A Christmas Miracle

by Anna Adams

  “A possum?”

  “During the daylight. Of course, it might have been resting, but my mom always told me possums out in the daytime were probably rabid. We almost jumped through the windows, but the possum was quicker than we were, and it got out of the room and ran somewhere. We bolted from the house.”

  “I’m not sure whether to laugh at you or be offended that you call my house abandoned.”

  She picked her way across the porch. “My mom raised a petition to have the yarn shop house razed. Instead, someone bought it at a good price and opened a business.”

  He held the door for her. “I’m grateful I don’t hold the mortgage on that one.”

  She couldn’t help laughing at his heartfelt admission, but she also noticed the changes he’d made in the house. More of those lights were hanging in each room. “You’ve been sweeping.” Dust motes still hung in the air.

  “It was dirty. I wanted to see what the place looked like. Devoid of furnishings, of course. I figure your friends and neighbors came in and shopped for things at a really low price. My mother said my father left most of the furniture here when he moved out.”

  “I don’t know anyone who would steal your family’s belongings,” she said.

  “I wasn’t accusing you.” He pushed through the swinging kitchen door. “I was trying to make a joke. I swept in here last night. The leftover dust should be more settled.”

  He must also have righted the two wooden chairs by the Formica table no one had wanted as much as they’d wanted the sink. He grabbed a thermos and a cup off the counter.

  “I’m glad you brought that,” Fleming said. “I didn’t think of a drink.”

  “Coffee.” He poured some into the cup and pushed it to her. “I don’t have cream or sugar.”

  “This is fine. Thanks. It’ll be perfect in here.”

  “It is a little chilly.” To punctuate his statement, a gust of wind rattled the wide windows on the kitchen wall above the sink.

  “But it looks nicer.” Fleming went to the counter. Butcher block, scarred, but obviously well-used. “Someone did love this place once.”

  “My mother, apparently.”

  “Are you going to give it back to her?”

  He stared at Fleming as she turned to face him. She couldn’t read his careful gaze. He finally shrugged. “I don’t know what to do about that. Staying in one place doesn’t seem to be her strong suit, either. I want it for my family, but I’m not sure my mother could afford the taxes, even. I haven’t talked to her since I told her to stay away from you.”

  “You’re feeling attached to the house?”

  He sat, placing his thermos to one side. Then he ripped open the paper bag, spreading the plastic silverware, the container of greens and the box that held his sandwich and fries over the torn expanse of paper. “I don’t know that I feel attached, either,” he said. “Maybe intrigued.”

  “What are you planning to do here, Jason?” Fleming picked up the coffee cup he’d left on the counter and sat in the chair opposite his.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  His bluntness took her aback. “I thought I could ask you nosy questions without being questioned in return. I’m just surprised that you aren’t planning to sell it.”

  “I can regret that my parents neglected the home that was mine, without wanting to live in a small town on top of a mountain.”

  Fleming felt as if he’d slapped her hands, like her mom had once when she’d almost touched the hot stove as a child. “Okay.”

  “Are you suggesting I should repair it for my mother?”

  “Not my business,” Fleming said brusquely, to cover her hurt feelings. She ran her fingers over the Formica. “I’m surprised no one took this. It would sell for quite a bit in one of those retro stores in town. Your mother, even—I’d have been tempted to take back my kitchen table if I wanted my house enough to ask my estranged son to find a way for me to live in it.”

  “You think people should just take the things they want?”

  She flushed. In fact, her skin felt as if it were on fire. “Not at all. I’m an honest person even if I did get behind in mortgage payments.”

  “I didn’t mean you weren’t.”

  “Are you picking a fight?”

  He opened the lid on his greens and peered at them. “Not on purpose. What’s this?”

  “Collard greens. You haven’t had them before?”

  “I can’t be sure.” He opened the plastic-wrapped cutlery and took out a fork to test the collards. “You like them?”

  “I love them, and Lyle’s are the best. Even better than my mother’s.”

  “She’s a good cook?”

  “Really good.”

  “Except for your problems with your father, you had a pretty good childhood.” He speared a bite of greens and tried them, looking surprised as he chewed with more gusto. “Hey—these are good.”

  “Wait until you try the sandwich. And it’s even better when the cheese is still hot.”

  He picked it up. “It’s warmish. Thanks for thinking of me.” He took a bite and his smile made Fleming happy. He chewed with relish. “This is a work of art.”

  “Enjoy.” It was always nice when someone enjoyed a gift you’d given them.

  “Was I right? Did you have a pretty good childhood?” he asked again.

  His doggedness startled her, but she thought before she answered. “I guess I did,” she said. “Why?” What difference did it make to him? Why should he—

  She got spooked. “Are you wondering how well I’ll cope if you foreclose on the store? Do you think I’ll fall apart and run away?”

  She realized even as she spoke how ridiculous the question sounded. They were both feeling prickly with each other.

  “Hold on,” he said. “Your mind bobs and weaves in ways I can’t follow. I’m not going to foreclose on the store. You’re holding your own.” He grimaced. “For now.”

  “For now?”

  “I know it’s only part of the picture, but some days your bank deposits are better than others.”

  “Are you keeping such a close eye on everyone’s loan? Are you even allowed to look into our accounts?”

  “I’m not normally so hands-on,” he said. “But you make this business more personal. I don’t want you to fail.”

  “Why did you want to know about my childhood?” She didn’t want to go any more deeply into the concept of her business being personal to him. He was leaving. She would stay in Bliss all her life.

  “I can’t say, exactly.” He took another bite of sandwich. “I guess I’m thinking more about my own past since I heard from my mother. I’ve asked my father why she insists she tried to get in touch, but he’s ducking me.”

  “Why do you let him duck?”

  “You see?” He leaned back. “You’re emotional and happy and anxious, all at the same time, but you had a parent who didn’t exactly stick around. I wonder what makes you so willing to feel, when I’m trying hard not to care.”

  “About what?” she asked, suddenly unable to catch her breath. She’d heard the expression “heart in your throat,” but she’d never considered what that must feel like until this moment.

  “I don’t even know,” he said. “Well, yes, I do. I don’t want to care about what happened in the past. I do care about what happens to your business, and I care what happens to my mother. I don’t like to think of her longing for this house, but unable to get home.”

  “Where is your home? Do you long for it?”

  He nodded. “You know that moment when you walk through your own door, when you haven’t been home in ages?”

  “I felt that way coming back from college.”

  “You see? You’re a part of Bliss. It’s a part of you. I have to
ask myself if my mother feels about this house the way you do about your town,” Jason said. “I have an apartment with furniture a decorator chose and paintings I couldn’t describe to you if you asked me, but it’s home. I stay there between jobs, and I’m glad there’s still a bookstore in the neighborhood with good Wi-Fi and even better coffee.”

  “You could be part of Bliss, too. People want you here.” She felt as if she were choking. People. Sure. “The mayor, the council.”

  Jason stared at her, his eyes expressionless. She wished she could call back the words. He nodded.

  “I could put down roots anywhere, I suppose, but Bliss is hardly handy for travel,” he said.

  “And you have to travel?”

  “I enjoy my work. Like you enjoy yours.” He passed her a french fry. “Did you try one of these?”

  “They were my favorite after-school snack when I was in high school. My mother doesn’t know that. Unless Lyle ratted me out.” She laughed. “There are advantages to not living in a town where everyone is willing to share your worst secrets with your parents.”

  “Neighborhoods can be like that in New York. Not mine. People come and go too frequently. I’m not sure anyone there considers the option of putting down roots. We’re all on the way somewhere. If not to a new job, to a new neighborhood, with a higher price tag or a more prestigious address.”

  “We have those here, too, but most people live in them part-time. A lot of the wealthier homeowners here are only on vacation.”

  He lifted both brows, his gaze reflective. “Not even my father feels the need for a vacation home he might use for only a few weeks a year.”

  “I assumed everyone who lived in New York had second homes.” She grinned. “From watching reality shows on TV.”

  “I don’t see you as a reality-show fan.”

  “Sometimes when I’m working, I leave it on for company. Background noise.”

  Too late, she realized her slip.

  “Background noise while you work?” he asked. “I don’t remember a television in the store.”

  She looked around the kitchen as if she’d never seen anything that mattered to her as much. “What are you doing next? Do you want me to find some polish for these counters?”

  He stared at her. “What? Where would you find polish in this house? Why would I want the counters polished when I’m not even sure the floors aren’t about to fall in?”

  She stared back. “I’ve gone blank.”

  “Blank.” He looked at her as if he was seeing new parts of her he hadn’t expected. “So am I. What’s going on with you? What are you trying to hide?”

  “I’m not hiding anything.”

  “You’re one of the worst liars I’ve ever met, and you know I see a few of them in my line of work.”

  “People lie to their bankers?”

  “Not just to a banker. Business owners lie to me about the state of their accounts and their prospects. They lie about mistakes they’ve made in the past, and you’ve been lying from the first day I met you about something that matters to you as much as the shop.”

  “I don’t understand why you think that.”

  “Because it’s four walls and objects. You make it pretty, but it doesn’t challenge you. You think too much to be completely satisfied by sales figures.”

  She opened her mouth, but words wouldn’t come. If she confessed her writing dreams, how foolish would she feel? She was spending all this time on work that didn’t pay, on hopes that might never come to fruition.

  A business consultant, whose bottom line was profit, would never understand. He’d be even more frustrated with her, and she didn’t want that to matter. She didn’t want to make him believe he was taking a risk on a bad loan with her, but more than that, his opinion of her counted.

  “What is it? Where do you work with a television? Have you taken some part-time job in a call center or something?”

  “Do they leave televisions on?”

  “Fleming, I don’t understand you.”

  His determination touched her. He wanted to save her from a second job that hardly paid. Imagine what he’d think of the gut-sucking pain of being rejected for work that so far hadn’t paid anything at all?

  “You don’t have the right to understand me. We don’t matter to each other.”

  “You know that’s not true. You do matter.”

  “I’m repeating what you’ve said over and over. If I have a secret, I’m not sure why I’d tell you when I haven’t told my friends or my mother, or anyone else in this whole wide world.”

  Jason looked at her as if he could will her to spill her story. “I can’t imagine what you’re hiding. How bad could it be?”

  “It’s not bad.” She stared at her hands on the table. At the fingers that often ached from typing. Her thumb that cramped from repeatedly pressing the space bar.

  Jason took another bite of his sandwich. “You don’t have to tell me. As long as it doesn’t affect what you do in the store, you’re correct. I don’t really have any right to ask.”

  And just like that, she wanted to tell him, because he no longer cared enough to ask again. She wanted to share the hope that was a light inside her when she felt dark about the store and the future.

  “I write,” she said. “I’ve submitted stories here and there. Short ones, novellas, a longer novel.”

  He sat back. “That’s what you’re doing at your laptop when I pass the store at night and you’re buried in something on that screen. I thought it was your spreadsheets.”

  “How many times have you walked by? I’ve only noticed you once.”

  “Because you’re steeped in the stories you’re writing. That’s your passion.”

  She couldn’t deny it. “Don’t start on me about giving up Mom’s store. My store,” she said, already regretting her moment of truth.

  “You haven’t sold any of your stories?”

  Her ego, almost always in a state of being bruised about her writing, seemed to melt away like a piece of ice in the sun. “How did you know?”

  “I’d assume you’d talk about it if you had something published.”

  “I guess I would.”

  “You’d have to. Promotion,” he said.

  “You’re a businessman, first and foremost,” she said. “Don’t you love something in your life so much you can’t be pragmatic about it?”

  His quick glance around the kitchen startled her.

  “Could you love this house like that, Jason?”

  He didn’t answer. Apparently, he had something to hide, too. An ability to care about this house. Maybe about his family. Maybe about more.

  Or maybe he didn’t know what it felt like to love that much. Maybe he never would.

  “I feel connected to this place.” He took the last mouthful of his sandwich and licked a smidgen of pimento cheese from the pad of his thumb. “I don’t know why, and I’m not sure I want to be connected, but it was my home, and I think I can feel that to be true.”

  “I really don’t understand your family.” Looking up, Fleming noticed only a few squares of tin were left on the ceiling. And they were so dented they might have been left because the neighborhood looters hadn’t thought them worthy of stealing. “How do you just walk away?”

  “From your children and your home? No idea.” Jason wadded up his sandwich wrapper and tucked the last few fries into the torn brown paper.

  “My mom couldn’t bring herself to leave here even when the man she loved lived almost two hours away.”

  “And now you’re returning the favor she did you.” Jason lifted the container of collards and stabbed the last few leaves with his fork. “You’re putting her dreams before yours like she put your happiness first.”

  “You need to believe me about the
shop. It’s my future, too. I can’t count on selling my work, and I have to support myself. This year, when I’m all but begging people to buy, I realize how I’d miss the holidays if I didn’t have the shop. It wouldn’t feel normal.”

  “Why haven’t you told your mother about your writing?” he asked, putting the lid back on the empty container.

  “I’m not even sure why I told you.” She stood and tucked her chair back beneath the table as if this were someone’s well-loved home.

  “I’m glad you did.”

  She braced herself. “Will my alternate plan make you feel a little better about taking the store if I can’t make it profitable? You must not have grasped the part where I have yet to be paid for anything I’ve written.”

  He shook his head, pushing his own chair back. “Thanks for also sharing your high opinion of me. I’m glad you told me the truth. I knew there was something you loved to do. There had to be something other than the store.”

  “I do love writing.” She walked ahead of him to the kitchen door, pausing to push a dangling piece of rooster-emblazoned wallpaper back against the plaster. “What do you love?”

  “What kind of work?” He sounded surprised. “My job. I like making order out of chaos. Restoring a sick business to health. My skill is for seeing the big picture—like I could see you making a living at the work that makes you happy.”

  “I haven’t been slacking at the shop,” she said, hating that she felt defensive.

  “I didn’t say you had. You asked what I like to do as much as you like writing, and I told you, and then I extrapolated a scenario where you might also make a living at some work you find more rewarding than running Mainly Merry Christmas.”

  “No.” She couldn’t find words to argue with all that, so a simple no had to do. “And I don’t want to discuss it. What do you want me to do while you rebuild those steps?”

  “Help me,” he said, without even an effort at putting her off. “I can’t seem to hold the replacement wood in place and use the nail gun at the same time.”

  But when they got to the front door, he stopped and looked at her with fresh eyes again. “Fleming,” he said. His concern startled her. She was even more startled when he pulled her into his arms.