The 13th Gift Read online

  It’s clear its state of undress isn’t from a lack of effort.

  Ransacked ornament tins clutter the living room with wads of packing paper spilling from open lids. Glass balls are arranged on the coffee table by color: red, green, silver, gold. Folks unfamiliar with my Megan might think she’s trying to organize them.

  Not my little girl.

  She’s searching for something.

  From the appearance of the room, she hasn’t found it. I get the step stool from the garage and carry it down to the family room closet. I know what she’s looking for and where to find it. I’m standing on tiptoe, feeling around, when my fingers touch the edge of the metal tin on the top shelf labeled “Precious.” I scoot it across the wooden surface until I can grab it with both hands.

  Running my fingers across the cold surface of the lid, I study the picture stamped on top: a white stone castle built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the very one used as a model for the Disneyland castle. The tin had been filled with chocolate-dipped cookies, a gift to Rick from a Gem City Engineering customer. The cookies didn’t last long, but the beautiful tin has become very special to me.

  I return to the living room and plant the box and myself near the tree.

  The container holds my family’s Christmas history, each year individually wrapped in white tissue paper. A bewildered bride and groom stand side by side on a ceramic ornament, with “Our first Christmas together” and “1980” stamped in gold letters. A baby boy in red pajamas tangled in light strings smiles from the 1982 ball that commemorates Ben’s birth. There’s a tiny playpen with a teddy bear dated 1987 for Nick, and Megan’s rocking horse is inscribed 1989.

  My mother bought them all for us over the years. The Christmas after my dad died, she told me why.

  “Give these to your children someday to hang on their own Christmas trees. They will be grown, and I will be a memory. Tell them these are from Baci and Grandpa Huist. Tell them they were loved even before they were born.”

  I’m tempted to hang these keepsakes on the tree myself, but set them aside to leave for Megan, with my supervision. I have told her the story of these precious keepsakes. I will tell her again, while she cleans up this mess, and then we can hang them together.

  I change my clothes as planned, grab my purse, and head for the door. The mall is waiting. My kids need presents. I am just stepping onto the porch when I see a car rounding the bend up the street.

  “Wait a minute,” I say out loud.

  The vehicle looks similar to the one we chased the other night.

  No time to close the door or turn off the lights. I stand my ground and stare as it passes. The car doesn’t stop, but I imagine that the passenger is slumping down in the front seat, like I did.

  When the car turns the corner, I shift into high gear, figuring they’ll circle the block and return in a few minutes. I run outside and pull my Grand Am into the garage, then turn off the lights in the house so it looks like no one is home. I am crouching on the living room floor next to the front window with my binoculars aimed at the street, when my hair gets tangled on a low-hanging branch of the Christmas tree.

  “Crap.”

  I yank at my hair, which luckily comes loose, but the tree nearly topples.

  I thank goodness that I didn’t put our special ornaments on the tree.

  I give up my hazardous hideout, a twig still knotted in my hair, and run up to Nick’s bedroom, where I hope to find a better vantage point. I reach his window in time to see a lone figure step from a car more than a block up the street.

  A small figure moves quickly up the street toward the house, growing larger with each step. The dark-clad creature crisscrosses yards staying in the shadows, and I lose sight of it more than once. The figure disappears again somewhere in the flower bed that borders our house.

  I’m swelling with emotions. Our gift giver is standing below this window, waiting to step onto the porch where a beam of moonlight will reveal his or her identity to me.

  Seconds pass with no movement. I hesitate, think about running downstairs and opening the door, but I don’t want to take my eyes off the porch. Flattening my body against the wall, I try to get a better view. I pull myself up to straddle the rim of an old dog food bucket that holds Nick’s Lego collection. Balancing on the thin edge of plastic I peek out the corner of the window. My sweaty palms clutch at the wall for a handhold. I test the stability of the curtain rod, but it is already loose. My heart is thumping, and I think of Rick, but this time I am not afraid. I am too excited. The view is much better up here. I can see someone moving around the boxwood.

  The mysterious figure steps out of the shadows … and I fall down.

  I catch the flash of a smile before I tumble into Lego land.

  I bang my head on the frame of Nick’s waterbed, and my backside lands on hundreds of building bricks. Laughter bubbles up from somewhere deep. I try to stop, but it’s a runaway.

  “It’s got to be the bump on my head,” I think, rubbing the blossoming lump, which hurts. “Or, maybe I am happy.”

  The feeling warms me like holding a new baby, or hot soup on a winter day. I imagine my coworkers, the kids, or even Rick seeing me sprawled on the floor. He would be laughing the loudest. I would be laughing with him.

  That’s what I do. Lie there on the floor laughing. I can’t seem to stop.

  When I regain composure enough to stand, the street is empty. The car up the street has moved on, but our Ninth Day of Christmas gift is waiting for me. As I walk downstairs to retrieve it, I try to picture the face that glanced up at me.

  It was a woman, definitely a girl. Or maybe a teenage boy. Perhaps an older man or a midget. Admitting I have no idea makes me laugh all the more. The wisp of a smile does confirm to me that our true friend heard me fall, or feels good about giving.

  I’m ready to feel that way, too.

  I walk out the door without a coat. I have presents to buy. I don’t stop to look inside the gift bag on the porch—time enough to do that later as a family.

  My kids will have Christmas, and if I learn the identity of my smiling friend, I’ll make sure the holiday is special for all of us. I arrive at the mall an hour before closing and whip through stores like a reformed Scrooge.

  I buy three outfits for Meg, including a new red sweater.

  Nick gets baggy blue jeans and sweats. I buy new running shoes for Ben, plus snow boots for everybody. The weight of the shopping bags gives my biceps a workout, and it feels wonderful.

  A little girl trailing her mom around the shoe department approaches me at the checkout counter.

  “Lady, you have Christmas tree in your hair,” she says.

  Sure enough, I am wearing a twig.

  My spree at the mall ends when a department store clerk asks me to leave.

  “We’re closing,” she says.

  No bother. I have to collect my kids. No time tonight to buy a bed for Nick or whatever else Megan and Ben want. I am Christmas delayed, but I will make up for the weeks I lost. I will be ready by December 25.

  A new and improved mom picks up Nick and Megan from their sports practices. I itch to quiz them about items on their Christmas lists.

  “No problem,” Nick says pulling a notebook from his backpack. “What kind of money are we talking about?”

  Megan hasn’t made a list yet, so her brother gives her a sheet of paper and encourages her to get started. When Megan asks if I’ve been Christmas shopping this evening, it feels good to answer truthfully, “Lots.”

  When we arrive home the gift is missing from the porch, but the lights of the tree brighten the window. Ben must be inside. His siblings and I burst through the door asking questions.

  “Where is it? Did we get a gift?”

  Ben points to the dining room table where he has added nine votive candles to our centerpiece. The table is set with our Christmas china. In the kitchen, a pot of spaghetti simmers on the stove. The culinary arts class he took at the high school is paying o
ff.

  “You’ve been busy, Ben.”

  “Dinner is served, Momma.”

  I will always remember this meal, the first truly happy one since before Rick’s death. We illuminate our dinner with candle and Christmas tree lights. Ben tells us about a new video game he’s been playing at Robert’s, and I make a mental note to buy it for him. I tell my children about the story I wrote today and the runaway horses. We all agree to go ice-skating on New Year’s Day.

  Before the last spaghetti noodle is slurped, we decide to host the big family gathering at our house on Christmas Eve, just like always.

  I’m so caught up in the meal and conversation that I forget to ask Ben if our true friends left a card. I remember later, after Megan and Nick have cleared away the packing debris from the living room floor.

  “I mean, I think we got a card. I didn’t read it. I went straight for the candles, then I got the idea to make dinner. I threw the bag on the floor with the rest of the mess.”

  Ben searches through the trash while I empty each of the ornament tins. I find candy canes left over from last year, a spare house key, and someone’s baby tooth, but no card. Ben also comes up empty-handed.

  “Another mystery?” he asks.

  Robbed of a chance to look for clues on the card, Nick is upset over the loss.

  “We haven’t solved the first mystery yet,” Nick complains. “We’re never going to find out who the gifts are from.”

  Megan tells him not to worry.

  “I know what the card said. Want me to sing it?”

  Her sibling is not amused.

  Megan sticks her tongue out at her brother and starts putting hooks into the ornaments she left on the coffee table. When she gets seven attached to her sweater, she walks over to the tree and plots the locations each will hang.

  Ben gets the honor of placing our toilet-paper-roll angel on the top and then sprawls on the couch, pointing out bare spots in the branches that need Megan’s attention. I find perfect perches for each of our special ornaments. When the tree is fully dressed, we match tins with lids and return them to the basement closet. Our now-empty heirloom tin will remain under the tree until after Christmas. Inside it rests the cards from our gift givers—at least the ones we can find—safely stowed inside sheet protectors, now forever part of our family’s Christmas history.

  While in the basement, I pack away our painting supplies and peek into Nick’s new room. It is nearly ready for occupancy. The walls are painted and the carpet cleaned.

  It just needs furniture.

  Nick heads up to his old room with the intent of starting the transition.

  From his room, I hear him shout.

  “Who’s been messing with my Legos?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Tenth Day of Christmas

  THE NEXT MORNING, the kids are still snoring as I lock the front door behind me. I arrive at the office by seven a.m. and then skip lunch. Eight hours later, I am waving good-bye to coworkers, guilt-free. I have Christmas shopping to finish, and I want to be home in time for dinner.

  This trip to the discount store is meant to be a quick one, as I still need to buy a bike for Nick. I pull into the parking lot and head toward the shopping cart corral, when something inside a nearby car causes me to stop midstep. The fading December sun illuminates the contents of the station wagon, creating a rainbow of dancing colors on its windows. One glance inside the wagon, and my shopping ambitions morph into criminal intent.

  There on the front passenger seat, holding court over an assortment of shopping bags, is the identical twin to our poinsettia, the one left by our still-mysterious true friends on the porch on the First Day of Christmas. I know I shouldn’t be loitering in the parking lot, attempting to break into the car parked next to mine. But the matching wrapping paper on the two plants could be my first solid clue to the identity of the gift givers. All of the lessons I had learned reading Nancy Drew amateur detective novels in elementary school are clicking into gear.

  I take a slow scan around the parking lot, making sure no one is watching, then I jiggle the door handle of the station wagon a second time … just to be certain.

  Of course it’s locked.

  I drag my fingers through my hair and feel sweat beading at my temples, though the temperature outside is near freezing.

  I need to find a way into this car.

  Knowing where the poinsettias were purchased could reveal so much about the identity of our true friends. If the buy was made in Bellbrook, I can eliminate Rick’s coworkers and mine as suspects. None of them live in our south Dayton suburb. Certainly, they wouldn’t risk getting caught shopping for the poinsettia in our tiny town, not if they really wanted to keep their identity hidden.

  If the Christmas flowers are from the same store here in town, then Megan’s Girl Scout troop or someone from the schools will soar to the top of my suspect list.

  I just need a look at the price tag.

  I pull up the hood of my coat to shield my face from passersby and take a closer look inside the car. With my nose pressed against the window, I can see the white sticker on the pot.

  The clue is so close, but it might as well be on the other side of eternity with Rick. I can’t read the name of the store on the sticker. All of my rational thoughts, like the fact that I’m about to commit a crime, disappear. All I can think about is the truth and that the possibility of learning it is sitting right there, almost within reach.

  I’m tugging at the car door handle a third time, rather violently, when two young men approach.

  “Can we help you?”

  My hands fly up like a criminal caught as I turn to face two blue-vested store employees. I never saw them coming. My car keys leap from my opening palm and strike one of the fellows on the foot.

  My only audible comment, “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Megan’s reprimanding voice screams in my head for use of this four-letter word, and I wonder how I’ll tell my daughter her mom will be spending Christmas in the slammer.

  The key-bludgeoned clerk picks up the projectile from the pavement, noting the Pontiac key chain, clearly not matching the Volvo I stand beside.

  “So, you’re not locked out of your car. Manager saw everything. Got it on video.”

  So, their manager had observed my antics on the store’s surveillance system and assumed I was locked out of my car, an alibi killed by that blasted key chain. Fear takes over me, and suddenly words are flying out of my mouth

  “My husband died … my children are devastated. We’re getting these anonymous gifts and I have to find out who they’re from.…”

  When they don’t immediately respond, I keep babbling. “The poinsettia in this car, I need to know what store it came from. I need to know.”

  The two men stand there looking at me, then at each other, then at the Volvo. A crowd has started to gather around us. I’m so embarrassed.

  “We should probably go get a manager,” the young clerk holding my keys says. But that’s not what he does. Instead, he walks over to the car and looks inside.

  “Not one of ours,” he proclaims after eyeing the plant. “All of our small poinsettias are wrapped in green paper.”

  “I got one from Kroger,” a lady from the crowd calls out. “Let me have a look.”

  As people start jostling toward the window, it seems that everyone in the gathering has bought a poinsettia this season, and they all want a chance to see if theirs matches the one in the car. They all want to help me solve the mystery. One by one they peer in and shake their heads; no one recognizes where the plant is from.

  The clerk with my car keys approaches me again.

  “I’ve gotta get back inside. Promise you won’t do something stupid, like break a car window?”

  I promise and he tosses me the keys. I hate giving up, but I’ve got to buy that bike and get home. The kids are waiting for me.

  As I head to get a cart from the corral, an older woman pushing a cart full of
poinsettias—there have to be at least ten—passes me, and I turn to see her destination. When she stops at the Volvo, I turn around.

  She’s rearranging boxes of poinsettias in the rear of the station wagon to make room for more when I approach her. I hadn’t even noticed all the ones in the back.

  “Excuse me, can we talk for a minute?”

  “If you’re after money, honey, haven’t got any,” she says, picking up her pace. I can tell she’s nervous; she thinks perhaps I am unbalanced.

  “I just need to talk,” I try to reassure her. “I need to ask you about that poinsettia plant on the front car seat. My husband just passed away. I know this doesn’t quite make sense. But please.”

  She rubs the ring on her left hand and her expression softens. I help her load the rest of her flowers into the back of the car.

  “I could use a cup of coffee,” she says, slamming the hatch door. “How about you buy.”

  We drive separately over to Frisch’s across the street and meet in a booth in the back of the restaurant. She orders coffee, and I get a Diet Coke.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I tell her, ashamed that I’m pulling her away from her own family, her life.

  She calls the waitress back to the table.

  “Better bring a slice of pumpkin pie with that coffee.”

  I tell her about Rick, our kids, the gifts. She listens. She nods. She drinks her coffee and eats the pie.

  “At first, I wanted nothing to do with the gifts. I even considered reporting our true friends to the police,” I confess. “Now, I desperately want to thank them for gluing my family back together.”

  When I ask her about the poinsettia on the front seat of her car, she responds with a story of her own. She tells me about Neal, her husband, who lives in a nursing home.

  “Senility. It’s an ugly word,” she says. “ ‘Permanently forgetful’ seems less harsh.”

  She’s taking the poinsettias, all of the poinsettias, to the nursing home on Christmas Eve to decorate her husband’s room. It’s their wedding anniversary. She began purchasing the flowers more than a week ago, patronizing at least seven different stores.