The Christmas Sisters (11 page)

The image of Willa in Sam's lap, of the two of them admiring the snowbird Big Hyde had given her overwhelmed Nic's thoughts. That was why, she assured herself,
she
trusted him not to make some hurtful remark about her daughter. She refused to entertain any other possible explanation for her ease around him and about Willa.

“We're not going to tape an angel to the pull cord and that's that, Collier. It just smacks of disrespect or...or something.”
Petie
looked mad enough to pinch their baby sister, but she didn't do anything more threatening than shake her finger.

Collier laughed.

The Duets laughed and said things that sounded cute coming from the over sixty set like, “You go, girl.”

“No,
you
go, girls.”
Petie
clucked her tongue at her aunts. “Y'all go find a nice tall vase or something we can set that angel on top of to keep things tasteful around here. I know the four of you came over here and rearranged everything to your liking as soon as we left last year.”

Aunt Bert grunted.

Lula hopped right up and helped her twin get up off the couch. “We know what you are up to, Miss Patricia.”

“And far be it from us...” Fran gathered Nan's coffee cup up with her own.
“To stay.

“Where we're not wanted,” Nan finished for her identical twin.

“Uh-huh.”
Petie
shooed them off with both hands, her face a mix of tenderness and exasperation. “Then why don't you just stand off to the edge of ‘where you're not wanted’, like say in the kitchen. That way you can talk about us while still keeping an eye on what we're up to.”

Their aunts said not one word to that. Though Bert did chuckle under her breath and Nan did a little thing with her head that conveyed a “what do I care about keeping an eye on
you
” attitude as she passed by. In short order the parade of elderly aunts had passed by.

Sam cleared his throat, which hardly covered his amusement over it all.

Collier did an imitation of the dispatched biddy brigade, got caught, and winced apologetically at Aunt Bert who just shook her head and tipped up her nose.

Nic captured the blond-haired, pink-lipped angel as Willa whisked past, scooping it up in both hands the way she'd seen magicians hold doves before releasing them into an awed crowd.

Willa hardly even seemed to notice. She simply spread her tiny fingers and adapted, swooping around like an angel or a bird set free all on her own.

“Well, it's about time the two of you came out of that room.”
Petie
dropped onto Grandmother's love seat and kicked her feet up onto the footstool Nic had made in summer camp by covering a circle of juice cans with padding and fabric.

Nic thought of kicking those cans right out from under her sister, or worse. She clutched the angel in her hands so tight that the silver thread in the yarn dress scratched her palms.

Sam stepped up behind her, and as if he knew how badly Nic wanted to throw that innocent little angel right at her smart- mouthed sister's big head, he took the thing from Nic's hands. “So,
Petie
, what do you plan to do about this potential murder-by-tuna situation back home?”

Nic thanked him with a sidelong glance for turning the spotlight onto her sister, the troublemaker.

“I'll thank you not to make light of my likely impending widowhood, Reverend Moss.” She looked like anything but an impending widow. In fact, she went positively petulant and pouty like she was still seventeen and captain of the cheerleading squad. “It's unbecoming of a man of the cloth.”

“Do you
got
a cloth, too?” Willa came out of a spin perfectly positioned to tilt her head back and look straight up at Sam.

“Too?”
Sam bent at the knees and cocked his head. “Do you have a cloth, Miss Willa?”

“My mommy does. She has a garage full of them, and every week a big smelly truck takes the dirty ones away and brings clean ones all wrapped up like presents.”

“Is that right?” he said like he found it fascinating, not like he doubted her for one second.

“Willa, darling, a man of the cloth means he's a minister.” Collier nudged
Petie's
feet from the footstool and sat down on it.

Willa reached up for Nic's hand, which still held the angel. The child wound her fingers in the hem of her mother's shirt instead. “My mom is a minister.”

“Is that right?” Sam smiled up at Nic.

The sight warmed her more than she wished it would.

“A mommy and sister.
A minister.”
Willa beamed. Her sweet smile and innocent remark made everyone laugh.

Then
Petie
doused the subtle mood like water on coals. “Actually, Nicolette cleans other people's houses for a living, Sam.”

“I own my own business.” Nic spoke to Sam as if her sister were not even in the room.

“A
housecleaning
business,”
Petie
interjected like it just galled her to let Nic have the last word on it.

“What's so bad about a housecleaning business? “ Nic crossed her arms and aimed her cocked eyebrow at
Petie
. “If a certain someone I could mention would have done a more thorough job cleaning her own house, maybe she wouldn't be worried her husband had done himself in eating something she should have thrown out a week ago.”

“This is where I came in.” Sam stood.

“I'm going to go try to call Park again.”
Petie
shot out of her chair and rushed off.

“I'll come, too, in case you need someone to catch the receiver when he answers and you fall into a dead faint.” Collier took off on her sister's heels.

Nic mouthed a thank-you to Sam. Heaven help her, she was still too proud and too mad at him to say it aloud.

He offered his open hand to Willa. “As I recall your mom said we should put your snowbird away until we can hang it on the Christmas tree. Want me to help you do that?”

“Oh, she won't—”

Sam put his hand on Nic's shoulder. She instantly knew he'd done it to keep her from saying anything that might make her daughter shy away.

Willa slipped one hand into his, then grabbed Nic by the fingers with her other hand. She looked up, and smiled.

For one moment, no longer than that really, they formed a tight circle—mother, child, and...
old
friend. There was no reason for this sweet passing interlude. Nothing had precipitated it. Nothing had prepared her for it. It just happened. It seemed so right and yet so entirely apart from her reality.

Nic tried to make sense of it all, but her mind and senses reeled.

Willa's soft voice finally broke the almost reverent hush between them. “Can we wrap my snowbird up in your cloth to keep it warm until we get a Christmas tree?”

“I don't actually have a—”

“That's what happened with a snowbird we found when I was little. It got cold and sick and went to sing for Jesus on His birthday.”

“I see.” Sam curled his fingers around Willa's hand.

“I want Jesus to have a happy birthday, but do you think He'd mind if we kept Big Hyde's snowbird here, wrapped in your God cloth so I can have this one for always?”

“I think...” Sam took in a deep breath and lowered his head. “I can't think of anything more wonderful than wrapping up the ones we care about in God's love.”

“God's glove?”
Willa blinked. “It's not a cloth?”

Nic opened her mouth to try to explain, but Sam spoke first.

“Love.
God's love.
It's not a cloth like this.” He reached into his back pocket and tugged free a white handkerchief. “But we can wrap ourselves those we love in it.”

Willa pulled the hankie from Sam's hand. “Birds, too?”

“Birds and beasts, all God's creatures.”

“Then I'm going to put my snowbird in God's cloth.” Willa stared down at the stark white square covering her open palm, never taking her eyes from it as she walked toward the table where her snowbird lay among a flock of ceramic sheep.
“So God will always look after him.”

“Sam...” Nic looked up, but he didn't take his eyes from the small, determined girl tackling her task.

He asked no questions, made no assumptions, and most importantly offered not a single recrimination about her fragile, broken child. He just watched and waited. Like a kind man. Like an old family friend. Like a faithful minister. Like...

Nic's throat closed. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She clenched her jaw and tightened her fists, but she could not close her heart and mind to that final frightening, unimaginable insight. Sam watched and waited for Willa. With that one look he wrapped her more securely in God's love than most members of her old church had done in a lifetime of promised prayers. He watched the extraordinary and sometimes heartbreaking child in a way no one had ever looked at her before—like a father.

And that fact nearly scared Nic half to death.

Eight

Claiming a headache, Nic steered clear of everyone the rest of the evening, shuffling Willa off to bed early. Nic, however, did not actually get to sleep until late so she wasn’t exactly in the best of Christmas spirits the next morning.

“What are we planning to do about a Christmas tree?”
Petie
stood at the picture window in the living room, the morning sun warming the spot always reserved for the tree in a lifetime of Christmases past.

“We did not come here to put on some kind of Dorsey family holiday extravaganza.” Nic tidied the pillow on the love seat. “We came down here to sort out the situation with our new boarder and to put this house on the market.”

“Sam wants to go with us,” Collier announced as if the whole tree thing was a done deal.

“Why should he go with us?” Nic punched the pillow she had just fluffed. “What place does he have horning in on our family celebration?”

“Some
family
celebration.”
Collier crinkled her nose and ruffled her fingers through her short hair. “Mom and Wally-boy are spending the holidays with his kids. Your kids aren't coming in until a few days before Christmas,
Petie
. And poor old Park has probably wolfed down one too many spoonfuls of your rotten casserole, stumbled into the bathroom to be sick, pitched forward, and clunked his head on the sink.”

“Collier!”
Nic held the pillow close to her chest.

“Most likely he's lying in some hospital bed right now suffering from amnesia and can't remember who he is much less where he's supposed to spend Christmas.” Collier laid the back of her hand over her forehead and leaned back in the wooden rocker at the side of the window, her face the picture of dire drama.

“That s enough.”
Nic dropped the pillow into its proper place.

“What? My version's a whole lot better than
Petie's
. She had poor
ol
’ Parker sprawled out dead on the kitchen floor, a spoon in one hand and greasy potato chip crumbs from the casserole on his cold, cold lips.”

Petie
spun on her the low heel of her fabulously cute, naturally, house shoe. “Sure, make a joke of my misery.”

“What misery?” Nic rolled her eyes.
Petie
would not know true misery if it bit her on her perfectly
pedicured
big toe. “You've only tried twice in the last twenty-four hours to get him with no luck. That hardly qualifies you to play the lead in some made for women’s TV tragedy.”

Petie
ignored her sister. “I should have set the alarm and tried calling him in the middle of the night.”

“Yes, you should have.
If
you really wanted to get
ahold
of him.”

“You're implying I don't?”

She hadn't intended that, but now that she thought about it, maybe she was.
Petie
had a way of milking her imaginary woes long past the point when anyone, even her family, cared about them. The oldest of the sisters had always loved attention, and when the spotlight strayed, she found a way to draw it back to her.

Sam's appearance in Persuasion, his very presence in this house, had become the new focal point. With him living in the master bedroom downstairs, and Nic and Willa occupying her old
room on the second floor, everyone in town was bound to hone in on that and forget all about
Petie
.

To tell her so would cross a line. But then the sisters had never really paid any attention to lines. “Maybe I am saying that
Petie
. Maybe I am saying that if you made a point of calling Park at a time you knew you would reach him, your drama would come to a quick and ridiculously dull end.”