The Christmas Secret

The
Christmas
Secret

 

 

 

ALSO BY DONNA VANLIERE

Finding Grace

The Christmas Promise

The Angels of Morgan Hill

The Christmas Shoes

The Christmas Blessing

The Christmas Hope

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
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CONTENTS

TITLE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

EPILOGUE

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE CHRISTMAS SECRET
. Copyright © 2009 by Donna VanLiere. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.stmartins.com

 

Design by Susan Walsh

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

 

VanLiere, Donna, 1966–

The Christmas secret / Donna VanLiere.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-55836-9

1. Single mothers—Fiction. 2. Waitresses—Fiction. 3. Department

stores—Fiction. 4. Christmas stories. I. Title.

PS3622.A66C4795 2009

813'.6—dc22

2009019892

 

First Edition: October 2009

 

10    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

 

eISBN 9781429985345

For Angela Gentry,
who gets up each day and believes

Special thanks to:

 

Troy, Gracie, Kate, and David for game night, stick horse parades, swimming, camping, pancakes, dates with Mom at Chick-Fil-A and Jasmine, and “special nights.”

 

Jen G., Esmond, Jen E., Sally, Sara, Matt, Tara, and Rachel Ekstrom (welcome to the team!) for your continued belief.

 

The folks at Meridee's and the Mercantile for great food and a spot to work.

 

And Mary Weekly for the blessing of your help and touching our home with grace.

 

 

 

 

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the secret sits in the middle and knows
—Robert Frost

The
Christmas
Secret

I didn't know my father; it's how my mother wanted it or maybe what he wanted. I don't know. I'd often find my mom staring out the kitchen window while washing the dishes at night. She always seemed to be looking for something or someone or hoping for something or someone. Her face was one of wistfulness . . . or perhaps it was longing. It's hard to recall. It changed, I suppose, from day to day.

I never asked about the man who was my father, but on my tenth Christmas I gathered my nerve as we put up our decorations. We dragged the artificial tree in from the garage and positioned the plastic Santa and reindeer on the front lawn. My heart pounded as we pulled Grandma's porcelain nativity pieces from a box of ornaments. I took a small cow from its packaging and placed it on the coffee table. I fumbled for the right words but knew I just had to come out with it. “Do you ever wish my father was here?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the bluish white cow.

She worked in silence, her hands fluttering like moths.
“There was a king once,” she said, peering at me over her glasses.

“Where?” I asked.

“Um,” she said, polishing the shepherd boy's head with the tail of her shirt. “He lived in some far-off land. On a whim he decided to place an enormous boulder in the middle of the road.”

“How'd he get it there?” I asked, lifting a lamb from the tissue paper.

She paused. “I don't know. I'm sure he had an ox move it.”

“It'd take more than one ox to move a huge boulder, wouldn't it?”

She sighed, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “He had six oxen push the boulder.”

“Now that seems like too many.”

“How many do you want him to have?”

I thought it over as I unwrapped the baby Jesus. “Four.”

She shook her head and turned Mary just so on the table. “Okay. Four oxen moved the boulder. The king then threw buckets of water on each side of the rock so there was nothing but mud surrounding it. Then he hid himself and watched as people traveled the road. Many of his courtiers and soldiers grumbled about the enormous rock as they walked through the mud around it. Wealthy merchants and dignitaries from neighboring kingdoms complained about the
king and the conditions of the roads in his kingdom yet no one would do anything about the gigantic roadblock.” She added bits of straw around the nativity, pushing extra around each animal. “In time a peasant came along, carrying a sack over his back.”

“What was in the sack?” I asked. “Candy?”

“Sure,” she said, shoving the tissue paper back into the nativity box. “When he sees the boulder he sets his bag of candy on the ground and finds a fallen tree branch, jamming it at the base of the rock, but guess what?”

“It won't budge,” I said.

“Not an inch. So he climbed on top of the branch and jumped with all his might. He jumped and jumped and jumped but . . . ?”

“Nothing,” I said, picking up the baby Jesus.

“Put Jesus back on the table,” she said, pointing. “Not only nothing! He fell off the branch right into that gloopy, gloppy mud. So the peasant looks all around him again and way off in the distance he sees the oxen coming his way.” I picked up two wise men and pretended they were talking to each other. “Please put the wise men back down before you bust their frankincense and myrrh.” She huffed at me as she lifted the figurines from my hands. “The oxen smelled that sack of candy.”

My eyes bulged. “How'd they smell that small sack of candy from way far away?”

“Oxen have big nostrils,” she said.

“How big?” I asked, moving Joseph closer to the action in the manger.

“Angela Christine!” I looked up at her. She had named me Angela Christine, after her mother and grandmother. She
always
called me Christine except at times like this when I exasperated her and she'd say my full name through gritted teeth.

“It doesn't matter. Would you please just listen?” She sounded like an ox sighing and went on. “The peasant harnessed the oxen together with the fallen branch and vines and in moments the boulder was moved away. To his astonishment the peasant discovered a small red velvet bag filled with gold coins and a note inside it.”

I lay on the couch and threw a pillow high into the air and caught it. “What'd it say?”

She sat on the other end of the couch and put my feet in her lap. “It said, ‘Thank you for removing this boulder. Please keep this gold as a token of my appreciation. Signed, the King.' And the peasant learned what all of us learn at one time or another.”

“What's that?” I asked, looking at her.

“Every rock in the road can improve our lives but we might have to get a little muddy before it does.” And that's how she answered my question of if she ever wished my father lived with us.

I thought my mother had movie star looks. She had dark auburn hair she could twist on top of her head with one flick of her wrist or let hang off her shoulders, her skin was pale, and she wore tortoiseshell-framed glasses for her nearsightedness. She worked in the local bakery and would come home smelling like dough and coffee with a sack of day-old breads and pastries that had been poked by one too many old ladies looking for cream cheese filling. I often wondered what my mother would have been if she hadn't had me. I always sensed that there was another person within her as deep and beautiful as the mystery inside her heart.

There was nothing fancy about our Christmases together. With the exception of the tree, Grandma's nativity, and the plastic Santa, we didn't have any other decorations, and since there were only two of us Mom would usually bake a chicken for our meal that day with a few roasted potatoes and beans. In the days leading up to Christmas my mother would sit me down and we'd compose two letters: one to Santa that was filled with everything I could find in the JC Penney catalog and the other to God, thanking him for everything we could think of: our home; Mom's job; my stuffed bunny, Millie; Oscar, my hamster; health insurance; the money to replace the hot water heater, pay the bills, and to buy food. As I grew older the letters dwindled to one and we left it under the tree. “To remember,” Mom would say.
By some accounts I guess our day was pretty plain but it felt magical to me.

On those magical Christmas days with my mother I couldn't imagine any rocks in my road. I never dreamed of stumbling along without an end in sight, but when I grew up that's how I ended up living—day-to-day, survival of the fittest. I guess we're all like that in some ways. We don't dare look behind us but we're not brave enough to look ahead. We're just stuck. Right here. Waiting. I'm always waiting it seems—waiting for the right time, the right job, for the light to turn green, waiting on a call, waiting for my past to catch up with me, and for my future to begin.

I got to the point in my life where I was so tired of waiting and wanted to know that my life was not just leading
anywhere
but
somewhere
. I wanted that childhood sense of wonderment back. The crazy how, when, and why of life finally caught up with me and I realized that there was no Oz, fairy-tale king, or Scrooge waking up from a dream moment that was going to whisk me away from reality, and that's when I wanted Christmas again. The Christmas of the simple tree and polishing the nativity with my shirt-sleeve and holding my mother's hand in church. I wanted to know that there was a reason and purpose not only behind the boulder in the road but buried beneath it so that when I unearthed it I could brush off that muddy gem and
say, “So this is it!” In the moment, it seemed like the wait would never end, but looking back it all passed like a misty dream.