Page 39 of Meet Me at Christmas
“Come in!” he’d called to her, lifting his safety goggles, the little space heater going full blast in the corner. “Watcha up to?”
“Just coming in to see you,” she’d said, climbing onto one of the workbench stools and fiddling with the line of screwdrivers on the table. “What are you making?”
“I’m fixing the wooden edge of the screened door for your mama…”
Now Stella stood in front of the closed entrance to the garage, her hand on the frozen latch, wishing that when she opened it she’d find Pop under his lamp inside, fixing that wooden frame. She lifted the cold metal until the door opened. The space was musty, dark, void of the life that had filled it on so many of her younger days. She clicked on the light, the beam only serving to illuminate the emptiness.
A shiver ran down her spine as she stood in the cold space. Where had her family gone? It was as if Pop had taken it with him when he’d left this world. She had to admit that if she’d been asked as a girl, she’d have had a different vision for where she’d be at this time in her life. But she’d also done a good job of ruining the family she’d been building. The sting of tears came yet again, and she tried unsuccessfully to blink them away.
After sucking in a cold breath, she located the bucket she’d come to get, turned off the light, and quickly locked the garage back up, deciding then that she needed to try harder to reach Lily. If she was going to accomplish one thing this Christmas, she was going to put her family back together.
When she got inside, she dialed her sister’s number.
“I’ve tried three times to call Lily and I can’t get her,” Stella said, frustrated by the time Mama came into the kitchen where she was sitting.
Mama grabbed a Christmas cookie and nibbled it, sitting down at the kitchen table.
“I wish she’d come home. She’s supposed to be here.”
Mama pulled a napkin from the holder in the center of the table and set down her half-eaten cookie. “Let’s do something to get our minds off it.” She slid the necklace toward her. “Why don’t we research the Christmas Diamond a little more? Maybe we can find a museum or something that might be able to help us figure out whether we’re in possession of an antique or not.”
Stella ran a finger over the blue stone. “Why are you so interested in this necklace?”
Mama’s gaze remained on the gem. “I don’t know… Something about it speaks to me.”
“What do you mean?” Stella grabbed a cookie and took a bite, the sugary crunch of the outside giving way to a soft, spicy inside—a reminder of Christmases past and happier times.
“Remember when you came home for Christmas last year and your dad and I didn’t spend a lot on gifts because he was sick?”
“Yeah.”
“He promised to buy me something special. He never did, and I guess a part of me wishes for something lovely this year.” She picked up the pendant and held it up to the light. “This is so pretty. I almost hope no one claims it.”
“All right.” Stella decided to humor her mother. If no one claimed the necklace, she’d leave it with Mama when she went to her next assignment. “What should we search for?”
Mama set down the necklace gingerly and reached for her phone. “What about Charles Worley? We could see if there’s anything on him.”
“Who’s he again?”
“He was the merchant that Samuel Morgan, the pirate, gave the diamond to.” She was already typing on her phone and scrolling through the results. “Nothing. Let’s try… ‘Christmas Diamond Charles Worley legend.’” She put her phone between them and a small list of sites came up.
Stella pointed to a particular article that caught her eye:How Much is the Christmas Diamond Actually Worth?“Click that one.”
Mama tapped the link and started to read. “‘Charles Worley, a local merchant in the Massachusetts Bay colony, took the stone to a fellow colonist who’d been a jeweler back in London. He told the man he’d been hiding it in a small trunk in his bedroom and hadn’t let a soul know he had it.’
“‘The jeweler, named Edward James, assessed the diamond at two carats.’” Mama’s eyes rounded and she looked up from her phone, lifting the diamond again and turning it back and forth in the light. “Want to guess how much the Christmas Diamond was worth?”
“A lot, I’d imagine.”
Mama kept reading. “‘Today, the jewel is estimated to be worth upwards oftwenty thousand dollars. The merchant immediately had the jeweler engrave his family name on the back. Over the years, the inscription has been worn down, but evidence of it remains…’” Mama gasped. “You don’t think…”
Stella flipped over the diamond to reveal the inscription they hadn’t been able to read. “If it was a good replica, they’d attempt the inscription as well, right?” Stella countered. “I’ll bet it’s a Christmas trinket someone was bringing to a relative or a friend, and it slipped out of their shopping bag on the way to their plane.” Stella stopped talking when Mama’s face filled with disappointment. “You never know, though,” she said, hoping to cheer up her mother. “What else does the article say?”
Mama resumed reading. “‘The day after the merchant took the necklace to the jeweler, the merchant went missing. It was thought that, given the poor conditions in which he lived in the colony and with this opportunity for trading such a possession, he ran off in search of someone to buy it from him.’” Mama clicked off her phone. “We could take it to a jewelry store in Nashville and have it appraised. Then we’d know for sure.”
Pop’s voice floated into Stella’s mind.“Humor her.”
That had been his mantra when Stella was growing up. “Mama wants to paint the back room green, but I think it should be cream,” she’d said.
