God Bless Us Every One. Eva Marie Everson

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СКАЧАТЬ made it halfway to them, hands holding several small playbooks, when he stopped. “Charlie?” His voice went up an octave.

      Charlie held up her free hand. “Hi there.”

      His face—the one that had somehow gotten more handsome, the one with the Scott Eastwood eyes and brows, the one with the pouty lips and chiseled jaw—registered honest pleasure at seeing her. He dropped the books on a nearby desk and, before she could prepare, wrapped her in a warm hug of cotton and denim. “Wow,” he said, stepping back. “I didn’t expect to see you.” He smiled, and she blushed—she was positive she did—before he added, “Are you here for Thanksgiving?”

      And Christmas and New Year’s . . . “I am,” she replied.

      “Charlie teaches at Miss Fisher’s School for Girls down in Ocala, Florida,” Sis interjected. “Drama.”

      Dusty took two steps back as though struck by a bullet. “You’re kidding.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember you being in the drama club back in the day.”

      “I wasn’t,” Charlie said. “I concentrated more on chorus in those days.”

      He pointed a finger, wagging it. “I remember that now. Of course, of course.” His smile widened. “Miss Fisher’s, huh? Sounds classy. Are you here to help us little people with our Christmas play?”

      Charlie walked up to the front of the room and placed her cup on the teacher’s desk. “I understand you’re doing A Christmas Carol.”

      He picked up the playbooks while Sis took a seat in one of the desks, crossed her legs, and took a long sip of her latte. “We are,” he said. He grinned knowingly. “I bet I know what you’re thinking . . . that old thing?”

      Charlie stared at her feet. “Well . . .”

      “Charlie believes in contemporary plays,” Sis called to the front of the room.

      “I don’t believe in them, Sis. I simply prefer them.”

      Dusty dropped the playbooks on his desk, adding to an array of papers, pens, and files that Clara Pressley would have demanded he set to rights. “But A Christmas Carol is a classic.” He raised his hands dramatically. “A classic, I tell you.” He looked at her again, mischief glinting from his dark eyes. “You don’t have anything against Dickens, do you?”

      “Not personally,” she shot back. “I never met the man.”

      Dusty crossed his arms and rested his hip on the desk. “But I assume you at least appreciate his writings.”

      Charlie shrugged. “As much as I have to. I teach his works, but I like to allow my students to discuss whether or not he’s . . .” Her words faded.

      “He’s . . . ?” Dusty prompted.

      Sis coughed out a laugh behind her granddaughter. “I believe the word she’s looking for is relevant.”

      The Scott Eastwood brows shot together in the middle. “Relevant? Charles Dickens is megarelevant.” He reached for one of the playbooks, curled on the edges. “Do you even know the story behind the story?”

      Charlie shook her head, trying to remember what she might have learned along the way about the writer and his short work. “It was published in the mid-1800s.”

      “Eighteen forty-three,” Dusty supplied.

      New heat rose within her. She swallowed hard, ready to spar with what limited information she had. But before she could, the classroom door jerked open and a flock of teenagers walked in.

      Chapter 4

      4

      * * *

      “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round . . . as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

      —Scrooge’s nephew

      Sis?” Charlie drew out the name as she placed the last of the washed-and-dried china in the dining room hutch.

      “Yes?”

      Charlie turned to see her grandmother standing before her with the two crystal goblets they’d used earlier during their quiet Thanksgiving dinner. She took them gingerly and moved to place them in the hutch. “Sis, can I talk to you for a moment?”

      Sis’s boots clomped across the floor as she left the dining room and headed back into the kitchen. “Is this the part where you tell me you’ve lost your job and need to move back in with me for a while?”

      Charlie’s shoulders dropped as she closed the glass doors, sealing the family china and crystal in safety until Christmas. “How do you know these things?” She followed Sis to find her folding the drying cloth over a metal hanger near the window.

      “Call it a gift.”

      Charlie narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “Want to clarify?”

      Sis turned and smiled. “Your friend from school called.”

      “Marjorie?”

      “She was wondering when she should mail your boxes.”

      Charlie allowed a sigh to escape her lungs. “Fine.” She threw up her hands. “So you’re on to me.”

      Sis laughed lightly. “How about we go into the living room and talk about it?” When Charlie didn’t answer right away, she added, “I’ll light a fire.”

      Charlie nodded, then dutifully followed her grandmother into the sunken living room. While Sis went to work at the stone fireplace, Charlie sank onto the oversized brown leather loveseat. She grabbed one of the five mismatched throw pillows and wrapped it in her arms as she kicked off her shoes and slid her feet under her.

      “I always loved this room,” she said, her eyes glancing up to the exposed beams in the ceiling and then over her shoulder to the French doors leading out to a small patio. Darkness had already fallen on the other side, and she could barely make out the wrought-iron patio furniture that would, soon enough, be covered until spring.

      The crackling of the newly lit fire drew her attention back to where her grandmother knelt at the hearth. Sis stood, slapped the debris from her palms, and walked to her favorite chair. The old Boston rocker, which had been in the family for three generations, creaked under her slight weight as she eased into it, then pushed back and crossed her legs.

      “Marjorie wouldn’t spill the beans,” Sis said with a tilt of her head. “But she did insist that you would be honest about it all.”

      Charlie punched at the pillow. “That nasty ole Clara Pressley,” she said. “Everything has to be her way.”

      “The СКАЧАТЬ