A Knights Bridge Christmas

by Carla Neggers

  After church on Christmas Eve, she placed Tom’s candle on a small, flat stone in the living room window and lit the blackened wick. Her father sat in his chair by the fire and stared at the flame, not saying a word.

  Daisy was about to head upstairs to bed when she heard singing.

  She went to a window and peered out into the darkness, and she could see Tom, his father and a dozen carolers from town gathered in front of the house, each holding a small, lit candle.

  They sang “Silent Night.”

  Her father got up from his chair. Her mother wandered in from the kitchen. He put his arm around her, and they stood at the window where Tom’s candle burned.

  Daisy wasn’t sure they noticed her slip outside. She wasn’t wearing a coat but didn’t notice the cold as she eased next to Tom. She joined in, singing “White Christmas,” although she wasn’t sure she hit any of the right notes. To her surprise, Tom hit all the notes. He had a deep, beautiful voice.

  When the song ended and carolers started on to the next house, he squeezed her hand. “Merry Christmas, Daisy,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

  It wasn’t until after Tom and the rest of the carolers had gone that his mother came to the house. Daisy’s father was the first to notice Betty Farrell standing outside, alone. Daisy went out with him, but he asked her to stay on the porch.

  “It’s just a candle,” Betty said when he stood next to her. “It’ll burn out.”

  He put an arm around her. “It’s been hard coming home when so many others didn’t. I’ve felt...guilty. This candle—Betty, I know...I know it made a difference to your son.”

  “I miss him.”

  “Like no one else can.”

  She stared at the burning candle in the window. “I’m glad you came home safe. We can’t live in the past, you and I, but I think of Angus...” Her voice faltered. “He loved Christmas.”

  “I remember, Betty.”

  “It’s almost Christmas Day. We’re on our way to midnight service at church. Keep the candle, won’t you? Burn it every Christmas Eve, for as long as it lasts. Then when it’s gone...” She bit on her lower lip and didn’t continue.

  “We’ll make another,” Tom said, walking across from the common, joining his mother. “Better yet, buy one. You almost burned down the house making the last batch of candles. Hot wax is highly flammable.”

  “Go on with you, Tom.”

  Daisy walked down from the porch and stood beside her father as they watched Betty Farrell and her surviving son walk across the common together. I’m going to marry Tom Farrell one day, she thought.

  Then she noticed her father looking at her, and she wondered if she’d thought aloud. But he smiled at her, kissed her on the top of the head and went inside with her.

  They kept the candle burning until the stroke of midnight, then blew it out, until the next Christmas Eve.

  Present day

  When Daisy finished her story, she was aware the room had gone silent. She noticed with shock the deep lines and brown spots on her hands. For a moment, she’d been fifteen again, falling in love with a boy who missed his brother lost to war, and always would.

  She touched the simple cover of A Christmas Carol in her lap. “Tom gave me this book on Christmas Day. He said he bought it at a library sale. He was so pleased with himself.” She smiled up at her grandson. “He said we helped him and his mother think about Christmases yet to come, and not just Christmases past.”

  “Gran.” Logan was having difficulty speaking. “I knew he’d lost a brother in the war, but I never—I’ve never considered what it must have been like for him and his family, or for you.”

  “Angus was killed in Holland in September, 1944. He was the only serviceman from Knights Bridge who was killed in the war, but the Farrells weren’t alone. So many people lost loved ones. It’s easy to forget that the names on war monuments are of real people.”

  “And the candle we found,” Clare said. “It’s the one your mother-in-law made?”

  Daisy nodded. “Tom and I continued the tradition of lighting a candle in the front window at Christmas. We kept that one going for a few years, but he got to where he thought it would set the house on fire, it was so old. I didn’t realize he’d saved it, or if I did, I forgot. He was usually so unsentimental.”

  “It was in its own box inside another box,” Logan said.

  “The book was in a small box, too,” Clare said. “It’s obviously a family heirloom that wasn’t intended for the sale.”

  Daisy touched a finger to the gold lettering on the cover. “Our first real conversation was over Tom’s book report on A Christmas Carol. He wasn’t much of a student.” She cleared her throat, looked up at the two young people. “We had a good life together. He loved you so much, Logan. Angus was a medic. I think he’d have been a doctor if he could have, but he planned to come back to the farm.”

  “Did he leave behind a girlfriend or a fiancée?” Logan asked.

  “We always thought he was sweet on Grace Webster.”

  Grace, who’d been living with a secret only recently revealed to anyone else in town. Had Angus guessed? Daisy hadn’t asked Grace, and never would. She looked at Clare. “Tom loved buying books and then donating them to the library after we’d read them, but I was a pack rat and kept a lot of them.”

  Clare nodded, but she was breathing rapidly, overcome with emotion.

  Daisy hadn’t expected that. “Are you all right?” she asked the young woman.

  Another nod. “I should get going. Owen and I...” She waved a hand toward the door. “We have a few errands we need to do.”

  “I hope I didn’t upset you,” Daisy said, alarmed.

  “No, no. I’m fine. Thank you for telling your story. Having me here.”

  “Your husband—he wasn’t in the military, was he?”

  Clare shook her head. “He died in a car accident,” she mumbled, then pointed again, vaguely. “I’ll go now. I’ll find my way back to town. Thank you both.”

  “Cookies,” Logan said, jumping up. “It’s time for molasses cookies. I swear I’m never going to run out. Gran, you okay—”

  “I’ll be fine sitting right here.”

  She handed him the book. He was already on the move. That was Logan, she thought affectionately, sinking into her chair. She closed her eyes, remembering when Tom Farrell knocked on her front door on Christmas Day during her senior year in high school. He wanted to take her ice-skating on Echo Lake. He had graduated and was already a firefighter, and it was their first real date...but she’d been in love with him since he’d helped turn her father away from bitterness and his mother away from sadness and loss by the simple act of lighting a candle.

  It was reading A Christmas Carol with its transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge that had given him the idea—and the courage—to bring the candle into town and see what he could do.

  I hated every second of writing that book report, though.

  Daisy smiled at the memory. He’d always expected to go first and had wanted her to be ready, but how could she ever be ready?

  She got up, slowly, carefully, and headed into the hall, figuring she’d run into someone she knew.

  Grace was in the sunroom, watching her birds and reading a book.

  “Do you remember Angus Farrell?” Daisy asked, sitting in a chair next to her longtime friend.

  “Angus? Of course. He was so full of life...” Grace sighed. “I don’t think any of us ever imagined he wouldn’t survive the war. Of all those who went, Angus seemed one of the most likely to come home.”

  “Tom’s mother used to fantasize Angus was wandering around Belgium or Holland with a head injury and couldn’t remember who he was.”

  “But you and Tom visited his grave, didn’t you?”

  “In Holland, yes. His mother had died by then. She knew Angus had been killed. Picturing him drinking beer at a Dutch café was a little fantasy she allowed herself sometimes.”

  Grace seemed unco
nvinced. “I suppose.”

  Daisy smiled. “You’ve always had your feet firmly planted in reality, haven’t you, Grace?”

  “This you ask of someone rereading The Scarlet Pimpernel for at least the twentieth time.” She pointed at the feeders. “It’s quiet today. Let’s sit a moment, shall we, and see if our cardinal shows up?”

  A Recipe for Hot Chocolate

  ⅓ cup Droste or other cocoa (unsweetened)

  ½ cup sugar (or to taste)

  ⅓ cup hot water

  4 cups milk

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

  Combine cocoa and sugar in a medium saucepan. Blend in water. Stirring constantly, cook over medium heat until mixture comes to a boil. Let boil, continuing to stir, for two minutes. Add milk, heat to desired temperature (don’t boil). Remove from heat and add vanilla. Serve by itself or topped with whipped cream and/or marshmallows.

  Fourteen

  Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh.

  —Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

  MOLASSES COOKIES AND milk in Daisy’s kitchen did the trick. Clare felt better. “It’s not kale,” she said with a smile. “It’s a good source of calcium.”

  Logan shuddered. “There are dark green leafy vegetables, and there’s kale.”

  “Not your favorite?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it while I’m eating a molasses cookie.”

  She laughed, enjoying his company, but she knew his mind was on his grandmother’s story.

  “I have to get rolling,” he said. “I have a twelve-hour overnight shift and need to get myself ready. Keep the key to the house. Check for more books, drop by for cookies with Owen—my house is your house.”

  “You say that now. Wait until I eat all the cookies.”

  He kissed her softly. “We can always make more cookies.”

  “I’m going to find out more about your grandmother’s edition of A Christmas Carol.”

  “I’ve only seen the movie adaptations. I’ve never read the book.”

  “What’s your favorite adaptation?”

  “I’m not sure I have a particular favorite. Maybe we can watch different versions together.”

  “Logan...”

  He pressed a finger to her lips. “No thinking right now. Not with molasses, sugar and butter in your system.”

  Not to mention him, she thought. “Have a good shift at the hospital.”

  She returned to the library after he left. Daisy’s books were a temptation, but she got the boxes out of the way. She didn’t expect to find anything else as intriguing and potentially valuable as A Christmas Carol. The small library was different from what she was accustomed to in Boston, but she loved its atmosphere and the breadth of the work she did. She had no ambitions beyond doing the best job she could and making a home for herself and Owen.

  When she picked him up at the Sloans’ house, Owen wanted Logan to come back to their sawmill apartment with them. Clare explained he’d returned to Boston to work. Owen looked thoughtful for a moment. “Logan’ll be back. He likes it here.”

  “Do you like it here, Owen?”

  He beamed. “I love it here. In Knights Bridge,” he added quickly as they went up to their apartment. “You still need your own room, Mom. And I want to live in a house next to Aidan and Tyler so we can walk to school together. You could walk to the library. What about Logan’s house? Tyler says it’s for sale. Can we buy it?”

  “We won’t be living in this place forever, but it’s good right now. It’s quiet.”

  “I can hear the waterfall.”

  “How many places have their own waterfall?”

  He liked that. His transition from city life to country life hadn’t been without incident, but he was making friends, doing well in school and seemed content.

  He plugged in the lights on their Charlie Brown Christmas tree and crawled under a blanket on the couch, yawning as Clare read him a story. After he went to bed, she kept the tree lights on as she tried to hear the water tumbling over the dam, rocks and ice, and imagine Logan with her.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, Clare drove into Boston for a workshop at a city college for small-town librarians. While she was in town, she stopped to see a friend, an archivist and rare books specialist. It was enough to prompt her to walk over to the busy hospital where Logan worked, but she also wanted to see it for herself.

  The emergency department was relatively quiet at four o’clock on a December weekday afternoon. She didn’t want to interrupt Logan—wasn’t sure he was there—but she appreciated seeing where he spent his days, and, often, his nights. His life was so different from hers. Even when she had lived in Boston, she’d had a quiet work life compared to his. What had drawn him into emergency medicine?

  She hadn’t been in an emergency room since Stephen’s death.

  “Clare,” Logan said behind her.

  She turned, smiling at him. “You caught me. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all.” He wore a suit under a white doctor’s coat, his eyes on her as they stepped away from the desk. “I’ve been deep in documentation. It’s not the most exciting part of my job but it has to be done.”

  “You don’t do well with tedious tasks.”

  “Ah. You are getting to know me.”

  “I won’t keep you. I’m in town on library business, but I wanted to tell you that it looks as if the edition of A Christmas Carol your grandfather gave to your grandmother could be a first edition. I recommend having it appraised.”

  “It belongs to the library now.”

  “It wouldn’t be right to keep it.”

  “Someone made a mistake putting it into the book sale when my grandfather bought it. Gran obviously wanted the library to have it back. She doesn’t need to sell it for the money. What makes you think it’s a first edition?”

  “A friend who knows about such things told me. It was first published in 1843 by Chapman & Hall in England, with a pink-brown cloth cover and gold lettering. That first edition had green endpapers, but the ink wasn’t fast and came off on people’s fingers—so it was changed in subsequent editions to yellow.”

  “And Gran’s copy has green endpapers?”

  Clare nodded. “The yellow would be valuable, too. The etchings and engravings also suggest a first edition. The book was an instant bestseller. Dickens was very involved in its publication. It was his idea to sell it at a low five shillings per copy.”

  “That must have helped,” Logan said. “I’ll be happy to have it appraised, but it belongs at the library. It would be a great annual Christmas display.”

  “I wish we had a copy of your grandfather’s book report.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Gran saved it, but I bet he burned it before she got the chance. Speaking of Christmas, I am free as of 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve and I have Christmas Day off. I’ve decided to spend it in Knights Bridge. I did promise Gran I’d light a candle in the window.” He fell silent, as if taking pause to remember Daisy’s story about her father and brother-in-law. Finally he stood straight, the busy ER doctor again. “What are your plans for Christmas?”

  “I don’t know about Christmas Eve yet, except for the early service at church with Owen. I imagine he’ll get me up early on Christmas Day. Santa has big plans for him. Well...maybe not quite as big as Owen thinks.”

  “Let me make dinner for you two on Christmas Eve.”

  “That would be lovely, thank you.”

  An ambulance arrived. Logan clearly had to go. Clare left him to his work and went back to hers. As she left through a revolving door, she was breathing rapidly, but her mind was on the future, not the past.

  * * *

  Four hours after Clare left the hospital, Logan finally had time to grab a sandwich and sit for a few minutes. His visit with her was a blur, but he knew he’d said he’d be spending Christmas Eve in Knights Bridge and
invited her to his grandmother’s house for dinner.

  “Christmas Eve in Knights Bridge?” His friend Paul chuckled over a beer together that evening. “Great. You can catch up on your sleep.”

  “I’ll need a week of Christmas Eves in Knights Bridge to catch up on my sleep.”

  “I hear you. What’s drawing you to your dad’s hometown?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “She’s lived there for eighty-plus years. Damn, Logan. You’ve never had this look when you’ve mentioned the Farrell hometown.”

  Logan frowned. “What look?”

  “Twitchy.”

  “Twitchy isn’t a look.”

  “With you it is. Your grandmother’s great. I met her, remember? She came to town with a cake and that insane fruit salad with the coconut. That was the best. I think it had almonds in it, too.”

  “Pecans.” Logan yawned. “I’m calling it a night.”

  His friend leaned back, eyes narrowed, appraising. “It’s the librarian.”

  “Good night, Paul.”

  “I admit my mind flooded with stereotypes when I heard a librarian had shown up at the hospital to see you, but I caught a peek of her. Pretty, pretty. A little on the harried side, and she obviously doesn’t like hospitals. I can’t say I blame her. I don’t like hospitals. She looked like she wanted to throw up—I take it that wasn’t you.”

  “Her husband died in an ER.”

  “Ouch. Not ours, I hope?”

  “I don’t know which one. Boston, somewhere. She was expecting.”

  His friend blinked in confusion. “Expecting what? Her husband to come home for dinner?”

  “A baby, Paul.”

  “She was pregnant? Double ouch.”

  “She had a baby boy. Owen. He’s six now. Cute kid. We cut a Christmas tree together.”

  “Logan...” Paul was serious now. “Being back in Boston hasn’t helped you snap back to your senses?”

  “Not yet.”