Christmas Mourning Read online

  “Did you get a message from Kaitlyn?” asked Emma. “Everybody’s going to bring red or gold flowers to where Mallory crashed. They’re making a cross with her name on it.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning at seven-thirty.”

  As I approached a sharp curve, they suddenly went mute. There on the ditchbank, amid a tangle of dead weeds and dried leaves, were three small dilapidated wooden crosses embellished with plastic flowers. The roses had been bright red when placed there almost two years ago. Now they had faded to a pale grayish pink. The once-yellow daisies were discolored and dirty-looking. The white ribbons had almost rotted way, the lettering on the cross was illegible, and the toy football at the base had lost its air and faded almost beyond recognition.

  “We need to do new crosses for Rosie and Ben and Doug,” Jess said, her voice breaking.

  She wiped fresh tears from her eyes, and from the backseat I heard Ruth and Emma softly crying.

  And then the clickety-click-click of their keypads.

  CHAPTER 3

  They said it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  Instead of cutting through one of the farm lanes directly to my house, I turned onto our hardtop and swung past Zach’s house to drop Emma off first. A.K. was right behind me in his truck and he stopped at the edge of the road to let Lee out before driving on to Seth’s house to take Richard home. My sister-in-law Barbara had just pulled into the yard when we got there. Zach must have called her from school, for she immediately got out of her car without putting on her coat and held out her arms to Emma, who had begun to cry again as she scrambled out of the backseat and hurried to her mother.

  “I could have come for my children,” Barbara said tightly when I lowered the window to speak to her. Her tone was as frosty as the air that flowed in over the glass.

  “I know,” I said. “But I was right there and—”

  The front of her black cardigan was embroidered with clusters of red-berried holly. White snowflakes were scattered across the back. I found myself talking to the snowflakes as she abruptly turned and led Emma into the house. Lee gave an awkward wave and trailed them inside.

  I put the car into reverse and headed back onto the road. I did not jerk it into drive. I did not dig off. All the same, Ruth asked, “How come you and Aunt Barbara don’t get along?”

  “I get along with your Aunt Barbara just fine,” I told her.

  I could almost hear her eyeballs rolling, but nothing more was said until I drove up to her house. A.K. was waiting for her in the carport and he put a protective arm around his younger sister before holding the side door open for her. There was no sign of April, their mother, who teaches sixth grade at the local middle school, and Andrew’s own pickup was not under the shelter.

  I continued on through the yard, past the shelters and barns, and down the rutted lane that led to my own house.

  “No you don’t,” Jessica said quietly from the seat beside me.

  “No I don’t what?” I asked.

  “Get along with Aunt Barbara. I mean, you don’t snarl at each other or talk ugly, but it’s like y’all’s hackles rise every time you get around each other.”

  She was right. Not that I had ever sat down and given it serious thought.

  “You two are like oil and water.”

  “Nothing wrong with oil or water,” I said.

  “No, but you sure don’t mix.”

  “Objection,” I said, trying to keep it light.

  “Sustained,” she said agreeably. “Actually, Aunt Barbara’s the one that doesn’t do much mixing, does she? Why?”

  When I was silent, she said, “I’m not still a child, you know.”

  I reached over to pat her leg and said, “I know,” even though it seemed like only yesterday that she was a kid more interested in horses and dogs than intrafamily relationships. Now she was seventeen, not a full-grown adult, but certainly cresting the hill. Like her mother, Minnie, she was growing into a steady, sensible woman. She would never be conventionally beautiful, not with Seth’s square face and Minnie’s sturdy build, but she had the Knott family’s clear blue eyes, open smile, and sandy blond hair, and she had her share of interested boys even though her heart still belonged to Dollar, her old white horse.

  “Maybe it’s because she was raised in town,” Jess mused aloud.

  “Your Aunt Amy was raised in town,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but she and Uncle Will live in Dobbs. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe Aunt Barbara doesn’t really like living on the farm.”

  “Can you see Uncle Zach anywhere else?” I asked.

  She smiled, but then her tone turned thoughtful. “Actually, I could. He might mess around with his bees, but he’d rather read a book than sit on a tractor, and he doesn’t raise any animals. Yeah, he likes to hunt and fish like Dad and the others, but he doesn’t have to live out here to do that. He could keep bees in town and drive out like Uncle Will does or like Uncle Herman.”

  “True,” I said as I turned into my own yard and coasted to a stop by the back porch, “but Aunt Barbara knew when she married him that she’d never get him to live anywhere else. He loves being part of the family’s daily life too much to leave it.”

  I shifted into park and opened the door. The icy wind slashed at my face and made my eyes water.

  Jessica came around the car with my robe in one hand and her phone in the other, then held the door for me while I fished my purse out from beneath the seat.

  “You okay to drive home?” I asked, giving her a big hug. A wisp of her hair blew in my face. It smelled like baby shampoo, sweet and innocent.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “You’d think we’d be used to it by now. I feel so sorry for Mallory’s mom and dad. Mr. Johnson thought she hung the moon. He was so proud that she got into Carolina that he was going to throw this huge graduation party for her, then they were going to go to Spain for a week. Mallory said he already bought their plane tickets and made reservations. This is going to kill him. Christmas is never going to be the same for them, is it?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  She sighed again as she slid under the wheel of her car. “Well, at least Mrs. Johnson still has Charlie, but poor Mr. Johnson. He’s so upset, I heard he was out yesterday morning walking up and down the road where Mallory crashed, trying to understand how it could have happened.” She gave me a watery smile and said, “See you Saturday,” before closing the door and putting the car in gear.

  She was halfway down the lane, her phone clamped to her ear, and I was inside my warm kitchen stuffing my gloves in my coat pocket and still thinking about Zach and Barbara, before Jessica’s words fully registered. I had almost forgotten that Sarah Johnson had eloped before she finished high school and that she was pregnant when she graduated. Six months later, her young husband had died in some sort of bad fall—while pruning some tree limbs? Roofing the house? Malcolm Johnson had been his best friend and everyone thought it was wonderful that he was there for Sarah.

  Although…

  I tried to remember the gossip. I’m pretty sure there was some. But that was around the time Mother was first diagnosed with cancer and everyone else’s troubles seemed insignificant compared to mine.

  I vaguely remembered that he had adopted the boy and given him his name, yet his daughter had been headed to Chapel Hill? While his adopted stepson made do with Colleton Community College?

  “Poor Mr. Johnson,” but “at least Mrs. Johnson still has Charlie.” Now what was that about?

  Curiosity is an itch I have to scratch right away. I tried Jess, but her phone was busy, of course, so I ran a mental finger down the list of people who might remember.

  Isabel’s name jumped right to the top of the list. Haywood’s wife is a gregarious, opinionated gossip. Whatever talk was going around back when Sarah and Malcolm married, Isabel would surely have heard it,
and what’s even better, she’s always ready to repeat every detail, both the real and the speculative.

  “Oh, hey, Deborah,” Isabel said cheerfully when she answered the phone on the first ring. “I was just about to call you. Haywood stopped by Miss Zell’s this morning to take her some of Mr. Kezzie’s peach brandy, and she sent you a fruitcake.”

  Momentarily diverted, I said, “Tell me the truth, Isabel. Is Daddy still running moonshine these days?”

  “Now, honey, you know I don’t know a thing about where his good stuff comes from. All I can say is that he sends your Aunt Zell about a gallon every winter, but he was a little short this year, so he had to poke around and find her another quart to finish off her cakes. And don’t you know that brother of yours had to go and cut hisself off a slice of ours before he could get it here? I’ve had to hide it under the bed in the guest room or there won’t be a crumb left for Stevie and Jane Ann when they get home tomorrow.”

  Mother’s sister makes the best fruitcakes in Colleton County—easy on the citron and candied cherries and heavy on the fat meaty pecans. Early in November, she bakes about twenty, then wraps them in cheesecloth, gives them a periodic drenching with some of Daddy’s homebrew to keep them moist, and ages them till Christmas.

  Daddy swears that the brandy is left over from the time he used to finance a few stills around this part of the state. He also swears that he quit doing that forty years ago. Swears it with a straight face, too. Yet every year, for over forty years, he’s sent Aunt Zell a gallon for her fruitcakes.

  In half-gallon Mason jars with shiny new lids.

  I’ve stopped telling him how embarrassing and politically damaging it would be for me if he’s arrested for moonshining, and Dwight keeps threatening to run him in if he catches him in possession of untaxed liquor. (Happily for me, Dwight turns a blind eye to the pint jar in our own pantry. I mean, I can’t let the fruitcake Aunt Zell always sends me dry out before Christmas, now can I?)

  “You hear that Malcolm and Sarah Johnson’s daughter died?” Isabel asked. “That’s just going to tear their hearts out, ain’t it? And right here at Christmas, too. Not that it don’t ever not hurt to lose a child, but to have to think about it fresh every Christmas? That’s double hard. Poor Sarah. Jeff died at Christmas, too, you know.”

  “Jeff?”

  “Jeff Barefoot. Her first husband. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “They were both a little older than me. I remember that he died, but I don’t remember how. Didn’t he fall or something?”

  “They were renting that little yellow house there on the left as you go into Cotton Grove. Right behind the Burger Barn? Cute little house but it has a real steep roof. He was stringing up Christmas lights in the dark, trying to put a Santa Claus on the ridgepole when his feet got tangled in the light cords and down he went. Banged his head on a rock and the ladder fell on top of him. Sarah was putting the baby to bed and by the time she missed him and went out to look, he was flat dead. Broke her heart. Malcolm’s, too. Or so we heard.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, him and Jeff? They were best friends all through school even after Sarah chose Jeff over him.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, they both courted her hot and heavy, but Malcolm went off to Carolina and Jeff stayed here and went to work in his daddy’s roofing business, so he got the inside track with her. Got her pregnant and that was that till he died.”

  “I sort of remember people talking about how fast Sarah married Malcolm after that,” I said.

  “Less than a year,” Isabel agreed. “Eight months in fact. His daddy won’t too happy about it neither. Taking on another man’s baby and him still two years from finishing up at Carolina? But Malcolm said he won’t gonna let her get away again, and if Mr. Johnson didn’t help them, he’d quit school right then and there. Jeff’s mama won’t happy about it neither. She was in my Sunday school class back then before the church split last time and—no, wait a minute. It was time before last when that preacher—what was that man’s name?”

  Isabel’s church seems to split up every five or six years with great drama and many hard feelings, so it’s no wonder she can’t keep track. Before she could go wandering down that interesting track, I said, “So Mrs. Barefoot was in your Sunday school class?”

  “Yes, and it really hurt her when Sarah let Malcolm adopt Charlie and give him the Johnson name. She said Malcolm had Jeff’s wife and Jeff’s baby, and he was living the life Jeff was supposed to live.” Isabel heaved a great sigh. “And now he’s lost both of the kids.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, that’s what it sounds like. I heard that him and Charlie don’t get along so good and Charlie changed his name back to Barefoot last spring. Whoops! There goes the dinger on my oven, honey. Now what was it you called about?”

  CHAPTER 4

  “I don’t know much about it either way. I only know he’s dead.”

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  After hanging up from talking to Isabel, I let Bandit out of his crate and opened the back door so the little dog could go outside, then I cut through the living area, circled past our ceiling-high Christmas tree, and headed into the bedroom, where I changed out of my dark green wool suit with its sassy cropped jacket and formfitting slacks into jeans and a warm red Hurricanes sweatshirt.

  The tree made me smile every time I looked at it.

  Like every other farm family around, my brothers used to go out with Daddy and cut a bushy cedar from the few still left on the farm. By the time I came along, nicely shaped ones had dwindled into virtual extinction, so that Mother would send the boys to town to buy a fir or spruce grown on tree farms up in the mountains. Between bought trees and artificial ones, cedars have made a nice comeback along our hedgerows and back pastures, but Dwight likes to re-create the pines he cobbled together after his dad died when cedars were few and money was too tight to waste on buying a tree.

  A freshly cut young pine is as scrawny and pitiful-looking as Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, but Dwight thickens it up with extra branches until it’s as full and bushy as any other.

  Last year, the week had been crowded with parties and festive dinners to celebrate our wedding. Dwight’s ex-wife had allowed him to have Cal over the holidays for the first time since the divorce, and we had gladly dispensed with a honeymoon so that Dwight wouldn’t have to miss a moment of the visit. Watching his face while he watched Cal tear into his presents was worth any number of moonlight cruises.

  Then Jonna died and Cal came to live with us. Some memories of her death are blessedly beginning to fade for him, but not the memory of last year’s celebration down here on the farm. He started bugging Dwight to go cut a tree right after Thanksgiving, the minute that twinkling lights first began appearing on rooftops and doorways and the warm glow of decorated trees radiated from windows through the winter darkness.

  Dwight’s sister-in-law Kate keeps Cal after school during the week, and once their tree was up, the pressure was really on for ours. Rob’s an attorney with a large law firm in Cameron Village and he does not share his brother’s nostalgia for those pinch-penny times. The first Christmas after he and Kate were married, he bought an expensive fully wired artificial fir tree and they fastened all the ornaments on so securely that it takes less than a half hour to bring the tree in from one of the outbuildings, carefully remove its protective dustcloth, and plug it in.

  Instant Christmas on the fifteenth of December.

  No muss. No fuss.

  “No real pine smell either,” Dwight mutters.

  I switched on the tree lights, added water to the stand, and breathed in the woodsy fragrance. Kate burns pine-scented candles, but Dwight’s right. It’s not the same.

  It’s like the difference between our fireplace and their remote-controlled gas logs, I thought, as I opened the damper, folded back the glass doors, and struck a match to paper and kindling. The bright flames danced
up and caught the dry oak logs cut from last year’s windfalls around the farm.

  I heard Bandit scratch at the door, but by the time I opened it, Dwight’s truck rolled up and the dog had changed his mind about coming in right then. Instead, he danced around the passenger side till Cal got out and petted him.

  “Guess what?” Cal called to me, pulling a sheet of paper from a side pocket of his bookbag. “I only missed one on my spelling test!”

  “Don’t tell me you messed up on ‘disease’?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No. ‘Despite.’ ”

  He showed me his paper and I had to laugh, too. He usually does his homework over at Kate’s, but last night I had worked with him on his word list because he kept wanting to spell “disease” d-e-s. We had tried so hard to implant d-i-s that it had carried over to “despite,” which he had spelled d-i-s, too.

  I took his bookbag and he went to help his dad load the cart with an evening’s supply of logs.

  Not that we were going to be here throwing logs on the fire all evening. Tonight was the last home game for the Carolina Hurricanes till after Christmas and we had tickets, which meant junk food at the RBC Center in Raleigh instead of a nutritionally sound supper.

  Ice hockey is a relatively recent import in the South. I grew up on basketball and baseball, with an occasional high school football game thrown in whenever some of my brothers were playing. I had heard about hockey, but the televised games never grabbed me. I couldn’t relate to ice skating, and the puck zipped around the ice too quickly for me to follow, but winters were colder up in the foothills of the Virginia mountains and Cal loved the game. When he came to live with us last winter, I remembered that a former client worked for the Canes. Karen was able to come up with a pair of decent seats for the second half of the season and I thought that the drive back and forth to Raleigh would let Dwight help Cal get a handle on all the changes in his life.

  Then came the night that Dwight was called out on a murder case just as they were about to walk out the door. Cal tried so hard not to show his disappointment that I said I’d take him if he would get me up to speed on the rules by the time we got to the game.