Page 2 of Run, Run Mistletoe
The tears sting my eyes again but I force them back. I’ve spent too much of the last year crying and I just need to stop.
This is my life now.
“Mom!” Velvet hollers down the stairs and I stiffen, jerking upright and tightening my hand on the phone.
“I’ve got to go, Mom. Velvet’s hollering. She needs me. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Hey, baby. Remember to slow down and take care of yourself too. You don’t need to get sick on top of everything else. Who would take care of you?”
We both know she would want to. But we also know that she’s not the same strong, independent woman she always was.
Time changes everything.
“I’ll be alright, Mom. Take care of yourself. Love you.”
“Love you too, Mistletoe.”
Hanging up, I dart up the stairs and reach the door of my daughter’s bedroom in record time. Her cheeks aren’t as pink and flushed as they’ve been the last two days and her eyes aren’t fever-bright.
Her soft blue eyes that are the exact same blue eyes I see in the mirror at night when I get ready for bed slip to me and she smiles. My own lip’s curve up too.
“I’m starving, Mom. Can I have a cookie?”
Little stinker. She knows that’s not happening right before bed. But…
“Tell you what. If you can eat the chicken and dumplings I made today and keep it down and your fever is still down, I’ll let you have one cookie before you go to bed.”
She claps her little hands in glee and her tousled, blond curls shimmy with her little shoulders as she dances in her bed.
Laughing, I walk downstairs to get her some soup and a cookie. For the first time in what feels like forever, my heart feels light.
My daughter’s feeling better. My mother’s getting better and she’s got a friend to help her out since I can’t handle everything.
Maybe things are going to start looking up around here. I can only hope so.
Christmas is a time for miracles after all. I love this time of year and I can’t wait for Velvet to open her special gift this year. I’ll go later this week to pick it up at the bookstore.
And maybe a little holiday reading for myself too.
’Tis the season, you know. Love might not be for me anymore but that doesn’t mean I don’t love a good Hallmark movie or a romantic holiday read.
But that’s it. I don’t need a man. No matter what my Mom thinks.
2
FRANKINCENSE
Squinting, I glare out the window at the driving snow. This place is ridiculous. I can’t believe that after a lifetime in Boulder, my mother moved to some little piddling place called Valentine. In the middle of nowhere.
Glaring at my phone again, I struggle to keep my car on what passes for a road around here and watch the frozen screen and the spinning wheel that means that I’m not connected to anything out here. No signs of life for miles and spotty cell service at best.
“Ugh! What the heck was she thinking? This place is the worst.”
Which makes what I’m thinking of doing even more ridiculous.
My mother isn’t getting any younger. Helena Monroe might be a tough woman but she’s sixty-five years old and all alone. I can’t have her out here by herself. What if something happens to her and I’m not around?
What if nobody’s around?
