Home for Christmas Read online

  When both girls had gone upstairs and Nell was sitting alone in the midst of half-constructed candy soldiers and marshmallow snowmen, she felt that too familiar wave of sadness wash over her again. She thought about the pinecones she had covered in silver-and-gold glitter; the fat pillar candles around which she had wrapped bright red ribbon; the tree-shaped napkin rings she had made out of construction paper; the place cards in the shape of holly leaves; the red and white poinsettia plants she had arranged in groups around the house. Christmas crafts, no matter how beautiful or charming, weren’t going to stop the inevitable from happening. Nell knew that. And yet she continued to squeeze glue and sprinkle glitter and wield knitting needles in some vain and vaguely superstitious attempt to keep her children where they belonged. At home with their mother.

  Chapter 2

  While Molly set the table with the Kings’ plain white plates, Felicity poured water into three tall everyday glasses. Nell rarely used the Waterford crystal and the Lenox tableware she had received at her wedding shower. The pieces held too many memories of the days when Nell and Joel King had been—or at least had appeared to be—a happy couple.

  “That smells soooo good,” Felicity said, refilling the pitcher at the sink.

  Nell smiled. “I know.” She had made batch upon batch of pesto during the summer, harvesting the basil from the garden, until the freezer was full of containers that brought back memories of the days when the sun provided light if not warmth until eight or nine o’clock.

  “What did Mick want earlier?” Nell asked as the three took their seats around the table and began to eat.

  “Nothing,” Molly said.

  “It couldn’t really have been nothing,” Felicity pointed out. “There has to be some intention behind calling someone, even if it’s just to say hi.”

  “Okay, he called to say hi.”

  “See?” Felicity cleared her throat and looked meaningfully at her mother. “I was looking again online at the J. W. Anderson bag I really want for Christmas. It’s made in Spain.”

  “I know,” Nell said. “You already told me.”

  “So what if it’s made in Spain?” Molly asked.

  “It means the workmanship is high quality. A bag like that is an investment piece.”

  Molly laughed. “What does a seventeen-year-old need with an investment piece? And it’s not even something important. It’s just a bag.”

  “Women keep their designer bags forever,” Felicity argued. “One day I could pass it on to my own daughter.”

  “Assuming it hasn’t gotten lost or stolen or hasn’t totally fallen apart.”

  While her daughters argued about the relative importance of a handbag, Nell thought about the larger issue at hand. Before Felicity had announced her plans to spend next Christmas with her father and stepmother, Nell had considered the coveted bag out of the question. Since her daughter’s announcement, however, she had given the idea of buying the bag serious consideration. If Pam and Joel could give Felicity a trip to Europe, the least Nell could do was to give her something equally extravagant. She might be able to scrape together the money, even though her salary as office manager of Mutts and Meows, a local veterinary practice, wasn’t grand. And there were online luxury consignment stores, though the chances of a new design having already been given up for sale seemed low.

  Nell suddenly became aware that her daughters’ friendly disagreement was threatening to turn into an outright argument about the dangers of materialism. “I was reading an article in today’s Portland Press Herald,” she interrupted. “It was about the Yorktide and Oceanside Land Bank Commission. Seems there are always volunteer posts open on the Emergency Shelter Assessment Committee.”

  “That’s the bunch of services and government reps and advocates who make sure the homeless are safe and taken care of?” Felicity asked, using tongs to add more pasta to her plate.

  “Right. I was thinking that once Molly graduates next June she’ll have some time to give back to the community.” Nell turned to her older daughter. “I thought you might be interested since you took that advanced psychology seminar last year on the causes of homelessness and what being homeless does to a person’s state of mind.”

  “Some of the stuff you told us really freaked me out,” Felicity said to her sister. “Like that when a non-homeless person looks at a homeless person, the part of the brain that activates when relating to other people and empathizing with them fails to activate.”

  “The medial prefrontal cortex,” Molly said without looking up from her plate.

  “It’s like the brain dehumanizes the homeless before, I don’t know, before a person can really see an individual.” Felicity shuddered. “Awful.”

  “It is awful,” Nell agreed. “This article said that last month on any given night there were an average of four hundred and thirty people in shelters in Portland alone. That’s an appalling number.”

  “Molly could volunteer,” Felicity said, “if co-managing the Williams’s farm doesn’t kill her! Farmers don’t exactly have a lot of downtime.”

  “Molly won’t be co-managing the farm until she and Mick are married,” Nell pointed out. “Before that she’ll have some room in her schedule.”

  Molly didn’t comment.

  “This pasta is awesome,” Felicity said, heaping yet more onto her plate.

  Clearly, Nell thought, her daughters were done with the subject of volunteering. “Do you taste the special ingredient in the salad dressing?” she asked. “It’s coriander.”

  Felicity shrugged. “I can never identify individual ingredients. Frankly, as long as there’s a lot of something, I’ll probably enjoy it.”

  For a moment Nell wondered if Pam was a good cook, but it wasn’t a question she would ask Felicity. She didn’t need to know that Pam was as proficient in the kitchen as she was at so many other things. Like winning gold medals and luring other people’s children to Switzerland for Christmas.

  Molly suddenly got up from her seat and brought her plate and glass to the sink. “I’ve got some homework to do,” she said.

  “Can I help you clean up, Mom?” Felicity asked. “I know teenagers aren’t supposed to complain about their mothers doing their chores, but seriously, you didn’t have to vacuum my room and do my laundry yesterday. Those are my jobs, even though I’m not very good at them.”

  “That’s okay. Cleaning up is exercise, right? All the bending and reaching. And I’m sure you have homework, too, like that trig you mentioned before dinner.”

  “Ugh,” Felicity said. “I still have three more problems to solve.”

  When both girls had gone upstairs, Nell looked at the dirty plates and empty glasses with a sort of fondness. Some day in the not too distant future she would be making meals for one and cleaning up after only herself. She felt a keen wave of loneliness come over her and considered calling her closest friend and neighbor Jill for no other reason than to hear her voice. Nell had pulled her cell phone from her pocket before she decided not to make the call. I’d better get used to being on my own, she thought, striding toward the dishwasher with her own plate and glass. I’d better get used to the sound of my own thoughts.

  Chapter 3

  The house seemed oddly quiet until Nell remembered that Felicity had left for school at six-thirty that morning. When Felicity was in the house you knew it. Molly, who didn’t have a class until nine, was probably somewhere about, but she was generally quiet and careful in her movements, not likely to be charging up and down the stairs, dropping cups on the kitchen floor, or accidentally letting doors slam behind her.

  Nell sat on the edge of her bed, surrounded by books and magazines dedicated to holiday crafts. In a shopping bag on the floor were several skeins of wool, knitting needles, and the half-completed Christmas stockings she was determined to finish by Christmas Eve. Nell hated knitting and was remarkably bad at it, and true, the girls already had stockings their paternal grandmother had given them long ago, but as part of her pla
n to give her daughters a Christmas they would never forget, Nell was forging ahead with this project.

  Other projects were more successful. One of the craft books Nell had borrowed from the library suggested wrapping one’s Christmas gifts in plain brown paper decorated with images cut from old Christmas cards and magazines. The process of arranging the images to create a pleasing effect was time consuming and Nell wasn’t at all sure the girls would appreciate her efforts. Still, she continued to paste images of Santa’s reindeers, of angels in long white robes, and of Christmas wreaths decorated with red and green lights onto sheets of plain brown paper with a will.

  The coveted J. W. Anderson bag aside, Nell had already purchased a few gifts for the girls: colorful wool socks for both, a new nightgown for Molly, a pair of fingerless gloves for Felicity. In addition she had decided to give each girl one special heirloom. For Felicity, who loved jewelry, it was a white gold and diamond cocktail ring that had once belonged to Nell’s great aunt Prudence Emerson. Nell hadn’t worn it since the divorce, and it seemed a shame the ring be kept stowed away when it could be enjoyed. For Molly, who had been collecting napkin rings and candlesticks for years in anticipation of having her own home one day, it was a large Mikasa serving platter dating from the 1950s. That, too, had once belonged to Great Aunt Prudence, and Molly had loved it since she was a little girl.

  Nell glanced at the digital clock on her bedside table and realized she had better get a move on if she was to be on time for work. She hurriedly stashed her craft materials back into the closet and headed downstairs to the kitchen. As was her habit, she first looked to the Advent calendar that hung on the wall by the fridge. It depicted a large Victorian style house with one window for every day of the month of December through the twenty-fourth. On the front door of the house was the number twenty-five. The image was sprinkled with white glitter to represent snow, and several carolers in Victorian dress stood at the far left of the image, their mouths open in song. Nell saw that Felicity had already opened the window marked December twelfth.

  “Morning.”

  Nell turned to see Molly standing in the doorway. “Good morning to you,” she said. “I’ll get the kettle going.”

  “Mom,” Molly said. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure,” Nell said, taking a seat at the table. “Join me. Coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”

  “I’d rather stand.” Molly straightened her shoulders and tilted her head back a bit, as if she were about to deliver an oration. “I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’ve decided to move to Boston after graduation in June.”

  “What do you mean?” Nell asked.

  “I mean that I’ve always wanted to experience urban life.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nell said with a bit of a laugh. “Whenever we visit Boston you can’t wait to get home. And the last time we were in New York the noise of the traffic drove you mad. You and Mick have both said that people who choose to live in a big city are crazy.”

  “Well, things have changed,” Molly stated. “I want to meet new people and see new things. I feel stifled here. I’m beyond bored.”

  Nell stared up at her daughter; there was a look of set determination on her face, and suddenly Nell recalled what Felicity had said when she came home from her last trip to Boston. She, too, had said that life here in Yorktide was boring. Did her daughters really mean that life with their mother was boring? And where was Mick in all this? Had Molly suddenly broken up with him? Don’t jump to conclusions, Nell told herself. Listen to what Molly has to say.

  “So,” she asked, “are you saying that you need a sort of vacation?”

  “I’m saying,” Molly replied, “that I want to do something important before it’s too late. I want to focus on achieving something.”

  Nell felt her head swim. She had so many questions. For one, what did Molly mean by “too late”? For another, wasn’t managing a thriving farm with the person you loved doing something important?

  “Molly,” she said. “Please sit.”

  Molly did, though with an air of reluctance.

  “Have you made any firm plans?” Nell asked, careful to keep her tone neutral.

  Molly placed her hands flat on the table. “No,” she said.

  “Have you started looking for a job?” Nell asked. “Have you thought about what sort of work you’ll be qualified for?”

  Molly drew her hands off the table and onto her lap. “No. There’s time for all that. I’ll set up interviews during spring break. And I’ll start the hunt for an apartment then, too.”

  Nell took a deep breath and decided to ask a different sort of question. “Has anything happened to make you unhappy here?” she asked. “Has Mick done anything wrong? Have you two had a falling out? Have I said something to hurt you?”

  Molly sighed. “No,” she said. “Mick and I haven’t had a falling out and no one said or did anything wrong. It’s just that I’ve realized there’s so much else out there. That’s why I didn’t say anything when at dinner last night you were talking about volunteering. I’m not going to be around to give back to Yorktide. I want to experience the world before settling down to marriage and kids. Assuming I ever do settle down. I mean, I know I’ve talked about getting married and having a family, but I’ve changed my mind about all that.”

  Ah, Nell thought with a sinking heart. “Too late” means marriage and children. She wondered what sort of example she had set her daughters, forgoing a career to marry right out of college. Maybe it hadn’t been a very good example. “What does Mick have to say about all this?” she asked. “You’ve done more than just talk with him about marrying and starting a family. You’ve promised him it’s what you want. You’ve promised each other.”

  Molly looked into the middle distance. When she spoke, her tone was oddly cold. “It doesn’t matter what Mick has to say or what I’ve said in the past. I’m going to end things with him after Christmas.”

  Nell felt as if she had been dealt a physical blow. “I don’t understand,” she said, hearing the rising note of distress in her voice. “You love Mick. You’re going to be married. We’ve talked about what kind of dress you’re going to wear and what you’re going to serve at the reception. We’ve talked about the flowers and the favors. And after the wedding you and Mick are going to manage the farm together and someday you’ll own it outright and pass it on to your children when they come of age. It’s the life you’ve always wanted.”

  “It’s the life I thought I wanted.” Molly looked back to her mother, and the expression in her eyes was more than determined. It was hard. Nell had never before seen that look on her daughter’s face. “Look, Mom,” Molly went on. “Mick’s been the only guy in my life. I can’t just marry him and never know what it’s like to be with another man. No one does that anymore. It’s old-fashioned. It’s ridiculous.”

  “But . . .”

  “But what?” Molly said fiercely. “Look, I’m moving away from here and you know that Mick won’t ever walk away from the farm. It’s an impossible situation, Mom.”

  Nell put her hand to her forehead. “Have you told him how you feel?” she asked.

  “No. I haven’t told him anything.”

  Nell leaned forward in her chair. “Molly, please help me to understand. Are you saying that if Mick agreed to leave the farm and move with you to Boston you’d be happy?”

  Molly rose abruptly from her seat. “Yes. No. Look, I’m not changing my mind so don’t ask me to.”

  Nell felt sick. She was all too clearly reminded of how when she was Molly’s age she had left the man she truly loved for someone her parents had convinced her was the better, more sensible choice as a husband. The truth was that no one was capable of making smart decisions at the tender age of twenty-one and they shouldn’t even try, not without first consulting someone older and wiser, someone who had made plenty of mistakes they had lived to regret. Someone who was mature enough to admit her mistakes and to own up t
o the regrets. Before Nell could open her mouth to say something to that effect, Molly spoke again.

  “I haven’t told Fliss that I’m going to break up with Mick after the holidays. You know how she feels about him. She considers him a brother. So don’t say anything to her, okay?”

  Nell nodded. “All right,” she said, her voice catching.

  “Last night I told her that after graduation I’m probably going to get an apartment in Boston with some girls for a few months. That’s all she needs to know for now. And don’t tell Jill either about my breaking up with Mick, okay?”

  Nell nodded again but said nothing.

  “I’m going to be late for psych lab. I’ll see you later, Mom.”

  Molly left the kitchen. Nell remained seated at the table and attempted to process what she had just heard. Molly’s decision to radically alter the plans she had set for her life seemed to have come from out of the blue, but the decision had to have a source. If only Nell could discover that source. Molly had been so sure about wanting to marry Mick and have a family with him. And Nell had relied on that scenario. It would have given her a continuing role in the life of her older daughter. Molly was planning my future for me, Nell realized. I allowed her to promise me a life. But now . . .

  The furious whistling of the kettle startled Nell into action. She looked at the wall clock above the microwave. She had just enough time to grab a cup of coffee before leaving for work. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to be in the company of her cheerful colleagues at Mutts and Meows.

  Chapter 4

  “I binge watched the first season of The Crown again yesterday.” Jill shook her head. “What did we ever do before Netflix and Acorn and Hulu?”

  Nell dumped a measure of flour into the food processor and smiled. “We read a lot more.”

  Jill Smith, Nell’s neighbor and closest friend in Yorktide, was a youthful seventy years old. Her hair was thick and silvery and she wore it in a sharp bob. Jill had an impressive collection of jewelry set with all sorts of stones, from pyrite to malachite, from jasper to peridot, from rough diamonds to rutilated quartz. This morning she was wearing a suite of turquoise stones set in yellow gold. The bright blue of the stone complemented the bright blue of her eyes.