The Christmas Secret (Christmas Hope) Read online

  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

  Christmas

  Secret

  DONNA VANLIERE

  ST. MARTIN’S PRESS

  NEW YORK

  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

  For Angela Gentry,

  who gets up each day and believes

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  PROLOGUE

  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.

  I never moved the boulder, by the way; I couldn’t. Several people helped me. Then I discovered the gift beneath it.

  November—One Year Earlier

  It was winter again. We were in light jackets until the week before Thanksgiving but then a gust of frigid air blew in and each day felt like deep night. Everything was cold and hard and seemed far away. While growing up, when winter grew long and weary, my mother would say, “The trees are barren and ugly now but they’re rooted in the promise of spring.” I understood what she was trying to say but over the years winter carried itself into summer in my life.

  I walked to the door for the fourth time and looked out the window. The driveway was empty. My chest tightened and I felt pressure in my head. Why can’t a teenager ever be on time? I wondered, crossing to my cup of coffee on the kitchen counter. I took a sip and spit it out. It had gotten cold as I waited for Allie, one of my babysitters.

  “Mom, can you play with me?” my five-year-old asked, sitting on the living-room floor with two of her stuffed dogs. “Can you be Brown Dog and I’ll be Genevieve?”

  I crossed to the front door. “I can’t right now, Haley. As soon as Allie gets here I have to bolt for work.” I looked at my watch: ten fifty. I was getting angry and my face was growing pale from waiting.

  “I flew again last night,” Haley said, making Brown Dog soar above her head.

  “In your dreams?”

  “No, Mom. I got up and flew all around the house.”

  I kept my eye on the road. “You did that in your dreams. You fly a lot in your dreams.” I noticed our neighbor’s newspaper in our driveway and decided to throw it on her front porch. Mrs. Meredith looked like she was in her early seventies, and although we’d never spoken a lot, I sensed she didn’t care much for my children or me. Last summer when Zach was six, he and Haley had been playing in the yard that stretches behind this row of duplexes when Zach kicked a ball that landed on Mrs. Meredith’s deck, breaking her bright red hibiscus. He apologized but I don’t think it helped. She wasn’t used to children and I think the noise and busyness associated with them got on her nerves. To keep the peace, whenever the paperboy got a wild arm and the paper landed in my driveway, I made sure it got to her front door as soon as possible.

  I scooped up the paper and walked to the front of Mrs. Meredith’s house. I groaned when I heard the lock turn and looked up to see her. She was wearing a pink robe that she cinched tighter on opening the door. “Landed in my driveway,” I said, holding the paper out to her. The few times we had talked Mrs. Meredith always kept the door opened about four inches as if keeping me from invading her home. I handed the paper to her through the small opening and pushed the corners of my mouth up into a faint smile.

  “Thank you,” she said, closing the door before I could rob her.

  “You have a great day, too,” I said, mumbling to myself.

  Allie pulled into the driveway and I ran into the house to grab my purse. “I’m going to work, Zach,” I said, craning my neck around the corner of the hall toward his bedroom. I closed the door and saw Allie sitting in her car. “Take your time,” I muttered, walking to her door. “Allie, I really need you to be here at ten thirty. I can’t be late to work anymore.”

  Her blond hair was pulled up in a scrunchy, dark liner rimmed her eyes, and big hoop earrings dangled close to her jawline. “Sorry,” she said, closing her door.

  I didn’t have time to deal with it all again. I got in my car and sped out of the driveway, looking at my watch: ten fifty-two. “Inconsiderate kid,” I said. The pressure in my head had turned into a headache and I reached back, squeezing my neck. It always felt like I was running from one place to the next, always scrambling with doubt and failure piling up inside me like snow. I sped up to make the light at Main Street but didn’t make it. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t be late. I prayed that the manager wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t there but knew it was no use. Rod had been riding me for months about being late. The disc jockey announced the time and I turned off the radio, feeling my pulse race. My nearly bald tires squealed as I turned into the parking lot the restaurant shared with the bank, and then I slammed my door, running for the back entrance. Renee was in the back prepping cups of salad dressing for the lunch rush and I glanced at the time clock: eleven thirteen. “Is Rod here?” I asked.

  “He’s here,” Renee said, raising her eyebrows.

  “Stupid sitters,” I said, lining small cups of dressing onto a tray. “Did he know I wasn’t here?”

  “ ’Fraid so, kid.” Renee always called me kid even though she was no more than five years older than me.

  Patterson’s had been a family-owned restaurant for forty years until the last of the family died nine years earlier. No children or grandchildren wanted to leave their jobs to run a restaurant so the place was sold but the new owners kept the name. Rod was the day manager. He was in his mid-forties with a potbelly and a bald patch as wide as his forehead that ran to the back of his head. “Can you ever make it to work on time, Christine?”

  I cringed and turned to see him behind me. “I am on time when my kids are in school. It’s my sitters.”

  Rod scratched his domed head, looking at me. “Why aren’t your kids in school now?”

  “It’s Thanksgiving break,” I said, wrapping a fork, knife, and spoon in a napkin.

  “So why were you late last week?”

  My throat tightened. I didn’t want to be late. It wasn’t my goal each day to show up late for my job. “My five-year-old was sick and I had to find a sitter last minute.”

  “It’s always something,” he said, walking away. Rod had been gracious throughout the summer months when I’d shown up late for work at least once a week but that cat only had so many lives and his patience was wearing thin.

  I married Brad Eisley when I was twenty. Sometimes
you go into a situation knowing you’re making a mistake but think, “Well, I need a car and this one is right here and available, so how bad can it be?” Or, “The roof does need to be fixed but I need a house and this one is available so . . .” Brad was a nice guy, cute, and at the beginning I found him charming. We met while working at a grocery store in our hometown. I was a cashier and he stocked the shelves. He didn’t work there long; he said management didn’t know what they were doing. When he asked me to marry him he was unemployed; I was nineteen and consumed with the thought of being and doing nothing for the rest of my life. I was unable to go to college; my mother couldn’t afford it and, although my grades had been good in high school, they weren’t high enough for any sort of scholarship. There weren’t a lot of men in our area so when Brad wanted to get married, I thought, “Well, he is nice and I would like to get married and he is right here asking me, so how bad could it be?” My mother knew.

  “Christine, you are a dreamer. You love books and flowers and sitting next to a lake. You need a man who will appreciate that about you. Don’t marry him because you think he’ll be the only one to ever ask you,” she said, weeks after our engagement.

  “I’m not, Mom.”

  “Then why are you marrying him?” she asked, folding a load of towels in the laundry room.

  “He’s a nice, nice guy,” I said, trying to convince her as well as myself. She wouldn’t look at me and that made me angry. “What’s your problem with him?”

  “I don’t have a problem with Brad. You’re right. He seems nice. I know all about nice.” She stacked towels one on top of the other in silence.