Wishes for Christmas

by Fern Michaels

  “For you, Jack, anything.”

  Chapter 2

  Sunday dinner at Pinewood was always a delight, and the gang never missed a chance to get together for one of Charles’s memorable dinners because he never disappointed. Today was no exception.

  Today’s menu consisted of a vermicelli soup, garlic-roasted beef tenderloin, melt-in-your-mouth sweet potato puffs, green currants in a secret sauce, which the chef refused to reveal, and creamed cucumbers with young onions. For dessert, there was fig pudding with peaches and cream. Fresh homemade buttery cheese rolls completed the meal, along with hazelnut coffee, which Charles firmly believed was just as good as a dessert.

  Belts were undone as the gang groaned and moaned about how it was going to take them a whole week to work off all the calories they’d consumed in one sitting. Charles showed them no mercy by saying, “I only prepared what you asked for.”

  Cleanup took sixteen minutes, as opposed to the usual twelve, because, as Alexis put it, “We’re all sluggish,” and the figs scorched the bottom of the pan, and so it had to be scoured.

  “We know, dear,” Myra said as she worked alongside the girls. “And Charles really outdid himself today. Now we have to go down to the war room and work. We have only fifty-four days until Christmas Eve.”

  Jack grumbled under his breath, but Harry heard him say, “Whose bright idea was it to eat first, then work? It should be just the opposite.” Harry gave him a shove to move forward, then needled him that he could already see the five extra pounds added to his gut. Jack was too miserable to respond, other than to say, “I never eat like that, but it was so good.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Harry continued to needle.

  In the war room, Espinosa pressed a button, and the new table that Isabelle had designed, and that Avery Snowden and his men had crafted, opened, and the extra leaves slid into place, expanding the table so that everyone was comfortable. Yoko slid the grungy old shoe box to the center of the table. Everyone eyeballed it, but no one said anything.

  Charles was on the dais, and it was good to see him back there. “I think we are really back to normal now,” Nikki whispered to Kathryn, who nodded in agreement.

  “We need to look alive, people,” Myra said. “As I said earlier, we have only fifty-four days until Christmas Eve, and you all know how fast the season goes once it gets under way. First, though, I have a bit of news to share with you all. It was just confirmed, or I would have told you all sooner.

  “It concerns Nellie and Elias. As you all know, Elias has advanced Alzheimer’s. Nellie refuses to place her husband in a care facility, and rightly so. We take care of our own. As long as we can. Even with all the help she has, she has her own health issues. One of her new hips isn’t working properly. She’s looking at surgery and some serious recovery time. She has opted to go into an assisted living facility, a very nice one, I might add, where both she and Elias will have twenty-four-hour care if they need it but will still technically be on their own. Annie and I offered to move in with her, but she wouldn’t hear of it, which isn’t surprising, because she is so independent.

  “Having said all that, she can take her beloved cats, all four of them, with her. She’s turning the farm over to Nikki and Jack. She said it is perfect for them now that Cyrus has his five pups. At some point, if they want to buy the farm, that might happen. So Annie and I will have a new neighbor. Nikki and Jack are going to rent out their house in Georgetown.”

  The gang all clapped to show their approval.

  “Guess who is going to rent our house?” Nikki said. At the blank looks, she laughed and said, “Jack Sparrow. The perfect tenant. He’s never home, so there won’t be much wear and tear on the house, and he’s a bachelor. Win-win for everyone.”

  “With that business out of the way, let’s get down to why we’re here on a Sunday night. As Myra said, we have only fifty-four days to follow up on Maggie’s suggestion. So, let’s talk. You go first, Nikki,” Annie said.

  “Jack and I think it’s a great idea. Here’s the ‘but.’ Jack made a point that if we were to go back in time, then time would change. Jack, tell them what you told me last night.”

  Jack sat up straighter. “It’s the time chain. Twelve years ago, I lost a case to this obnoxious lawyer who should be ashamed to call himself an attorney. He’s a bottom-feeder if ever there was one. And the only reason he got his client off was on a technicality. I was so angry, so bummed out, I was going to follow him out to the parking lot and knock him silly. I was steaming down the hall and ran into Nikki, or she ran into me. Then two other attorneys who were right behind me collided with me. All our folders and files went flying. Took us a good ten minutes to gather up what belonged to each of us. Now, if I hadn’t been on the verge of running after Singer—that’s his name—I might never have met Nikki. Would I want to relive that moment? Change it? The answer is, ‘Absolutely not.’

  “Speaking strictly for myself, it’s all a nonstarter. Looking back, yeah, things went wrong, some my own fault, some not. But not worthy of trying to make it right in this day and age. I’m thinking—and again, this is just my opinion—we should look for a cause or a person or persons who, as Maggie said, could use our help. I’m up for everything and anything. Nikki agrees with me.”

  “All right, then, let’s run this up the flagpole and see what we end up with,” Myra said.

  Two hours later the final vote was in. No one had anything in their life that they would do differently, for the very reason Jack had outlined. Dennis West summed it up perfectly. “If we did that, none of us would be sitting where we are now, having this discussion. Life has to go on. The past is past.”

  Maggie felt like crying. She had been so sure everyone had something, like she did, that they wanted to make right. A tear rolled down her cheek. Annie saw it.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you want to make right, Maggie? Just because the rest of us don’t want to upset the time chain doesn’t mean you can’t,” she said. “We all have regrets. If I didn’t have that horrible headache the day my husband and children went boating, maybe they would be alive today. They wanted to stay with me, but I told them to go and enjoy the day. For nine long years, I regretted that decision, and I still do to this day, as does Myra for not telling her daughter to stay with her instead of going back to her car for the camera. They’re regrets. As Dennis said, if we had acted differently back then, none of us would be here today. Now, tell us what we can do for you, Maggie.”

  Maggie stiffened. “It was a mistake. I just got carried away there for a few moments. You are all right. So now we have to come up with a cause and make it work for us. Fifty-four days is not all that much time,” Maggie said with a smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. It was evident to everyone in the room that she was bummed out and was trying desperately to cover up the feeling. She wasn’t going to say another word.

  The silence in the room was deafening as all eyes watched Maggie. She was too stiff, too flat. They all felt like they had failed her somehow. They also knew that for now they had to let it go and revisit the issue only when Maggie was ready to revisit it. If ever.

  The conversation turned to childhood Christmases and all the stories that went with them, from childhood to adulthood. The stories were upbeat, as only those about childhood escapades could be. It was a good way to wind down the meeting, and so they did, with a promise to meet up the following week back at Pinewood.

  Maggie woke early. She hated it when that happened, especially when it was a Saturday, and she could sleep in. Hero hopped on her chest, purring loudly. Maggie loved it when he purred just for her. She stroked his thick coat and tussled with him for a few minutes, something he was absolutely crazy about. Finally, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Hero scampered off to do whatever it was he did until his mistress was showered and on her way to making his breakfast—salmon flakes and crunchy morsels.

  In the kitchen, Maggie followed her normal routine. She craned her n
eck to see the thermometer outside the kitchen door. It read thirty-five degrees. She shivered. She had no plans for the day. She could have coffee, she could go back to bed, she could sit around and read a book, or she could watch the idiot box and eat snacks all day. But none of those options appealed to her.

  Maggie fixed her gaze on her kitchen calendar. Tomorrow was Pinewood, but she didn’t have any great hopes that the gang would come up with something that would please her in regard to her original idea. Then again, perhaps they would.

  Maybe she could get a head start on her Christmas decorating. Not that she did much, but she always made sure she put up a Christmas tree. An artificial one that looked more real than the ones she used to get at the farmers’ market. This year, with the trip to China looming, Yoko had decided not to do Christmas trees.

  Normally, Maggie did her decorating the weekend after Thanksgiving. So, she’d get a head start this year. It would give her something to do.

  The decision made, she settled down and ate her scrambled egg with two slices of bacon and toast with jam. Always mindful that she was of an age now when she had to pay attention to her cholesterol, she ate bacon and one egg only on Saturday. The rest of the week she ate yogurt, fruit, and bran muffins. Her blood work at her last checkup was perfect.

  Christmas! She really didn’t like the holiday and was sick and tired of pretending that she did. Everyone called her Scrooge, but she didn’t care. The truth was, she didn’t hate the holiday; she just dreaded it. How many times had she wished she could go to sleep in November and not wake up till January 2? Not January 1, but January 2. Way too many times to count. Way too many. Since it was now November, she could feel the old uneasy feeling start to settle over her, the way it had every year since she was ten years old.

  As her thoughts drifted back to her childhood, Maggie busied herself cleaning up the breakfast dishes. She did like a tidy kitchen. She knew she was stalling as she cleaned Hero’s litter box and took out last night’s trash. She built a fire. You always needed a fire when you set up a Christmas tree. And music. You needed Christmas music to complete the picture. Snow would help, but a gloomy gray day would work just as well.

  Maggie dragged her feet as she made her way to the walk-in closet off the family room, where she stored seasonal items, mainly the Christmas tree, which came in three parts. When she’d bought it originally, years before she started getting a real tree from Yoko’s nursery, the salesman had told her that even an idiot could put it together. She’d narrowed her eyes at that statement, and the salesman had hastened to say something less offensive, which was, “Even a ten-year-old could set up this tree.” She recalled trying to say something, and in the end, she’d fled the store in tears. Two days later, she’d gone to another store to buy the identical tree. The same tree she was now going to set up in her family room. She had to agree with the first salesman, though: any idiot could set up the tree and plug it in.

  And that was what she did. The tree sprang to life with, if she recalled correctly, a thousand tiny colored lights at the tip of each branch.

  Maggie stood back to stare at the tree. She fluffed out a few branches, looked at it from various angles, and decided it was as good as it was going to get. She looked over to see how her fire was going, and it was blazing. Two down and two to go. She turned on her stereo. She rooted around for her Christmas album and pressed a button. The sound of “Jingle Bells” flooded the room. Hero perked up, did a crazy dance, then leapt up and onto the back of the sofa, where he hissed and snarled. Maggie turned down the volume, and the fat cat immediately relaxed and went to sleep.

  Three down and one to go, meaning it was now time to decorate the tree. Another trip back to the walk-in closet for the ornament. Ornament, as in one ornament—a single, solitary ornament. It was all she ever decorated her tree with. There were no heirloom Christmas balls, no tinkling bells, no fluffy angels, and no star on top of the tree.

  Maggie swiped at her eyes as she reached up for the old cardboard boot box on the top shelf where she kept the ornament stored year after year. Her hands were trembling as she tried to smooth out the creases in the old box, to no avail. She carried it over to the sofa where Hero was sleeping and sat down to open it. So many layers of tissue and bubble wrap. Anyone watching Maggie would have thought there was a priceless, fragile treasure underneath all the layers of tissue.

  Maggie peeled away the tissue and stared down at the Santa she’d made when she was only ten years old. It was made from an empty toilet-paper roll and was covered in red, black, and white cotton balls that Miss Roland had supplied. Over the years, she’d had to get out her glue gun to keep the colored balls intact. How well she remembered the hours that she, along with her entire class, had spent dyeing the white cotton balls red and black and waiting for days for the balls to dry before they could glue them onto the paper holder.

  Maggie recalled how happy she’d been the day Miss Roland, her teacher, said it was time to finish their Santas and glue all the cotton balls in place. She was so excited when Miss Roland praised her for not getting the Elmer’s glue on the fluffy red and black cotton balls like the other kids. Miss Roland was always stingy with praise, and Maggie had reveled in it that day. She could hardly wait to get home with her Santa so her mother could see it, and she actually got a stomachache. She felt even worse when her mother smiled and hung it on the back of the tree, out of sight.

  Maggie leaned back into the depths of the sofa and let the tears flow. If she hadn’t gotten that stomachache that day, if she’d gone straight out to the bus, she wouldn’t be sitting here crying like she was. If only . . .

  Chapter 3

  Nikki Quinn fished around in her pocket for her key chain, where she kept a spare key to Maggie’s kitchen door. Maggie had a key to Nikki’s house, too, in case of an emergency. She let herself in and stood stock-still when she heard Bing Crosby’s mellow voice singing “White Christmas.” She looked around, a frown building on her face. She felt something brush against her ankles and saw Hero.

  “Hey, Hero. How’s it going this morning?” Like the big fat cat was going to answer her.

  Nikki called out as she walked through the kitchen out to the hall and into the family room, where she saw Maggie crying on the sofa. “Maggie, what’s wrong?” Nikki said, rushing to her friend and neighbor.

  Maggie looked up, stunned to see Nikki standing in front of her. She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I didn’t hear you come in. What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

  “That was my question to you, Maggie. It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, and you’re crying. Not to mention you put up your Christmas tree and are playing Christmas music. You don’t usually do that till the weekend after Thanksgiving. So, I’ll ask again, what’s wrong?”

  Maggie swiped at her eyes again. “Nothing. I just thought I’d get an early start this year. You know how good I am at procrastinating. As you can see, I’m all done. I just have to hang my Santa on the tree. Then Ted and I are supposed to go to brunch at that new eatery on the main drag that everyone is saying such good things about. What brings you over here so early?”

  Nikki wasn’t buying Maggie’s story for a minute. “Jack and I are heading out to our new digs. I just wanted to ask you to keep an eye on the house till Jack Sparrow moves in next week. We put all the lights on timers, to go on at five o’clock. We locked everything up tight. You know where we keep everything, so if Sparrow needs something, he’ll most likely call on you. Like the snowblower and all the winter stuff.”

  “Sure. No problem. You excited to move into Nellie’s farmhouse?”

  “I am. I think Jack is more excited. We can ride every morning and exercise Nellie’s horses. We’ll be closer to Myra and Annie out there. Sometimes, I really hate driving all the way out there. Going into the District once a week will do it for me from here on in. I think I’m going to love living out there. Ah . . . Maggie, I’m a good listener. Do you want to talk about it? I
know something is wrong, so don’t push me away, okay? Talk to me. Get whatever it is off your chest. That’s what friends are for.”

  Maggie fingered the Santa in her hand. She held it up for Nikki to get a better look at her creation. “I made this when I was ten years old. The day I finished it, I was so excited I made myself sick. I almost missed the bus.”

  “Why?” Nikki asked. “I mean, why did you almost miss the bus?”

  Maggie bit down on her lower lip. “My mother didn’t think my Santa was as beautiful as I did.

  She hung it on the back of the tree. You know, it wasn’t easy making this ornament. First, we had to dye the cotton balls and let them dry. It took days for them to dry. I was so careful not to get glue on the colored balls. Miss Roland complimented me. She was my favorite teacher. She used to sub for my class, but that year she was my full-time teacher. She liked the stories I wrote in class, and told me that someday I was going to be a writer. Do you believe that?”

  Nikki had no idea where all this was going, so she just nodded and said, “And look at you now. You are a writer. I bet Miss Roland is proud of you. Did you stay in touch?”

  “When my dad was transferred to California, I took only two things with me, this ornament and my pillow. That’s sad, don’t you think?”

  “Not really, Maggie. Why take a bunch of junk and shove it somewhere? You took what meant the most to you. Some people don’t take anything. The past is past, and it’s all about moving forward.”

  “We moved around a lot, with my dad in the military. We were supposed to move in October of the year I was ten, but something went awry with my dad’s orders, and we didn’t move till two days after Christmas that year.”

  “It’s hard to make friends when you move around, and it’s even harder to adjust to a new school,” Nikki said. “Did you get to say good-bye to everyone? You said you moved two days after Christmas, so school was out.”