Authors: Fern Michaels,Elizabeth Bass,Rosalind Noonan,Nan Rossiter

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Anthologies (Multiple Authors)

Making Spirits Bright (9 page)

BOOK: Making Spirits Bright

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Epilogue

One week later ...

Melanie quietly closed the door to the spare bedroom, careful not to shut it all the way, just in case Sam or Lily needed her during the night. This was their second night together, her first night as a legally certified foster parent. Carla had expedited her application given the circumstances. Normally, she would be required to take parenting classes and undergo an extensive background check, but her circumstances were anything but normal.

Bryce and her parents were waiting for her in the living room. She’d invited them over to thank them for their help locating temporary homes for the other eleven kids. It hadn’t been easy, but they’d managed.

World Adoption Agency had been permanently closed. Olga Krause had dozens of charges filed against her. She’d been jailed, then released on her own recognizance. It would take years before her case was heard in court. Melanie rather hoped that the old woman would die first, saving the taxpayers money. Melanie knew that was callous, but she didn’t care. The children in her care had suffered greatly on her watch, and who knew what kind of psychological problems they would endure in the future? Her mother always told her that children were most resilient. She hoped this was true.

And now it was time for her and Bryce to tell her family they were married. They’d decided to wait until all the hoopla died down, since the story of the orphanage had made headlines.

She took a seat next to her husband, still amazed at the changes in her life in such a short span of time. Bryce kept reminding her, saying over and over that you only live once. She agreed with him.

“Melanie, you’ve been dancing around all night. I know you’re happy you have Sam and Lily—your father and I adore them already—but something is bothering you. Am I right?” her mother asked with the sweetest smile. She was the best mother in the world. Melanie loved her so much at that moment, she had to close her eyes for a few seconds to compose herself. She was truly the luckiest woman alive.

“You’re not sick, are you, kiddo?” her dad asked. “If you are, we’ll get you the best doctors in the world.”

“Dad, you’re such a riot. No, I am not sick. At least, I don’t think I am.” She turned to Bryce. “Do I look sick to you?”

“You look beautiful, Melanie,” Bryce said, his voice laced with love. And longing.

“Mom, Dad.” She paused. “There is no other way to say it, so I’m just going to say it: Bryce and I got married in Vegas.”

There.

She looked at her parents, waiting for their reaction. When they said nothing, she repeated herself.

“Bryce and I are married, and we’re going to adopt Sam and Lily.”

Her parents looked at one another, then at Bryce, and back at her. They high-fived each other. Then came the congratulations.

“Wonderful news! I knew something was up.” Her parents hugged her; her dad shook Bryce’s hand so long that she was sure it would fall off. That old guy thing. Mother and daughter hugged each other, tears puddling in their eyes.

“I couldn’t have handpicked a better man for you, Melanie dear. Now, why didn’t I see this coming?” her mother whispered loud enough for the others to hear.

Bryce laughed. “We didn’t see it coming, either, but it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”

Melanie kissed her husband on the cheek.

“So you’re both okay with this? You’re not going to have me committed?”

They all burst out laughing.

Bryce nuzzled her neck, whispering in her ear, “If I don’t have you tonight, they’ll commit
me.
”

“Patience, Bryce. Patience,” she whispered back. Then Melanie giggled like a kid at Christmas. Right now at that precise moment, her world was absolutely perfect.

Merry Christmas, world!

Runaway Christmas

ELIZABETH BASS

Chapter 1

Christmas was only a few days away, but you never would have known it from sitting in the living room at Sassy Spinster Farm. A tree? No. A carol or two on the radio? Heaven forbid. The scent of gingerbread? Not at Aunt Laura’s, not this year.

Erica had really been hoping for a tree at the farm. It would have been cool to see all her mom’s old ornaments again, and remember happier times.

Two miles away, at her father’s house, her stepmother, Leanne, had started decking the halls the second the Thanksgiving dishes were cleared. Every corner of every room was crammed with Christmas junk, and
The Nutcracker
had been on a constant loop for three weeks now. There was Christmas galore in the place Erica didn’t want to be, and a big Christmas black hole in the place she usually loved.

The trouble was babies. The world was a wonderland for a baby. For a thirteen-year-old, not so much. Adults turned the world upside down for babies, even when babies threatened to turn the adults inside out.

Her aunt sagged in the recliner chair where she now lived twenty-four-seven, her eyelids droopy. When Erica suggested they make a batch of Christmas cookies, Laura’s skin turned a weird color. In Crayola terms, she’d be Screamin Green. “Just the thought of a cookie makes me ill.”

“How can a cookie make you sick?” Erica asked. “Cookies make people feel better.”

“Because everything makes me sick,” Laura said, readjusting the washrag on her forehead. “The succubus doesn’t want me to eat anything but mint-chocolate-chip ice cream. And bacon.”

The succubus was Laura’s baby-to-be, which wasn’t going to be born until May but was already dictating everyone’s life, the same way that one-year-old Angelica did at Erica’s dad’s house. Usually Erica came to the farm to escape the tyranny of Leanne and baby Angelica—or Angel Baby as she was often nauseatingly called—but now all the good times at the farm had been hijacked by the unseen being Laura alternately called the succubus, the critter, or Hortense the Creeping Terror.

“If I can pass just one nugget of wisdom on to you, youngster,” Laura said, “let it be this—don’t ever get pregnant.”

Erica, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor, pursed her lips. As if anyone had to tell her
that.
“Once the kid’s born, it’ll be all you think about. Like Leanne and Angelica.”

Laura scowled. “Leanne’s just putting on an act to trick you into making the same mistake she made. Don’t be fooled. Don’t have kids. Don’t even think about boys. Go find a cave and live by yourself. Keep a cat for company. Or a chicken.”

Laura’s husband, Webb, who was sitting across the room quietly reading a mystery, looked up from his book, smiling. “She’ll make a great mom, won’t she?”

Laura roused herself enough to shoot a threatening look his way. “
You
don’t get to say a word on this subject. You’re not the one incubating the critter.”

“Really?” He laughed. “Your bitching and moaning makes it all so real for me, I sometimes forget.”

“Secondhand suffering doesn’t count for squat.”

Erica sighed. It used to be fun to come to the farm and listen to Webb and Laura’s scrappy way of communicating, which provided a refreshing contrast to the bored silence sporadically broken by real scrapping between Leanne and Erica’s dad. At the moment, though, she just wished everyone in her family talked like normal people. “I’m supposed to bring something to the youth group’s Christmas party at church later this afternoon,” she said. “Something like cookies.”

“Why don’t you take a plate of bacon to the party?” Laura asked. “It’s more nutritrious.”

“And what’s more festive for kids than a platter of Christmas bacon?” Webb asked.

“It’s got protein,” she shot back.

Erica couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Well, if we don’t make cookies, what are we going to do?”

“I don’t know about you,” Laura told her, “but I’m going to sit here and make up new critter names. What do y’all think of ‘Vomitia’?”

In contrast to Laura’s words, a whole room had already been transformed with primary colors and stuffed with toys and furniture, awaiting the baby’s arrival. The critter was probably going to be the most spoiled baby that ever crawled the earth.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to put up a Christmas tree?” Erica asked.

“The stench of cedar right now would send me straight to the hospital,” Laura said.

Of course.
Erica glowered at the carpet. “I wish Heidi had decided to come and visit.”

Laura shot to an upright position. “That would be
all
I need right now.”

“I
like
her,” Erica said.

Heidi had been her mom and Laura’s stepsister when they were teenagers, and now Erica thought of her almost as another aunt. She hadn’t visited the farm since the summer Erica’s mother had died, but she wrote Erica all the time, and had sent her a really cool outfit on her birthday, and had invited Erica to come visit her in New York someday.
New York City!

Well, Brooklyn.

Erica had hoped that Heidi would visit the farm for the holidays. But Heidi had said she was too busy with work this year. She’d just opened some kind of café.

A café was better than a baby.

“Why don’t you go ride Milkshake?” her aunt suggested, evidently eager to change the subject from Heidi, who she’d only ever learned to tolerate.

“It’s cold and drizzly.”

“Wimp,” Laura muttered, closing her eyes.

Webb guffawed. “You’re one to talk. One little baby’s sent you into a monthlong swoon.”

“Every time you make a crack, that’s one more onerous chore in your future,” Laura warned as she rearranged the rag over her eyes. “I’ve already got you slated for eighteen months of diaper duty and
Disney on Ice.
”

It was going to be another awful Christmas, Erica realized with despair. Maybe not as bad as last year—nothing could be that bad again. Last year was the first Christmas after her mother had died, and though everyone had tried to be nice to her, nothing could make up for the fact that the person she’d most wanted to celebrate with wasn’t there. And, of course, her half sister, Angelica, had been born two weeks early, on Christmas Eve, which Leanne and Erica’s dad had insisted was a Christmas miracle.

But this year was shaping up to be a strong runner-up for worst Christmas ever. Laura was completely consumed with her morning sickness, and Webb was all about catering to Laura. At home, with Leanne and Erica’s dad, the house was gearing up for Angelica’s first birthday and baby’s second Christmas.
Erica’s thirteenth Christmas
didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. No one was thinking of her. It was as if she’d disappeared from her own life.

In the old days, her mother had always been there to make her feel special. But now she felt so lost—an unformed blob of a person—and there was no one she could turn to. None of her friends at school understood. She’d never felt so alone.

She unfolded her legs and stood up. “I should go home.”

“You just got here.” Laura sat up a little. “Wait—you want to watch a movie or something? Maybe we can stream
Mommie Dearest
off Netflix. I could bone up on my parenting skills.”

“No thanks.” Watching movies was something they used to do with her mom. It wasn’t quite the same with only Laura and Webb. Nothing was the same. The big house, which once had been so full of life, felt empty. In her mom’s day, there had been paying guests living in the rooms, and music playing in the kitchen from sunup to bedtime. Now sometimes it was hard to believe that her mother had ever been here at all. Then Erica would catch a glimpse of something to remind her—her mom’s boom box in the kitchen, an afghan, the muffin pan that had made a thousand trips to the oven.

Erica fingered the ring that hung on a chain around her neck—the ring that had been her mom’s last gift to her. Tears stung her eyes and she grabbed her denim jacket. “I’ll see y’all later.”

Webb stood up. “I’ll run you back.”

“Bye, Laura,” Erica said as she shrugged into her jacket. “I hope you feel better.”

Her aunt grunted.

Outside, Webb put Erica’s bicycle into the back of his truck. They climbed into the cab and, as he drove the blacktop roads at a more leisurely pace than usual, he glanced sidewise at her. “I hope you’re not upset with Laura.”

She shrugged. “I get the feeling that Fred the Chicken rates higher than I do these days.” Fred, a one-legged rooster, probably was the apple of Laura’s eye. Erica didn’t resent Fred, but it would have seemed silly to say she was jealous of a little baby who wasn’t even born yet.

“She’s been knocked for a loop by the pregnancy,” Webb explained. “She’d never been sick a day in her life before this.”

“Yes, I remember,” Erica said.

As if she didn’t know her aunt as well as he did! Webb might have been friends with Laura since junior high school, but Erica had known her forever and had lived with her for several years after her mother had gotten divorced and moved back to the farm. Laura had always seemed almost as much of a friend as an aunt. But of course now Laura had Webb ... and in a few months there would be Hortense.

Everyone had someone. Except for her.

Could it be that the older she grew, the more she shriveled in importance to everyone who mattered to her? It probably wouldn’t have been that way with her mother, but...

Her lip started to tremble, so she broke off the thought.

“Christmas can be the hardest time of year,” Webb said.

She nodded.

“Next year things will be more normal,” he added.

Normal?
Was he insane? Next year he was going to have a little baby. Erica knew what that meant: diapers, colic, teething, never sleeping, short tempers. Breastfeeding. All focus on the baby. Baby constantly monitored.
Did it say a word or was that just gas?
Babies meant you couldn’t go out, or, if you did, you had to carry along so much baby junk—diaper bags, strollers, bottles, sippy cups, binkies—that it almost wasn’t worth the effort.

“Life takes a little patience sometimes,” Webb told her.

Patience.
Webb could have been the poster boy for that quality. He’d waited forever for Laura to agree to marry him.

But it was unfair of him to preach to her. “It’s not like I’m
impatient,
” Erica said in her own defense. “It’s just ...”

“Just what?”

I can’t wait to be grown up. So I’ll matter again.

She tried to find the right words—ones that didn’t make her sound like she was impatient. Which she supposed she was ... although it was more complicated than that. “Is it selfish to want something good to happen?” she asked. “To happen to me?”

He shook his head. “No. You’re overdue, I’d say.”

She growled in frustration. “So,
when
?”

“I guess you need to keep your eyes open for an opportunity to happen along—something you want. And then grab it.”

Great. How often did opportunities happen along for a thirteen-year-old girl in Sweetgum, Texas?

When they reached Erica’s dad’s house, Webb got out and lifted her bike out of the back of the truck in one swipe and rolled it to her side. He gave her a quick, bracing squeeze on the shoulder. “Hang in there, E.”

She bit her lip. “What else can I do?”

“Remember, you’re coming out to the farm Christmas Day and staying till New Year’s. You and me’ll make that batch of cookies. Let the Grinch sit in her chair and squawk all she likes.”

She smiled tightly. He meant well.
But I need those cookies for the Christmas party
today.

She took her bike around to the back and then trudged toward the kitchen door, mentally bracing herself for several scenes with Leanne before it was time to go to the party. Whenever Erica tried to bake anything, Leanne was always convinced she was going to burn the house down.

The moment Erica opened the door, however, it was clear something had changed. The air was charged. The “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” was blaring through the house, but this time the music was accompanied by the sounds of footsteps scurrying, doors slamming, and Angel Baby wailing at the top of her lungs.

Leanne came winging into the kitchen with her screaming daughter on her hip. “There you are! We couldn’t find you.”

“I was at the farm. I told you I was going.”

Leanne handed Angelica over to Erica. “See if you can get her to be quiet.”

“Me?” Erica asked.

“Yes, you. I’m asking you for help. We’re having a crisis here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

BOOK: Making Spirits Bright

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