The Christmas Secret Read online

  Jason smiled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s been one of those days. Come on in and let me find your application.” He slid the chair to a file cabinet and opened the middle drawer. Marshall stepped into the office and smiled at Tamara. Jason threw the oversized file on Judy’s desk. “Okay, what’s your name?”

  “Tamara Meachum,” she said, smiling at Marshall.

  “I’ll find your application and flag it,” Jason said. “If something opens we’ll call you.”

  Marshall sat on the edge of the desk. “What are you looking for?”

  “Anything, really,” Tamara said.

  Marshall took the application from Jason and pulled his glasses from his shirt pocket, reading. “You were a school-teacher?” he asked, looking at her over his glasses.

  “I was. Yes.” She folded her hands in front of her and shifted from foot to foot.

  “The address you have listed.” She stared at the desk and nodded, expecting him to dismiss her because he knew where she lived and could only have assumptions of what she’d done. “I’ve known Lou, Margaret, and that crew for years. Do you like it?”

  She noticed that he was careful not to let Jason know where she lived. “I like it very much,” she said.

  “A spot in our mailroom is open,” Marshall said. “Personally, I think you’re overqualified. . . .” She smiled at the compliment.

  “I didn’t know about that,” Jason said.

  “Holly told me yesterday that she’s been accepted to college and will start at the beginning of January. That means we’d need to train someone now.” He read through the rest of the application. “I can only imagine that you’re fulfilled in the classroom and not a mailroom but this could be a stepping-stone back.” He rested the application in his lap and looked at her. “Maybe?”

  “I hope so,” she said, so quiet that Jason had to strain to hear her.

  “Are you interested?” Marshall asked.

  She laughed out loud. “Yes! I’ve been looking so long that I’d almost given up hope.”

  Marshall took off his glasses and slid them back into his shirt pocket. “Nah,” he said. “To lose hope is to decide that it was all just a bunch of hooey. Hope is waiting, you know?” She looked at him. There was nothing remarkable about Marshall; actually, he was plain in every way but somehow his words ran along her ears and sat upon her skin. How did he say it? she wondered. Hope is waiting. Hope is waiting. Hope is waiting. Any way she thought about it it made her smile inside. “Jason will get you started on your paperwork. For references you can just put Lou and Margaret down. I’ve hired others on their word over the years.”

  Jason dug through Judy’s file cabinet for the papers and handed them and a pen to Tamara. He left her alone and stepped into Marshall’s office, closing the door. “There are so many other qualified applicants in the file,” he said, whispering. He didn’t get it. The accounting firm he had worked for would never hire a woman like that.

  “It’s the mailroom. It’s not rocket science,” Marshall said. “She’ll be fine,”

  Jason put his hands on Marshall’s desk and leaned toward him. “She’s strung out on something.”

  Marshall sorted through his paperwork. “She was,” he said. “No doubt about it. I don’t expect her to stay long.”

  “Because she’ll relapse?”

  “Maybe. But I think she’ll want her life back. Sooner than later, I hope.”

  Christmas was seven days away and I hadn’t purchased one present. The kids would take the bus to Glory’s Place after school so I decided to walk to Wilson’s before my second shift started. I took the stairs to the first floor and walked the aisles of toys looking for the space command building set Zach wanted. It was on the bottom shelf and marked at $39.99. I looked around for something similar and cheaper but there wasn’t anything. “Can I help you find anything?” An attractive black woman wearing a bright red scarf draped over a purple sweater with the name Lana pinned to it stood next to me.

  “Do you know if this will go on sale?” I asked, holding the building set.

  “That was on sale last week,” she said.

  I sighed. I was always a day late and a dollar short. “Well, that’s the story of my life,” I said.

  “Let me have it,” she said, taking the box from me. “I’ll look it up in the computer and if you want it for the sale price I’ll sell it to you for that.”

  “That would be great,” I said, following her to the cash register. She scanned the bar code and I took off my coat. I realized I’d left my apron on and pushed my tips deep into the pockets.

  “Twenty-eight ninety-nine,” she said. “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” I said. She held it for me while I looked around. A pair of flimsy pink wings hung on an endcap along with fairy wands and slippers. They were ten dollars and had Haley’s name written all over them. I found the same heart box I’d seen the last time I was in Wilson’s and picked it up. Haley would love to paint and decorate it but I knew I wouldn’t have the time or patience. I set it down and picked up a tin can filled with four different card games. I set that in my basket for both of them along with the game of Monopoly Jr. on sale for eight dollars. Zach loved to put together model cars and planes so I bought him a shining red Corvette. A Barbie doll with a pink sparkling dress and flowing blond hair smiled at me from a box and I knew Haley would love her. She was on sale for $8.99. Zach had always wanted a football small enough for his hands and they had one in the colors of his favorite football team so I threw it in my basket.

  “Are you finding everything today?”

  I glanced up to see an older man smiling at me. “Yes,” I said, feeling awkward in my work apron. The princess dress up game Haley wanted was on the bottom shelf and I looked at the price. Way too much right now. I found princess dress up shoes and a princess coloring book with sparkling Magic Markers. A small stuffed dog with his head sticking out of a pretty pink purse was on sale for ten dollars along with a LEGOs construction set. I looked over the things in my basket and couldn’t wait to wrap them. The kids would flip! I made my way toward the cash register when my phone rang. I stopped and pulled it out of my apron pocket. The word private appeared on the screen and I thought it might be someone calling back from my apartment search. “Hello.” The connection was terrible. It sounded like the person asked for Hillary. “This is Christine,” I said. “Christine,” I said louder. I noticed the older man looking at me from the stairs and I stepped back into the aisle so I wouldn’t be so noisy.

  “Christy!” My blood ran hot.

  “What?” I whispered hotly.

  “I can’t come for the kids after all today.”

  “Oh, really! Because your check never showed?”

  “No, because something came up. The check’s coming. It’ll be there tomorrow. Listen—” I hung up the phone and walked to the cashier.

  I couldn’t believe I had as much as I did for less than a hundred dollars. The saleslady wished me a merry Christmas and handed me two sacks that I carried through the store and out onto the sidewalk.

  Marshall stopped when he got to the office door and ran back down the stairs to the toy department. He scanned the floor. “Did that young woman leave?” he asked.

  Lana turned to him. “The one who was just here?”

  He nodded. “Did she leave?” Lana nodded. “Was she a waitress?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you see her wearing an apron around her waist?”

  Lana shook her head. “I didn’t notice. Why?”

  He opened the cash register. “Did she use a credit card?”

  Lana closed the drawer. “She paid cash.”

  “She said her name was Christine, right? That’s long for Christy.”

  “I didn’t ask her her name!”

  Marshall laughed. “I always knew I could be a private investigator and now I’ve proven it!” He ran up the stairs and through the main aisle to the front door. All the parking spaces wer
e full. No one was about to back up onto the street. He darted around the back of the building to watch cars in the parking lot. A woman with three children was getting out of a minivan and a man was driving away in a black sedan. “Missed her,” Marshall said. “But she’s out there.”

  . . .

  Jason pulled the heart box out of the bag and held it in front of Haley. “How about that for your mom?”

  “Oh, yeah!” she said, clapping her hands together. “She’ll love it.”

  “All right,” he said. “Let me help with everyone’s homework and when I’m done we’ll start this. Okay?” She jumped up and down. “But you need to do your letters.” She started to say something. “No whining. We can’t do the box if your letters aren’t done.” She ran for her backpack.

  Aiden plopped his backpack onto the table and pulled out a folder with a sheet of sentences. “I can’t read these,” he said, pushing his palm into his forehead.

  “Sure you can,” Jason said. He helped the other children at the table get situated with pencils and erasers and made sure all their homework was out before he sat next to Aiden. He covered up two letters in a word and held his index finger under the first letter, an h. “What letter is this?”

  “H,” Aiden groaned.

  “What sound does it make?”

  “Ha,” Aiden said.

  Jason uncovered the next letter. “What’s that?”

  “A,” Aiden said.

  “That starts all the letters,” Marcus said, interrupting.

  “What sound does it make?” Jason asked Aiden.

  “Ay,” Aiden said.

  “What else? That’s the long sound. What’s the short sound?” Aiden stared up at him. “Aa. Like at or apple. Put the h and the a together with that short a sound now.” Aiden sounded out the two letters and Jason uncovered the t. “Now put the t on the end. Put it all together.”

  “Ha-t,” Aiden said. “Hat.”

  “So if that’s hat,” Jason said. “What is this word?” he asked, pointing to s-a-t. Aiden stared at the paper. “The only new letter is an s. What does that say?”

  “S-s-at,” Aiden said.

  Marcus grabbed another cookie and looked up at him. “Are you a teacher?”

  Jason laughed. “No.”

  “You should be,” Aiden said. “I like you better than Miss Albrecht.”

  Jason made his way from one child to the next and was surprised how at ease he felt. When the kids finished their work Jason double-checked it for errors and helped Aiden clean up gray, smoky eraser marks from his paper. Haley sat down with the second group of kids and showed her finished letters to Jason. He smiled and she pulled out the heart box to begin work.

  “Okay,” Jason said. “It says to paint it first. Do you know your mom’s favorite color?”

  “Purple,” she said, reaching for the small tub of paint.

  She splattered the paint on in great runny gobs and Zach shook his head. “That’s too messy,” he said, watching her.

  Jason showed her how to use the brush to even out the paint and held it in front of her so she could paint the sides. Zach and the other children finished their homework and ran off to play, leaving Jason and Haley alone. “Okay,” he said. “We can paint some of her favorite things on the sides. Does she like a certain flower or bug or anything?”

  Haley lifted her shoulders and squinched up her face. “Beats me,” she said.

  “All right,” he said, thinking. He remembered the conversation with Rosemary and said, “How about a hydrangea?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a flower,” he said, dabbing the brush to look like clusters of petals. “When I think of hydrangeas I think of my grandmother. I bet your mom will love them, too.” He finished a cluster of pink hydrangeas and turned to Haley. “I’m thinking bugs,” he said.

  “Why would she like bugs?” Haley asked.

  “Not a bug like a dung beetle. A pretty bug. How about a butterfly?”

  “I like them!” she said, smiling.

  Jason outlined a small butterfly next to the flower. “I’m going to let you paint this. Okay, let’s go to the other side. What over here? A kite maybe?”

  “Sure,” Haley said.

  He outlined a perfect diamond-shaped kite with a long tail that swept over the side of the box. “And on top we’ll glue all the jewels and glassy beads. How’s that sound?”

  Haley began to paint the green stem of the flower and smiled at her work. “Mom is going to hug me so tight for this. She was mad at me this week because I did something bad.”

  “What’d you do?” he asked, watching her.

  “I jumped off the deck so I could fly and went to the hospital. I got knocked out but Zach said it’s good my head is hard.”

  Jason laughed. “I doubt your mom is mad at you for that. She’s probably pretty grateful that you’re okay.”

  Haley stuck her paintbrush in a cup of water and swished it around. When it was clean she wiped it on a paper towel and stuck it in the red paint, making thin lines on the butterfly’s wings. “How was your date?”

  “How’d you know . . . oh, yeah, we talked about that, didn’t we?” She nodded, keeping her eyes on the butterfly. “Not so good. We never got to go out and then she got really mad at me.”

  “Why?”

  “She thinks something is true but it isn’t.”

  “Why can’t you just tell her the true thing? My mom always says if we tell her the truth that we won’t get into as much trouble.”

  He laughed and held the box steady for her. “Well, she’s pretty hot right now. I need to let her cool down.”

  “I can be your half girlfriend until she’s ready.”

  “Deal!” he said.

  Most of my tables were clean and prepped for breakfast at eight thirty that night. I had two tables of customers left but Lori said she’d take care of them for me so I could pick up the kids. I grabbed my coat off the back wall in the kitchen and turned in my tips to Spence who gave me big bills for them. Between the tips at breakfast and dinner I had made almost one hundred dollars. “Not bad,” Spence said. “Good Christmas shopping money.”

  “Got it all done today,” I said, slipping the money into my wallet. “See you tomorrow.” I pushed open the back door and the wind caught my breath. Holding my purse to my chest I ran across the parking lot for the car. I reached for the handle when something caught my eye. I stepped to the rear of the car; the trunk was open. I lifted it and gasped. Everything was gone.

  I spun in every direction. I’m not sure what I was hoping I’d see: a woman about to put the sacks into her car or a man walking across the lot saying, “Oops, I accidentally took these out of your trunk.” The trunk hadn’t been pried open; there weren’t any scratches or gouges. Somehow I hadn’t closed it all the way and I knew it. I sat in the car and cried for what I’d done and lost and the reality of how all you get for pain is more pain.

  I called when I got to Glory’s Place and told them I was too sick to come inside for the kids; in truth, I was. They sent Zach and Haley out to me and I half-listened as they told me about their night.

  “Is something wrong, Mom?” Haley asked after she brushed her teeth. I shook my head and held the blankets up so she could crawl into bed.

  “Can you read?” Zach asked.

  “It’s too late,” I said. “Let’s make up for it tomorrow.” He didn’t argue but lay down. I sat on the edge of his bed.

  “What is Christmas, Zach?”

  He furrowed his brows and screwed up his face. “Huh?”

  “What is it to you?”

  “It’s Jesus’ birthday,” he said.

  “So why do we give gifts?”

  “You said it was because God gave Jesus to us as a gift of love so we give gifts to say we love people.”

  I was beat and couldn’t smile. “What if there weren’t any presents? Would you still know how much I love you?” Tears were in my eyes and I concentrated hard so they w
ouldn’t fall.

  He lifted himself up and wrapped his arms around my neck, squeezing it. “It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “We have a lot of stuff.” I reached for the light beside his bed before I started to cry and kissed his forehead. I couldn’t speak.

  The lights from the Christmas tree filled the living room with a soft half-light and I noticed the letter under the tree. I grabbed it and pulled it from the envelope. God, help me, it said. I was so weary of plodding my way through life. It seemed that I’d just come up for air when something else pulled me down. I ripped up the letter, shoved it back inside the envelope, and lay down on the sofa. The vision of someone taking the kids’ toys raced through my mind. Some people would have closed the trunk in an act of kindness but not this jerk. He or she saw two bags of gifts and didn’t look to see what they were; it didn’t matter. I didn’t matter. My kids didn’t matter. Sleep wouldn’t come for hours.

  Marshall and Jason pulled into Glory’s Place a little after nine. The call for volunteers had gone out a few days before: help was needed to box the donations and deliver them to families. A small assembly line had been created on the far end of the building, away from the basketball court and activities. Dalton and Heddy were leading this first group of volunteers that included Marshall. “I always know Christmas is close when you come in to volunteer,” Dalton said.

  Marshall smiled. He and Dalton had been doing this together for years. “Where’s Gloria?” Marshall asked.

  “She and Miriam are second string today,” Dalton said. He moved next to Marshall and looked over the list on his clipboard. “You look tired, Marshall.”

  “Ah, just this season. I’m getting tired of working through Christmas. Linda went away to visit the kids and that worked for a long time but now I’m just tired of it.”

  Dalton patted him on the back. “You’ve got an anniversary coming up, right?”

  “He can remember yours but ours slips by him,” Heddy said, shaking her head.

  “I was a day late!” Dalton said, yelling over his shoulder. He looked at Marshall. “Maybe that’d be a good time to make some changes.”