‘Really! Who?’

‘It’s a surprise.’ The gospel truth if he ever told it.

‘I love surprises!’ She wrangled a notebook from her shoulder bag, pulled out her point-and-shoot. ‘I’m doin’ a story on this, okay?’

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘But I don’t know about a front page, I can’t guarantee a front page. It’s Christmas, you know.’

•   •   •

DRIVING DOWN MAIN AFTER CHURCH, they noticed a plastic bag hanging on the knob of the front door at Happy Endings. He parked at the post office and went across to check it out.

‘Good Lord!’ he said. It was frightening.

A bag full of white beards.

He unloaded the bag in the garage. Three of the blasted things, one with eyebrows. Dusty. He had a sneezing fit.

A note read: Oh thank you forevermore for taking these off my hands. I would sign my name but you might try to give them back. Merry Christmas!

He stuffed them in the bag and trotted through the hedge to Hélène’s. No answer to his knock on the rear door. He hung the bag on her doorknob, anonymous note included, and fled down the steps.

‘Father Tim!’

Kenny was putting a bag of garbage in the can by Miss Pringle’s driveway.

‘How are you, Kenny?’

‘Tryin’ to get my head around leavin’ in a couple of weeks. I’ve decided to take off the day after Christmas.’

‘We’ll miss you. You’ve been a fine influence on Sammy.’

‘My grandparents are to thank for that. I was goin’ wild like Sam, but they didn’t give up on me, they kept prayin’. And my girl back in Eugene, she’s been a huge help, she really understands why I had to come out here and find my brothers and little sister and stay awhile—not just find everybody and run back to Eugene. It’s been hard to be away this long.’

‘You’ve made your brothers and sister into a family again.’

‘I’m tryin’ to forgive my mother, but I don’t know . . .’

He nodded, took Kenny’s hand. ‘If you need anything—anything at all, anytime at all—will you call?’

‘I will.’

‘I’m glad we’ll be together for Christmas. Thanks for making that happen. We wish you a lot of success in school. You’ve saved some money, Dooley says . . .’

‘Five thousand. Not easy in my pay range, but the rent was low.’ Kenny smiled—he voted Kenny the best smiler in the family. ‘Harley’s a great guy, a really good influence. Sammy’s pretty connected to Harley, but Harley needs to do a little butt-kickin.’

He laughed. ‘Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘Thanks for puttin’ up with Sammy and helpin’ him. He really likes you, he’s probably never trusted an older guy before, especially somebody who lays down the law to him.’

‘We all need the law laid down to us now and again, it was sure laid down to me.’

Nanny Howard had taken no prisoners when it came to making him toe the line. His mother and Peggy hadn’t slacked in that department, either.

‘We’ll talk more before you leave,’ he said. ‘But I’d like to make sure you know you can call anytime. We all need to keep in touch, we can’t afford to lose one of you—one of us—again.’

Kenny gave him a determined look.

‘We’re done bein’ lost.’

•   •   •

ON SUNDAY EVENING, he took the Eucharist and a baked pasta dish to the Murphys’. They offered a prayer of thanks for the donor of the carriage house, and for Hope’s sister, Louise, who was coming on board after Christmas.

‘Louise once said that to be an aunt, she would give anything,’ Hope told him. ‘By not going to Denver and moving here, she’s actually giving everything.’

‘Starting a new life again in Mitford,’ he said. ‘A very good place to start a new life.’ That’s what he had done, and Cynthia, and Scott, and Hope, and Winnie’s Thomas, and Abe, and Shirlene . . .

Hope looked at him, happy. ‘Scott has something to tell you, Father.’

The chaplain sat on the side of the bed and took Hope’s hand. There was a kind of radiance in Scott that he’d never seen before.

‘Pretty soon, someone else will be starting a new life in Mitford. Her name is Grace.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

People were watching the chair.

They were watching the manger.

They were watching the upstairs window for the appearance of ‘the bookstore tree.’

And he, converted to the rigors of retail, was watching Hope’s bottom line. According to Marcie, annual sales were ‘up a little.’ In these last ticking hours of the year, he was going for ‘up a lot.’

He dug out the tree stand and several boxes of ornaments from under the stairs. Sammy and Harley were off to a tree farm to cut the finest specimen of Norway spruce they could find. ‘Ten feet!’ he said.

Marcie and Hélène would drop by after closing time to start the bedecking. Shirlene asked if she could pitch in.

He called home. ‘Why don’t you come up and join us? Sammy and Harley, Marcie, Hélène, Coot, Shirlene . . .’

‘Shirlene!’ said his wife. ‘Why don’t you invite Omer?’

‘Should I?’

‘Tell him there’ll be food. Bachelors like that. I just made pimiento cheese for lunches at Irene’s, but I’ll do sandwiches for the tree-trimming instead. And I’ll take a tray of lemon squares out of the freezer.’

‘Bring a yogurt,’ he said. ‘Banana.’

‘What time?’

‘Anytime.’

•   •   •

THE NATIVITY WINDOW WAS PLEASING, but it lacked something.

Something tall.

Ha! He muscled the rubber plant to the window and positioned it left-rear of the camel coming from afar.

The painted pot just happened to be sympatico with the red in a saddle blanket.

Nice.

•   •   •

SAMMY AND HARLEY WERE WRANGLING the tree up the stairs with the help of Coot and Scott. Marcie was out buying drinks and chips; Hélène was on her way.

As he and Cynthia shelved new books close by, Shirlene and Omer tried out the chairs so long secluded in the Poetry section.

‘How’s Miss Patsy?’ Shirlene asked Omer.

‘She’d like to be here, but I didn’t want her gettin’ tangled up in th’ tree lights.’

‘She is adorable, you are both totally lucky. I would love to find a little dog just like her.’

‘She’s one of a kind, for sure. Don’t know about findin’ another one.’

‘Th’ breed books are so confusin’, plus a lot of those breeds are a house payment.’ Shirlene sighed. ‘I guess I don’t know how to find a dog.’

‘SPCA,’ said Omer. ‘Somethin’ for everyone.’

‘But people say when you go over there, they’re all barkin’ at one time and they all want to go home with you. That is really sad, plus how do you know which one?’

‘You just have to follow your heart. I hear you play Scrabble.’

‘Scrabble is practically my life.’

‘I pulled a bingo last night. My online partner played th’ word SQUARE; I hooked on to her word with a D, used all seven tiles.’

A gasp from Shirlene; a jangle of bracelets.

‘Got a triple word score both ways,’ said Omer. ‘Nailed a hundred and sixty points.’

‘What . . . was your word?’

Omer looked ten feet tall, sitting down. ‘J-A-P-Y-G-I-D.’

‘Oh, my gosh.’ Shirlene put her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, my gosh.’

‘What?’ said Omer. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Are you . . . could you possibly be . . . WingDipper?’

‘Whoa. Are you . . . ?’

‘BocaGirl! Yes! You’re th’ one who killed me with that crazy word I never heard of in my entire life! I cannot believe this . . .’

‘Japygid!’ said Omer. ‘Any eyeless, wingless, primitive insect havin’ a pair of pincers at the rear of its abdomen.’

There went the toothsome grin. It was Scott Joplin’s ‘Maple Leaf Rag,’ it was Chopin’s Scherzo No. 2, Opus 31.

‘You’re a great Scrabble player,’ said Omer.

‘Oh!’ said Shirlene, fanning herself with a section of the Times.

‘Around town, I’m Flyboy, down th’ mountain, they call me Ragwing, but online, I’m WingDipper.’