The Treasure of Christmas

by Melody Carlson

  “But why?” Despite her reservations and a longing to escape this cantankerous woman, Christine felt herself being reeled in. She sensed there was a reason that Mrs. Daniels was so bitter and jaded. And she wanted to know what it was.

  “Like I said, they’re after my money.” She got a sly smile, as if she were keeping a secret. “And that’s perfectly fine with me. I plan to keep stringing them along just to ensure that they show me a bit of respect during my final years. I’m sure that’s the only reason they even attempt to be nice to me – thinking I’m going to leave my vast fortune to them.” She laughed again, only this time the hollow sound seemed to echo with sadness as it reverberated through the impeccably decorated rooms of the large, quiet house.

  Inexplicably, and to her own irritation, Christine felt a real wave of pity for this embittered woman. And although it seemed impossible to think they were actual blood relatives, she felt some strange kind of connection.

  “Okay, Mrs. Daniels, I’ll write down my references for you. I can give you my pastor’s name and number, and my manager at McDonald’s. I could give you my father’s phone number too, but he recently left the country to teach at a mission base down in Brazil. Will just two names be enough?”

  “I guess it’ll have to do. But mark my word, young lady, in the future if you should ever apply for a job again, you had better bring your references along with you!” With a loud groan, she pulled herself to her feet and then struggled for her crutches. “Young people nowadays!”

  Christine stood too. “So when do you want me to come?”

  “Well, Felicity is coming back today. Why don’t you come tomorrow at eight o’clock sharp, but not a minute before since I don’t get up until eight. And if you can promise to come tomorrow, I can tell Felicity that she no longer needs to bother herself with me. Actually, I’ve been telling them both that since I got home from the emergency room last Saturday, but do they listen to me? Ha! Not on your life.” The woman arranged her crutches beneath her arms, then hobbled away without even saying good-bye or seeing Christine to the door.

  Christine pulled a small notebook out of her purse, neatly wrote down the references, and left them on the gleaming mahogany table in the foyer. Then quietly she slipped on her parka and let herself out the front door. It was already getting dark outside, and she shivered against the cooling temperature. She hurried down the walk and questioned what she was getting herself into. But then again she had wondered what she’d do with herself during Christmas break. Surely this would be a holiday she’d never forget.

  2

  “You’re sure you’ll be okay on your own during the holidays?” Christine’s roommate asked as she shoved her dirty clothes into a laundry sack. “We’ve got a full house, but you’re welcome to come home with me if you don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

  Christine picked up a dirty sock and tossed it into Brianna’s rapidly filling bag. “Thanks anyway, but I’ve taken a job during the holidays.”

  “You’re going to work during Christmas?”

  She nodded. “It should be pretty interesting too.”

  Brianna frowned as she attempted to tie the bulging bag closed. “Sounds like a drag to me. But then I’ve never found work to be terribly engaging.”

  Christine didn’t say anything, but she knew firsthand this was true. She’d only just met Brianna at the beginning of fall term, when they’d been paired off to share a room, but in the past few months she’d witnessed up close and personal how this less-than-motivated girl allowed her side of the room to pile up until she practically needed a snow shovel to unearth her bed.

  “Well, you have fun now,” Brianna said with a bright smile.

  “Thanks,” Christine said, although fun hardly seemed the appropriate word to describe her new housekeeping job for the demanding Mrs. Daniels. “And you have a good Christmas with your family,” she called as Brianna struggled to get out the door, loaded down with her backpack and laundry bag.

  Christine lingered in the unusually quiet hallway for a few moments. It was amazing how quickly the place had evacuated following finals. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was the only one left on this floor by now. Finally she went back into her room, closed the door, and locked it. She glanced around the small space and told herself that she should appreciate these next few weeks of peace and quiet. And yet somehow she knew it wouldn’t be quite that simple.

  She sat down at her desk and reopened her father’s latest letter. He was writing only weekly now, if that. When he’d first arrived down there, she’d gotten letters from him almost every other day. She thumbed through the recent photos he’d sent. His tanned face looked years younger and more relaxed than it had in ages. In fact, he hardly appeared to be sixty-four. She felt certain this must be the result of his new teaching position down at the mission in Brazil.

  “It’s always been a lifetime dream of mine,” he’d confessed to her last year. “Long ago, back when I was still in college, back before I met your mother, I seriously considered becoming a foreign missionary. For some reason I fancied the idea of South America. I suppose it was because of all those missionary books I’d been reading. But I’d sent for the mission information and had even begun filling out an application.”

  “And then you met Mom and decided to get married instead?” Christine had asked.

  “It didn’t seem like such a difficult decision at the time. Once I met your mother, I knew she was all I’d ever wanted. It felt as if she brought everything I’d ever missed into my world.” He’d smiled. “And she made my life seem more alive and happy and full.”

  “You were really in love, weren’t you.”

  Christine had always enjoyed hearing her dad talk about their romance – how he had just been starting out in his teaching profession and her mother had been a registered nurse, how they’d met at church and fallen in love almost instantly. It was straight out of a storybook. And she still hoped that someday she’d have a similar experience herself. Although so far it didn’t seem terribly likely.

  “I was so completely smitten,” he’d confessed last year, “that I forgot all about wanting to be a foreign missionary. I was just happy to have a good job at the local elementary school, to marry your sweet little mother, and to live happily ever after.”

  “But are you happy now?” she’d asked. “In your work, I mean.”

  He’d frowned slightly. “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “Then why don’t you do it?” she’d said suddenly. “Why don’t you just go for it, Dad? Revive your old dream and just do it. I mean, lots of people your age take off to do something different. And you’ve been saying you’re going to take early retirement ever since Mom died, but you keep putting it off.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you were settled,” he’d said. “I wanted to be here for you during your first years of college.”

  “And you’ve done that, Dad. But you know I’ll be transferring to the university for my junior year. I won’t even be living at home after next summer.” She’d looked around the familiar kitchen, memorizing the cheerful yellow and white checked wallpaper her mother had hung back when Christine was still in grade school. “You know, Dad, you could even sell the house if you wanted. I mean, I’d totally understand.”

  “Oh, no, no.” He’d waved his hand. “I wouldn’t do that, Christine. Where would you come home to during your vacation times?”

  But, as it turned out, he’d leased the house, for just two years, but there’d also been talk of signing an option to buy, although Christine wasn’t sure about that. Still, it had seemed the sensible thing to do at the time, what with her off at college and him planning to be out of the country. And Christine had assured him that she would be perfectly fine on her own. She’d had a part-time job, a partial scholarship, and faith that God would see her through. So far so good.

  She stared at the recent photos of her father amidst the smiling brown faces of schoolchildren until her eyes became too blurr
y to focus and she feared that her tears would ruin the pictures completely. “Oh, how I miss you, Daddy,” she said as she carefully stacked the pictures and placed them back in the envelope.

  Of course, she knew he wasn’t her “real” father. Or, more accurately, her biological father. And she knew the only mother she’d ever known wasn’t her birth mother. But they’d both been her real parents, and she’d loved them as much, perhaps even more, than if they’d shared the same gene pool. And now that she was completely alone and on her own, she missed them both more than ever.

  She picked up the family portrait on her desk. It had been taken just about a year before her mother had suffered the brain aneurysm that had so unexpectedly taken her life. Christine remembered the day as if it were yesterday. She’d just started her freshman year in high school. It had been the first week and her mother had dropped her off at the front entrance.

  “Have a good day, honey,” she’d said, just like always. Then she’d added rather unexpectedly, “And don’t forget that God’s always watching out for you.”

  Christine had nodded, then uttered a quick good-bye before she dashed from the car. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed, exactly, to be seen emerging from a seventeen-year-old peach-colored sedan with a dented front fender, or even to be seen with a slightly frumpy mother who was quite a bit older than most of her friends’ parents, but the truth was she wasn’t eager to be seen like that either. And certainly not during the first week of school, especially when she’d been trying extra hard to make a good impression. At the time it had seemed incredibly important to look cool, and Christine’s parents, home, and car didn’t fall anywhere close to the cool category. But then life and values can change in a heartbeat. And by the end of that day, Christine couldn’t have cared less about appearances. All she wanted was her mother back. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  She and her father had grieved together, helping each other along like the blind leading the blind. Her first year of high school passed almost without notice. But eventually their lives fell into something of a pattern. Something that vaguely resembled normal. Not that it was anything like when her mother was alive. But they got by. And Christine slowly learned a bit about housekeeping and grocery shopping and how to do laundry without turning her father’s jockey shorts pink. She had never fully realized or even appreciated all that her stay-at-home mother had done to make their lives pleasant and comfortable and easy.

  It was midway through this year of grieving and getting by that her father had broken the news to her. As life turned out, Christine had lost not just one mother but two.

  “Your mother wanted to tell you several years ago,” he’d said one evening in late winter. “But I thought it was unimportant. I thought we were all the parents you’d ever need, the only ones you’ve ever known. But now that Marie is gone, well, I think maybe it’s time you knew the truth.”

  “The truth?” Christine had felt as if her world was suddenly shifting again. She’d felt the need to grab on to something before she went totally sideways.

  “This isn’t easy for me, honey. I’ve always thought of you as our very own. And, believe me, you are. But not completely.” He’d paused to take a deep breath. “The fact of the matter is we adopted you at birth.”

  Christine had blinked. How could this be? “I’m adopted?”

  He’d nodded. “Marie and I had always wanted to have children, but the good Lord just never saw fit to give us any – until you, that is. You were our little miracle child.”

  Christine had tried to take in his story, but at the time she’d been in such a state of shock that much of it went right past her. She’d had him retell the story days later, more slowly and carefully, so that she could begin to put the pieces together in her own mind. Her birth mother was Lenore Blackstone, an eighteen-year-old who had left home because of an unwanted pregnancy.

  “Lenore’s parents were unsympathetic,” her father had explained. “Her condition was an embarrassment to them. So Lenore moved from her hometown to Larchwood and got a job at Buddy’s Café. Marie and I were regulars there and knew all the waitresses by name. So, naturally, we noticed whenever a new girl came along. We quickly befriended Lenore and learned that she was on her own and lonely and frightened. She was renting a room above the hardware store but was barely able to make ends meet. When Marie learned that Lenore was pregnant, she invited her to come to church with us, and eventually we offered her a room in our home. We both loved Lenore and felt right off the bat that she was like family. As the end of her pregnancy drew near, she began to suggest that we might want to adopt her baby. We were a bit stunned at first, but the more we thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. Most of all, Lenore wanted to ensure that her baby had a good home.”

  Christine had patted her father’s hand. “And you and Mom saw to that.”

  He’d nodded. “We did our best. Your mom even gave up her job as a nurse just so she could be a full-time mother to you. We didn’t mind the extra scrimping, not one bit. You were worth it.”

  “But what happened to my birth mother?”

  “It was only about a month after you were born. We could both see that Lenore was an intelligent girl, and we encouraged her to register for classes at the community college. We even offered to pay her tuition, since she had no intention of going back to her family just then. It was a freezing day in January, and she’d just gotten off the bus near campus, when she was struck down by a car that had skidded across the icy pavement. She went into a coma and died two days later.”

  Christine had felt her eyes filling with tears for a woman she’d never even really known.

  “Marie and I were just devastated.” Her dad had sadly shaken his head. “We made arrangements for her funeral and desperately tried to locate her family in the town she’d said she’d come from, but there wasn’t a single Blackstone listed in the phone book. That’s when Marie wondered if perhaps Lenore had made up the name to distance herself from her family.”

  “Maybe she didn’t want to be found,” Christine had suggested.

  But, as it turned out, Lenore hadn’t made up the name at all. Only last summer while getting his traveling shots at the county health department, Christine’s dad had met a man named Blackstone, and out of curiosity he’d inquired further. The man told him about a second cousin, Allen Blackstone, who had lived in the same town Lenore had come from and who had also had a daughter by that name. Unfortunately, Allen had died of a heart attack when Lenore was still a young teenager, and her mother had remarried only a year or so later. The man wasn’t absolutely certain, but he thought the second husband’s name was Daniels and that he was some bigwig at the university.

  “Isn’t it ironic,” her father had said as they sat at the kitchen table, eating the chicken casserole she’d prepared that afternoon, “that you’re already enrolled to go to college in that very same town. It’s possible that you could have a grandmother there.”

  “I don’t care if I do,” Christine had said as she refilled her water glass.

  Her father’s brows had raised slightly. “Wouldn’t you like to meet her?”

  “Not if she was that horrible to my birth mother. Really, Dad, why would I want to have anything to do with someone like that?”

  “I don’t know . . .” Her father had taken another bite and then smiled. “Good dinner tonight, Christine. Your mother would be proud.”

  Which mother? Christine had wondered. But, of course, she knew who he meant. Naturally, he could only be speaking of Marie, the only mother Christine had ever known. Still, it bothered her that she’d begun to wonder about this other mother, the one who had died at an even younger age than Christine was now. What was Lenore Blackstone really like, anyway? And what was wrong with her family that they would abandon her like that?

  Well, starting tomorrow, Christine would find out. The big question was, Would she spill the beans to her biological grandmother? Or would she simply play along in the hous
ekeeper role and discover these things for herself? She wondered what her father would recommend, but, of course, she knew. He would be quick to quote something like “Honesty is the best policy.” And under normal circumstances she would agree with him completely. But this was anything but normal.

  3

  Esther Daniels cursed as she attempted to shove herself up from the low-seated chair where she’d fallen asleep in the living room. She wondered why she bothered to put up with these blasted wingback chairs anymore. It wasn’t as if they were comfortable. And at her age she should be sitting in a recliner, maybe even one with vibrating massage or a heater or one of those lift-seat contraptions she’d seen on television commercials. Oh, sure, they were ugly as sin, but they did the trick, didn’t they? Who cared about looks at her age? She looked around her impeccably decorated living room and rolled her eyes. “Hang those decorators, anyway!” she muttered as she finally managed to prop her crutches beneath her arms and steady herself. “What do they know about comfort?”

  She’d been speaking to herself more and more as the years passed. At first she’d questioned this odd behavior a bit, but after a while she’d decided it was better than the lonely silence that always prevailed in the large, empty house. Besides, what did she care if some people thought she was batty? Let them live all by themselves in a big old house and see how they liked it. Oh, she’d considered selling her home several times, but at the last moment she’d always reneged. Perhaps it was a matter of pride, or maybe it was just plain old laziness, but Esther had decided to remain here until her last days. They’d have to carry her out feet first.

  “What about checking out some of those nice retirement homes?” Jimmy had suggested to her just recently.

  “You’re not putting me in some old folks home,” she’d told him. “Not as long as I’m able to walk and talk and breathe.”

  Of course, it wasn’t long after she’d spoken those words that she’d slipped on her patio and sprained her right ankle. But even if she couldn’t walk, she could still talk and breathe, and she had absolutely no intention of being locked up in one of those smelly old folks homes like she’d taken her own mother to live in. Of course, her mother had been without funds at the time and her choices limited. Esther had told herself that she was doing the poor old woman a favor. Now she wasn’t too sure. But there was no going back. Only forward. And the prospects of that weren’t terribly encouraging.