and wings? Forty-eight hours from now when I have to go out of town tomorrow? It’s not doable. No. There are some things I just can’t…” He crumpled the paper into a ball in one hand. “I can’t do it all.”

  “Hey! We need that for the paper chain,” Greer snapped.

  “I don’t have time to fool around with paper chains or painted cookies or decorating Christmas trees.” Andy tossed the balled-up paper lightly to his sister then paced to the base of the stairway, looked back at the unfinished room and shut his eyes. “I started out this day just a couple days behind on the inn. I’ve lost at least one more day because of the paint. Now I find out I’m also behind schedule getting you a costume for the Christmas play. I don’t think I can do all this alone.”

  “You’re not alone,” Greer and Corrie spoke at once.

  He put his fist on the banister and looked toward the door. “Look, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you two but neither one of you is a professional painter, neither one of you can make a child’s costume out of, well, I don’t even know what we’d make it out of but I do know we don’t have a sewing machine to do it and if we did, either of you a seamstress?”

  “I may not be any of those things but I’m a really good prayer.” Greer took Corrie by the hand, dragged her a few steps then reached out to her brother. “You told me that we’re never alone. God is always with us. That’s what Christmas is all about, God loves us and doesn’t want us to be alone, so He sent us Jesus. So when we think it’s too much for us to take care of ourselves, we can turn to him.”

  Corrie and Andy looked at each other. Another defining moment, this time not just for Andy, but for all of them. What he did now would help to shore up the foundation of his sister’s faith. And it would create a new level of closeness between Andy and Corrie. They would no longer just be two people whose paths crossed one lonely Christmas season. They would share a bond of faith.

  “And one of the ways we help each other is to pray for each other,” Greer went on. “If we do that then we know we aren’t alone. We know Mom isn’t alone when she’s traveling and Andy’s not alone when he’s trying to get all his work done. And Corrie.”

  “What about me?” she asked softly.

  “Even if you don’t find your daddy, you’re not alone. You have God. You have us.”

  Tears washed over Corrie’s line of vision. She struggled to swallow. Hardly an hour ago she had felt like a lost puppy and had dug deep within her memory to hold fast to her mother’s warning that she could only count on herself. Now this innocent child had taken her hand and acted in God’s stead to say that she was never alone because she was loved. Corrie looked at Andy.

  “I have to tell you, if Greer wasn’t here, I probably wouldn’t have even thought about turning to prayer until I was absolutely overwhelmed.”

  She nodded.

  “But…what do you say?” He held his hand out toward her.

  He
r hand trembled as she lifted it then stretched her arm out and slid her chilled fingers into the warmth of his palm.

  There in the twinkling light of the Christmas tree she bowed her head and the three of them shared a brief prayer that everything would work out.

  That night as she drove home, Corrie began to formulate her own idea of just how that would happen.

  Chapter Twelve

  Monday morning the alarm clock woke Andy. He went about his workday routine as always. Showering, dressing, then heading into Greer’s room to get her up and started getting ready for school. Only this morning, Greer’s bed was empty.

  A week ago that would have either irritated or worried him, or both. Today, he headed downstairs fairly certain of where he would find his sister and who he would find her with.

  “Good morning, Greer! Good morning, Corrie!” He strolled through the swinging kitchen door only to find the room dark and cold.

  Confused, he headed to the dining room. Empty. His pulse picked up to match his footsteps pounding against the unforgiving concrete. He had his hand on the banister and was just about to go bounding upstairs to look for his sister when the sound of giggling made him pull up short. “What on earth are you two doing?”

  “’Bout time you got up, sleeping beauty.” Corrie called from where she sat, cross-legged on the floor shredding something silvery into strips that she then handed to Greer who reached up on tiptoe to place them on the tree. “We’ve already eaten breakfast out of a pouch and recycled the packaging into tinsel.”

  “Nothing you just said registered in my thick head.” He rubbed his hand through his hair and squinted at the pair of them.

  Greer laughed and handed him a silver packet containing a toaster pastry. “We ate them cold because I told Corrie that’s how I like them and she said she’d rather eat the cardboard hot or cold and I said that if we have to take the marshmallows off the tree then we should at least make icicles out of—”