Montana Christmas. Jackie Merritt

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СКАЧАТЬ for Charlie, he’d been living alone in his big old house on Foxworth Street since Candace and Burke’s wedding. Andrea often wondered if he was lonely now, although he did have a coffee shop in the front portion of his house to keep him busy. Every night while lying in her bed before falling asleep, she pictured herself walking into that coffee shop and introducing herself. Hello, Charlie. I’m Andrea Dillon, your third child, your second daughter. She usually went to sleep with a sickish feeling in her stomach because of that fantasy.

      And maybe that’s all the whole thing was, she was beginning to think—a fantasy. If Charlie hadn’t wanted a third child at the time of his and her mother’s divorce, why on earth would he want one now? Why was she so driven to see this through and, at the same time, too cowardly to do it? Why was she afraid? She hadn’t been afraid to call

      on Harry, after all. Maybe leery was a better word for whatever it was inside of her that kept her from accomplishing her goal with Charlie. But if she was never going to confront him, why stay in this small Montana town?

      These were not new questions. Andrea had been asking them of herself for months, without being able to supply the answers. Surprising her, however, was an answer about why she stayed in Rocky Ford: she liked it there. For the first time in her life, she was putting down roots. Sandra had moved them around California so much, Andrea had never felt connected to any one place. Here, in this unpretentious little country town, she was at long last discovering the tranquillity of belonging.

      Even so, she wasn’t entirely content. There was Charlie, of course, almost constantly on her mind, and she knew liking a town was no excuse for living a purposeless existence. A job might do wonders for the doldrums she often suffered, and hopefully tire her enough to make her sleep better. At the very least, she would have something to think about besides the Fanon family.

      Lucas broke into her somber thoughts. “Ready for Christmas, Andrea? It’s not far off now, you know.”

      Andrea stuck her shovel into the snow and then leaned on it. She was neither ready for Christmas nor thrilled that the holiday season was upon her. Looking at Lucas’s pleasant face, ruddy from the cold, she wondered how to answer his question. He knew very little of her background, mere bits and pieces that she had thought were safe enough to pass on. One brief conversation had been about the death of her mother.

      She fell back on that. “With Mother gone, I’m afraid I’m not feeling very much holiday cheer, Lucas.”

      He stopped shoveling and conveyed embarrassment by clearing his throat. “Course you’re not. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

      Guilt struck Andrea. Sandra had rarely spent Christmas with her. Instead, she was off to the Bahamas, or Bermuda, or somewhere else elegant and sunny, with one man or another. Andrea’s Christmases had usually been spent with some of Sandra’s friends or with servants. That was during her childhood, of course. Once she was old enough to make her own decisions, she chose which of her own friends with whom she wanted to celebrate the holiday.

      The truth was that Christmas simply didn’t excite her. It never had.

      But it seemed important to Lucas, and he, too, was alone. His only offspring was a son living in Los Angeles, an extremely successful plastic surgeon, happily married, according to Lucas, and too busy to come home for the holidays.

      “Lucas, do you have any plans for Christmas Day?” she asked.

      He looked off into the distance, appearing wistful to Andrea. “I’ll probably do what I usually do, drop in on a few friends.”

      “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

      His head came around. “I don’t want to impose, Andrea.”

      “You wouldn’t be imposing. You’d be doing me a favor. I’ve been planning to cook a turkey with all the trimmings, and eating it alone wouldn’t be any fun.” She’d been planning no such thing, but once out of her mouth, it seemed like the best idea she’d had in a long time.

      A smile broke out on Lucas’s face. “Since you put it that way, yes, I’d love having Christmas dinner with you. Thanks for the invite.”

      Andrea smiled, too. “You’re very welcome. Hey, guess what? I’m suddenly looking forward to Christmas.” She realized it was true and smiled again as she started shoveling. She would even buy Lucas a present, nothing that would embarrass him because he didn’t have one for her. Just some little thing she could put under the tree.

      A tree? she thought with some amazement. My goodness, she really was getting into the holiday spirit, wasn’t she? Well, why not? She and Lucas could have a very nice day together, and neither of them would be alone and despondent.

      She thought of Lucas’s son, Dr. Shepler Wilde, who was too busy to visit his aging father on Christmas, and snorted derisively. He was probably a self-centered, inconsiderate, better-than-thou jerk.

      Maybe she could give Lucas a merry Christmas. It wouldn’t completely make up for his son’s negligence, but it would help.

      

      By that evening, Andrea had to admit she was really looking forward to Christmas Day. If nothing else, planning a holiday dinner took her mind off the Fanons. Ready for bed, with her dark auburn hair damp from a shower and wearing her nightgown and robe, she curled up in her favorite chair with a pad and pen to prepare a grocery list. Even though she wouldn’t be shopping for the ingredients for another week or so, she liked the idea of early organization.

      The list grew quickly, but after a while she had to stop to think about it. As she did, her gaze drifted around her cozy living room and ultimately fell on a black-bound notebook tucked into a small bookcase along with several dozen books, all of which she had purchased and read since coming to Rocky Ford. Her thoughts immediately turned from her grocery list to the contents of that notebook. Everything she knew about the Fanon family was in it, including handwritten notes describing her own observations and every newspaper article mentioning the Fanons she had run across in the Rocky Ford News, which she had neatly clipped and pasted on various pages. Her last entry was a newspaper accounting of Candace Fanon and Burke Mallory’s wedding. Burke had invited her to attend the affair, and she had wanted to go very badly. But she’d stayed away, knowing how uncomfortable she would be with Burke aware of her lurking in corners and spying on the Fanons, as she had done on several previous occasions when she’d been able to hide in a crowd. Then, however, no one had known who she was.

      That notebook disturbed her, blatantly reminding her that she was on the outside looking in, yet she couldn’t get rid of it. It was the most detailed documentation of any portion of her life, and destroying it would be like destroying a piece of herself.

      Sighing with a profound sense of unrest, she forced herself to concentrate on Christmas dinner again.

      

      For someone who had initially tried to ignore the holiday season, Andrea became very involved in it. Happy about it, too. She shopped for Lucas’s present in Rocky Ford’s stores, and enjoyed seeing the decorations the town had put up. Several businesses had outside speakers playing Christmas music, and every window in every shop was bright with holiday displays.

      On impulse, she went into the drugstore and spent an hour picking out Christmas cards to send to the friends she had left behind in California. Leaving without a goodbye hadn’t bothered her at the time; her mind had been overloaded with grief over her mother’s death and the shocks that had come after. But, in retrospect, her hasty, unannounced СКАЧАТЬ