by Lisa Wingate
“I’ve never been to Wisconsin.”
“You should check it out sometime.” His slow, easy smile makes the words sound like an invitation. “Pretty country.” Those deep blue eyes are almost charcoal in this light. They find mine, and seem to both ask and answer questions.
“I might.” What is happening to me?
“Industrial engineering,” he offers.
“Huh?”
“You looked like you were going to ask what I was studying.”
“Oh… mmm-hmm. Yes. I was.” Thank heaven he’s completely clueless. Or maybe he’s just trying to take it easy on me. Maybe he can tell that I’m so messed up, I spend my time chasing after a ghost.
“I like it. I gained a pretty good grasp of big machines in the army. The college offers a hands-on kind of degree plan. I’m not a desk-sitter.”
And he doesn’t look like one, either. “I kind of guessed that.”
A car door shuts in the parking lot and an engine starts. Both of us look toward it, reminded that there’s an outside world and sooner or later it’ll show up in here.
“Hey, listen,” he says after the car drives away. “If you and the little corker here haven’t got anywhere to go tomorrow, we’ll have a big shindig at Aunt Sandy’s house…” He offers up what is now my second invitation to their Christmas festivities.
Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s exactly the sign you’ve been asking for. “I’ll think about that, thanks.” Because I don’t want him to feel bad if tomorrow is just another day, I add, “Micah and I haven’t really been celebrating Christmas. It’s just… hard.”
Those blue eyes study me for what seems like forever. What’s going through his mind? “I get it,” he says finally. “Just know the invitation’s open.” He moves forward on his makeshift seat, and I realize he’s getting ready to stand up. A little note of alarm sounds in my head. What if I’m blowing this and I shouldn’t be?
He pauses, then. “Or if you want to… just take a walk on the beach with somebody and talk, or go for a drive. No strings. Just seems like a brother’s family shouldn’t be alone on Christmas.” By brother, he means Aaron, a brother-in-arms. The homage is so incredibly kind and decent, it gives me that tender, slightly teary feeling, but in a good way. The best way.
Jason leans closer and sticks out his hand, and for a minute I think he wants me to shake on it. The confusion must show, because he chuckles. “Jason,” he says. “I guess I should introduce myself.”
“Tiff.” I place my hand in his, his skin warm against mine.
“Yeah, I know. Aunt Sandy told me.”
“She told me, too. I knew your name.”
He doubles forward, shaking his head, and when he comes up again, his smile is dazzling, but it isn’t what catches my eye. Instead, I’m transfixed by something that has slipped from the neck of his T-shirt. It dangles in the dim light, swinging back and forth on what looks like a shortened dog tag chain. The pattern of three stars and a wheat sprig is barely visible along its silver surface. I gasp, slap a hand over its twin, hidden beneath my jacket. The ring on Jason’s chain is smaller, but other than that, they’re the same – each made from silver 2 Afghanis coins.
He’ll grow into it. I want him to know where I met his mom. In my mind, Aaron holds the ring close to the webcam, turning it in his fingers so that I can see it via Skype. First Christmas present from Dad, he says.
“What?” Jason sits upright, glances behind himself. I must look like I’ve seen a ghost.
My lips hang voiceless, and all I can do is point to the ring, at first. That’s what Micah was digging for while he was on Santa’s lap. He’d spotted it under the costume. Finally, a few words struggle out. “That… the ring… where?”
Jason grabs the chain, lifts the ring and cranes to look at it. “Found it on the floor of a LAMS in Arifjan. I looked down, and there it was next to some parts. I don’t know, I just picked it up and… kept it all this time.” His face narrows with obvious concern. “Why?”
My body feels numb, as if I’m watching the scene, rather than living it. I slip a hand inside my collar, feel the chill of my own fingers against the warmth there as I hook the chain and pull it out, let the ring dangle between us.
Jason blinks, blinks again. “Wha…” The ring looks tiny in his palm as he studies it, then unhooks his and holds the two together. They match perfectly, but one is smaller than the other. “Well, look at that.”
Moments pass before I can manage the words to tell Jason the rest of the story. “Aaron made mine. It never fit, so I just kept it on a chain. He made one for Micah, too, but he never got home with it.”
Jason’s fingers finally close in a fist over his ring and chain. Mine lands against the zipper on my coat, chiming like a tiny bell as Jason presses the fist to his lips, breathes over it as if someone has knocked the air from him. He slowly shakes his head. “How in the world…”
But, I know how. I know it with every scrap of my soul. Something remarkable has happened in my small, mixed-up, broken life. Something that will divide all the days before from the days to come after.
A miracle has taken place.
What else could explain the journey of this tiny bit of metal from a world away… from the desert to this shed by the sea, with this stranger, this brother-in-arms?
I look beyond Jason to the manger, where the infant Christ lies silent in his manger bed. His presence explains everything.
This is a night of miracles.
This is the night of hope reborn.
Ready for more of Sandy’s Seashell Shop?
Check out more of Lisa Wingate’s Carolina stories!
The Sea Glass Sisters
(Novella, Carolina #1)
Lisa Wingate
Sometimes when sisters disagree, the only way out is through the storm….
Back home in Michigan, the family has decided it’s time for Seashell Sandy to retire and move away from her little store on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. But when a hurricane swamps Sandy’s Seashell Shop, will Sandy’s family and her sister, Sharon, pitch in to help save Sandy’s dream?
Available in Kindle.
The Prayer Box
(Novel, Carolina #2)
A young woman, an old woman, the story of a lifetime….
Running from a devastating relationship, Tandi Reese must clean out an old house on Hatteras Island to pay the bills. What she finds inside will change her forever. Hidden within eighty-one prayer boxes, the story of a lifetime awaits.
Available in trade paperback, hardcover, and Kindle.
The Tidewater Sisters
(Novella, Carolina #3)
Lisa Wingate
When sisters keep secrets, the aftermath can be devastating….
Tandi Reese’s Outer Banks wedding is right around the corner, but then her sister, Gina, does the unthinkable. To salvage her life and her wedding, Tandi must return to the old family farm in Carolina tidewater and uncover a dark family secret.
Available in Kindle.
The Story Keeper
(Novel, Carolina #4)
Lisa Wingate
"Not since To Kill a Mockingbird has a story impacted me like this." -- COLLEEN COBLE, USA Today bestselling author of Seagrass Pier
When New York editor, Jen Gibbs, discovers a mysterious manuscript on an old slush pile, she finds herself drawn to the heart of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains to search for the manuscript’s mysterious author. There, she unearths clues to a hidden family heritage and an age-old coastal Carolina mystery.
Available in trade paperback, hardcover, and Kindle.
The Sandcastle Sister
(Novella, Carolina #5)
Lisa Wingate
Coming July 2015
When the past is a tangled web of secrets and manipulation, can the future be changed?
Editor, Jen Gibbs, is hopelessly in love with her publishing company’s prize author and hopelessly afraid of the relationship. In Jen’s family, marriag
e represents the death of every dream a woman holds for herself. But will the discovery of a sister Jen has never known change everything she’s always believed about herself?
The Sea Keeper’s Daughters
(Novel, Carolina #6)
Lisa Wingate
Coming September 2015
Restaurant owner, Whitney Monroe, is desperate to save her business from a hostile takeover. The inheritance of an old hotel building on North Carolina’s Outer Banks may provide just the ray of hope she needs. But things on Roanoke Island are more complicated than they seem. Whitney’s estranged stepfather still lives on the third floor, and the downstairs tenants are determined to save the historic building. Searching through years of stored family heirlooms may be Whitney’s only hope, but will everything change when she discovers the depression-era love story of a great aunt she’s never heard of?
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