A Christmas Miracle

by Anna Adams

  Breathing as hard as if she’d run a race, Fleming didn’t budge. She eased one breath and then another through her lips. Get a grip. Find some control.

  They didn’t need anything else from the attic tonight. She turned and backed down to the second floor. As soon as she reached it she bumped into Jason.

  “Let me put the stairs back up,” he said.

  She hopped out of the way. Clearly, she was the only one feeling hyperaware, and it didn’t mean anything. Except that she was lonely and the holidays had arrived, and maybe she envied the couples who strolled past the store each night, holding hands or carrying their children. Making families. Making dreams.

  “Let’s get started,” Jason said. “Are you a control freak about decorating, or can we just go casual?”

  “Huh?” Distracted, she tried to focus without staring too hard at the handsome, sculpted face that was beginning to mean too much to her.

  “Do you start with lights, then go through your ornaments in a specific order and finally add the icicles, piece by piece? Or can we just put everything on as we take the decorations out of the box?”

  “We don’t have icicles. I used to have a cat that ate anything that looked like string. We had to get rid of all that. We had a faux tree at the time, and we had to vacuum the icicles off it.”

  “I was using them as an example,” he said. “No one reuses icicles.”

  “You’re an expert in tree decoration?” She found her own personality again, stopped being dumbfounded and reached for one of the boxes.

  “I watched the people my father hired to decorate our trees. They all had their methods. Every year until I left home for college, I wished someone would just once throw the ornaments on however they came out of the box.”

  “What would your dad have done?”

  Jason arched an eyebrow as if he’d never thought about the question, but then shrugged. “He probably would have presented me with a schedule for deducting the decorators’ overtime from my allowance, and then had them start over.”

  “Allowance... I’m not sure I knew a real person who got an allowance.”

  “How did your mom handle money?”

  “I helped in the store. She ‘paid’ me.” Fleming started down the hall, hitching the box to a more secure position in front of her. “But about the tree—we didn’t have a decorating plan. We always just grabbed the Christmas ornaments and put them on the branches.”

  “That’s the way to do it.”

  “And now’s your chance.” Fleming glanced over her shoulder. The box with the tree stand in it was heavier, but he picked it up as if it weighed nothing. “Tree decorators,” she said. “I never heard of such a thing, but if I lose the store, maybe that’s a whole new career direction.”

  * * *

  JASON SET HIS BOX on the floor beside the tree, and Fleming swooped in, flushed and happy and infectiously ready to work.

  She seemed to be unconscious of her charm or the sweetness of her sadness when she tried so hard in the store, but somehow always seemed to be behind on sales figures.

  He often walked past her windows and saw her working on her laptop or setting up some new display. But when his assistant had said something to him about the irony of a woman who owned a Christmas store, yet gossip said she never decorated her own home, he’d been driven to do a ridiculous good deed.

  The woman who owned the Christmas tree lot had given him time to search for the perfect tree. He’d wanted the right one for Fleming.

  She shouldn’t be without a tree at Christmas.

  In the old days, banks used to give out toasters. They still did deals for their clients. Why shouldn’t he buy a client a tree?

  Fleming was a client. That was all. That was fine.

  If he wanted to keep her in the client compartment of his life, he should not be hanging around her on her attic stairs or any other part of her house, wishing he had the right to kiss her.

  “Would you like hot chocolate?” she asked from behind him, her voice as silky as the most expensive chocolate. “It’s tradition. We brew it up and pop cookies in the oven.”

  “Always with the cocoa,” he said. “But I really like cookies. What kind do you have?”

  “Snickerdoodles or gingerbread. My mom always had her own dough in the freezer this time of year.” Fleming turned toward the kitchen. “I have store-bought. Whenever I try to make homemade, I always seem to leave something out of the mix. Cream of tartar, essence of this or that.”

  He followed her because she was still talking, and he didn’t know what else to do. This evening was beginning to feel ever so slightly like a date.

  “Once, I was chewing on these slightly dry oatmeal-raisin cookies I’d just pulled out of the oven, and when I opened the microwave to warm my coffee, I discovered the congealed butter I’d melted that I was supposed to put in the batter.”

  “So baking definitely isn’t your dream?”

  She laughed. “Having a baker friend who was dying to make me tasty treats whenever I wanted. That would be a dream.”

  He considered.

  “Do you have chocolate chips and brown sugar?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you like real chocolate-chip cookies?”

  She put one candy-apple-colored nail to the side of her cheek, pondering. “I love chocolate chip.”

  “I have a recipe.” He started rolling up his sleeves. He hadn’t changed clothes after work. He’d been so eager to present his gift that he’d come over in the suit he’d worn to the office that day, and only shucked off his jacket after he’d dragged the tree from his car roof.

  “In your head?” Fleming asked. “You’ve memorized it?”

  “I have a brother and two sisters who are younger than I, and they liked cookies. I like cookies.”

  “I like a man who bakes cookies.” She started opening cabinets and a wide pantry. “What else do you need?”

  “Let me help you put the tree in the stand, and then I’ll see if you have all the ingredients.”

  He liked that no one had ever brought her a tree before, and obviously no man had ever offered to bake for her.

  She eased past him and back through to the living room, and her perfume went to his head. He watched her open the box to take out the stand, then he went to the tree and picked up the scissors she’d gotten earlier, to finish cutting the blue net that bound the branches.

  “I think we should put it up now,” he said, “and while the cookies are baking, maybe the limbs will spring back.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me. I don’t know why I’ve been so stubborn about Christmas trees before this. They seemed like too much trouble, but at this point, I’d tie bulbs onto a Charlie Brown tree and consider myself lucky.”

  “I’ll hold the fir up. You tighten the pegs around the trunk.”

  “Okay.”

  With a bit of maneuvering, they managed. Fleming stood back and shook her head. “It’s crooked. You’re really patient. Hugh gives Mom and me three chances, and then it’s done, straight or not. We’ve had to tie the tree to their staircase before.”

  “We did that once. My baby sister had a kitten, and it kept climbing and knocking the thing down. Dad said the tree was too ugly to keep, and threatened to throw it out, but my grandfather wouldn’t allow it. Grandpa asked Dad what he had against the holidays, and why he was so determined to get rid of our tree, and then he managed to help us secure it.”

  “Your dad sounds...” Fleming bit that candy-colored nail. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t offer my opinion so generously.”

  “He was detached.” Jason heard the words come out of his mouth, and they shocked him. “He didn’t mean any harm. The tree was in our nursery dining room. We didn’t have the nicer ornaments, and he didn’t really care what
it looked like.”

  “Nicer ornaments?” Fleming stood back again, studying the tree. “What does that mean?”

  “Is it straight?”

  She formed the sign for “okay” with her fingers and thumb and they both laughed. Because they were together?

  “What about those ornaments? You had nursery ones and big-people ones?”

  “The ones on the big-people tree weren’t to be broken,” he said. “The others came down with cats and children, and sometimes the nanny, running after one or more of us.”

  “I don’t believe your life,” Fleming said. “Nurseries and nannies.”

  “You had your mom and Hugh.”

  “And I’ve become like your dad, detached about decorating at home. I only put my heart into the decorations at the store, and no one really enjoys those. They’re just for selling.”

  “Well, you’re changing that tonight,” Jason said, rising and wiping small needles off his pant leg. “I can start the cookies while you take out the decorations.”

  “Why did you do this for me?” She was leaning over the ornaments box, but stopped, her hands falling to her sides as she straightened. “How did you know I wouldn’t have a tree at home?”

  He tried to come up with a plausible answer and even considered idiotically claiming he’d had a feeling. “Hilda,” he finally said. “She loves your store, but apparently knows you well enough to be able to tell me you haven’t been doing anything at home for the holidays.”

  Fleming’s mouth thinned, but only for a second. Her smile was full and real and forgiving. “I don’t mind that someone told you. You brought me this beautiful gift.”

  “I thought you should remember you were worth the trouble,” he said.

  She looked taken aback, and he wished he’d kept quiet this time.

  “But you won’t have a tree in your hotel room?” she asked.

  “No, but who does?”

  “Lots of folks. I see them in the windows every year as I walk to work from the parking lot. And when I go back to my car, the colored lights comfort me. If you don’t have your own tree, you’ll have to come here and enjoy this one. It’s yours, really.”

  “Come here?” Join her in celebrating a family holiday? He’d been trying to just do a good deed, and she was assuming it meant more than that.

  “Not if it scares you,” she said, with a laugh that got under his skin. “I didn’t take the tree as some sort of engagement talisman.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” he said.

  “Nothing.” She went back to the boxes and opened the cardboard flaps on the one with the ornaments. Lifting them out, she acted as if the air wasn’t suddenly full of tension. “I think I’ll put these on the couch, and we can just hang them up willy-nilly.”

  “Sounds good.”

  He went to the kitchen and pulled down all the ingredients he needed. Her cabinets were neat. He hardly spent a month at a time in his apartment, and the kitchen looked fine on the surface, but open any door and the place was a shambles.

  He was buttering the cookie sheets when she came in.

  “Find everything you wanted?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Want to help me scoop the dough?”

  “Sure. Mom always uses an ice cream scoop. We have a couple.”

  “They’ll make big cookies,” he said.

  “Big are best. They’re always chewier.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “And you’re the expert.” She opened a drawer and pulled out one silver handled scoop, and one with a yellow enamel handle. She offered him his choice, and he took the silver one.

  “Why do you have two?”

  “I don’t know.” Blowing her hair over her shoulder, she scooped cookie dough onto one of the sheets. “Maybe one was a gift, but I don’t actually remember.”

  “Then why suggest it was a gift? You like to find a story for everything, don’t you?”

  She always blushed easily, but her face flushed more intensely, as if he’d hit a nerve. About telling stories? He didn’t get it.

  “I’m curious.” She cleared her throat. “I like to understand why people think the way they do. Why things are the way they are, so I come up with stories to explain them for myself.”

  “Do you? I like that.”

  She avoided his gaze. “When will these cookies be done?”

  An hour later, they finished the tree, and Fleming turned off the living room lights. In the glow from the kitchen and hall, they sat together in front of the tree, and toasted their efforts with mugs of hot cocoa.

  “Thank you,” she said, offering him the plate of cookies. “You were so kind to do this. I was a little creeped out tonight, and I didn’t want to be alone.”

  Jason’s antenna went up. “Creeped out? What are you talking about?”

  “You know, sometimes you get a little uneasy for no real reason. I was when I got home, but tonight was fun.”

  “Are you sure it was for no reason? Did something happen that bothered you?”

  “No. My imagination got the better of me and I—” She broke off. “Never mind. I feel silly even mentioning it.”

  “I don’t know what we’re talking about.” He took the plate and cup from her and set them on the floor between them. “What happened?”

  She thought for a second. Hard. He could see she didn’t want to talk about whatever was bothering her.

  “Fleming,” he said.

  She looked at him, looping her hair behind her ear. “There’s this woman. I don’t know who she is. She keeps coming by my store. Three times now. She stands at the window and stares in as if something’s on her mind.”

  “Could she be one of my clients?” he asked. “Maybe she’s thinking I gave her a raw deal and you got a better one. You mentioned yourself that people have said as much.”

  “Because we’re friends. It used to bother me, but now, I don’t care what anyone says. It’s ridiculous.” Fleming took a cookie and bit the edge. “But I still wonder about this woman. I don’t know if she’s in trouble or—I just don’t know.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Tall, dark hair, very thin.”

  “How old?”

  “I’m not good with age. Maybe sixty-ish?”

  He thought, scanning his memory for a client who matched that description. “No. I don’t remember anyone.” He picked up his mug and took a thoughtful sip. And then suddenly, it hit him. Out of the blue. Out of the past. “My mother.”

  “What?” Fleming set the cookie back on her delicate china serving plate.

  “My mother. If she knows where I’ve been, she knows you and I see each other a bit.”

  “You think she followed you to my shop?”

  He had a gut feeling. “It’s a pretty big coincidence that you’re seeing this woman and I have a mystery mother somewhere in town.”

  “Why would she be hanging around my shop?” Fleming crossed her legs and wrapped her arms around herself. “She must be desperate to see you.”

  “I called her and told her she could come by the house. When she does, I’ll talk to her.”

  “Jason, I don’t need you to take care of me, and I can’t be responsible for you being cruel to your mother.”

  “Cruel? Why would you think I’d be cruel to her?”

  “Because she left you, and you don’t seem inclined to forgive.”

  “I don’t understand her, but I wonder if she’s healthy—if she is the one who’s been hanging around your store, making you feel uncomfortable, that is.”

  “Don’t hurt her feelings.”

  “You seem convinced I really am some sort of Scrooge.”

  “I don’t want to be the source of someone el
se’s pain.”

  She robbed him of the power of speech. In his world people fought the ones who hurt or frightened them. People sought payback. It was the reason he stayed out of messy relationships. He’d had plenty of payback because his own family couldn’t seem to mix.

  He’d never seen the need to complicate his life further. But Fleming was a complication that tempted him more and more.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JASON HAD BOUGHT a kitchen stepladder in the hardware store in town. He dragged it to the broken stairs on the porch and set it up. What would it be like, seeing her after all these years?

  Watching her drive away had broken him as a child. He’d worked hard to overcome that weakness, but he couldn’t help wondering what her intentions now might be. He didn’t let himself dwell on it. He’d show her the house and find out whether she’d been following Fleming.

  Minutes later, sitting on the edge of the not-so-safe porch, he watched a battered, sun-bleached navy blue sedan struggle up the ragged driveway.

  The woman behind the wheel parked and got out. He might not have known her if they hadn’t scheduled the meeting. No wonder no one else in town recognized her.

  She was just as Fleming had described, though more tired-looking than he’d imagined. She gazed at him with sad eyes that made him feel guilty, even though he hadn’t been the one to wrong her. He had plenty of reasons to want his own payback.

  In that moment of realization, all his old memories came flooding back. When she’d been younger and full of life, versus worn and anxious, she’d been his favorite person. He remembered her voice reading the books he’d later read to his siblings. Her hands, slender, unlined, unmarked, making a peanut butter sandwich, his favorite, with cherry preserves. He remembered her sweet, comforting smile.

  Which he’d probably never see again because she eyed him warily, as if somehow he was responsible for wiping that kind of smile out of her repertoire.

  “Jason?” Her trembling tone floated across the long weeds and brown grass, which was starting to look lacy as snow covered the mess.

  He couldn’t speak. He had missed her desperately as a child, but he didn’t know her. He only knew she hadn’t wanted him.