by Annie Jones
“It's different with us. We're not twins, and we did not grow up then live our lives all within a three-mile radius of one another.”
“You're blood. You're Dorseys. You love one another with a bond no other humans could possibly share.” She looked into her palm for a moment then slapped her hands together to brush away the few needles that had come off the branch. “That's all that matters.”
Nic planted her feet to literally and figuratively stand her ground. “Aunt Bert, you don't under—”
“You are sisters.” She moved on, rounding the end of the row to the next line of trees without so much as a backward glance at Nic. “And you cannot run roughshod over them to get your way.”
“Running roughshod?” If Nic knew her aunt expected her to follow along. She took one step to do so, then chose to cut through between two blue spruce instead. She stepped into the next aisle right in front of Aunt Bert. “That's a bit harsh, isn't it?”
Aunt Bert didn’t seem one bit surprised to see her there. “Is it?”
Nic tightened her jaw.
“Oh, don't feel ashamed that you're the stronger personality, Nicolette. It might surprise you to know that I can sometimes be the tiniest shade more assertive than my sisters, myself.”
Laughter burst from Nic's lips at the understatement of the century. A cold glare from Aunt Bert shut her up quickly, though Nic almost strangled trying to accomplish it.
“My point is, girl, that they are your sisters.” The older woman wound her arm through Nic’s and propelled them forward through the Christmas tree lined lane. “They will be there for you today and ten years from now and ten years after that. As long as one of you draws a breath they will be a part of you every day of your life in some way.”
“What are you trying to do, scare me?” Nic teased.
“I'm trying to wake you up to the blessings you have in your hands right now.” She stopped and whirled Nic around to facer her. “Girl, I see you. I know who you are. From the very first day you learned to stamp your foot and holler and set your sisters running, you have wielded that power like a benevolent despot.”
Nic blinked. She wasn't sure which surprised her more: the accuracy of Bert’s earnest evaluation or the fact that her simple old aunt knew a term like benevolent despot.
“Exactly what are you driving at, Aunt Bert?” She folded her arms and stood toe-to-toe with the much older, more stout version of herself. “This isn't about Petie and Collier not tagging along to get the Christmas tree.”
“No, this is about what Petie and Collier are tagging along for, and against their wishes I suspect.” She folded her own arms, her nose inches from Nic's. “Selling that house we all love so much.”
“Fifteen thousand dollars.” Nic's pulse ticked hard along the side of her neck. “That's one year's tuition at the school where I need to send Willa. And that's not counting books and fees.”
“Lands! I had no idea.”
“So you see, Aunt Bert, even selling the house is only a temporary solution. Even if we get top dollar, it will only help for a couple years. But maybe that will buy me the time to find something better. And it will get Willa off to a better start. She's floundering in that great big system now.” Nic started to storm away, even though she really had nowhere to go.
“We have pretty fine schools here,” Bert called after her.
Nic froze in her tracks and sighed. “Not for a child with as many needs as Willa.”
“I thought the law provides for children with special needs.” Aunt Bert lumbered up beside her.
“The Bode County school system is just too small to—”
Then her aunt moved past her, grumbling as she did. “This one's too small, that one's too big. The one you want is too fool expensive.”
“Tell me something I don't know,” Nic muttered, not actually expecting a response.
“All right.” Leave it to Aunt Bert to do the unexpected. She faced Nic and cocked her head, sliding the stubby pencil behind her ear. “Sometimes it don't take a fancy degree to know what's best for children, to do what's right for them, and to teach them how to make good lives for themselves.”
“What are you saying?” The chilled winter wind whipped her hair across her face, but Nic didn’t bother to fight it back into place.
“I'm saying, well, just look at Willa and Sam.”
“Don't go there.” Nic held up her hand to cut that nonsense right off. Did her whole family have that flimsy matchmaking gene or what? Or worse, did they all just naturally assume that Sam was Willa's father and that Nic should be doing something to reunite their bedraggled family unit? Either way, Nic had no intention of encouraging their conduct. “I do not want to hear another word about Sam Moss, most especially in regard to my daughter.”
“Fine, then let's look at the way Willa is with the family. That child just blossoms when she spends time in the company of people who love her and show her discipline, patience, and understanding.”
“People who spoil her.” Nic covered her mouth almost as quickly as she had blurted out the groundless and defensive remark about her family. Guilt drove her to say it. Love, understanding, and discipline—Nic had those in abundance for her child but not patience. In that way she knew she failed her little girl. She did not have the aptitude to work with her in the same way that Petie, Collier, and now even Sam had shown. Guilt knotted in her stomach and burned high in her throat. “I'm sorry, Aunt Bert. I spoke without thinking. I know the family wants what's best for Willa. And I agree that she does respond best to people who have the right touch in dealing with her.”
“People who love her but don't bear the world's heavy weight of preparing her for the future, of setting her on the right path to make a meaningful life for herself despite her difficulties.” Bert slipped her ample arm around Nic's waist. “In other words, someone who is not her mama.”
“That's why I want to enroll her in this special school. Why I must hand over her care to professionals.”
“And pay dearly for it.”
Nic’s heart sank. “It costs a lot to provide that level of care.”
“I wasn't referring to the monetary costs you'd pay, honey. But if it gets down to that, no amount of money in the world can buy the level of care she gets from her family.”
Nic's lower lip trembled. “She's eight years old, and she cannot read her own name. I'm so afraid—”
Aunt Bert drew her close and a warmth from more than a physical nearness enveloped Nic as the older woman said softly, “Don't make decisions out of a position of fear, honey. Especially something as important as this.”
“What other position can I make them from regarding a helpless child like Willa in a scary world like ours?” Nic shook her head.
“Maybe it's something you should have a talk with Sam about.”
“Sam, Sam, Sam!” Nic pushed away from her aunt’s embrace and her interference. She strode up the aisle of trees until she came to the end of the lot, out in the open. When she spoke her frustrations it was to the sky, not to anyone in particular. “Why does this family insist on pushing me toward Sam Moss every chance and for every cooked-up excuse they can find?”
“Because he's a minister, honey.” Aunt Bert murmured. She bumped Nic lightly as she passed by, heading toward a collapsible lawn chair and big plastic cooler. “And a right fine one, by my account.”
“Oh. Yes. That's right.” She put her hand to her temple. “It's still hard for me to remember that.”
“So, talk to him.”
“He doesn't have children, so how could he know?”
“You don't have to have a child by blood to love a child.” Bert stood back, not having to remind Nic aloud that Bert's own two children came to her through adoption. “You obviously already trust him with the world, with your Willa. Why not trust him with your troubles, too?”
“It's not that simple.” She raised her gaze to the steeple a few streets over. “I came here with a plan—a well-thought-ou
t plan. I can't just up and—”
“Nothing is set in stone yet, honey. I'm just suggesting you talk it over with someone a little more objective, someone who has some perspective and the compassion of an old family friend.”
“When did Sam become an old family friend?”
“All right then, a new family friend.” Bert placed a kiss on her cheek and gave her an affectionate shake. “I worry about this choice of yours, Nicolette. If you sell your home, where will your heart come when it needs a rest?”
Nic's heart did need a rest. Aunt Bert was surely right about that. As a girl misguided, a woman trying to head both a business and a single parent family, and the mother of a child who might always need an advocate, Nic's heart did need a home.
“But a home is not a house, Aunt Bert. A home is not a place.”
“No, a home is where the people still love you no matter how unlovable you’re acting.”
Her throat closed with emotion, Nic could only nod.
“Do you really think you will find those things for Willa at that fifteen-thousand-dollar-a-year school?”
Sam's truck pulled into the lot and stopped. For an instant he looked up and caught Nics eye. He smiled.
Nic’s heart fluttered.
“Do you think you can find those things for yourself with Willa gone off somewhere else?”
Nic swallowed hard.
Willa bounced on the seat next to Sam. He leaned over to help her out of her safety belt then opened the door for her with the tenderness and care of someone releasing a mended bird back into the wild.
The December air stung deep into Nic's lungs as she held her breath. “Aren't you going to tell me I can't find those things without a husband, Aunt Bert? Without a father for Willa?”
“Me? Meddle like that?” Bert snorted. She settled into the lawn chair slowly, carefully, then looked up with a squint. “Can't imagine where you'd get an idea I'd ever do a thing like that.”
Nic laughed softly. “Yeah, go figure.”
“Get yourself on over here, Reverend,” Bert called out, motioned to Sam to hurry things along. “Nic can't manage things all on her own, you know.”
Before she could chide her aunt, Sam was at her side and Willa had her by the hand. She was outflanked and outnumbered and out and out unsure of what she should do next.
Ten
They had reached the eleventh day of Christmas in the
old carol when the wheels of Sam's truck bumped over the dirt road and into the gravel drive of ‘the Old Dorsey Homestead” as Collier Jack Dorsey liked to call it.
“Eleven la-la, hmm-hmm,” Willa bellowed. She did not let the fact that they'd all forgotten what gifts arrived on what days after five golden rings get in the way of her carrying on with the song.
The Old Dorsey Homestead. Driving up to it, even after the short trip from the Christmas tree lot, gave Nic a feeling no other place on earth could rival. If she had never come back for this last visit, if she'd never agreed to spend one last Christmas here, if she hadn't listened to Aunt Bert, maybe she could have sold the house without so much as a backward glance. But she had done all that and more, and now she knew she could not just let this house go without the input of her sisters. That was a conversation long overdue and it could not wait another minute.
Their feet had not hit the ground before Nic started barking out orders. “Sam, will you go out and check around back in the garden shed for a wash-tub or the like to set that tree in once we get it inside? We need something big enough to hold the root ball but not so big that the tree tips over.”
“Can do.” He gave a little salute.
“And, Willa, honey, you go with him and see if, between the two of you, you can find the dark green, long-necked watering can.” Nic added descriptive hand motions to her request, hoping that would help her child focus on the simple but important task.
“Dark-necked, long green water can.” Though she didn't get the words verbatim, Willa's hand copied her mother's gestures to a tee.
“We'll need that inside, too, so we can reach under the branches to water the tree without knocking decorations off.” Nic looked to Sam as a backup, to make sure he understood what she wanted.
“Not to worry, we won't let you down.”
Of the half dozen or so things she might have replied, all Nic could murmur was a hoarse, “I know.”
Sam extended his hand in her direction.
She braced herself for his touch on her shoulder.
At the last instant he withdrew and tucked both hands in his jeans pockets. “And while we're unearthing the necessities from the darkest recesses of the garden shed, what will you be doing on the Christmas tree prep front?”
“Nothing.”
“Aha!” Sam gave Willa a conspiratorial look. “She gives the orders, but she doesn't carry out the orders, just like a—”
“A benevolent despot?”
“I was going to say like a Dorsey woman but six of one, half a dozen of another.” He grinned.
“Go!” She feigned an authoritative scowl. “And take your time, please. I need to have a talk with my sisters.”
“Big confab on what to do in the house with a live tree?” He hesitated, half turned in the direction of his task, half honed intently in on her.
She set her jaw and squared her shoulders. “Big confab on what to do with the house, period.”
“Oh?” He cocked his head. The morning sun glinted off his thick, truck-ride tousled hair. It added to the feeling of mischief in his single syllable question.
“Don't look smug.” Nic lowered her chin and looked up at him slyly. “I haven't changed my mind about selling it. I just realized I never talked it over properly with Petie and Collier.”
“Then you're right, you should.” He nodded his head. “Personally I value the opportunity to talk things over with people I trust, to get feedback and an honest exchange. It often works wonders to help me see where they are coming from and for them to appreciate my point of view.”
“Point taken, Mr. Obvious.” She held her hands out and stepped back.
He turned her way and smiled, only slightly. “Maybe this evening you and I can finally have that private talk in my office?”
“Maybe.” She retreated backward another step. “But first, I really need to spend time with my sisters. I need their special insight, to seek their guidance.”
Sam raised his gaze skyward and pointed. “You do realize that you should take this—”
“Yes, yes, of course I realize I should take this all to God. Don't think I haven't. But I also need to see eye to eye and come heart-to-heart with the people who will always love me and put up with me no matter what.”
“Always a smart move, but I meant…” He looked up again.
“You know my sisters are my lifeline.” She shut her eyes to dismiss his nagging. “They are both so well grounded and levelheaded. They really care what happens to me and Willa, and they are—”
“On the roof,” he filled in for her with a much calmer tone than a statement like that would usually warrant.
Nic’s eyes flew open. “I beg your pardon?”
Sam pointed upward again. “Your levelheaded, well-grounded sisters are both, at this very moment, climbing out the attic window onto the roof.”
She turned in time to see Collier regain her footing just seconds before she would have gone sliding on her backside down the steep pitch of the gabled roof.
“Those blockheads!” Nic threw her hands up, not sure whether to run towards them or away. Far, far away.
“So much for wise and caring advisors to the headstrong, dominant Dorsey daughter.” Sam chuckled.
Petie flicked a string of Christmas lights trailing out of the window high in the air to hook over the weather vane on the very top of the single attic dormer.
“I'd cook up a scathing rejoinder to that, Sam, but I haven't got the time right now. This benevolent despot has got to go knock some sense into her beloved su
bjects.”
“What are you thinking crawling out onto the roof when both Sam and I are gone?” Nic climbed out the window without a moment's hesitation to confront her foolhardy sisters. “What if you had fallen off and broken your silly necks? Who would you have come running to for help then?”
“If we broke our silly necks, we wouldn't come running to anyone, least of all you.” Petie jabbed Nic in the shoulder with one perfectly manicured fingernail, then plunked a bundle of tiny lights into her hands. “Now either make yourself useful or go back inside.”
“I am making myself useful. I'm trying to keep you two from...” She inched along behind her older sister as Collier draped lights down the side of the dormer in no particular pattern. Nic stood back, frowned, then reached up to slip the green wire into the tiny hooks their father had put up two decades ago to hold the lights in place. “I am trying to keep you two from hurtling yourselves off the roof and crashing into Mama's rosebushes. Do you know how long it took her to get those filled in like that? One careless misstep by you two and splat, years of good gardening squashed.”
“We're not going to fall anywhere.” Petie guided the heavy strand of larger ceramic lights into place outlining the front eaves of the house. “And if we do that's our problem, not yours.”
“Oh, sure, like I wouldn't be the one stuck with the messy cleanup detail.” She pointed to a spot her younger sister had missed, causing the string of lights to droop.
“Your concern is too touching.” Collier took the last of the small lights from Nic's hands and squeezed past her. “But if the only reason you came out on this roof was to nag us...”
“Will you listen to what you're saying? What are you two doing out here anyway?”
“Irish step dancing.” Petie didn't even look her way. “What does it look like we're doing?”
“Petie and I decided that if this was our last ever Christmas in this house, we wanted to do it up right. We haven't hung the lights on the roof since Daddy died. It just seemed the right thing to do this final time.”
