Colors of Christmas Read online

  “I suppose this was all your idea.”

  “I’m always glad to help out a friend,” Gabe said. “It’s going to be a spectacular night. You’ll see.”

  Brian spread his hand and looked up with his tongue out. “It’s snowing again. We’re going to have snow!”

  “Maybe,” Angela said. It still seemed unlikely they’d get more than a few minutes of flurries, but she wouldn’t dash Brian’s hopes with reality. Not five hours before the event.

  Soon enough they had hung the last lantern and returned to the church to stow the ladder out of sight.

  Gabe rubbed his hands together. “I have a few things to take care of. Angela, can you run my mate here home?”

  “Sure. Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, ma’am. I will see you back here in a few hours. It will be a great night!”

  “Thanks to the two of you,” Angela said.

  She dropped Brian at the younger Bergstroms’ house and drove straight home from there. Blitzen greeted her with his usual ecstasy. After a quick tuna sandwich for lunch, Angela put the leash on him. Blitzen might not know that she had promised him a walk, but she did—and she needed it even more than he did. Elinor and Kim were right. Some of the basic elements were there, but overall the event would be different than what people expected. She made sure to tuck a list of phone numbers and her cell phone in her jacket pocket. If she could make a few phone calls to double-check arrangements, she would have reassurance.

  At the top of her list was a family with four children. If she knew for certain they were coming, she’d feel better. Three of them had friends who were hardly ever out of sight. That would give her at least seven children. She still hoped for a couple of dozen, so she called three other families. Everyone confirmed they would be there and knew where to meet.

  Simon Masters would be at the south end of Main Street with the horses. The mayor of Spruce Valley was personally making sure the street was blocked off an hour ahead of time.

  The sidewalk tables would be set up as soon as the street was blocked off.

  The lights already had been double-checked that afternoon and everything worked according to plan.

  Satisfied, Angela dropped her phone in her pocket and tugged on the leash to guide Blitzen toward home. Already the temperature had tumbled enough to feel a bite when the wind gusted. Angela dressed in layers for the lower temperatures sure to arrive after sunset.

  “Guess what, Blitzen?” She scratched beneath his jowls. “You’re coming with me. But you have to wear a Santa hat.”

  Deftly she put the hat on his head and pulled the elastic strap under his chin. He moved his head in circles for a few minutes before settling into acceptance.

  “Time to go, buddy.”

  Angela loaded the dog in the back of the car and drove into town, parking at the south end of Main Street and waiting in the lot where she’d told all the families to drop off their children. She was more than twenty minutes early, plenty of time to greet even the first family to arrive.

  Simon arrived a few minutes later with his horse trailer. Angela kept Blitzen on a short leash while she watched Simon lead one horse out and then the other. He went into the trailer one more time and came out with blankets to hang from their backs.

  “Those are beautiful,” Angela said.

  “My wife was in town the other day and noticed there seemed to be a blue theme this year. We’ve had these up in the rafters for years.”

  “They’re perfect.” She fingered the deep blue velvet with bright white trim. People would have good reason to remember this year as the blue Christmas.

  But where were the children? Their parents wouldn’t stay home because of light snowfall, would they? She looked at the time glowing on the bank’s display. Technically no one was late yet, but she had supposed some would be early. She’d confirmed at least a dozen just a couple of hours earlier, and she’d been very clear about where to meet.

  Down the street, some of the businesses were closing for the day, while others would stay open for evening traffic. Spectators were lining the streets. But the Christmas lights weren’t on. She’d spoken to Pete, too. The lights couldn’t have broken in the last two hours. Could they?

  Without the lights, Main Street looked like a sorry excuse for a holiday.

  Angela fished in one jacket pocket for her cell phone and then the other. Not there. She unzipped her jacket for access to her jeans. Not there, either.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to Simon. She searched under the driver’s seat of her car, on the passenger seat, on the floor, in the console. Not there.

  Still none of the children had arrived and still none of the lights were on. And she had no phone. Her mind’s eye saw it clearly on her kitchen table.

  She returned to Simon. “Can I borrow your cell phone?”

  “I don’t carry one,” he said.

  Angela blinked. No phone.

  “I’m just not sure where everybody is,” she said. “We’re supposed to start soon.”

  “And we will.”

  Even with a dozen children, it wasn’t going to be much of a parade. But there were supposed to be lights. Two horses and a dog walking down the middle of a dark street—that was an utter failure.

  Simon led the horses to the street.

  Blitzen tugged against the leash to be allowed to follow, and Angela let him lead her into the street as well. She didn’t know what else to do.

  A single golden light came on across the street.

  And a single voice rang out. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas!”

  Gabe? Angela peered into the darkness, not quite able to fix on the location of his voice as he continued singing the familiar Christmas song. Simon led the horses forward slowly. Blitzen followed, pulling Angela along. Without missing a bar of the music, Gabe stepped into the street to walk beside her, and the song drew her in. Grinning, she sang with him.

  Then the children began.

  As they passed each building on the street, the lights on either side came on and children slipped out of the crowd to join the parade and the singing. When the song ended, Gabe lifted a megaphone to his mouth summoning more children by name.

  Abigail. Patsy. Paul. Rafe. Suzy. Deborah. Jamie. Phil. Tim. Michelle. Bethany. Michael. Eric. Malinda.

  The names kept coming, and the kids kept coming. Behind Gabe, a high schooler lifted a trumpet to his lips and another held a violin. The instruments played a stanza of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” while Gabe continued to call out names.

  Elsa. Ian. Mark. Caleb. Emily. Katie. Lisa. Boden. Rhys. Annalise. Titus. Matt. Eddie. Lilia. Xavier. Aaden. Caspian. Deacon. Galena.

  All those names!

  The children were singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” now. Angela had supposed she would be the one to guide their singing, but they seemed to know just what to do without her.

  Elsie. Evelyn. Maddox. Tytan. Tucker. Charlotte. Logan. Sally. Eloise. One by one they joined the throng behind the horses. Some pulled red wagons or strollers with younger children tucked in.

  Angela could hardly keep up with the names. Somebody with a saxophone joined the instrumentalists, and she wondered where Brian was.

  Where did Gabe get this list? The names were all students of hers—some current students and some who were now in college and home for the holidays. Some were older than that and had children of their own. What threaded them together was the hours they’d sat at her upright grand piano learning to play.

  The students sang with gusto. The strings of lights came on block by block, making the blue garland dance. Candles passed through the spectators on the sidewalk, followed soon by the flame. At the towering spruce, blue lights spiraled and twinkled against the night sky.

  Gabe had created joy and beauty against impossible odds.

  And hope, once lost, was found again.

  CHAPTER 19

  The glow lasted all evening. Hot cocoa. Cookies. More hugs than Angela co
uld remember ever sharing before in one night. Groups of people stood on street corners, blue candles in hand, singing Christmas carols rather than walking past the carved and painted wooden carolers of years past. Children were intent on scraping together enough snow to at least form one miniature snowball to throw at someone’s back. Gabe even set up a table to show people how to fold the paper lanterns. He seemed to have an endless supply of spray-on flocking. Just when Angela thought surely he was down to his last can, he produced more. Angela had come to the task of organizing A Christmas to Remember kicking and screaming, and the debacle of the water damage had lowered her expectations even further. She’d made the phone calls and lists and schedules, but it was Gabe who brought joy to the evening. No longer did Angela think of Christmas Eve, with both its morning service and its late-evening candlelight service, as the last day to get through so Christmas would be behind her.

  Angela was in the choir room early on Sunday to make sure the red robe she’d assigned Gabe was long enough. The usual gold collars would be flipped to the white sides for both services on Christmas Eve. As soon as most of the sopranos were present, she huddled with them to explain that they might hear Gabe singing their line.

  “Don’t let it throw you,” she said. “You know when to come in.”

  “But we haven’t practiced that way,” someone said.

  “I know,” Angela said. “And I’m afraid we can’t do much more than warm up with the piano right now. Let’s have him sing with you on scales just to get used to it.”

  She had only moments before she had to be at the organ in the sanctuary playing prelude music and the choir would arrange themselves in the foyer, ready to process in while the congregation sang “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”

  They sang a few scales and a few bars of the morning’s anthem. Then it was time.

  “Remember,” Angela said, “tonight we gather at ten thirty so we can have a brief rehearsal and be ready to process for the eleven o’clock service.”

  Angela encouraged everyone to take deep breaths while she prayed that their music would bring glory to God and encourage hearts in need of hope.

  Like mine.

  Then she led them out of the choir room and hurried down the hall to take her place at the organ.

  They did well. Both in the processional, which included a descant, and the main anthem, Gabe added just the right vocal touch to support the sopranos when they needed it without taking over or suggesting in any way that they would have been weak on their own. In fact, he surprised even Angela with the range of his falsetto. When she offered to stay after church and run through the other three pieces the choir would sing that evening, he said it wasn’t necessary, and she believed him. She was beginning to wonder if he had more substantial musical experience than small-town church choirs.

  Then she debated inviting him to her house for the afternoon, but the truth was she wanted a good long nap. With the strain of A Christmas to Remember behind her—as well as the unexpected joy—exhaustion had set in. She pulled some soup from the freezer, left it to thaw a bit while she walked Blitzen, and then ate the soup and stretched out on the sofa under a quilt with Blitzen on the floor right beside her. When she woke, the day’s brilliance was spent and nightfall blanketed the neighborhood. She still had most of the evening to pass before going to church, but on Christmas Eve, one holiday movie after another played on television. She liked the old classics. White Christmas. The Bishop’s Wife. It’s a Wonderful Life. The Bells of St. Mary’s. Miracle on 34th Street. With Blitzen’s head—and it was a huge head even for a dog—in her lap, she propped up her feet and selected It’s a Wonderful Life. She almost wished she had put up a Christmas tree so she could sit in its gleam.

  Angela arrived at church early. The choir’s limited warm-up time required intentionality, and she hoped to run through one selection from start to finish. She wouldn’t single out the sopranos, though it was for their benefit she carried this hope. The pastor’s car was already in the lot, and the church doors were unlocked even though it was only ten fifteen. She saw him lurking in the foyer.

  “Merry Christmas, Martin,” Angela said, with more brightness in her voice than she’d felt in the entire preceding week.

  He glanced at her just long enough for it to feel like a scowl.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Lost my sermon notes, that’s all.”

  “Goodness.”

  “And I was assured that the candles left from last year were sufficient to use again this year,” Martin said. “Have you seen them? Half of them are practically stubs. We may have to skip them altogether.”

  “No candles on Christmas Eve?”

  “Nothing to be done about it at this point.” Martin slapped a wall. “I can’t think what I did with my sermon notes.”

  “I can’t do anything about your notes,” Angela said, “but we do have some candles left from last night.”

  Martin paused. “The blue ones?”

  “Sorry about the color. They weren’t my first choice, either.”

  “Hardly a Christmas color.”

  “That’s what I thought, but they did nicely for us last night.”

  “This is not the same. Can you think of a single time in your entire life that you sang ‘Silent Night’ on Christmas Eve holding a blue candle?”

  Angela was beginning to resent his tone. She was only trying to help.

  “How about this?” she said. “We put the extras in a closet downstairs. I’m not even sure how many there are. But I’ll get them out and you decide if you want to use them.”

  “Fine. As you wish. I’ve got to find my notes.”

  Angela shook her head at Martin’s departing back. She hadn’t thought it possible, but his Christmas spirit was even worse than hers had been before last night.

  She hustled downstairs, found the candles, took them upstairs, left them on the usher’s table at the back of the sanctuary, and rushed to the choir room. All the margin she’d built into the evening was gone. Most of the choir was assembled.

  Everyone except Gabe.

  “Where’s your friend?” one of the sopranos asked. “Isn’t he going to help us tonight like he did this morning?”

  “I thought he was,” Angela said, “but we’d better get started. Let’s run through ‘Still, Still, Still.’”

  The sopranos had a way of sliding up and down between notes on this old Austrian folk tune. Lea made the transitions cleanly, but without her—and without Gabe?

  “Remember, everyone,” Angela said, “we want one continuous flow. Sneak your breath when you need to, but not at the end of a line, and not when you know your neighbor is breathing.”

  She played a few bars of introduction then lifted one hand long enough to cue the choir’s beginning. This had always been one of her favorites.

  “Still, still, still, one can hear the falling snow.

  For all is hushed, the world is sleeping,

  holy star its vigil keeping.

  Still, still, still, one can hear the falling snow.”

  She let them go on, even though the sopranos might as well have been sliding and stumbling around a skating rink, and half the choir breathed at the end of every line.

  “Sleep, sleep, sleep, ’tis the eve of our Savior’s birth.

  The night is peaceful all around you,

  close your eyes, let sleep surround you.

  Sleep, sleep, sleep, ’tis the eve of our Savior’s birth.”

  She cut them off there. They would gain nothing by continuing with the third stanza.

  “One last reminder to watch me carefully,” she said. “We want clean cutoffs. We want to just let the notes hang in the silence before anyone makes another sound.”

  They filed out and, for the second time that day, lined up to process into the sanctuary. Angela kept the prelude music simple, playing various familiar carols by memory as she watched for Gabe. He might yet save the night’s music. As she started on
the fourth carol, she shook away that thought. She was the organist and choir director. If anyone was supposed to save the music, it should be her. This was Christmas Eve. And no matter how many wrong notes they might sing, these dear people would sing with their hearts.

  Dim lights welcomed worshippers. There would be fewer families at eleven in the evening compared with eleven in the morning. Only the hardiest families would bring small children out at this hour, equipped with blankets and stuffed toys for small children in Christmas pajamas who would soon go limp in their parents’ arms or sprawled on a roomy pew.

  No Gabe.

  Angela began a fifth carol and started to worry about Gabe. She was certain he’d intended to sing tonight. Something must have happened.

  She shifted her attention to watch Martin come in. Usually he left his sermon notes in the pulpit ahead of time, but it remained bare. Either he never found them or they’d turned up at the very last minute and he hadn’t had a chance to put them in the pulpit beside his Bible. The time was straight up eleven. She let the organ fade out of the carol as Martin stepped forward.

  Martin gave a simple welcome. If he was still annoyed about losing his notes, he covered it better in the presence of the congregation than he had in her presence in the hallway. He even held up one white candle and one blue and reminded worshippers that if they had overlooked picking one up on the way in an usher would be glad to help. The service, which would finish promptly at midnight, would consist of readings and carols and a short meditation. He invited the congregation to stand for the processional hymn.

  Angela opened stops to create the illusion of brass instruments in the sanctuary and played a robust rendition of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” The choir processed in and took their places in the choir loft at the front of the sanctuary.

  The congregation shuffled into their seats, putting away hymnals and arranging themselves comfortably. Martin stepped again to the pulpit to read the first passage of scripture for the evening.

  Where was Gabe?

  CHAPTER 20