A Carol Christmas (24 page)

I suddenly felt nervous, tongue-tied, stupid.

He fought through the crowd like a salmon swimming upstream and finally broke through to stand next to me. Mom made herself scarce.

“Nice service, huh?” he said.

“It was lovely,” I agreed. “And I thought Ben did a great job on his solo.”

“I guess he takes after your grandma,” Gabe teased, making me blush. Then he sobered. “Did you talk to your sister?”

Suddenly I couldn’t look him in the eye. I fastened my gaze on one of his shirt buttons and nodded.

“We do a lot of dumb things when we’re kids,” he said, his voice lowered so only I could hear. “I know I’ve done my share. But we’re not kids now, Andie. What do you say to starting over?”

Starting over with Gabe, kissing him and having him whisper
my
name. Oh, that sounded good. But, realistically, how often would that happen with him here and me on the east coast?

“We’re not exactly neighbors anymore,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “A minor obstacle.”

“Of a few thousand miles.”

“I don’t mind racking up some frequent flier miles.”

All I needed to complicate my life right now was to fall in love with Gabe. Again. “Let’s think on it,” I said.

“I have been,” he pushed.

“Well, I haven’t. I need some time.”

“You’ve had years.”

“That was years of you dating other women.”

“Only trying to find another you. There isn’t one.”

“Stop already,” I said half-heartedly. “You sound like something out of a book.”

“One with a happy ending?”

I rolled my eyes. “Time to change the subject.”

“Okay. So, what sights should we go see when I visit you in New York?”

“That is not changing the subject.”

“Show me how it’s done then.”

“All right,” I said. “Are you going back to your parents’ to open presents?”

“Oh, yeah. The big Christmas Eve tradition.” He nodded to where Mom and Ben stood talking with Mrs. Bailey. “Maybe you guys are starting a new tradition tonight. You’ve got the whole gang here and so far so good. Nothing weird going on.”

I suddenly felt jinxed. I scanned the crowd, doing a quick check on my relatives. Gram was still talking with the same woman. Mom seemed to be enjoying her conversation with Ben and Mrs. Bailey, and Keira had found another cute guy. Aunt Chloe and her new admirer had drifted over to the refreshment table.

Now she was leaning over a plate of cookies. The bird on her hat was leaning too, precariously near the branch of candles at the center of the table.

I sure hoped all that netting and feathers were made of inflammable material. Of course, I reasoned, they had to be. Everything was fireproof these days.

Wait a minute. Was I seeing smoke?

Chapter Seventeen

They say where there’s smoke there’s fire. Aunt Chloe gave us living proof of that. Before I could say “Smokey Bear,” her hat burst into flames.

A woman next to her let out a screech while another pulled her away from the cookie plate, crying, “Your hat is on fire!”

One hundred and fifty people (not counting children) stopped their conversation and turned to see what was going on.

Someone cried, “Aunt Chloe!” I realized it was me. I pulled my gloves from my pocket and began pushing at the herd of shoulders in front of me in an effort to reach her.

Meanwhile, back at the eats table, Aunt Chloe’s admirer had grabbed the punch bowl. His grasp on the thing looked anything but secure, and he teetered with it like a weight lifter competing for the world’s record. The punch sloshed back and forth, spattering the people on either side of him. He finally balanced himself enough to give a mighty heave-ho. A stream of red punch went flying. So did the punch bowl. It bounced off the table and fell to the floor with a glassy crunch. For all his effort, Oscar completely missed his target, spilling the punch down Aunt Chloe’s dress while her pear tree continued to burn. She barely noticed the drenching. She was completely hysterical, flapping at her hat, while shrieking and dancing in a circle.

A man rushed past me, calling, “I’ll get the fire extinguisher.”

Aunt Chloe’s hat had a real blaze going now. She looked like a giant pillar candle with legs or an escaped extra from Disney’s
Beauty and the Beast
.

If her hair caught, it was all over. I had my gloves on by the time I got to her. If I pulled the hat off fast enough, neither of us would get burned. I tried to get it, but she was still dancing around and kept moving out of range.

“Hold still, Auntie,” I cried.

Ben had reached us now. He’d ripped off his shirt and wadded it up. Using it like an oven mitt, he grabbed the flaming hat and ripped it off Aunt Chloe’s head. Along with about half her hair.

She let out a howl of pain as he pulled the hat off and threw it on the floor. He began stomping on it and she joined in, still shrieking and doing her own version of the Mexican hat dance.

The man returned with the fire extinguisher and, although the flames were already out, aimed the thing and squirted a chemical stream at the dying hat, making it jump.

Mom got to us just as the volunteer fireman emptied his last round. “Oh, dear,” she said, looking at the mess at her feet. In back of us, two women knelt, picking up pieces of the broken punch bowl with paper towels.

Aunt Chloe’s new friend hovered anxiously. “Are you all right, Chloe?”

“My hat,” she sobbed.

Ben bent and gingerly picked his shirt away, and we all stared at the pear tree corpse. The bird was charred and black, the pears had melted, and the whole thing lay in a puddle of fire extinguisher gook.

“No loss,” I heard some kid mutter.

“Who is that woman, anyway?” someone asked in a loud whisper.

I felt like turning around and saying, “An angel in disguise, running a kindness test, and you just flunked, turkey,” but I settled for giving the offender a dirty look.

Gram was on the scene now. “Chloe, are you all right?” she asked. “You’re not in shock, are you?”

Aunt Chloe didn’t answer. She just stood there, staring at the remains of her hat.

The foyer reeked of smoke and chemicals, and people were wrinkling their noses, speaking with muted voices as they moved away from the cookies. Or maybe it was us they were trying to get away from.

The pastor came up to us and asked if Aunt Chloe was all right.

She was trembling now. She wrapped her arms around herself and whimpered, “Everyone told me not to wear the hat.”

“Well, we’re glad you’re not hurt,” he said, wisely avoiding any discussion of my aunt’s fashion decision. “The Lord was surely watching over you.”

And speaking of watching, I could feel everyone’s eyes on us. The Hartwells were already infamous in the neighborhood. Now we had left our mark on one of Carol’s local churches. My whole face flamed with something no fire extinguisher could put out. Even though I was thankful my poor aunt was unhurt (and even more thankful her hat was dead), I found myself wishing I could rewind the evening and take everyone to some other church’s Christmas Eve service, someplace in another town where no one knew me.

“Maybe we’d better go home,” Mom suggested.

I was all over that. I led Aunt Chloe toward the door. People parted before us like the Red Sea. Actually, it was more like we were lepers and they were avoiding contamination. “Don’t worry,” I wanted to say, “you can’t catch Hartwell craziness from physical contact.”

Aunt Chloe’s new friend was behind us now. He tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Come back again, Chloe. We don’t have candles every week.”

“Thank you, Oscar,” she said. “That’s very kind of you.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Keira skirting around the edge of the crowd, trying to pretend she didn’t know us. I couldn’t blame her. If I wasn’t busy trying to keep my aunt calm I’d have skirted too.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” Mrs. Bailey said to Aunt Chloe right before we reached the door. “You be sure and come back again.”

Aunt Chloe gave her a wobbly smile and nodded.

After Mrs. Bailey left, Aunt Chloe turned to me, teary-eyed. “I ruined everyone’s evening.”

“You didn’t ruin mine,” I told her and hoped my nose wouldn’t grow like Pinocchio’s.

But then I realized it was no lie. Aunt Chloe hadn’t really wrecked my evening. Yes, I have to admit I had been embarrassed after the fact by her performance. But my embarrassment had been overshadowed by relief that my aunt hadn’t torched herself completely. With my family’s proclivities toward fire, I could be thankful the church building was still standing. It had survived the Hartwells.

“I’ll bring the car around,” Mom said once we had all reached the door. “You don’t want to go out in the cold all wet,” she told Aunt Chloe.

Aunt Chloe stopped suddenly. “My coat!”

“I’ll get it,” Ben offered.

“I left it over there on the seat,” she said, pointing.

“I’ll take Gram out to the car,” Keira offered, using our grandmother as cover for a quick escape.

It was just my aunt and me standing together now. I felt like I needed to say something. “I’m sorry you lost your hat,” I ventured.

She shrugged. “It was just one of those things. It probably could have happened to anyone.”

I wasn’t sure about that. In fact, I thought this was probably some kind of first for the church. I suspected next year the refreshment table would be devoid of candles.

We ran Gram home, then went back to the house. Keira took off practically the minute we got in the door, saying, “I told Spencer I’d meet him at his parents’ after we were done with church.” She gave Mom and Aunt Chloe each a quick kiss on the cheek, then she was gone. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Ben came in and plopped down on the living room couch. “So, what’s to eat?”

Was that all he thought about? “You can’t be hungry,” I said to him even as Mom went to the kitchen to find goodies.

“I didn’t say I was,” he replied. “I just asked what’s to eat. I didn’t get any cookies at church.”

“Thanks to me,” said Aunt Chloe. She looked like she was going to cry again.
Way to go, Ben. Let’s revisit the whole burning hat experience
.

“You couldn’t help it if your bird took a dive into the candles,” Ben told her. He slumped against the couch cushions and stretched his legs out in front of him. “Man, this has been a real personal injury Christmas.”

“Which reminds me,” Mom called from the kitchen. “How’s your leg? It looked like you were limping tonight.”

“It’s fine,” he called back.

Mom returned with a platter of cookies. At the rate we were going through those things we’d all be round as cookie jars by the time we were done.

All except my brother, who never gained weight. The rat. He grabbed two and stuffed one in his mouth. “What time does the party start tomorrow?” he asked, his words muffled by cookie crumbs.

Mom looked at me. “I don’t know. What time should we open presents? ”

“Whenever Keira gets up, I guess.” Keira was the closest thing we had to a child, and she was always the first one out of bed. When we heard the Christmas music start playing on the radio we knew Keir already had the tree lights on. If no one came out within ten minutes, she started banging on doors.

“Why don’t we plan to open presents around ten?” Mom suggested.

“Think Keir can wait that long?” Ben asked.

Mom grinned. “She can play with the things in her Christmas stocking until the grownups are ready to open presents.”

An old Mom and Dad ploy from when we were young. It could still work, though, since Mom had never stopped giving us stockings.

We sat around for an hour and reminisced about Christmases past. I was careful not to mention Dad as we talked.

Aunt Chloe was a different story. “Well, I think the most memorable Christmas was when Michael started that chimney fire,” she said, making Mom frown.

“Which one?” Ben joked, just as obtuse as Aunt Chloe.

“If you’re going to talk about your father, then I’m going to bed,” Mom threatened.

So we all shut up. The silence hung there in the middle of the room like a no-man’s land no one dared cross.

Ben looked at his watch. “Well, I’d better shove off.”

“Already?” asked Mom the wet blanket.

“Yeah. I have to go see . . . ” He stuttered to a stop. “Gotta make a stop on the way home.”

It didn’t take an ace detective to figure out he was going to go see Dad. Mom made a face like she’d bitten into a rotten nut.

Oh, boy. If she looked like this now, just hearing about one of her kids going to see Dad on Christmas Eve, how was she going to react when he walked through the door on Christmas day? Maybe inviting him hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

“I guess I’ll head home too,” said Aunt Chloe.

Five minutes later they were gone, and it was just Mom and me and my misgivings.

“Well,” Mom said cheerily. “What shall we do?”

Eat a whole bunch of chocolate and pray that tomorrow never comes, I thought.

Chapter Eighteen

I was dreaming that Gabe and I were in a winter wonderland, sledding down a fast hill. We had started in the middle of the street, but halfway down the sled went crooked, taking us onto the sidewalk. Now we were hurtling toward someone’s front yard and a huge maple tree.

“Look out for the tree!” I cried.

I heard the sound before we hit. My eyes popped open and I jerked upright in bed, my heart thudding. I heard more banging, and it was coming from the direction of my bedroom door. I wasn’t dead or crippled. Whew!

“Come on, get up,” Keira called and thumped the door again. “Coffee’s ready.”

Then she was down the hall, hammering on Mom’s door.

I took several deep, calming breaths. Okay, back to reality. Christmas Day with the Hartwells. I looked at the clock. It was only seven-thirty. I let out a moan and flopped back down, shutting my eyes and throwing an arm over them for good measure. Maybe I could still find my way back to Sleepy Land.

And a careening sled with Gabe Knightly. What would Freud say about a dream like that?