Page 14 of Christmas Past
And then she said, “But that won’t work now. Thinking of Christmas is definitely not going to help me go down deep to the place I used to think linked me to others.”
“Why not?” His expression curious, he studied her. She didn’t altogether hate his attention.
“Because what I learned later, what my older sister told me the night that Jenny died, was that it was all a hoax put on for my benefit. Christmas is accepted as a happy time. A time for parties and presents and celebration. For magic and Santa Claus. But it’s also a really difficult time for many who have lost loved ones, whose lives aren’t going as planned, who have no one to share the holiday with them. It’s a time when they’re most vulnerable, and so, the season where mygiftmade the family the most money.”
“Surely you would have known how much you were making?”
Surely sheshouldhave known. She picked up a carrot stick. Put it back. “I never handled the money,” she told him. “It was unseemly for me to have done so. I was always back in the cordoned-off part of the tent. The money matters were handled out front. And I was told that my readings at Christmas were also given away as gifts.”
“But they weren’t?” His eyes had narrowed.
She shook her head. She hadn’t believed Natalia, her oldest sister, when she’d first been told. But she’d asked her grandfather, who was the keeper of the family money, and he’d confirmed what her sister had said.
“How did your mother explain that one to you?”
Bella shook her head. “I never asked her to. I was always closest to her. She was the one who had the real ability to manipulate me. What was the point in giving her the chance to do so again?”
She thought of the note that had been left in her mailbox. And shuddered.
Chad picked up the same carrot she had. Lifted it to his mouth, and ate it. He seemed to be assessing her. And to come to some kind of decision.
“What if those things your mother told you about Christmas, about the spirit, and hope and faith and love, what if they’re true?”
“Of course they’re true,” she told him. “They just don’t have anything to do with my ability to read people. It’s not the love I doubt. It’s my ability to perform magic that I no longer believe in.”
“I noticed your box out front when I pulled in,” he said. “The one where you leave product. It has an unlocked lid. And a slot for payment.”
Because…in Christmas Town people looked out for each other. Cared about each other. Gave to each other. Loved each other. They didn’t typically steal from each other.
And she understood where he was going with his question. What he was trying to help her see. She might notdecorate for the holiday, but the things she’d loved about it…the love, the giving, the kindness...they existed here without her family’s tarnish. She lived it here…
And if she let herself be open to those feelings, maybe she couldopen her heart to the magic again. She could remember how she’d felt as a kid. She still didn’t think hergiftwould work. But if there was even a chance that she could help save that little girl…
“I’ll be right back,” she said, heart pounding as she left the room. She had a very clear goal. And was afraid, a fear all her own, that she was going to regret what she was doing. The box was on the top shelf in the closet in the spare bedroom. Way in the corner. She had to stand on a stool to get it down. The item she wanted was right on top. As she’d known it would be.
Chad was waiting right where she left him as she came back into the room. A sign that he trusted her now?
“What’s that?” He nodded toward the old discolored wad of knitting in her hand.
Holding it by the tip, she allowed it to unroll.
“A Christmas stocking.” Chad wasn’t smiling. Yet he sounded almost…approving.
“My mother made it for me when I was a baby,” she told him. “Every year from Thanksgiving until January, it would hang above my bedding and every morning, when I got up, there’d be a note in it. Sometimes just telling me how beautiful I was. Sometimes it would be a piece of advice. Always, it was written on Christmas paper. It was never signed, and no one ever admitted to leaving it there.” She’d known they’d been from Edith, though. Just like the note left in her mailbox recently.
“Was the advice good intentioned?”
“As far as I can remember.”
“Did you ever take it?”
She couldn’t remember many of the edicts. But the few she could… “Yes.”
“Then no matter what else went on during Christmas, what made you feel the magic stemmed from the stuff you say is real Christmas spirit…”
He needed her to be in the right frame of mind to do whatever she might be able to do. She got that.
Looking at the stocking, she saw grey where there used to be green, brown instead of red. A hole where a bell used to be. And she remembered how she’d felt all those many many mornings growing up when she’d wake and see that stocking hanging above her bed. Remembered the magic she’d felt as she’d jumped up to find her note.
