The 13th Gift Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Joanne Smith

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  Harmony Books is a registered trademark, and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Smith, Joanne Huist.

  The 13th gift : a true story of a Christmas miracle / by Joanne Huist Smith.

  pages cm

  1. Christmas—Anecdotes. 2. Kindness—Anecdotes. 3. Miracles—Anecdotes. 4. Smith, Joanne Huist. 5. Smith, Joanne Huist—Family. I. Title. II. Title: Thirteenth gift.

  BV45.S484 2014

  394.2663—dc23

  2014015048

  ISBN 978-0-553-41855-2

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-41856-9

  Illustrations by Julia Rothman

  Jacket design by Nupoor Gordon

  Jacket photography by Ttatty/Shutterstock, pkline/iStock, Tsekhmister/iStock, claudio.arnese/iStock

  v3.1

  For Rick, my very first true friend, and our three most precious gifts, Benjamin, Nicholas, and Megan.

  On the twelfth day of Christmas,

  my true love sent to me

  Twelve drummers drumming,

  Eleven pipers piping,

  Ten lords a-leaping,

  Nine ladies dancing,

  Eight maids a-milking,

  Seven swans a-swimming,

  Six geese a-laying,

  Five golden rings,

  Four calling birds,

  Three French hens,

  Two turtle doves,

  And a partridge in a pear tree!

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER ONE:

  The First Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER TWO:

  The Second Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER THREE:

  The Third Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER FOUR:

  The Fourth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  The Fifth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER SIX:

  The Sixth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  The Seventh Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  The Eighth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER NINE:

  The Ninth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER TEN:

  The Tenth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER ELEVEN:

  The Eleventh Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER TWELVE:

  The Twelfth Day of Christmas

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  The 13th Gift

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  Dear Readers,

  I learned the lyrics to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” carol as a kid in grammar school choir, when the magic of the holiday season still filled me with a sense of wonder and possibility, a dreams-come-true mentality. Partridges and pear trees, ladies dancing and leaping lords—I had thought the words of the tune farcical. I didn’t know then that the key to happiness was hidden within its silly stanzas.

  I had spent my life grasping at those five golden rings: a husband, three healthy children, and a comfortable home. Then just before Christmas in 1999, my beloved husband died in the night, and I realized my gold was fragile as glass.

  We were shattered.

  I found no comfort or joy in the approaching holidays, only memories that cut at my heart like broken pieces of a treasured Christmas ornament.

  I stopped singing. It hurt even to breathe. I wanted to banish the holidays from our lives. But then something extraordinary happened.

  Thirteen days before Christmas, gifts began appearing at my home. They were just small tokens of the holiday season, accompanied by a card with lines similar to the carol. Each was signed simply, “Your true friends.” At first, I resisted the intrusion of Christmas into my grief. But slowly, as the gifts kept arriving, my heart began to thaw. The gifts made my children smile, got us talking, as we tried to identify the source of our mysterious presents. They were teaching us how to function as a family again.

  The romantic in me would like to believe a miracle touched my family that Christmas, and in a way that is true. But I know that the miracle was the way a small act of kindness saved my family and brought us back to each other. Years later, the magic of the holiday season is still colored by the light that those friends shone into our lives. Thinking of what a powerful impact those anonymous gifts made on my family has changed the way I see the holidays—not just as an excuse to give and receive presents with my loved ones, but as a time when it is more important than ever to step outside of my own world and consider those around me, to open my heart, reach out my hand, and engage. The holidays are a time to rejoice, to remember, to reflect on seasons past, and to celebrate our memories. This book is about finding a way to honor those who cannot be with us this season, to create new and joyful memories, to experience this season of giving in a very special way.

  Come.

  Walk with me.

  I will share with you the message that forever changed my family, the healing magic of the 13th Gift.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The First Day of Christmas

  JUST BEFORE DAWN on December 13, my daughter, Megan, tugs at my nightshirt.

  “Mom, we missed the school bus.”

  Disoriented and still half asleep, I start calling commands to my children before my feet hit the floor.

  “Splash water on your face! Get dressed! We’ve got bananas and granola bars in the kitchen for breakfast. I’ll get the car heated up, but we have to leave in ten minutes!”

  Megan dashes off as directed, while I rouse her less cooperative brothers.

  When I hear movement in all of their bedrooms, I take a two-minute bath, swipe on makeup, and pummel my hair with baby powder to give it poof. A dark suit hanging on the back of the bathroom door becomes my ensemble for the day. The vision in the mirror is not enchanting, but at least my red eyes and rumpled clothes seem to match.

  “I dare anyone to criticize,” I say, pointing at my reflection.

  I check on the readiness of my three Smiths—Megan, ten; Nick, twelve; and Ben, seventeen—dig car keys from my purse, and toss four coats onto the couch.

  “Two minutes,” I holler. “Everybody outside.”

  I whisper a plea for even a few weak rays of sunshine as I open the front door, but instead I meet typical weather for Bellbrook, Ohio, less than two weeks before Christmas: gray, wet, and cold. It has always been the warmth of the people, our neighbors, the community, mooring us to this southern suburb of Dayton. But this December, I only feel the chill.

  In my haste to heat up the car, I nearly knock over a poinsettia sitting outside our front door. Raindrops on its holiday wrapper sparkle in the porch light.

  “What the heck?”

  Megan peeks around me, and her face lights up.

  “It’s so pretty!”

  That’s my Meg: ever hopeful even after we’ve been through so much. I wish I could be more like her, but then again, I’m not ten.

  “Yes, real pretty. Where are your brothers? Get your brothers.”

  “Where did it come from, Mom? Let’s bring it in.”

  I stand at the door watching the cold rain beat down on the plant’s four blood-red blooms. For me, bringing the flower into the house offers as much appeal as inviting in a wet, rabid dog for the holidays. I absolutely understand Scrooge no
w. I want to go to bed tonight and wake up on December 26. No shopping. No baking. No tree with lights. I’m not in a mood to make memories. The ones I have just hurt; I can’t imagine new ones will feel any better. I don’t expect to avoid the holiday altogether. I merely hope to minimize the affair as much as possible. Christmas is supposed to be about family, and ours has a larger-than-life-sized hole. The flower can’t fill it.

  I imagine my husband standing next to the closet he lined with shelves last December. Beside him, our fully trimmed Canadian fir stands in a growing puddle of pine needles.

  “You’re killing the Christmas tree,” I scolded, pointing to the mounting evidence on the floor. He tested my theory with a whack of his hammer on the closet shelf. Needles pirouetted from the branches.

  “At least these shelves aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “Neither am I.”

  So why am I alone?

  I search for him in the shadows of the house in the hours between good-night kisses and the morning alarm, even though I know he’s not there. My back throbs from the continual jabbing of a broken coil in the sofa, but I can’t bring myself to sleep upstairs in the bed we shared. I won’t even shift to his side of the sofa.

  The space Rick filled, it’s empty.

  Megan needs Christmas, but I’m not ready to descend into fa-la-la land. The appearance of this flower is sure to jumpstart the nagging about buying a Christmas tree and scavenging through boxes in the basement for our collection of Santa Claus figurines. I consider asking Rick’s brother Tom and his wife, Charlotte, to let the kids spend the holidays with them, just a day or two. I could hide from the season while they shower my children with gifts and stuff them with turkey and banana pudding. The kids would only be a few miles away if I got needy, but I could delegate the Christmas trimmings to Tom and Char. Delivery of the idea will be tricky. I can hear the chorus of “No way,” and recognize my voice as the loudest. I don’t want the holidays, but I do want my kids home with me.

  The clock on the mantel chimes seven a.m., and I snap back into my “single mom with children nearly late for school” mode.

  “I don’t know where the flower came from, Meg. But I’m not bringing it in. It’s wet, and the potting soil looks like a mudslide.”

  “But, Mom, it’s a Christmas flower.”

  Megan presses her plea for the plant, as Ben walks up the steps from his basement bedroom. I know he was out until nearly three a.m., and I’m not fool enough to believe he was studying. He doesn’t give me a chance to say good morning or to question him about the missed curfew.

  “I don’t see why I have to go to school. Most of my friends have already left town for winter break.”

  The thought of having this conversation, again, makes me weary. I want to crawl back under the covers and tell him to do the same, but it’s not an option for either of us.

  “Just get your coat. You’ve already missed too many days of school.”

  Megan stands between us.

  “Look, Ben. Look what we found on the porch.”

  I’m not sure why or exactly when, but she has become the peacemaker of the family in the last two months.

  “Where’d it come from?”

  Ben moves past me to retrieve the flower. I put a hand up to stop him.

  “Whoa.” Ben throws his arms up in surrender, but his eyes warn me a battle is brewing. I know there are words to soothe him, but they aren’t in my vocabulary this morning.

  “Please, just go get your book bag.”

  Ben disappears back down the basement stairs just as Nick leaps down three steps at a time from his bedroom upstairs. Megan draws him into the poinsettia debate.

  “Mom doesn’t want to bring it in, but I think we should. It’s too cold outside for a such a pretty little flower.”

  Nick glances out the door and immediately loses interest.

  “Better not bring it in,” he whispers to Meg. “Might be a bomb disguised as a flower. Yeah. It’s probably okay as long as it’s outside where the temperature is nearly freezing, but bring it into a warm house and kaboom!”

  Megan jumps. “Mom!”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll bring it in.” I acquire several fingernails full of wet potting soil, and muddy raindrops mark a trail across the living room carpet to the kitchen.

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t say that,” Megan scolds. “Hey, there’s something else.”

  Megan follows me into the kitchen carrying a plastic bag with a homemade Christmas card inside. The note is written on yellow parchment with ripped edges, giving it an aged look. Someone has penned the message in an elegant cursive hand and sketched a holly leaf in the corner. The verse is a familiar one, though some of the lines are different:

  On the first day of Christmas

  your true friends give to you,

  one Poinsettia for all of you.

  Megan converts the note to song and starts dancing around the kitchen. Our blue-eyed Siberian husky, Bella, begins howling in unison. Nick grabs the parchment.

  “What friends? Was it Aunt Char? Uncle Tom? Someone from school? A teacher maybe?”

  I can’t answer him.

  Right now, I don’t feel as if we have any friends. Telephone calls to chat and make plans for weekend gatherings have stopped. There are no Christmas cards in our mailbox, only bills.

  Ben takes advantage of the commotion to announce he is not going to school.

  “I’ve got a headache. I’m going back to bed.”

  I want to put my arms around Ben and tell him that I understand his need to banish that song and everything relating to the holidays from our lives, but I don’t have the energy. Instead, I think of their father’s voice, bellowing the loudest when we sang that same carol as he drove us to a Christmas tree farm just outside of Yellow Springs.

  After nearly twenty years of marriage, I had grown accustomed to Rick’s often off-key chorus, but still I had been grateful for the closed truck windows. At the tree lot, we had meandered down rows of Scotch and white pines, Canadian firs, and blue spruce. Megan begged for one of each. Nick set his heart on a fifteen-footer, though our family room is only twelve feet tall, floor to ceiling. Ben’s only request was that the tree branches be sparse near the bottom.

  “More room for presents,” he had explained.

  Together, we had selected the perfect tree, then Rick had shooed the kids and me back into the warm truck to share a thermos of hot chocolate that I’d made for the occasion and brought with us. He alone braved temperatures in the low twenties, chipping away at the stubborn tree trunk with a dull ax. Wearing a red-and-black flannel shirt, dark jeans, and knit cap, he had looked like a lumberjack as he dragged the tree to the truck, strong, healthy, and rugged but with adorable rosy cheeks.

  That was my man.

  Standing six feet five, with wavy black hair and hands large enough to schlep an eight-pound infant in his palm like a pizza, Rick had reveled in his role of protector, provider, “the Big Dad.” He always had his huge arms wrapped around us.

  The clock on the mantel chimes again, reminding me how late we really are. Meanwhile the poinsettia is creating a puddle of dirty water on the counter, forging a channel down the kitchen cabinet onto the floor. I pick up the pot, shiny paper and all, and toss it into the sink. It topples and splatters damp potting soil on the clean dishes left to drain after last night’s dinner.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit. Everybody in the car,” I shout.

  “Mommy …” Megan huffs, stomping her foot on the floor.

  “I know. I know. Don’t say that.”

  Megan straightens the plant before collecting her backpack and heading out to the car. Her brothers and I follow. The car is cold.

  I deposit the still grumbling Ben at the high school and navigate through a jumble of parent traffic at the junior high that Nick attends.

  “Learn something,” I call as he slams the car door. He just keeps walking.

  Megan, who attends the intermediate school, starts cla
sses later than her brothers, so she and I sit in the car for twenty minutes practicing her spelling words, all holiday related, of course.

  “Ornament. O-r-n-a-m-e-n-t. Ornament. Poinsettia. P-o-i-n-s-e-t-t-i-a. Poinsettia. Do you think … do you suppose Daddy could’ve left it for us, Mom? You know, the p-o-i-n-s-e-t-t-i-a.”

  She looks at me with chocolate eyes so like her Dad’s, but there’s a new yearning haunting them that wasn’t there until two months ago. I want to tell her that his love lingers all around us, but how can I say that if I’m not sure it’s true? Do I lie? It’s easier to stick to safe topics like school, basketball practice, and her Girl Scout troop.

  She needs reassurance from me that we’ll be okay, but I’m not sure we will.

  “What I think is that it’s time for you to go to class and earn a few A’s,” I say, pulling up the zipper on her bright yellow jacket. I plant a kiss on top of her head.

  “Put your hood up, because …”

  “Body heat escapes off your head.” We say it together and laugh.

  She starts up the sidewalk toward the school but turns and runs back to the car. I check the seat to see what she’s forgotten, but it’s empty. Megan presses her nose against the car window just as I am about to roll it down. Her breath leaves a puff of steam on the glass.

  “Can we get a Christmas tree this weekend, Mom? Please? Okay, great,” she says, without waiting for an answer.

  “Maybe once you clean your room!” I call after her weakly, but she is already running toward the school. She waves before disappearing inside, taking what’s left of my heart with her.

  Before I get the car into gear, tears are blurring my vision.

  On my way to the office, I weave through town past Christmas decorations dangling from lampposts in the shopping plaza. By the time I reach the entrance ramp to the interstate, I feel like screaming.

  I pound the steering wheel and accidentally hit the horn. An elderly gentleman in a black sedan pulls over into the slow lane, and I speed up guiltily. I am ashamed of my actions now, and of the sense of panic that moved into our home when Rick left us.