Dear Santa

by Nancy Naigle

  Jeremy pushed his hair behind his ear. “Know where the key is to this thing?”

  “Is it locked?” Angela walked over and tried the door herself. “I always wondered why there was a key lock on this thing. Never did make sense to me.”

  “A massive rush of cookie thieves could come in,” Jeremy teased with a laugh.

  “Let me check the office.” Angela swerved around the counter and went back into the office. Momma Grace had spent countless hours in here.

  The old desk was chipped and worn along the front edge, probably from the charm bracelet she always wore. It was kind of Momma Grace’s signature. You could hear her coming down the hall, like a cat wearing a bell.

  Angela shuffled through the random clips and ink pens in the top drawer. All the keys there were labeled.

  Tugging open the file drawer, she flipped through the old manila folders. Warranty cards for things that were as old as she was were still filed there. One of these days she’d have to clean this mess out.

  A folder labeled SWEET STUFF caught her attention. Right inside it was the manual for the cookie warmer, with the original receipt taped to it along with the key.

  “Found it,” she called out. As she leaned over to shove the folder back into the drawer a red envelope fell to the floor. She picked it up, then paused. The familiar block print read, DEAR SANTA.

  She sat back in the chair and laid the folder on the desk. Turning the envelope over in her hands, she saw the words “Angela, Age 6” written in cursive in Momma Grace’s handwriting under DEAR SANTA.

  Angela slid the notepaper out of the envelope.

  Dear Santa,

  My sister is sad. Mommy went to heaven. Daddy took us to the beach to see Momma Grace and PawPaw, but he left and never came back. Marie says he went to heaven too, but I heard PawPaw talking to him on the phone. I think he’s coming back. Please bring Daddy home for Christmas, and bring me a sno-cone machine with cherry flavor. It’s my sister’s favorite. It makes her smile.

  I’ve been very good helping Momma Grace work in the Christmas shop.

  Angela

  Angela still remembered writing the letter. She’d hated Santa for ignoring her. Opening the folder, among the booklets and receipts there were two more envelopes tucked inside.

  Angela, Age 7

  Dear Santa,

  Momma was really sick and went to heaven. I miss her. For Christmas can you tell her that I miss her?

  Marie and I can share presents if you get something for Dad. Momma always helped us buy him T-shirts for Christmas. We don’t know where he is, but I think he would like a present from us, and maybe he’d come home.

  Thank you,

  Angela

  Angela, Age 8

  Dear Santa,

  My name is Angela. I’m writing to remind you that my sister and I have been really good. Momma Grace and PawPaw said so. We are staying here until my daddy comes back to get us. He’s been gone a very long time.

  I’ve been asking and asking for your help. Can you please bring Daddy to our house for Christmas?

  I want my own step stool so I can help Momma Grace at the store. Blue is my favorite color. I don’t need any presents if you’ll just bring Daddy back.

  Pretty please,

  Angela

  Angela clutched her heart. Momma Grace had kept these letters all of these years. Angela had been so disenchanted with Santa after this. She did get a blue step stool that Christmas, but that had been like getting second place.

  Daddy never did call or come back for them.

  She closed her eyes, tipping her chin toward the lighthouse tower. “I’m so sorry I’m letting you down, Momma Grace. I can’t believe I might have to close this store. You were always, always there for me.” She took in a deep breath. “If there’s anything you can do from up there as an angel, I sure could use your help now.”

  She opened her eyes. Through misty tears the festive twinkle lights looked more like rain against the fogged glass window of the office door. The soft holiday music filled the air and her heart. How she wished she could turn back time.

  This place was as much her home as was the beach house. Not only did she spend more time here than there, but her family was in every part of this store. Her grandfather had built the wooden displays, and Momma Grace had taught her the business from the time Angela was old enough to say “Welcome” and “Thank you for shopping with us” to customers.

  She’d never imagined that it would end one day.

  Feeling adrift, she forced herself to get up and get back on the sales floor.

  Once Angela got the warming box open, Stephanie transferred the cookies to it from the huge pot.

  The four of them worked quickly, transforming the store for the official start of the Christmas holiday. It was tradition that Heart of Christmas look extra-special starting the day after Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day.

  It was no easy task Christmas-ing up a Christmas store! But they had some decorations that came out only in December.

  And today the area behind the building that they’d once used as a live-tree lot would open as Snow Valley. With so many of the local clubs and churches selling trees it hadn’t been practical to sell them at the store anymore, so Angela had worked a trade with an old friend who owned a ski lodge in the mountains for use of his snow machine for the weeks prior to Christmas Eve, rather than leave the space empty.

  For the past three weeks, her team had worked tirelessly decorating Snow Valley. It had taken shape, a wintery village complete with a different-themed live Christmas tree in each corner. Jeremy had crafted fresh wreaths out of the trimmings from the trees to adorn the backs of the benches scattered throughout.

  Now families could play together in frigid temperatures for an hour or two then warm back up inside the store. Angela had hoped and prayed these tweaks would breathe new life into the store.

  It was her last hope.

  Jeremy exploded through the Snow Valley entrance. “Are you ready for this?” He pulled a snowball from behind his back and raised it in the air.

  “Are we ready?” Angela exclaimed. His excitement was contagious. “We’re dying to experience the finished product.”

  “Come see!” Jeremy waved them out into the big-tented area.

  Emma grabbed Angela’s hand, and Stephanie ran ahead and held the door so Jeremy could go in first.

  When the girls walked inside the tent, soft snow floated around them to the ground.

  “It’s so real,” Angela said. She’d had high hopes, but this truly looked like the real thing.

  A snowball flew by her arm and landed square between the slats of one of the benches.

  “Perfect!” Emma exclaimed, then squatted down and packed a snowball of her own, throwing it at Jeremy and landing it right in his chest. “Gotcha.”

  Jeremy had made the snow in the perfect ratio of powdery to wet for a good snowball. He’d turned out to be a genius when it came to making snow. Who knew a beach guy who’d only seen snow a handful of times could be so good at making it? Unlike most guys, he’d even read the directions.

  “Do you know the last snow that we had on Black Friday in Pleasant Sands was in 1941?” Angela asked.

  “No,” all three of her employees said at once.

  “Well, it was, and it was a big one. A whopping three inches. One of the biggest snowstorms on our beach ever.”

  She saw the three of them exchange a glance. They teased her all the time about knowing so much trivia about the town. Whatever. Strangers enjoyed it, and so did she.

  “People are going to love this snow,” Jeremy said.

  Emma smacked him in the leg with another snowball. “I already do!”

  “Careful, Emma,” Jeremy said. “I’m a good shot. Don’t start something you don’t want to really be a part of.”

  Emma laughed nervously, wiping her hands on her Mrs. Claus apron. “Sorry. You’re right. I don’t like it when I get hit.” She turned to Angela. �
�My brothers were relentless. This is nothing compared to the snows we had back home in Pennsylvania, but it really is like real snow.”

  Angela lifted her hand and crossed her fingers. “Here’s hoping it’s a hit.”

  “It’s new. That has to be good, right?” Emma said.

  “I guess. I mean, we’ve always counted on keeping things the same. That’s just not working anymore.” Angela’s great-great-grandmother had started selling handcrafted ornaments from the store to earn enough money to make ends meet. The first ornaments ever sold were made from the excessive inventory of wicks stored from the old days when oil lamps were an important part of how lighthouses lit the sky as a navigational aid, and for this one in particular, to warn ships of the rocks off the coast. Great-grandma braided, wove and painted wicks into beautiful stars, and people loved them so much the store quickly became the place to visit.

  It wasn’t until Momma Grace was a little girl that she and her mom, Great-grandma Mackey, started making the holiday mason jar oil lamps that the store was known for now.

  The first year, the town of Pleasant Sands bought two hundred of them to dress up every store window on Main Street. That went on for years. The oil lamps were so pretty, but of course nowadays everyone used electric lights.

  Monday night the outline of every building would be lit with white lights. Not much work for Angela since she kept hers that way year-round, a bonus of being in the Christmas business.

  “Are we ready?” she asked the team.

  “The biggest retail day of the year,” Emma said.

  “I need the biggest sales day in this store’s history,” she said. In the past they’d done very little in the way of promotion for the holiday, and always fared well. This year, she’d broken down and advertised specials and the Black Friday grand opening of Snow Valley in the paper.

  To keep to the old tradition of family focus, Angela had decided to make the attraction free. One area had been fenced off for a snow castle competition. People could come in during store hours to work on them all month long, and the winner would receive a trophy and a hand-carved nativity worth over five hundred dollars.

  “I think we’re ready, team.” Angela walked over to the register and checked the money drawer and credit card machine. Brightly colored stacks of tissue paper to protect the fragile ornaments were stacked next to the shopping bags with the store’s gold lighthouse logo on them. Everything was ready to go.

  “Ten more minutes,” Emma announced. “And I just looked out front. There are at least twenty cars out there waiting.”

  “A good sign.” Angela’s stomach did a flip. She opened the top of the cookie warmer and let the sugary-sweet smell from the cookies fill the room.

  “Our secret weapon,” Emma said with wink.

  A girl could hope.

  “Let’s go ahead and open. No sense making people sit in their cars on such a pretty day.”

  Chapter Nine

  Dear Santa,

  I’m so excited for you to come see me and my sisters!! I am 4 years old, and I can’t write yet, so my sister Sara is writing this. Sara says she wants a bike for Christmas. I would really like a Barbie house and car. Playing with Barbies is my most favorite thing!

  I love you Santa!!

  Aimee

  Normally Geoff parked in the back employee lot at Christmas Galore and took that entrance up to his office, but today he came right in the front door with the customers because there really was nothing like the buzz of Black Friday shoppers.

  “Pardon me.” He sidestepped a woman carrying a pile of striped beach towels at least ten high. Then skipped aisle four, usually his shortcut, due to the number of shoppers blocking it, only to help another customer negotiate an air fryer from a top shelf to her basket. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Thank you for your help. Isn’t this the best store around?”

  “I like to think so,” he said with a smile. She had no idea it was his store. That made it all that much more of a compliment.

  He made one sweep across the row of registers to make sure everything was moving along. Pleased with the number of customers, and how quickly his employees were taking care of them, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  On his way to the elevator that led to the offices, someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Nine-thirty? Really?” Chandler gave him one of those what-the-heck looks, head cocked.

  “My schedule is not up for discussion with you.”

  “True,” Chandler said with a touch of humility, “but I’ve never known you to come in this late. Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Everything’s good.”

  “Good for you. Me? Not so fine, thanks to those doggone sno-cones,” Chandler said. “The floors are already sticky.”

  “Well, those sno-cones are our signature.”

  “I know. I know. But those sno-cones are a disaster when we have this many customers at one time.”

  “Be thankful for that. All those customers contribute to your bonus, if you recall.”

  Chandler pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Trust me. I do. Right now our sales are twenty-one percent over any other location’s. And since we didn’t mark down the beach stuff, we’re seeing a spike in profit in that department that we’ve never seen this time of year.”

  Geoff wasn’t surprised. “Told you it would work.”

  “Doesn’t hurt that we don’t have any competition in this town,” Chandler said. “In every other beach town there’s been at least one other place with beach stuff on sale over the holidays, but not here. All these beach shops are seasonal. Shuttered up. The only competition is that little Christmas store, but their price points put them in a whole other bracket. Not our demographic at all.”

  “The shop in the lighthouse, right?” Geoff remembered it from their original location reports.

  “Yes. It’s been in their family for years. Mostly high-dollar decorations, and one-of-a-kind holiday gifts with a focus on family and tradition. Heirloom stuff. Totally different kind of store from us.”

  “Good,” Geoff said. “I’d hate to be responsible for making their little landmark store have to close its doors.” Geoff held a sincere pose, but only for a half a second. “Okay, that’s a big fat lie.”

  “Don’t let Santa hear you. You’ll get coal in your stocking,” Chandler said.

  “Doubtful,” Geoff said. “I just saw the inventory alert that we’re almost out of bags of coal. Row seventeen, bin twenty-two.”

  “That stuff is flying off the shelves. What we’re not selling is the personalized ornaments. What’s with that? We always sell out of those. Tess is down there doodling on cardboard boxes waiting for a customer.”

  Geoff’s brows knit closer. “That’s usually one of our most active areas. What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Chandler said. “I told the team in the last huddle to recommend the personalized ornaments as keepsakes to steer folks toward them. Maybe they’re just not seeing them.”

  “Push the ones with this year already printed on them. We don’t want to get stuck with those ornaments. Once they’re out of date you can’t give them away no matter how cool they are.” He wasn’t telling Chandler anything he didn’t already know.

  “I hear ya.” Chandler turned toward the door. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”

  “I know you do. I’m headed upstairs.”

  “Hey, are you feeling okay today?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” Distracted is what he was. Ever since he saw that girl at the coffee shop.

  “You know I’ve got this place under control. If you’re not feeling okay you don’t have to stick around.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, Chandler. I know.” He didn’t need to be here, but working was his favorite pastime. “I’m not sick.”

  “You just seem off.”

  “I’m fine.” He caught himself sounding short-tempered.

  “Whatever you say.” Chandler put his hands up and backed off. “Not
to poke the bear, but you’ve been a little off ever since you got your mind wrapped around that girl you saw.”

  They’d been working together a long time. Chandler knew him pretty well. “Thought I saw her again last night too.”

  “Then she’s in town. You’re bound to run across her soon. It’s not that big of a place.”

  He had a point. Geoff turned and went upstairs to his office. He closed the door behind him and walked over to the mirrored window that gave him a complete view of the store. Shoppers filled every single aisle. Business was good.

  He turned to his computer and flagged the annual ornaments. He’d rather break even and get rid of them then get stuck with them. Easy enough. He reduced the price, and sent the sale stickers down to the printer on the floor. The team would take action on them immediately.

  Virgil poked his head in the door. “I was looking for your mother.”

  “She’s doing something with some women she met on the Pleasant Sands Christmas Giving Project committee today. She’s consumed with that stuff all of the sudden.”

  “Not surprised.” Virgil crossed one leg over the other, leaning against the doorjamb.

  “Really? I am. She’s never gotten involved like this in any of the other towns we’ve opened in.”

  “Pleasant Sands is different.” Virgil ran a hand through his mop of thick gray hair. “Always has been.”

  Geoff closed the top of his laptop and looked up at Virgil. “Always?”

  “You know your mom and I met here.”

  “In Pleasant Sands?”

  “Yep. Like a hundred years ago,” he said with a snicker. “Or forty. Whatever.”

  “She never said a thing.” Geoff thought back to how his mother had fought for this specific location. “That explains her tenacity to open a store here even though it didn’t fit our business model. The population in Pleasant Sands is way below our target market, and the average income much higher. We had better options.”

  “She had her reasons.”

  “I wish she’d shared them.” He sat back in his chair. “Is she getting sentimental in her old age?”