by Foxglove Lee
Sylvie and the Christmas Ghost © 2014 by Foxglove Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design © 2014 Foxglove Lee
First Edition December 2014
Sylvie and the Christmas Ghost
By Foxglove Lee
Chapter One
When I turned to see if the bus was coming, my mom wrapped my scarf tighter around my neck. “Zip up your coat, Sylvie. You’ll catch your death.”
Rolling my eyes, I said, “I’ve got a huge sweater on underneath. Besides, it isn’t very cold for December.”
I don’t know why my mother insisted on waiting with me on the bus platform. If anyone heading to Erinville for the holidays wanted to stab me with a fork, wouldn’t they wait until I was alone on the bus? Not that I would suggest such a thing to my mom. She was concerned enough about letting me travel on my own.
“Where’s your ticket?” she asked.
I held it up, valid one day only: December 21, 1994.
“And where do you sit?” Pop quiz!
“Up front, near the driver.”
“And if anybody makes you uncomfortable, be sure to report them.”
Groan! “Mom, we went over this already.”
“I know, Sylvie, but I worry about you.”
“I’m fourteen years old. I can take care of myself.”
My mom looked at me in a sappy way that meant she was about to cry. I hated it when my mom cried, and ever since she and my dad started their whole “trial separation” thing, she’d been doing a lot of it. Not in front of us kids, of course. She always put on a strong front. But even if she was downstairs and we were up in our rooms, we could still hear her.
“Graham and Alley are getting restless,” I told my mom, and pointed at my two younger siblings pummeling each other in the back of our station wagon. “You don’t have to wait with me. I’ll be fine. Really.”
The waterworks came on like a storm. My mom wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight. “You’ve never spent Christmas away from home. I’ll miss you so much. You know that, right?”
Her tears fell hot on my head. I hadn’t worn a hat, so I felt them seeping through my hair and wetting my scalp. “I’ll miss you too, but I’m sure Dad’ll miss Graham and Naomi and Douglas and Alley just as much as you’ll miss me.”
My mom brushed my bangs from my eyes. “You see? That’s what I’ll miss most: you’re always thinking about others, putting their needs above your own. Most kids your age can’t manage that.”
She said the exact opposite on nights when I refused to dry the dishes because there was a new Simpsons on TV. But moms were like that. At any given moment, they could either adore their kids or despise them. No mother could look at her children and see just normal, average individuals. My siblings and I were special or we were trouble, but never anything in between.
When the bus pulled up, a woman in uniform stepped out to open the luggage hatch. My mom smiled with relief. If the driver was a woman, I’d be taken care of. That was my mother’s way of thinking.
“Be safe,” my mom said as the driver heaved people’s suitcases into the luggage compartment. “Call home to let me know you arrived in one piece.”
“But Dad’s doesn’t have a phone yet.”
“Call from a payphone.” My mom placed a few quarters in my gloved hand and snickered. “Assuming they’ve got one in Erinville.”
“I’m sure they must have one,” I said, going along with her joke.
The driver took my case and shoved it in with all the rest. My mom thanked the woman, then gave me a final once-over. When I took a step back, she must have noticed I didn’t lift my foot properly, because she asked, “You’re not wearing your leg brace, are you?”
“I packed it,” I said. “It doesn’t fit right under these boots.”
She gave me the squinty eyes. “Are you sure you packed it?”
“Come on, Mom. Would I lie to you?” Yes. Yes I would. And I’m lying right now, because my leg brace is under my bed and if you go looking for it I’ll get super-mad that you were snooping around my room.
“It’s in your suitcase?” my mom asked suspiciously.
“Yes.” Nope.
“You definitely packed it?”
“Definitely.” Under my bed.
“And you’re going to wear it?”
“Every day.” Lies, all lies!
My mom’s eyebrows did that thing where they looked like two caterpillars falling into a martini glass. “I’ll check with your father, you know.”
Sure you will. “Ask away. If his house is being renovated, why would I go around in bare feet? I’d probably step on a nail and have to go to the hospital for a tetanus shot.”
My mom smiled when I said that. She was obsessed with tetanus shots. Every time my siblings and I even looked at something rusty, she would lecture us about blood poisoning.
But what she said was, “I don’t think they have a hospital in Erinville.”
“Not even one?”
Mom shook her head.
“How can they not have a hospital?”
“It’s just a small town, honey.”
In my best small-town accent, I said, “Everybody knows everybody. Nobody locks the door.”
“You laugh, but you’ll soon find out.” Ruffling my hair, my mom said, “Wish your father a Merry Christmas.”
When she hugged me again, I almost cried. Not because we were saying goodbye for a week, but because it was rare that my mom showed she cared about my dad anymore. Not that she went around bad-mouthing him. Neither of my parents said anything negative about the other—that was a pact they’d made that they thought we didn’t know about.
But just the fact that my mom would tell me to wish my dad a Merry Christmas showed she still had feelings for him, didn’t it? My one and only wish was for them to proclaim the trial separation a big failure. Maybe by the end of the holidays they’d get back together.
Anything was possible…
Chapter Two
Erinville didn’t have a bus depot, just a pole by the side of the road with a picture of a bus on it. There were only two people waiting by the pole, and one smiled brightly when he saw me. I hadn’t seen a smile like that on my dad’s face since way before the separation.
He offered me his hand as I got off the bus and said, “Be careful with the step. Are you okay getting down? Are you wearing your brace?”
“You sound just like Mom.” Normally I didn’t let anybody help me, but I put my gloved hand in my father’s. The step was way higher than it needed to be.
“How’s my middle child?” he asked eagerly. “How was the trip? How was traffic? How were the roads?”
I smiled so hard my jaw hurt. I hadn’t seen my dad since he’d started his renovation project, and it felt like a million years ago.
“Roads were fine. Traffic was fine. Trip was fine.” I stepped away from the door so the lady standing at the bus stop could board, but she just stood there grinning at me. “Mom said to tell you Merry Christmas.”
My father’s smile faltered for a moment, then he cleared his throat. “That’s nice.”
The driver opened the luggage compartment. “Is this your suitcase? The one with the flowers?”
“Yeah, that’s mine.”
“Say thank
you, Sylvie,” my father said, quietly.
“Thanks,” I grumbled, not because I had anything against the driver but because I felt like my dad was treating me like a little kid. That always bugged me.
The driver wished us a Merry Christmas and then climbed into the bus, rubbing her arms. She was only wearing short sleeves and no coat, and she closed the doors right away. For a second I thought maybe I should knock because the lady waiting at the stop still hadn’t gotten on. When the bus drove off and the smiling lady didn’t say anything, I got a bit confused.
“I like your coat,” my dad said. “Didn’t that used to be Naomi’s?”
“Obviously.” I wasn’t sure why I was being rude to him. I didn’t mean to be. “All my clothes used to be Naomi’s.”
The strange lady nodded, and not just her head. She nodded her whole body, almost like she was bowing. “Big family. I get it. I have a lot of brothers and sisters, just like you. I think the whole reason I’m so into fashion now is because I never got new clothes until I had my first part-time job.”
I hadn’t looked at the lady in detail before she started talking to me. She had that sort of face where I couldn’t tell if she was young or old. Was she twenty? Was she forty? Her outfit didn’t help. Her coat was more like a cloak, like the kind women wore in the olden days. She had unnaturally red hair, which was cut in a bob, and she wore a Blossom hat, which was too summery for winter. Her boots were pointy, like witch shoes, but they were red, just like her wool skirt, so at least she matched.
“Sylvie,” my dad said. “I forgot to introduce you. This is Amy. She’s the architect who’s redesigning my house.”
Instead of saying, “Hi! Nice to meet you!” like a normal person, I looked at my dad and said, “I thought your house was already built and you were just renovating it. What’s an architect for?”
He chuckled nervously and glanced at Amy. “Well, it’s a very old house. Neglected houses tend to fall into disrepair. It nearly needed to be gutted, and—”
“That’s when it’s useful to have an architect plan out the space,” Amy added. Holding out a shiny gold gift bag, she said, “I almost forgot, I bought you a little Welcome to Erinville present. Hope you like it.”
Why was my father’s architect buying me gifts? Weird. I pushed the tissue paper aside and pulled out a pair of knee-highs with reindeer all over them.
Looking at Amy the Architect, I asked, “Christmas socks?”
“Yeah,” she replied, seeming eager to please. “Do you like them? I thought they were sort of fun. And your dad told me about your… disability, so I thought I’d—”
“Draw attention to it?”
“Sylvie!” my father scolded. “Say thank you to Amy right this second.” Looking at his architect, he said, “Christmas socks were a very thoughtful gift.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I was being mean to her. She’d given me a gift for no reason. I should have been grateful. “I do like Christmas socks, and I don’t have any with reindeer on them.”
“There you go,” my dad said, tapping me gently on the shoulder. “This is good. We’re all getting along.”
He seemed to really want me to like this architect woman, so I conceded. “It’s cool that they’re knee socks. They’ll be warm for winter.”
My father said, “When I told Amy about your brace, she was concerned the plastic might cut into your skin. That’s why she bought you the high ones. Wasn’t that thoughtful?”
“Yeah.” It actually was really thoughtful, and my brace did cut into my leg if I wore short socks… if I wore the brace at all, which I tried not to as much as possible. It still bugged me that my dad talked to some stranger about my leg, which is why I didn’t say anything more.
After a moment of awkward silence, my dad said, “Amy’s offered to drive us back to the house so we won’t have to lug your suitcase through the snow. Wasn’t that nice of her?”
“I guess.”
She pointed to her car, which was parked across the street. It was bright red, just like her boots, and a lot newer and nicer than my dad’s sedan or my mom’s station wagon. Still, it seemed weird that this random lady was driving us home.
I asked my dad, “Where’s your car?”
“Oh. Your mom didn’t tell you?” He seemed flustered, and he loosened his scarf. I’d never seen my dad in a scarf before, come to think of it.
“Mom didn’t tell me what?”
He looked at Amy the Architect as we crossed the street. Then he said, “I sold the car. It was old anyway. I’ll buy a new one when the renovations are done. Then I’ll be able to visit you in the city. That’ll be good, huh?”
Amy opened the trunk so my dad could put my suitcase inside. I stood by the back door, not really knowing what to say. I probably shouldn’t have asked, “Are you poor now?”
Dad closed the trunk, chuckling in that way he did when he didn’t want to talk about something. “No, no. Money’s just tied up in the house.”
Amy leaned in close to my dad and whispered, “Not to mention alimony and child support.”
She obviously didn’t mean for me to hear that, but it made me feel awful. Did my dad have to sell his car because of us?
Unlocking the passenger side, Amy said, “Here, Sylvie. You can sit up front with me. It’ll be easier on your leg.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my leg,” I snapped, like I couldn’t control myself. “I’ll sit in the back.”
“Sylvie!” Dad said. “Apologize.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s okay.” Amy reached around to unlock the back door. “It’s my fault. I’m being insensitive.”
“No you’re not,” my father told her. “My daughter is being rude.”
I felt guilty but also angry and I didn’t know why. When I looked down at the shiny gift bag, the guilt took over. I was acting like a little kid.
Amy walked around to the driver’s side. She must have noticed me standing there, because she whispered across the car, “Does she need help getting in?”
Did she think I couldn’t hear her?
“I don’t need help doing anything,” I said, and threw myself into her car.
Amy the Architect apologized, even though my dad told her not to. He told her I was being deliberately disrespectful, which I really couldn’t be mad about. It was true. I was.
The back seat of Amy’s car was much cleaner than our station wagon. There was an emergency kit under the driver’s seat and a leather briefcase on the seat, but no gum stuck to the upholstery or tissues crammed anywhere or chip bags or chocolate wrappers. Obviously Amy the Architect didn’t have five kids. She probably didn’t even have one.
“Are you married?” I asked her, even though I knew it was a rude question.
She stuck the key in the ignition and held it there, like she was afraid it would fall out.
“Sylvie,” Dad growled.
Amy the Architect didn’t answer my question, which made me feel like I’d won some weird kind of battle.
Nobody said much for a while. Erinville seemed vaguely familiar, like the kind of place you’ve seen in a dream. My father grew up in this town. When I was a really little kid we used to visit my great-aunt in a retirement home. That’s one reason my dad decided to move here: to be closer to her.
Dad pointed out how busy the main street was. Busy with city slickers, Amy said, because the weather was mild. Erinville had a store that sold only Christmas stuff. It was open year-round, but it was especially popular in December.
All the lampposts along the main street looked like they came from the olden days. They weren’t giant wooden poles like we had in the city. These ones were fancy and black and not too tall, and the lights on them looked like old-timey lanterns.
Everything was strung up with pine boughs and red velvet ribbons, and all the stores and houses had their Christmas lights on even though it was only two in the afternoon. It was like driving through a Christmas v
illage.
When we passed a place with a Cut Your Own Tree sign, I asked my dad, “Is that where we used to get our trees when I was little?”
My dad turned around and smiled. “You remember that? You must have been only… oh, I don’t know. Four? Five?”
“I remember.” It was like a winter wonderland, something you couldn’t experience in the city.
“If you want to cut down a tree we certainly can, but we’ll get it from our own property. This new house has a huge back lot.”
“A forest,” Amy said, speaking up for the first time since I’d been mean to her earlier. “It’s beautiful. It’s gigantic.”
I wondered how my father could afford a beautiful, gigantic property when he couldn’t afford a car, but I’d heard houses were a lot less expensive in small towns than in the city. Maybe he got the place for cheap.
That’s what I thought until Amy pulled up in front of a mansion and said, “Home sweet home!”
“Whose home-sweet-home?”
“Your dad’s,” Amy told me.
I couldn’t believe it. The place was like something from a movie—one of those movies where a regular family inherits their rich relative’s every earthly possession if they stay overnight in a haunted house.
But the house itself wasn’t the weirdest thing about the property. The weirdest thing was the people sitting in lawn chairs outside the house. It reminded me of a movie director and film crew. All they needed was one of those giant cameras.
What they had instead was a garbage can with a fire burning in it. And a barbeque.
“Are there gonna be fireworks or something?” I asked as my dad opened his door. “What’s with the crowd?”
My dad and Amy the Architect both breathed in and breathed out simultaneously. Then my dad turned halfway and said, “Erinville is a small town and people in small towns are very… curious… about newcomers. They’re just watching to see what we’re doing with the house.”
“That’s weird,” I said. “Why do they care so much?”
