Their First Noel (10 page)

They did string up much more easily than the popcorn, especially after they decided to use dental floss instead of string. In almost no time they had wound the garland from the top branches to the lower ones. Andy plugged in the twinkle lights.

“Now we're getting somewhere,” Corrie announced at the sight.

“Somewhere boring,” Greer grumbled. “There's no colors on this tree. That doesn't look very Christmassy to me.”

Corrie stared down at the very simply shaped, pale
sugar cookies on the tray in her hands. “She has a point. If I had food coloring, I could have whipped up some icing for these. But I didn't bring any because I wanted all white accents on my piece.”

“You know these cookies are kind of like your contest gingerbread.” Andy picked up one of the diamond shapes.

“How so?” Corrie cocked her head, trying to guess what he had in mind.

“They don't have to taste good.” He looked over the cookie in his hand as if contemplating taking a bite. “In fact, they don't even have to be edible.”

“I did make them extra thick and less sweet than my usual Christmas sugar cookies, to stand up to being hung on the tree. So, what are you thinking?”

He moved in close to whisper, “I have gallons of powder blue paint in the dining room. I don't suppose the painters would miss enough to cover a few cookies.”

She pulled back just enough to meet his gaze. “Andy McFarland, I do believe you're beginning to think like me.”

“I'd deny it but before I met you I can't imagine a case where I'd ever have suggested using wall paint on cookies, then using those cookies as Christmas tree ornaments.” He shook his head and put the cookie back on the tray.

She laughed and went to the cans stacked along the side of the dining room. She picked one up and read the label. “You sure you ordered powder blue paint?”

“I don't like the sound of that question. What's wrong?” His boots scuffed over the concrete floor,
pounding along until he was at her side. “What color is the paint?”

She plunked the can down with a deadened thud. “Gunpowder blue.”

His eyes went all squinty. “What exactly is gunpowder blue?

Corrie used the can opener key to pry the lid off and peered down inside, concluding, “Gray.”

“Gray?” He swept two fingers across the paint on the lid and smeared it on to the dining room wall.

Corrie looked closely at the color, which was darker and maybe a hint bluer than the concrete beneath their feet. “It's gray all right.”

“No. This won't do. I can't…” His face went red.

Corrie suspected that if the painters had been here instead of her and Greer, he'd have lit into them and taken a bite out of their backsides. He had been trying so hard to get this all right and here it was, another goof up like the bed linens and lack of curtains and workers who refused to work in bad weather. She wanted to comfort him. She wanted to counsel him.

She wanted to take him in her arms and kiss him and make it all better, the way he had when she had bumped her head.

Instead she tried to smile about it and said, “At least you hadn't already wasted a couple of days getting it on the walls before you found out.”

“Yeah, I guess there is that.” He took the lid from her and set it on top of the can. “Well, there's no choice. I have tell the painters to hold off while I go to Daviston tomorrow to get all new paint.”

Greer cocked her head and looked at them. “Does that mean we're done decorating?”

“We can find another way to get color on to the tree,” Corrie said. There was always another way, of course, and Andy needed to be reminded of that. “If you have any colored paper we could make a paper chain.”

Andy shook his head and nudged the paint can with the toe of his boot. “I don't know where I'd find any—”

“I have some.” Greer ran off to the spot beside the front door where she had sloughed off her coat. Her small hand dove into the coat pocket and she wrestled free the piece of red paper she had brought home from Sunday school. “We can use this.”

“That's a start. If you can round up some more, plus a pair of scissors and some glue or tape, we'll be in business.” Corrie took the page.

“I have some tape in a box in my room and I have a magazine we could cut up, too. There's scissors in the kitchen drawer because Andy won't let me keep them upstairs.” Greer ran off to get the other supplies.

“You know which drawer she means?” Corrie started off toward the other room with the paper in her hand.

Andy raised each can of paint in turn, checking the labels and shaking his head as he said, “Considering I was hiding them from her and she knows where they are, my guess is she moved them, so…”

“I'll figure it out as I—” Just then she flipped over the page Greer had gotten in Sunday School, wanting to look at it before she cut it up. With every sentence she read there, her stomach tightened. “Andy? Did you know
that the kids have to come up with their own costumes for the Christmas pageant?”

“Huh?” He looked up from the paint cans at last and blinked as if he'd just woken up from a light nap. “What? Costumes? When?”

Corrie closed the distance between them, her boots scuffing lightly over the hard surface of the floor with each hurried step. She extended the paper to him. “They have to bring their own costumes to the dress rehearsal Tuesday evening.”

“No. Not possible.” He took the paper away from her, read it over. “A costume? With a
halo and wings?
Forty-eight hours from now when I have to go out of town tomorrow? It's not doable. No. There are some things I just can't…” He crumpled the paper into a ball in one hand. “I can't do it all.”

“Hey! We need that for the paper chain,” Greer snapped.

“I don't have time to fool around with paper chains or painted cookies or decorating Christmas trees.” Andy tossed the balled-up paper lightly to his sister then paced to the base of the stairway, looked back at the unfinished room and shut his eyes. “I started out this day just a couple days behind on the inn. I've lost at least one more day because of the paint. Now I find out I'm also behind schedule getting you a costume for the Christmas play. I don't think I can do all this alone.”

“You're not alone,” Greer and Corrie spoke at once.

He put his fist on the banister and looked toward the door. “Look, it's not that I don't appreciate you two but neither one of you is a professional painter, neither one of you can make a child's costume out of, well, I don't
even know what we'd make it out of but I do know we don't have a sewing machine to do it and if we did, either of you a seamstress?”

“I may not be any of those things but I'm a really good prayer.” Greer took Corrie by the hand, dragged her a few steps then reached out to her brother. “You told me that we're never alone. God is always with us. That's what Christmas is all about, God loves us and doesn't want us to be alone, so He sent us Jesus. So when we think it's too much for us to take care of ourselves, we can turn to him.”

Corrie and Andy looked at each other. Another defining moment, this time not just for Andy, but for all of them. What he did now would help to shore up the foundation of his sister's faith. And it would create a new level of closeness between Andy and Corrie. They would no longer just be two people whose paths crossed one lonely Christmas season. They would share a bond of faith.

“And one of the ways we help each other is to pray for each other,” Greer went on. “If we do that then we know we aren't alone. We know Mom isn't alone when she's traveling and Andy's not alone when he's trying to get all his work done. And Corrie.”

“What
about
me?” she asked softly.

“Even if you don't find your daddy, you're not alone. You have God. You have us.”

Tears washed over Corrie's line of vision. She struggled to swallow. Hardly an hour ago she had felt like a lost puppy and had dug deep within her memory to hold fast to her mother's warning that she could only count on herself. Now this innocent child had taken her hand
and acted in God's stead to say that she was never alone because she was loved. Corrie looked at Andy.

“I have to tell you, if Greer wasn't here, I probably wouldn't have even thought about turning to prayer until I was absolutely overwhelmed.”

She nodded.

“But…what do you say?” He held his hand out toward her.

Her hand trembled as she lifted it then stretched her arm out and slid her chilled fingers into the warmth of his palm.

There in the twinkling light of the Christmas tree she bowed her head and the three of them shared a brief prayer that everything would work out.

That night as she drove home, Corrie began to formulate her own idea of just how that would happen.

M
onday morning the alarm clock woke Andy. He went about his workday routine as always. Showering, dressing, then heading into Greer's room to get her up and started getting ready for school. Only this morning, Greer's bed was empty.

A week ago that would have either irritated or worried him, or both. Today, he headed downstairs fairly certain of where he would find his sister and who he would find her with.

“Good morning, Greer! Good morning, Corrie!” He strolled through the swinging kitchen door only to find the room dark and cold.

Confused, he headed to the dining room. Empty. His pulse picked up to match his footsteps pounding against the unforgiving concrete. He had his hand on the banister and was just about to go bounding upstairs to look for his sister when the sound of giggling made him pull up short. “What on earth are you two doing?”

“'Bout time you got up, sleeping beauty.” Corrie called from where she sat, cross-legged on the floor
shredding something silvery into strips that she then handed to Greer who reached up on tiptoe to place them on the tree. “We've already eaten breakfast out of a pouch and recycled the packaging into tinsel.”

“Nothing you just said registered in my thick head.” He rubbed his hand through his hair and squinted at the pair of them.

Greer laughed and handed him a silver packet containing a toaster pastry. “We ate them cold because I told Corrie that's how I like them and she said she'd rather eat the cardboard hot or cold and I said that if we have to take the marshmallows off the tree then we should at least make icicles out of—”

“Again. Head.” He pointed to his skull. “Thick. Not getting any of this.”

Corrie laughed and stood. “I went to the grocery store in Hadleyville last night after I left here and found out there wasn't a marshmallow to be found in all of town.”

He blinked at her and decided that even if she insisted on not making any sense, that didn't mean he couldn't carry on like a civil, normal human being. “Good morning to you.”

Corrie blushed.

He'd never met a woman so sheltered and yet so outgoing who blushed as easily as Corrie did. Well, he'd never met a woman as anything as Corrie. Still, he liked it when she blushed.

So he kept his gaze trained on her, folded his arms and lowered his chin. Using his best cool intensified look he asked, “I suppose you came to my home this early to get a start on your project?”

Her blush deepened. “Actually, no.”

Greer began fiddling with marshmallow strings and moving around the tree. “She came to get a ride to Daviston with you.”

Cool intensified became lukewarm unnerved. “What?”

“You said you were going over first thing to pick out some new paint?” Corrie made a nonspecific gesture toward the dining room and the pyramid of cans of gunpowder blue paint. “If you don't mind, I'd like to come with and see if I can't find some marshmallows.”

“If she can't she may have to take the ones off the tree, only we've all had out dirty paws all over them.” Greer held her hands up and flashed her fingers up and down. “So these marshmallows might not look very white and snowy. So she'd rather go with you. So…say you'll take her, Andy.”

“I need to… I can't just…”

“And get some ornaments for the tree. Not a lot, but some pretty ones. Shiny. And lots of colors.” Again, Greer waved her hands all around as she spoke.

Corrie stood perfectly still, her hands clasped in front of her looking like a hapless waif in search of marshmallows.

He shifted his gaze from Greer to Corrie then to the tree. “I'll be ready to leave as soon as Greer gets on the bus for school.”

Greer cheered and leapt in the air.

That was way more enthusiasm than the situation merited. Corrie laughed at the kid's antics. But then she could. Corrie wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath when she left and Greer realized that neither her
prayer nor her blatant matchmaking attempts would make Corrie his girlfriend.

He rubbed his hand over his forehead but that didn't ease the twinge of pain building there. He went to collect his sister to take her to the bus stop and though he didn't want to do it, he had to make it perfectly clear to the kid. “I'll take Corrie to Daviston because I'm going anyway, and it's a good thing to do what you can for others, that's all. Nothing more. Got that?”

“I got it,” Greer had said as she skipped off. “But I'm still praying that Corrie is your girlfriend. Don't forget the ornaments.”

This was not how he had expected the morning to go. Greer on the bus. Corrie in the seat next to him. The Snowy Eaves Inn in the rearview mirror. Still, it didn't seem to be costing him any time or effort and he didn't exactly mind the company.

“When we get to Daviston, we'll hit the home improvement store first to return the wrong color paint.” He glanced back to the truck bed to indicate the cans that had been stacked in the doorway to the dining room since last night. And were still stacked in the doorway to the dining room at this very minute. He fixed his eyes on the road as they passed a sign saying they were only a few miles away from Daviston and he groaned. “No. I can't believe this.”

Corrie didn't seem to have any trouble believing, or pointing out his mistake, though she did have the good grace to look sympathetic as she said, “You forgot the paint, didn't you?”

“I meant to put the paint in the truck but I got distracted.” He gripped the steering wheel. “If we go back
and get it now it will add at least an hour to this trip. And cost at least an hour of work today for me and…oh, man.”

“You know, I took a lot of pictures of the inn and Christmas tree last night.” She pulled her purse into her lap and began rummaging around in it. “I might have gotten the paint smudge you made on the wall if you want to show them how wrong it is. Worth a shot, right?”

She brought out her phone and began scrolling back through the photos.

Andy kept his eyes on the road. This was not like him. He didn't just up and leave to run an errand without making sure he had everything he needed. “Don't worry about it, Corrie. It's not just about the color. We left in such a rush I left the phone number of the painter's crew chief.”

She set the phone in her lap, cocked her head and pushed up her glasses. “Okay. No problem. We'll just look him up on the web.”

“Or, when we get to town we'll look him up in the phone book.”

“The phone book?” She laughed like he'd suggested they do something as archaic as hopping in his jalopy and heading down to the burger joint to split a malted. “I've used a phone book maybe three times in my whole life. Why don't we just look him up online?”

He nodded toward the phone in her lap. “Can you connect to the web on that thing from here?”

She jabbed a couple of buttons. “Um…no. Sorry.”

“Then when we get to town we'll try it the old-fashioned way. C'mon, you're the one big on being flexible
when things don't go the way you want. Might do you good to learn a new skill,” he teased. “It's not hard. The guy's name is Ben Haines. You go to the H's, find Haines then look down the list to Ben. Ben Haines… Haines, Ben.”

“Haines, Ben. Haines… Ben.” She said it normally, then quietly then she just mouthed the name with no sound at all. Then her lips moved without clearly forming any name or recognizable word. Finally, she turned to him. “What if…Andy…oh my goodness! It can't be that easy, can it?”

“Trust me, it is.”

“No. You don't understand.” She flipped back through the collection of photos she'd taken in the inn and stopped at one taken in the attic. She turned the screen toward him and thrust it in his direction. “BJ loves BB.”

“I can't look at that. I'm driving. And if I weren't driving and could look at it, I would still have to tell you that I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“My mom never talked about my dad to me. My grandmother insisted that Mom not even put his name on my birth certificate. I guess my mother went along with that because she was so hurt when he didn't come for her and she was alone and desperate and needed my grandmother's love and approval.”

“I see.” He made a sharp turn and the truck went bumping off the highway on to the side road that would take them to the store where they could use the phone book and get new paint.

Corrie seemed oblivious to the scenery as it changed from rural roadway to the landscape of a midsized town.
She just stared at her cell phone and said, “Ten years ago when I begged my mom to find my dad, she got on the phone immediately. I sat on the floor in the other room, listening as she asked again and again for James Wallace. James Wallace. I said the name over and over and wrote it down in my diary like that. But…”

“Your mom wasn't calling people and asking about your father, she was calling directory assistance, asking for a listing. Last name first.”

“I know it sounds so obvious now, but I was a kid. I didn't know about that, I just heard her asking over and over for James Wallace but his name was really—”

“Wallace James.”

“Wallace James,” she echoed, softly. She touched the picture on the small screen. “Okay, that doesn't make the initials BJ. But in the same year my mom worked at the inn, someone with her initials loved someone with the last initial J. Andy, I think I just figured out my father's real name.”

“I guess it would be a bad time to bring up that if you had approached this more carefully instead of making it up as you went along, you'd have had that information before you made a thousand-mile drive.”

“I just…” Her lower lip quivered. “I feel so foolish. All that time, wasted. When if I had only…”

“I didn't say that to make you feel bad, Corrie. I was just trying to lighten the moment.” And done a lousy job of it, judging from the stricken look on her sweet face. Fortunately, he had what he believed would be the perfect remedy for that. “I suspect you'll forgive me for that clumsy attempt at a joke when I tell you this. You know our mayor, Ellie Walker? The one with the
nephew in Virginia named Wallace? Her maiden name was James.”

“You mean I've been spending time all week looking for my dad right under the nose of my own…” She scrunched her face up like she was doing a tricky math problem in her head.

“Great aunt,” he filled in for her as he pulled the truck into the parking lot and eased it into the closest available space. He shut the engine off and turned sideways in the cab to face her. “Ellie James Walker is your great aunt.”

“Ellie
James
Walker is my great aunt.” She bowed her head then sniffled.

He thought he should say something but had no idea what. He swallowed and felt like he had a baseball lodged in his chest. Ever since his dad died he had made it his goal to protect his family from every inevitability he could plan against. And to fix any damage left by whatever he couldn't plan around, whatever caught them off guard.

“What a silly mistake to make. Just blindly charging around with the wrong name when I should have… I could have…” A small sob cut her off. Her shoulders lifted and fell, then she covered her mouth with her hand and tried to collect herself.

Corrie was not his family, but when he brought her into his home and promised to set things right after Greer broke her treasured snow globe, he had extended that same dedication to her. And he had failed her. “Like you said, you got the wrong idea as a kid. You didn't know any better.”

“What about my father? Did he not know any better?
If it could be that simple for me to find him, wouldn't it have been just as easy for him to find me? He knew my mom's real name and where she lived. She's owned a bakery in that town with her name on it for almost twenty years now.” She shook her head slowly. “He could have found me, if he wanted me. My mom was right. We can only depend on ourselves.”

Corrie Bennington sat in his truck crying over all the time lost, all the opportunities she might have taken that would have led her to her father so much sooner and the harsh reality that that father had never tried to make contact. Andy didn't know how to fix that.

She slipped her glasses off and tried to clean them with a corner of her green-and-white scarf. The spots from her tears and the fuzzy fabric created a cloudy blur that painted the entire lens.

Andy couldn't give her back the time lost or the sense of joy she had so clearly gotten from going about life in her haphazard, things-will-work-out-if-you-are-open-to-change way. But he could do this. He reached out and took her glasses, tugged free the hem of his fresh, clean shirt and carefully cleaned them. Then he reached out, tipped her chin up with one finger and slid the glasses in place.

He brushed his thumb over her cheek to wipe away a runaway tear and said, quietly, “When you know better, you do better. You have a name now. You have a connection. Corrie, you have what you came for. You went about it in a weird way, but you've reached your goal.”

“Have I?” She looked up at him, attempted a weak smile then sighed. “Funny, from my point of view, it feels like I've lost sight of it completely.”