Christmas at the Hummingbird House (16 page)

SIXTEEN

Christmas Stories

“
N
o worries, folks,” Mick had said cheerfully just before he got out of the van.  “I’ll have her back on her feet in no time.”

That had been before he lifted the hood and a plume of smoke billowed out, before he returned for the third time to assure them everything was under control, before Lindsay and Cici had hiked half a mile in opposite directions trying to get a cell phone signal, and before what must have been the fifth car zoomed by them on the narrow country road without stopping, slowing down, or even glancing in their direction.

“I don’t understand why no one stops,” Bridget said, twisting her head to follow the wake of the latest vehicle that had left them behind.  “It’s Christmas Eve, for heaven’s sake.”

Geoffery, sitting behind her, did not want to point out that if he had come across a broken down van attended by a tattooed man in a too-small tuxedo, motorcycle boots and a Frosty-the-Snowman skullcap, he wouldn’t have stopped either.  Instead he offered, “I’m sure one of them will report a stranded vehicle.  People do, you know, even when they don’t stop.”

Bridget turned in her seat and smiled hesitantly.  “Mr. Windsor, I’m sure you hear this all the time, but I loved your book.  It helped me get through a very difficult time.  I was hoping to see you yesterday at the cooking class, but I’m glad I got to tell you that.”

Geoffery hesitated, putting the pieces together. “Oh,” he said. “Ms. Tindale.  Right, the cooking class.  Sorry I missed it.”

She said, continuing to smile, “You’re leaving us, then?  I’m on my way to see my daughter and grandchildren, too.  It’ll be the first time in three years!  There’s nothing like family at Christmas, is there?”

He replied, without exactly knowing why, “Actually, my wife is dead.  I don’t have a family.”

He saw the familiar confusion and sympathy cross her face.  “I’m so sorry,” she said.  “How awful to be alone at Christmas.”

He sensed, rather than saw, Angela’s gaze turn toward him.  And he said, quietly and as kindly as he could, “Actually, sometimes it’s worse to be with people.”

Bridget’s smile faltered.  “Oh,” she said.  “Well.  Maybe someone will call for help, like you said.”  She turned to face forward again.

Cici slid open the van door in time to hear that and said, “Well, if they do it won’t be for a while.”

“Still no signal?” said Bridget, dismayed.

Cici shook her head as she climbed inside.  “And the houses are so far apart here I’d rather not try to walk to one.”

“This is so lame,” said one of the girls in the first row.  “How can this be so lame?”

Her sister replied, “In the lamest place ever?  You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Lindsay opened the other sliding door and climbed inside.  “No luck,” she reported, and the heads that had turned hopefully toward her looked away again.  “And,” she added in a slightly lower tone, “not that I’m one to judge, but I don’t think our driver knows anything at all about car engines.”

Cici muffled a groan.  “Great.  My flight leaves in an hour and a half.  Even if we got on the road right now I’d barely make it.”

Lindsay said, “I’m sure none of the flights will leave on time today.” But she sounded worried too.

Geoffery glanced at his seat companion, who was resting her head against the windowpane with an expression of complete disinterest on her face.  He said, “Maybe I’d better see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

He did not know any more about cars than anyone else in the vehicle, but spirits were starting to sink inside the van and he could use the fresh air.  Besides, there was still something about his last conversation with that man Mick that made him uneasy, and he would feel better keeping an eye on him.

He walked to the front of the van, where Mick had spread a drop cloth over the engine and lined up what appeared to be the contents of the vehicle’s emergency repair kit on top. Mick himself was bent intently over the engine with a wrench in hand, and he looked up with a grin when Geoffery walked up.

“How’s it going?”

“No worries,” he replied cheerfully, “right on schedule.”

Geoffery glanced at his watch.  “The other passengers are getting a little concerned they’re going to miss their flights.  And no one can get a cell phone signal.”

“Doesn’t surprise me a bit.”  Mick turned back to his work.

“We’ve been here over an hour.”

“Everyone has somewhere important to be for Christmas.”  And then he glanced up at Geoffery with a smile.  “Except yourself, of course.  You just need to be wherever you’re not.”

Geoffery was silent for a moment.  Then he said evenly, “You don’t have the first idea what you’re doing with that engine, do you?”

Mick just winked and starting banging around with the wrench again.

The van door opened and the two teenagers climbed out, sniping at each other about something Geoffery didn’t hear and didn’t want to.  They stalked away into the weeds on the side of the road, one of them holding her phone up to the sky as though expecting the gods of technology to strike it with life-giving lightning.  In a moment, Angela Phipps climbed out of the van and walked around to the front.

“Excuse me,” she said.  “I know you’re doing the best you can, but I wonder if you could give me an idea how much longer it will be?  I’m flying standby and the last flight tonight leaves at six.”

Geoffery looked at her in surprise.

Mick replied pleasantly, “Don’t you worry, ma’am.  I’ll get you where you need to be.”

The door opened again and the other three women climbed out.  Angela turned to them with a helpless shrug and walked a few feet away to stand in the sun, hands in the pockets of her coat.

Cici said worriedly, “Maybe we
should
start walking.”

Bridget looked in dismay at her high-heeled boots.  “In these?”

“Anyway,” Lindsay said, “who knows how far we’d have to go before we got a signal, or found a house where someone was home?  Let’s wait a while longer.”

“We don’t want to wait too long,” Cici said.  “It starts getting dark early this time of year.”

They all glanced at one another uneasily.  The possibility of being stranded overnight had not previously occurred to them.

Lindsay said, “Remember that Christmas we waited all day for Noah?  I was sick with worry.”

“He walked four hours to get home,” Bridget said with an affectionate shake of her head.  “Crazy kid.”

Lindsay smiled with remembrance and explained to Geoffery and Angela, “Noah’s my son.”

“We all claim him,” Cici put in.

“He’s in the military now,” Bridget added.  “We thought he might be able to come home for Christmas, but his leave was canceled at the last minute.”

Angela made a sympathetic sound, but it was clear she wasn’t interested in conversation. They all stood together awkwardly beside the van for a while, listening, with slowly diminishing hope, to the clanging sounds coming from the front.

The teenagers returned, stomping and kicking through the dead grass like young colts with a grudge.  The oldest one, Pamela, went up to Mick and demanded, “So how long do the stores in this place stay open, anyway?”

He glanced up with a smile.  “Sorry, young lady, I’m not from around here. Afraid I couldn’t guess.”

Cici volunteered, “I’m sure quite a few will be open late on Christmas Eve.”

Lindsay added, “It depends on what kind of store you’re looking for, I imagine.  There are a lot of cute shops in Staunton, but it’s usually the boutiques that close early.”

Kelly, the youngest one, said, “What about toy stores?”

Bridget looked amused, and so, briefly, did the other women. “Aren’t you girls a little old for toys?”

Pamela scowled.  “It’s not for us,” she muttered.  She stalked away and sat down hard on a patch of dead grass beside the van, drawing her knees up to her chin.

Kelly looked at Mick boldly.  “We did what you said,” she said.  “We asked her about the earthquake.”

Mick glanced up from his work with lifted eyebrow.  “Did you, now?”

“Of course we didn’t believe her,” Kelly said. “What kind of lame-brain believes everything an old woman says?  So we looked it up on my iPad.  It was true, every word.  Turns out she really does know Bono, too.  There were pictures.”

“Good for you,” Geoffery murmured, and looked away.

Lindsay said curiously, “What earthquake?”

Kelly turned to her, straightening her shoulders with her own sense of importance.  “The one in Haiti. I guess it was a pretty big deal.  A lot of people died and stuff.  She was there, the old woman—Mrs. Hildebrand, I mean—supervising a photo shoot for her magazine.  She was really old then too, I guess, but she went anyway. Anyway, the earthquake happened, and she tried to take cover in the doorway of this building, only it fell down.  The whole building.”

Geoffery turned to her, listening, and so did everyone else.  Mick stopped banging the wrench, and Angela straightened up to look at the girl.

Kelly went on, “There were a lot of kids inside.  Turns out it was an orphanage.  They were all hurt and scared, and Mrs. Hildebrand, she was trapped under this big steel beam …”

“Post,” corrected Pamela without looking around.  “It was a post that held up a wall, and it was concrete not steel.”

Kelly shrugged.  “Anyway, she was trapped so she couldn’t help the kids.  They were there for a long time …”

“Three days,” said Pamela, and everyone looked at her.  “They were there for three days.”

“Oh my God,” Bridget said softly.

“And it was hot and dark, and the kids were hungry and thirsty and thinking probably no one would ever find them, but you know what she did?  Mrs. Hildebrand, that is.  She told them stories to keep their spirits up.  For three days she told them stories.”

“Like Scheherazade,” put in Pamela.

“We looked that up, too,” Kelly said.  “So anyway, eventually the firemen or whatever found them, but they had to cut off Mrs. Hildebrand’s leg to get her out.  Now she has an artificial leg.”

“Lots of them,” corrected Pamela.  “One for each pair of shoes.”

The attention of the adults was riveted on the two girls.  Angela whispered, “How awful.”

Geoffery murmured, “I never knew that.”

Pam pushed herself to her feet.  “There were fifteen of them,” she said.  “Fifteen that got out alive, at least.  Mrs. Hildebrand helped rebuild the orphanage, and most of those same kids are still there.  She goes to see them a couple of times a year.  She said she was going down there next month and …” She added with a defiant lift of her chin, “They’re not too old for toys.”

“We know she’s rich and all,” Kelly added, “and probably gives them everything they need.  But we thought it would be kind of cool if they got Christmas presents from some American kids. Even though they won’t get there for Christmas.”

The silence that followed while the gathered adults simply smiled in wonder and tenderness at the two girls seemed to embarrass both of them.  Pamela broke it abruptly by turning to Mick.  “And it’s not going to happen at all, is it,” she demanded belligerently, “if you don’t get this van started.”

Mick ducked his head to hide his smile, and picked up the wrench again.

“I really can’t imagine what’s keeping the others,” Derrick said, fussing anxiously with the tea service.  “I’m sure they’ll be here at any minute.  Mick is very reliable about keeping a schedule.”

But even as he spoke what he only hoped was not a lie, Paul appeared at the door of the parlor with his phone in hand and a distressed look on his face. Mick did not have a cell phone—which they realized only now was a mistake on their parts—and attempts to reach Cici, Lindsay or Bridget for a progress report had so far failed.  That meant nothing, of course, as they were probably all in the air by now.  But from the anxiety in Paul’s eyes as he beckoned to Derrick, there must have been news, and it could not be good.

“They might have run into traffic,” suggested Adele, placing a festively decorated finger sandwich on her plate, and then, throwing caution to the wind, another.

“Oh, sweetie,” objected her sister Sheila, “those may be small, but you know they’re nothing but calorie bombs.  I’ll have another, too, if you don’t mind.”

After a morning of sightseeing, the two couples had returned full of their usual high spirits, anxious to chat about all they’d seen.  Mrs. Hildebrand, the only other attendee at the elaborate Christmas Eve tea, had seemed less than enthused by their adventures, and had taken her teacup over to the window.  There she stood and gazed out at the garden, sipping silently, and left the four friends to relive their adventures among themselves.  Neither Bryce Phipps nor Carl Bartlett had as yet made an appearance.

Derrick said, in as easy a tone as possible, “Enjoy, everyone. I’ll be right back.  Mrs. Hildebrand,” he added as he passed her, “did I mention how lovely you look this afternoon?  That color of blue really brings out your eyes.”