She did, on him and several others, until there was a short break in the line of kids, but nothing about being kind felt natural. And yet, she had to change, and quickly. And she also had to find…Charis.
“Ah, look who’s here.” Finnie pointed over the head of the next departing child as Pru walked toward them, pushing a baby carriage with the top pulled securely down. “’Tis the baby Jesus himself. How did it go, lass?”
“Well, he did wail a little bit when one of the wisemen screamed his line right in Danny’s face, but for the most part, he was divine.” She laughed at the pun. “So to speak. How’s the Claus family doing?”
“Have a wee break in the action,” Finnie said. “I think we’ll be able to leave when your mother arrives. Then we—”
“My doggies!” A little girl called out from a few passersby, tugging on the hand that held her, reaching out to Pyggie and Gala. “Those are my doggies! My friends!”
Agnes immediately recognized her as the child who’d been so in love with the dogs at the coffee tent earlier in the day. Pru’s friend’s little sister. A fact that was confirmed by the look on Pru’s face as the girl broke free and ran toward them.
“Pyggie and Gala!” She folded onto the snow-covered grass, practically tackling the dogs.
“Avery!” Pru’s friend Teagan came forward. “We’re not stopping here.”
“Hey, Teag,” Pru said quickly. “It’s okay. She can play with the dogs.”
“I want to sit on Santa’s lap! I want to ask for my special gift.”
“Not now, Avery.” Teagan reached down to get the girl, but Pru put a hand on her friend’s arm.
“It’s fine, Teagan. Just because you’re mad at me doesn’t mean she can’t sit on Santa’s lap.”
Teagan tipped her head in resignation. “Two minutes, Avery. I’ll be right over there.”
Pru’s face paled with disappointment that Agnes felt in her own chest. The girl didn’t miss a beat, though.
“Right this way, Avery,” she said softly. Gently nudging the little girl closer to Santa with one hand and rolling her little brother’s stroller with the other, Pru exhibited the same grace that her mother and great-grandmother seemed to exude. “You can sit on Santa’s lap, if you like.”
“I want to!” she cried out, flipping back strawberry-blond curls as she fearlessly approached Agnes. “I want to tell Santa what he has to bring me.”
Entitled little brat. But Agnes forced a smile and reached out her hands, settling the little girl on her knee and leaning her into the big pillows that made her stomach.
“Ho ho ho, little one.” She attempted her deep Santa voice, shooting Pru a look when she giggled a few feet away.
Finnie merrily jingled her strip of sleigh bells. “Merry Christmas, Avery. Would you like to tell Santa what you want to celebrate Jesus’s birthday?”
She crossed her arms and looked around, and all three of them followed the child’s gaze. It landed on Teagan, who was a good forty feet away now, looking at her phone.
“You can’t give me what I want,” she said, all her bravado suddenly gone.
Finnie and Agnes exchanged a look of surprise.
“Well, give us a chance to try,” Agnes said. “You’d be surprised what Mrs. Claus can dig out of her pile of goodies.”
The little girl shook her head, and tears threatened.
“Avery.” Pru came closer and crouched next to Agnes’s lap. “What’s the matter, honey?”
The lower lip came out. “My daddy moved away for good.”
Pru sucked in a breath. “Are you sure? Maybe he took a trip.” She looked up at Agnes and mouthed, “I never heard that,” over Avery’s head.
“He took all his suitcases and money.”
“He took his money?” Agnes asked, shocked by the phrase.
“He told Mommy he hates her, and he isn’t coming back, and now we can’t have Christmas!” Teardrops fell now, making Pru stand up and block the child from anyone’s view—including her sister, who was still staring at her phone.
“I don’t know about that, Avery,” Pru said gently. “Maybe the grownups are talking about things you don’t understand.”
She shook her head vehemently. “He’s gone, and we’re not getting our Christmas present.”
“What was the present?” Finnie asked, riveted like Agnes and Pru to the child’s story.
“A dog. Like that one.” She pointed to Gala. “A wiener dog! He said we could have one, but then he left, and Mommy said there isn’t going to be a dog.” Tears rolled down her freckled cheeks. “I want a wiener dog,” she choked on a sigh. “It’s all I want in the whole wide world, Santa.” She pressed herself against Agnes. “Please give me one of yours.”
Agnes blinked, speechless. “Well, I…I… Those are my…”
Finnie quickly turned to the pile. “Lass, I have one here that’s just as good. Not a wiener dog, not alive, but this plush boy will snuggle next to you all night long.”
The little girl looked at the box Finnie offered and took it with a reluctant sigh. “Okay. My sister said we’re not getting any presents ’cause Mommy doesn’t have any money.”
“Oh.” Pru put her hand over her mouth. “I had no idea.” She looked past Avery to where her friend had been standing, but now Teagan marched toward them, her expression unreadable.
“Come on, Avery,” Teagan said, sliding past the baby carriage to get close to Agnes. “Thank the ladies for your present. Mom just texted, and we have to go.”
“Is Daddy home?” she asked with painfully bright enthusiasm.
“No, he’s not ever…” She caught herself and glanced at Pru, whose face was pure sympathy. “Look, I’m sorry,” she added on a whisper to Pru. “I couldn’t get you anything, and I was embarrassed, and…it doesn’t matter. My mom says we’re moving to Raleigh next week to live with my grandmother. So, see ya, Pru.”
“Teagan!” Pru stood and started to reach for her friend, but the other girl shrugged off the hug.
“Avery. Let’s go.” She snagged the little girl’s arm and tugged her away. As she stumbled off, clinging to her present, Avery turned and looked at Agnes. “Are you sure I can’t have one of your dogs? Please, please, please? I want a wiener dog!”
Something welled up in Agnes. Pity. Sadness. Maybe Christmas spirit. She opened her mouth, but Finnie put a hand on her arm. “You don’t have to be that nice,” she whispered. Then, “Just be a good girl, Avery, and be nice to your sister. Santa will be back next year.”
“But she won’t.” Pru folded to the ground in front of Agnes. “She’s moving? Her parents are splitting up? She couldn’t afford a gift for me? Why didn’t she tell me all that?”
“It’s her shame,” Agnes said, throwing a look at Finnie.
“What do you mean, Yiayia?”
“I mean that sometimes a person cloaks themselves with cruelty so they don’t have to face the pity and judgment of others. Believe me, I know.”
“I guess.” Pru sighed. “I wouldn’t have pitied or judged her, and I don’t care about a present. I just want my friend back.”
“I understand,” Agnes said. “I really do.”
Pru started to push up to stand, but she paused midway and gave a long, hard look to Agnes. “Do you really think that’s what it was?”
“Absolutely. It’s what I do,” she added. “As my good friend Finnie has pointed out.”
“Why are you ashamed?” Pru asked. “You liked a boy enough to run after him, but you married the one your dad wanted for you, right? It all worked out, and you have nothing to be ashamed of. Or did I miss something?”
“You—”
“Didn’t miss a thing,” Finnie interjected. “She left that restaurant and took the subway back home, realizing her mistake, and married the handsome, wonderful man who was the father to Nico.”
None of that was a lie, Agnes realized. It’s just that Finnie left out the part about spending a month in the bed of a married man. Grati
tude and a deep, deep love for Finola Kilcannon rolled over her.
“Oh.” Pru leaned back on her heels. “Then why do you think shame has made you cruel, which you are not, by the way?”
“Have you asked your grandfather’s new wife about that?” she asked, referring to the woman who was once her daughter-in-law. “Katie will tell you just how cruel I can be, and her only fault was not being Greek.”
“Well, you’re not cruel anymore, Yiayia, so you need to quit worrying about it.”
Agnes sighed heavily. “I do worry about it. And I needed the dog we spent the day trying to get as much as that little girl. More.”
“Why?” Pru frowned and looked at Finnie, who just shrugged.
“Don’t ask me, lass. Agnes is cryptic about some things.”
“I’m not cryptic. I’m…” Agnes sat back and looked from one to the other, making her decision, knowing that one last secret could help these two and explain a lot to them. “When we’re done here, before your mother gets here, I’ll tell you. I hope you’ll understand and not think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy or cruel or anything but wonderful.” Pru hugged her hard. “And you helped me figure out what happened with my friend.” She planted an unexpected kiss on Agnes’s cheek, making her laugh. “Thank you, Yiayia.”
“You’re welcome, Prudence.” She leaned back and patted the young girl’s cheek. “I hope you feel that way after I finish my story.”
Chapter Twelve
Jacaranda Lakes, Florida 2018
“What’s the matter, Agnes?” Linda Jurgenson leaned her skinny seventy-seven-year-old frame against Agnes’s arm. “You don’t look so good today.”
“I’m damn near eighty, Linda.” Actually a little past, but none of her Golden Girl pals needed to know that. “How good can I look?”
The truth was, Agnes felt like hell today and had very little interest in the weekly luncheon her canasta team seemed to love. She hadn’t slept due to indigestion, had a headache that could kill a cow, and now she was forced to eat a lunch cooked by pimply-faced teenage boys using a can of tomato sauce shipped from a corporate office. Not how a good restaurant ran. Not how she and Nik had run Santorini’s.
“You are a little pale,” Barbara “I’ll Stop Any Fight Before It Happens” Riley chimed in. “Did you skip your rouge?”
“No one calls it ‘rouge’ anymore, Barbara. You’re giving away your old age,” Agnes shot back. “And no, I didn’t skip it.”
Carol Burns looked up from her usual examination of every single breadstick in the basket, as if there was some kind of prize for getting the best one. “You just miss Ted,” she said. “It’s been, what? Two months without a word? That’s gotta hurt. Oh, what the hell.” She plucked one stick in each hand. “I guess I’ll take two. That’s why they invented ‘unlimited’ on the menu.”
“If I’m pale, it’s because I hate chain restaurants.”
“But this is Olive Garden.” Linda looked scandalized. “We all can agree on Italian.”
Agnes rolled her eyes. “We all can agree that the food is trash, and the service sucks.”
“Agnes!” Barbara chided her. “It’s not about the food. This is canasta team-bonding time.”
“You want to bond? Eat the alfredo sauce. It’s made of Elmer’s glue, or at least that’s what it tastes like. That’ll bond you up but good.”
Barbara chuckled, but she laughed at everything everyone said. No discernment, that one.
“Well, I for one am having creamy mushroom ravioli,” Carol said, closing her menu with a flourish. “It’s almost as good as sex.”
Barbara snorted, Linda pretend-gasped, but Agnes felt just lousy enough to call the little liar on it.
“Really, Carol? You remember sex? From, what? When Richard Nixon was president?”
The other woman narrowed her blue eyes. “You really are missing Ted, aren’t you?”
“No, I was bitchy before he picked me over you, believe me.”
She nearly choked on her bite of bread. “Agnes, you flatter yourself if you think I was jealous.”
“Please.” More irritation rolled around Agnes’s gut, burning a little more than her usual constant bickering with Carol caused. “You were the shade of that fake tree when he asked me to the Sabal Palms Valentine Dance.”
Carol sniffed and slathered some butter on her next bite of bread. “I’ll admit I thought he was nice enough, considering how slim the pickings are at that complex, and the man played a decent shuffleboard game, which I suppose made him good at…other things.”
“Hubba, hubba,” Barbara chimed in, earning a dark look from Agnes.
But Linda leaned in to whisper, “I did notice that day we played charades in the clubhouse that he had very large hands. You know what they say about a man with large hands.”
“He can carry two bags of trash at once,” Barbara joked.
“The only thing he could carry was a lottery ticket,” Agnes said, shaking her head.
“No kidding,” Carol said. “A million dollars in a scratch-off. Talk about lucky.”
They all moaned a little, Agnes more so than anyone. Not that she wanted old Ted “forever,” but it stung that the minute he got all that cash, he headed off to buy his grandson a farm in Iowa, then stayed there with him.
The waitress came over to get their order, and Agnes asked to go last, staring at the menu, but the letters and pictures just swam in front of her eyes. What she wouldn’t do for a good plate of moussaka instead of this junk. And a…
A weird pain in her shoulder pinched, a little more intense than it had been this morning, making her wince.
“Are you okay, Agnes?” Barbara asked.
“Just dreading this food.”
The waitress inched back in surprise. “Have you had a bad experience here, ma’am?”
“‘Have I ever not had a bad experience?’ is a better question.” The shoulder pain zinged down her arm as she closed the menu. “I guess I’ll have the mushroom ravioli, but tell the chef, which is being generous about whatever prepubescent is back there, that less is more on that sauce.”
The young woman gave a tight smile, but her eyebrows raised as if she’d had it with cranky customers.
So sue me if I want my lunch to taste like actual food.
“Do you have to be so snappy with the poor girl?” Carol asked when she left. “She doesn’t make the ravioli.”
“Carol.” Agnes inched closer and flinched again as the pain found a new home under her collarbone. “I ran a restaurant for most of my adult life. The service person is the face, voice, and presentation of the place to the customers. It won’t kill her to deliver the message to the line cook.”
“It won’t kill her,” Linda said softly. “But it might kill you.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Agnes shot back.
“What she’s trying to say is being unkind just shortens your life-span, Agnes.” Barbara reached over and patted Agnes’s hand. “It causes stress that breaks down the strands of your DNA.”
“Someone’s been bingeing Dr. Oz,” Agnes muttered.
“She’s trying to help you,” Carol said.
Agnes reached to pick up her iced tea, but a brand-new wave of pain shot down her arm, and this one was accompanied by a band around her chest. “Don’t gang up on…” Her breath grew so tight, she couldn’t talk for a moment. “Me,” she finished, suddenly aware her upper lip was wet.
“Honey, you really don’t look good,” Linda said with real alarm in her voice. “You’re sweating.”
“Because it’s hotter than the basement of hell in here.” She squeezed her eyes shut as another pain sliced through her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think she’s going to faint.”
“Agnes, open your eyes.”
Shut up! Shut up! Shut… She willed her lips to move and say the words, but they wouldn’t. Nothing would move. Not her arm or her mouth o
r anything. All her muscles seized up and gripped her as a wave of nausea roiled through her body.
She tried to breathe and tamp it down, but everything was so dark. And hot. And painful.
“Agnes!”
“Someone call 911!”
Why wouldn’t they all shut up? Go away! Leave her alone! Let her…
She felt her face hit the table, and her last thought was, thank God she didn’t go face first into that garbage ravioli.
* * *
Everything was so quiet. Not just silent, but more like Agnes had just stepped into a vacuum that sucked away all the noise. And light. And air. There was just…nothing.
So this is it? This is what all the fuss is about? A big fat black hole of blackness?
She knew all the clouds and angels were a bunch of crap. She knew it! No harps. No pearly gates. No stinking light at the end of the tunnel. No reason to wallow in guilt and shame because it was all…over.
Or was it?
Agnes pushed up and started to move forward in the darkness—not walking exactly, but, well, yeah, floating, with no idea where she was going or why. At least the pain stopped. All of it, actually. Her old back didn’t ache, her dry eyes didn’t burn, and her right knee felt like someone had magically removed all of the arthritis that had made it scream with every step.
That was nice.
But everything else was…nothing. Was this what the other place was, then? Just nothing? Guess that beat—
A noise cracked and echoed. A sharp, sudden, loud…bark? No, that couldn’t have been what she heard.
She took a few more steps, her arms out like a blind person, vaguely aware that whatever was around her—it wasn’t air—was like a blanket made of satin and…peace. Yes, this all felt rather—
There it was again. Definitely a bark or someone calling out with a very low voice. She turned, but it was just as black back there and all around her. There was nothing. Just—
Something brushed her leg, and she opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came out. No air, either. She wasn’t breathing. But it didn’t matter.
She bent over slowly and reached down, her hands suddenly hitting something small and wiggly and…furry.
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