Colors of Christmas Page 15

  So they had an understanding of sorts. At least this was the last lesson before the Christmas break—for both of them. Angela had ten days off before Christmas and another ten days after, when she’d be free from students. Most years she organized a Christmas recital just before the break. Martin, the pastor at Main Street Church, where she was the organist and choir director, let her use the grand piano in the sanctuary for winter and spring recitals, and there was plenty of space for parents and siblings.

  Angela just couldn’t manage it. Not this year. She didn’t have a festive cell in her body this year.

  No doubt families would now be expecting great strides by the time of the spring recital. Angela wasn’t sure she could manage that event, either, but she had time to decide. It wouldn’t be in May as it usually was. She was sure of that much. Perhaps the last week of April.

  Instead of the Christmas recital, she required every student to play a polished piece for a parent. Brian’s mother, Liz, had just settled herself on the deep red love seat in the small music room Angela used for lessons on an upright grand. Angela eyed Brian. Without lifting his head, he looked at her out of the sides of his eyes through brown hair hanging well past his eyebrows. It was a wonder he saw anything. Angela turned the page back to a selection she was more sure he had mastered, and his shoulders eased down in relief. Then she went and sat on the sofa next to his mother.

  Brian muddled through. It was a simple two-part Bach invention in C, the first one that most students learned. For the most part Brian had the notes right, though he played them too slowly. But his performance pleased his mother, and at this time and in this place, that is what mattered.

  Liz Bergstrom beamed. “Not a note wrong,” she said when Brian had finished.

  “That’s right,” Angela said.

  Liz crooked a finger at her son, and he slid off the piano bench in relief. His mother whispered in his ear before reaching into an oversized handbag and putting a package in his hands.

  He took a few steps toward Angela. “Mrs. Carter, this is for you. Thank you for my lessons.”

  Angela suffered through this awkward moment with every student. Not every student, precisely. Some families opted out of the annual offering, and some extroverted children presented gifts with enough enthusiasm to blow Angela over.

  “Thank you, Brian,” Angela said, standing up. “It’s lovely of you to think of me. Please be sure to take one of the gifts on your way out.”

  His head bobbed. She still couldn’t get a good look at his eyes. Surely before he returned in three weeks his mother would insist he have a haircut. Maybe he’d get a comb in his stocking as a hint. He retrieved his jacket from the freestanding brass coatrack at the entrance to the room. The basket at the base of the rack had once held dozens of identical six-piece boxes of fudge from Spruce Valley’s candy store, gift-wrapped in a variety of foil papers. She always prepared more gifts than the number of students she had, wanting every child to have a sense of choice. Brian, the last student having his last lesson of the year, still had four boxes to choose from. While he made his selection, Angela exchanged Christmas well wishes with his mother.

  She walked them into the hall, a smile on her face, closed the front door behind them, and immediately dismissed the smile. From the kitchen, looking mournfully at her over the doggy gate, Blitzen’s brown eyes begged for his freedom, and she padded toward him to grant his wish. Then, Brian’s gift still in her hand, she returned to the music room. The gift array seldom varied from year to year. She blew out her breath and reached down to scratch Blitzen’s neck. She didn’t have to reach far. He was a big dog and she was a small woman.

  “What do you think, my friend?” She talked to the yellow shaggy mutt as if she’d always had a dog in the house, when in truth Blitzen had only come to her seven months before.

  In May.

  Another month to dread.

  “We might as well see what it is.” Angela tore the paper off Brian’s gift—or rather his mother’s. She couldn’t imagine Brian had any knowledge of what the package contained, or even curiosity. She based this opinion on the steady stream of eleven-year-old boys who came and went through her home over the last twenty-five years. Of course there were exceptions. She just didn’t think Brian was one of them.

  It was a small Christmas-themed notepad, useful enough for the next couple of weeks, she supposed. Grocery lists. To-do reminders. She might even inventory the freezer, to make sure she used up forgotten items, or start making lists of music to assign. After Christmas, of course, the seasonal art would look silly and she’d stick the pad in a bedside drawer. She might as well use it now.

  Blitzen nuzzled her thigh and she squatted to return the affection. “We’ll get through this, buddy. I know you understand. You’re the only one who does.”

  He licked her face and she laughed, a sound she rarely made these days. She sat in the red sofa and patted her lap. So what if he was a seventy-pound sprawl? She didn’t need to get up. Stroking his head the way he liked it, she took stock of the items that had amassed in the last couple of weeks. It was the same stuff every year. Santa mugs filled with candy canes. Canisters of homemade hot chocolate mix. Starbucks cards she’d never use—not because she didn’t like coffee but because she rarely made the seven-mile drive to the nearest Starbucks. Enough cookies for a bake sale wrapped in various colors of cellophane and tied with ribbons. Garish ornaments that would never hang on her tasteful Victorian tree in the bay window—which she hadn’t even put up this year. The odd handmade scarf in a color outside a palette she would ever don.

  Spruce Valley was small, with distinct but overlapping social circles. Re-gifting was next to impossible, even if she waited a year, though she might be able to give away the Starbucks cards if she took them out of the envelopes. She might use the hot chocolate mix, though she never found it a bother to make hot cocoa on the stove. At least the mix would keep. She had no appetite for the cookies. The rest she’d have to box up and leave in the trunk of her car and hope she’d remember it was there the next time she drove to one of the surrounding towns large enough to at least have a thrift store where residents of Spruce Valley were unlikely to discover their items.

  CHAPTER 2

  Who called a committee meeting on a Friday evening? Angela was not much inclined to attend, but she’d given her word, and when Rowena Pickwell called a few hours ago to remind her, she’d given her word a second time. It had something to do with Spruce Valley’s traditional Christmas celebration. Angela had been helping for years, doing odd jobs behind the scenes, running errands, making sure the hot chocolate supply was uninterrupted, answering questions for people who visited for the occasion, staffing the first-aid booth. They might just want her to organize a children’s choir from some of the families at church. She’d always done whatever Carole asked her to do.

  Carole.

  She pulled Blitzen’s face up to look into his eyes. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  His jowls hung loose beneath huge sagging eyes. The only reason she had Blitzen was because Carole was gone. Maybe she should have said no to the committee this year right from the start. The closer the date got to Christmas, the less inclined she felt to do anything associated with Christmas. She couldn’t beg off of Christmas music at the church. She was the organist and choir director, both positions that were impossible to find substitutes for at Christmastime. She would just have to soldier on through her duties. But why had she agreed to help the committee for A Christmas to Remember? It just seemed easier to agree to do something than to put up with all the pity looks and whispering that would come if she declined. The whole town knew how close she and Carole had been. As it was, the twenty-seven families represented by her forty piano students were probably speculating among themselves about why she had done away with the winter recital for the first time any of them could remember.

  Ten days.

  Since going to bed and waking on the other side of Christmas was not
an option, she nudged Blitzen off her lap and padded to the closet in the front hall. The forecast didn’t include a lot of snow, but temperatures would have dropped with the arrival of darkness. Angela selected her warmest coat with a hat and gloves.

  “Let’s check your water bowl, shall we?”

  She walked into the kitchen. Blitzen sat in the hall. Angela grimaced.

  “I know. You’ve got me figured out. But this is the way it has to be.” She thumped her thigh. “Come on.”

  He stared, forlorn.

  Angela sighed and reached into a zip-top bag on the counter. Blitzen stood on all fours. She threw the doggy treats well into the kitchen, and he chased them. It felt dishonest, but sometimes she had to do what she had to do. She opened the back door, dreading the frigid temperatures. At the last minute she remembered the water bowl and retraced a few steps to make sure it wasn’t empty.

  The house phone rang.

  That’s when everything began to unravel.

  She picked it up and said hello just as she saw Blitzen nudge the door open wider and shoot out. Even after seven months with a dog, she made novice mistakes. She knew Blitzen had a tendency to bolt. Even when he had been Carole’s dog, she knew this about him. Even the professional dog trainer had not successfully conditioned the behavior out of him. Not even with the best doggy treats.

  The voice on the phone was already speaking in response to Angela’s own weak habit of not checking caller ID before picking up the phone. She was not an unfriendly person. In fact she had only acquiesced to the caller ID feature a couple of years ago because the telephone company assured her it would be less expensive to choose a bundle that included it than to leave it out. Carole always teased her for not using it once she had it.

  “Just glance at the phone,” Carole used to say. “Don’t pick it up if it’s not a good time.”

  Angela always looked at it a fraction of a second too late, when the phone was already on the way to her face and her mouth was already forming a greeting.

  And when Lea Sabatelli was on the other end of the conversation, there was no graceful way of backing out of it. Lea’s soprano voice was the blessing of an angel in the church choir. In her presence the rest of the sopranos lost their timidity and believed in themselves, but it was Lea who soared to the highest notes at full volume and on perfect pitch when others dropped out. Angela was grateful to have her. But on the telephone? It was as if Lea fell into her favorite comfy chair with a plate of warm gooey chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of milk. She was never in a hurry to get off the phone.

  Lea thought this had been an exquisite day. She loved winter. She was getting so excited about flying to California after Christmas for the birth of her first grandchild.

  Her speech utterly dripped with exclamation points.

  Angela murmured soft affirmations as she stood in the frame of the open back door and scanned the yard for Blitzen. He had a way of getting out that she never understood. He was a big dog. How did he squeeze under the fence? Before much longer, she’d be out of oversized clay pots and miscellaneous items to put along the fence to discourage his efforts. Spring yard work might mean more intentional dog-proofing. He never wandered far. The thrill was in the escape. Then he’d turn up in the front yard or nosing around the neighbor’s yard. Angela stepped out to the patio, unsure if she would lose the phone’s signal if she went more than a few steps.

  “It sounds like a lovely time of year for you.” She managed to squeeze the words in while Lea stopped for breath. Or maybe she was wiping chocolate off her mouth with a napkin. “Did you have a question?”

  “Oh. Right. I just wanted to double-check the rehearsal schedule.”

  “We’re in good shape.” Angela dared two more steps away from the door. By this time she thought there was a good chance Blitzen had left the yard. She wanted to call his name but couldn’t quite bring herself to be that rude to Lea. “We’ll have our usual rehearsal next Wednesday and run through all the Christmas Eve music a couple of times, and we’ll be all set.”

  “If I circle a few measures that I’m not sure I’m singing correctly, could we go over those a few times?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’ll see you on Sunday for church.”

  “I’ll be there!”

  Lea chuckled and hung up.

  Angela cupped her hands around her mouth and bellowed. “Blitzen!”

  The ground was damp enough to show recent dog prints illumined by safety lights. Blitzen had a favorite spot behind the garage, under some old paneling covered by a blue tarp. She ought to have gotten rid of it years ago. Until she had Blitzen, it was never a problem. With her hands on her knees, she peered into the hollow space created by the angle at which the panels were stacked.

  No Blitzen. She looked at the tracks again. He’d been there, but the tracks deteriorated into muddy circles that she did not care to add to.

  “Blitzen!”

  The gate creaked.

  Nora Neesen, her neighbor, appeared—with Blitzen. “Looking for something?”

  “Thank you!” Angela said. “I left the door open for just a second when the phone rang, and he was out of there.”

  “You have to be careful with a pet. It’s a big responsibility.”

  Angela made no pretense of smiling. She wasn’t in the mood for one of Nora’s lectures. Nora acted as if she were the only adult in the entire Spruce Valley. The maturation of the rest of the population stalled somewhere around eight years old.

  “In any event, thank you for bringing him safely back to me,” Angela said.

  “You’ll want to clean up his feet,” Nora said, “before he tracks mud all through your house.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “An old towel works well.”

  “Good idea.” Angela gripped Blitzen’s collar and tugged him in the direction of her house. He went willingly, almost triumphantly, as if he knew that he had successfully kept her from going wherever it was she was going when she pulled her warm coat from the closet.

  Back in the kitchen, she shook a finger at the dog. “Stay right there while I get a towel.”

  She managed to get his paws cleaned up and then sponged off a spot on her coat. Ducking into the powder room, she examined the image in the mirror to determine if she remained presentable overall.

  The gate was in place. The water bowl was full. Blitzen had been fed two hours ago and was cordoned off in the kitchen. She had her purse and keys, hat and gloves. The meeting shouldn’t last long—she’d probably missed the beginning by now—and she could come back home to enjoy the evening with Blitzen. Maybe she’d light the logs in the living room fireplace and find something to read. Perhaps a mystery novel—something that had nothing to do with Christmas.

  It was a good thing the kitchen had no windows on the side of the house facing the garage because Blitzen would have set his sad face on a sill and done his best to shame her into coming back. She had a stack of music that she’d been driving around with for three days. This was the night she would remember to put it on the organ bench. Then she’d go to the meeting room and, for Carole’s sake, agree to whatever it was the committee wanted her to do. Who was in charge this year, anyway? Rowena Pickwell had called the meeting. It must be her.

  CHAPTER 3

  Angela was a good twenty-three minutes late by the time she slipped into the room that used to be the church’s library until somebody decided that nobody ever checked out a book anyway, and they needed the meeting space more than they needed piles of old donated books and no librarian. It wouldn’t have been Rowena Pickwell who did that. She wasn’t a member of Main Street Church. Her people were Methodists on the other side of town. If you showed the least bit of interest, she would expound on family lore about her great-great-grandfather laying the cornerstone of the Methodist church after having chiseled the date in it himself. The ironic thing was that after he died, there was no one to chisel his gravestone. For two
years, it was unmarked limestone set in the ground above him, the only clue to his identity the proximity to the wife and daughter who had preceded him in death.

  Rowena was a familiar figure at Main Street Church because for the last fifteen years she had chaired the town’s committee for special events. The church’s prominent location in relation to so many quaint shops that drew visitors made it difficult to imagine an event that didn’t include it. There were Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day, of course. Every community across the country observed those days in some manner. But on Spruce Valley’s Founders’ Day and Spruce Valley’s A Christmas to Remember, Rowena demanded perfection.

  Angela glanced around. She didn’t come in this room much. Its beige walls, built-in whiteboard, wide table, and chairs on wheels looked very much like a corporate meeting space. When she slid into one of the chairs, it rolled farther than she intended. The other heads around the table turned toward her.

  “Good evening.” Angela shirked out of her coat. “Sorry to be late. The phone rang. The dog got out. Well, I’m sure you know how these things happen even when you have the best intentions.”

  Four sets of eyes stared at her.

  “I hope I haven’t missed too much.”

  Rowena looked at Angela over her narrow black-rimmed reading glasses. Surely she got new glasses periodically, but they were always the same. Angela had a similar pair, which she used while she gave lessons and never remembered to put in her purse when she left the house. Ellen Schuman was Rowena’s part-time assistant. She took notes at meetings so Rowena wouldn’t have to. Nan Tarrington twiddled a pen between her fingers, but the pad of lined paper in front of her was unspoiled. Jasmine Tewell was dipping a tea bag in hot water with pronounced deliberation. Earl Grey, not jasmine, lest anyone was tempted to ask about Jasmine the person drinking jasmine the tea. Nan and Jasmine’s husbands were known for their financial generosity to Spruce Valley’s town budget, especially for underwriting events such as A Christmas to Remember. In Nan’s case, the generosity also extended to Main Street Church. Rowena had recruited Jasmine from among the Methodists. It was never quite clear to Angela if Nan and Jasmine wanted to be on these committees or if their participation with some of the hands-on work was some sort of package deal that came with the checks their husbands wrote.