As Trixie came down the
escalator into Baggage Claim, she anxiously scanned the throng that stood
waiting for their loved ones who were flying into New York for the holidays.
Her brow crinkled in worry as she scanned again, unable to find the loved
one she was looking for.
Near the back of the
crowd a uniformed man caught her eye. He
was holding a sign that read “BELDEN”.
Puzzled, Trixie carefully inched her way towards him through the mass of
hugging friends and kissing cousins and weeping grandparents.
A smile began creeping across her face as she got closer and saw that
underneath the large block letters of her name was written “Mangan” in much
smaller letters.
She smiled at the
driver and nodded towards the sign in his hand.
“Are you Miss
Belden?” the man asked politely. He
had a hint of a British accent and his gray mustache twitched as he asked the
question.
“Yes,” Trixie
answered with a grin. Dan had put
his name on the card, but hadn’t given up their secret; not even to a
stranger.
The driver held out his
hand for Trixie’s bag. “I’ll
collect your baggage, ma’am. The
car is sitting outside by the curb, if you’d like to go along and wait for me
there.”
Nodding and smiling
politely, she handed over her carry-on and moved towards the sliding doors that
led outside. She walked with
purpose but not rushing, trying to remember and put into practice the lessons
she had learned in Georgia about quiet confidence and not drawing attention to
one’s self.
The cold air was a
welcome shock to her system after being in southern Georgia for almost three
months. A light snow was falling,
but the roadways appeared to be clear and patches of blue poked their winter
brilliance through the clouds that sprinkled their flakes gently upon the city.
A long, black limousine
was waiting at the curb, as promised. Trixie
gave it a quick once over before approaching.
It was lighter than the ones she had worked with in Georgia, but of
course, she wasn’t expecting bulletproof steel to carry her to Sleepyside.
As she reached for the handle, the door opened for her.
Her eyes had just begun adjusting to the brightness of the winter morning
and she couldn’t see into the dark interior of the car very well.
But a familiar hand, with a cheap gold band on the ring finger reached
out for her and with a smile of joyful recognition, she willingly put her hand
in his.
With the door shutting
and locking quickly behind her, she found herself in Dan’s arms and the two of
them shared a passionate kiss that was not nearly long enough to satisfy either
of them.
“Merry Christmas,
babe,” Dan murmured as he broke reluctantly away from her, their foreheads
still touching.
“Merry Christmas,”
Trixie whispered. “This is a hell
of a homecoming.”
Dan shrugged modestly.
“I figure the least I could do was not shock your southern self by
making you ride a motorcycle all the way to Sleepyside in the cold wind of
December.”
“I like the cold.
This is what Christmas is supposed to be like!”
“All right,” Dan
conceded, nuzzling her neck. “But
we can’t make mad, passionate love on my bike.”
Trixie giggled.
“And you couldn’t possibly wait until we got back to Sleepyside,
could you?”
Dan’s hands were
sliding sensuously down her back, underneath her coat, and into the back of her
pants. “Can you?”
“No,” she whispered
hoarsely, zipping down his jacket and quickly transferring her fingers to the
zipper on his jeans, which bulged tellingly under her touch.
They hardly noticed
when the trunk was opened and Trixie’s bags were deposited inside.
The rumble of the car’s motor only spurred them on, and they were
completely oblivious to the airport disappearing behind them as the driver
discreetly ignored his passengers and inched the car carefully into the heavy
traffic.
After three long weeks
apart, their lovemaking was quick and urgent – a deliberate passion could wait
until later. As they lay panting on
the seat, undressed just enough to get the job done, Trixie’s brain clicked
back on. “Where are we going?”
she asked.
“Sleepyside, of
course,” Dan replied. “Tomorrow
is Christmas.”
Trixie looked at him
with a puzzled expression on her flushed face.
“No it’s not. It’s
only the 23rd tomorrow.”
With a sly smile, Dan
said, “As far as I’m concerned, tomorrow is Christmas.”
Trixie stared evenly at him, obviously needing more of an explanation.
“It’s our first Christmas as husband and wife and because nobody
knows about it, we’ll be spending Christmas morning apart.
You’ll be with your family and I’ll be with Edwin and Uncle Bill.”
“We’ll see each
other. I’m certain Moms invited
you over for Christmas dinner.”
“Yes, but it’s not
the same thing,” Dan said, looking downcast for a moment.
“I mean, we’ve still got 248 days before we can spend all our
Christmases together!”
Stifling a smile,
Trixie widened her eyes and murmured, “Gleeps, that’s a long time!
And you’re looking like you just might crack under the pressure,
Danny.”
Thrusting his chin out
stubbornly, Dan replied, “I’m married to you, Trixie.
I think I can handle stress.”
Trixie stuck her tongue
out at him. “So, how do you plan
to handle this stress, Mr. Mangan?”
“By
telling little white lies, Mrs. Mangan.”
Trixie tilted her head
quizzically at him, blue eyes twinkling in anticipation.
“I told your parents
and Uncle Bill that we were arriving in Sleepyside tomorrow afternoon.”
Trixie tried
unsuccessfully to hold back her grin by biting her lower lip.
“Looks like somebody’s getting a lump of coal for Christmas.
But where will we stay? You
didn’t hire the limo for 24 hours, I assume?”
“No.”
“Anybody who sees us
at the Sleepyside Inn will eventually tell my mother or father, just in
passing.”
“Then where?”
“Mr. Maypenny’s.
I picked him up this morning and put him on the train to Connecticut to
go see David. He’ll be back
Christmas Eve.”
“You sly dog, Danny!
How on earth did you manage to coerce Edwin into going out of town so
close to Christmas? And on a
new-fangled contraption like a train, no less!”
“I had nothing to do
with it. David and his wife had
twins – a boy and a girl – last month and David begged Edwin to come see his
great-niece and -nephew. The
boy’s name is David Edwin. From
what I understand, it wasn’t an easy task to convince him, but David
apparently comes by his stubbornness genetically.”
” Well, remind me to send a thank you note to David Maypenny,” Trixie murmured, cuddling in Dan’s arms as the limo continued on its way to the remote cabin in the Wheeler game preserve.
***
Dan felt supremely
guilty watching their hired driver as he tried to maneuver the long limousine
around the tight hairpin turnaround by the cabin before he could head back to
the main road. While Trixie and
Penny joyfully greeted one another and played in the snowy clearing outside the
cabin, Dan steered and directed the driver through the arboreal snafu and gave
him a large tip as both thanks and apology.
He solemnly watched him drive cautiously up the narrow and rutty dirt
road, certain the outreaching tree branches would leave scratches on the dark
paint.
All of a sudden a
snowball hit him squarely on the back of his head.
He turned slowly to see Trixie batting her eyelashes innocently and
pointing down at Penny as if to indicate the beagle had thrown the offending
snowball.
“You are so dead,
Belden!” he shouted as he leaned over and started creating his own armory for
the snowball fight.
“That’s Belden-Mangan,
mister!” came Trixie’s laughing reprimand from behind the woodpile, where
she had ducked for cover as the counterattack began.
Penny leaped and yelped happily between the warring Mangans, trying to
catch every snowball that sailed over her head.
After several minutes
of the spirited battle, they called a truce and retreated snow-soaked into the
cabin, shedding their outer clothes and hanging them on the pegs by the door,
where Penny lapped up the melting snow as it dripped onto the floor below.
Pulling Trixie into his
arms, Dan rubbed his frozen nose against hers, wondering if his cheeks were as
red from exertion and cold as hers were. “Want
me to start a fire?” he asked.
“What kind of
fire?” Trixie asked puckishly.
“In the fireplace,
you nympho! For crying out loud,
let’s warm up first!”
Trixie giggled and
pulled free of his arms. “I’ll
make hot chocolate while you do that.”
With an expertise honed
from years of practice, Dan quickly had a fire roaring in the fireplace and sat
down with Trixie. They each sat at
one end of the couch, rubbing their cold toes against each other for warmth
under the heavy quilt Dan had pulled out of the cedar chest in Mr. Maypenny’s
bedroom. They sipped cocoa and
nibbled on some of Mrs. Vanderpoel’s windmill cookies and let the flickering
flames soothe them into a hypnotic state.
“Tell me about my
family,” Trixie murmured.
Dan shrugged.
“I haven’t seen any of them since Thanksgiving, babe.
Not even Mart. He and Sally
were out of town that weekend I went up to Indian Lake.”
“Not the Beldens, the
Mangans,” Trixie said with a soft smile, letting one hand drop down to offer
Penny a bite of her cookie.
Dan sighed contentedly.
How did she know? Trixie had
a way of seeing right into his heart like no one else ever had.
All through the holiday season, Dan had been thinking about family and
how important it was to him to have a family of his own.
He loved Uncle Bill, his only blood relative; and whether they knew he
was an official member or not, the Beldens were definitely family.
But Dan wanted to have his own family – mom and dad and kids...and a
wriggling beagle begging for cookies. He
was partway there, anyway.
“I took Penny to
Indian Lake last weekend. I
remember how Jim trained Patch and thought maybe he could teach Penny to do some
tracking, or rabbit hunting, or something.”
“And?”
“Well,” he said
with a hefty sigh and a roll of his eyes at Penny, “lesson one wasn’t
terribly successful. She decided
she’d rather play in the snow with the boys.”
Trixie smiled at him
over her cocoa mug. She had some
hot chocolate above her lip and Dan was sorely tempted to pull her onto his lap
and lick it off.
“And how’s work?”
“Not bad.
I’m really torn on this graveyard shift situation.
It’s been really hard for me to adjust my lifestyle, but the best work
experience is the night shift.”
They continued to
quietly converse about this and that – topics important and trivial, silly and
serious – enjoying the comfort of just…being.
“So…are you warmed
up now?” Dan finally asked.
“Yes,” Trixie
replied slowly, a glint appearing in her eye.
“What did you have in mind?”
Dan grinned.
“You’ve got a one-track mind, babe.
Sorry, but I have something else on the agenda at the moment.”
Trixie pouted, tucking
a hand underneath the quilt to explore as she inched closer to Dan’s side of
the couch. “Anything I can do to
change your mind?”
Dan reached under and
grabbed her wandering fingers with a chuckle.
“Later. Right now,
there’s something I want to do before we lose daylight.”
“What?”
“Get a tree.
When I lived here, Edwin would always sneak out one day when I was at
school and I’d come home to find a little tree in the corner, all decorated
and lit up. I think he meant it as
a surprise for me and I always enjoyed it, but I’ve never gotten to go out and
get my own tree.”
Trixie’s face lit up
in that way that never failed to lift Dan’s spirits, no matter how low he was
feeling. When he was happy and
content, as he was now, it practically sent him into orbit.
He was amazed he didn’t overdose on the joy inside him.
Shooting up from the
couch like a bottle rocket, she grabbed their mugs and rushed over to the
kitchen to rinse them out at the sink. “Well,
then we should go! This will be
fun! I haven’t gone out tree
hunting in years!”
Dan wrinkled his brow.
Trixie may have missed the family Christmas tree hunt while she was away
at college, but certainly not more than once or twice.
She was as excited as if she hadn’t performed the ritual since she was
a little girl. In short order, they
were bundled up against the winter cold, Penny whirling in frantic circles at
their feet, licking their faces as they squatted down to pull on boots, and
yapping excitedly as the door opened, as if she hadn’t been outside in years.
Penny and Trixie had a lot in common where enthusiasm was concerned.
The trio headed out
into the forest, not going too far for fear of running into someone who didn’t
know they were in Sleepyside a day early. Trixie
and Penny ran ahead, carefully studying – or sniffing – each potential
Christmas tree. Trixie would point
to a promising one and Dan would come and give it serious consideration before
rejecting it as too tall for Mr. Maypenny’s small cabin or not fat enough to
fill the whole corner they had cleared out for it.
After their first
choice had been rejected, Penny gave it her final seal of disapproval by
urinating on it, making Dan and Trixie fall to their knees in hysterics,
laughing until their sides hurt as Penny licked away their tears of mirth and
wondered what she had done to make her humans so happy.
Eventually they found
the perfect tree – not too tall, not too skinny, and most importantly to
Trixie, no bare spots. Dan took up
the ax, enjoying the familiar feel of it in his hands again and soon the tree
was safely felled. He tied a pair
of ropes around the trunk and together he and Trixie dragged the tree back to
the cabin, Dan gently berating Penny for not being a Saint Bernard as she
frolicked in the snow ahead of them.
“Because she could
pull the tree home for us or because she’d have a keg of brandy around her
neck?” Trixie queried with a giggle.
“Both!” Dan said,
joining her as their warm laughter echoed through the trees and across the snowy
trails.
When they got back to
the cabin, Trixie ran up to get the boxes of Christmas ornaments from the crawl
space in the attic room Dan had used as his bedroom when he lived there, while
Dan carefully trimmed the branches and trunk and set the tree up in the stand.
Together they decorated the tree, laughing and teasing and singing
Christmas carols throughout.
When the task was
completed, they heated up some of Mr. Maypenny’s leftover hunter’s stew and
sat on the couch to eat dinner and admire the tree.
Trixie declared it, “the best Christmas tree we’ve ever had!”
Dan wanted to stare at it all night, so he stoked up the fire and brought
down some extra quilts from the storage chest upstairs and he and Trixie made
love in front of the fireplace before falling asleep in each other’s arms
while the lights of the tree twinkled down on them.
***
Dan woke to find
himself staring at the dying embers of the fire.
Trixie’s snub nose was pressed firmly against his back, her left arm
flung over his chest and her hand with his mother’s engagement ring and the
cheap gold wedding band pressed up against his comforting heartbeat during her
dreams. Penny was curled up in
front of him and Dan fondled one of her soft, brown ears while she snored
peacefully.
He sighed with
happiness. For the present, it was
only his covert wife and a flop-eared beagle, but it felt like a family.
And that’s all he’d really wanted for Christmas since his mother
died. Edwin Maypenny and Bill Regan
had always done their best to make sure his holidays were happy, but it wasn’t
easy. Edwin was accustomed to being
alone and the trappings of Christmas were just not something he usually fussed
with. Still, every year without
fail Dan would come home from school one random day before the holiday break to
find a modestly decorated tree in the small living room; and every day that
Christmas drew nearer, another present would magically appear underneath the
piney boughs, snuck in when nobody was looking by Edwin or Dan or Uncle Bill.
Regan’s childhood
Christmases were maybe even sadder than his own, or at least equally so.
Christmas was hard for his uncle and even though he pushed himself to
make sure Dan was happy, there was always a shadow of sadness in his green eyes
throughout the season.
The three men would
have a Christmas breakfast in the cabin in the woods.
It wasn’t anything special, just Edwin’s usual hearty breakfast to
stick to the ribs of three working men and keep them warm while they chopped
wood and patrolled the preserve and tended to the horses, getting the necessary
daily chores over with so they could enjoy the rest of their day off.
They would exchange a few gifts, but it never really felt
“traditional” to Dan and tradition was something he desperately longed for.
In the afternoon, the three of them would troop up to the Manor House or
Crabapple Farm or sometimes both, and celebrate with their friends.
Dan always enjoyed that too, but still he longed for his own family and
his own traditions.
He had faint memories
of the last Christmas spent with his father, but he was only five at the time
and he sometimes wondered if the memories were real or had been embellished by
his own imagination. He remembered
curling up under a heavy patchwork quilt with his mother and father in front of
the fireplace. It was cozy and his
parents always made it fun – his father would tell stories and his mother
would sing and they would eat popcorn that had been popped right in the
fireplace – but it was partially out of necessity too.
The small house was difficult and expensive to heat in the winter, and
sitting around the fireplace all Christmas day was as much to keep warm as to
celebrate the day with family togetherness.
Their tree sat on a
tabletop in the corner, maybe a few notches above a Charlie Brown tree, but
still small and bare. Mama would
wrap a string of popcorn around it, maybe a handful of tinsel she had
painstakingly saved from the year before, and the ornaments of red, green,
silver, and gold.
Dan remembered those
ornaments with regret. They were
small and plain, no decorative wintry scenes printed on them, no “Our First
Christmas” or “Baby’s First Christmas” etched on them in glittering
letters. Dan remembered his mother
saying how she had bought them at the five-and-dime the year she and his father
got married. It was a few weeks
after Christmas and they were marked down 50%.
Mama got the store manager to come down even more on the price because
the original box of twelve was down to nine, missing one silver and two green
balls. No, they weren’t family
heirlooms and they weren’t all that sentimental, but Dan wished he still had
them. He remembered his stepfather
Ray smashing them to pieces one year, angry because Cathleen hadn’t fixed his
dinner and was asking for money to buy gifts for her son.
Pushing down the
resentment at a demon long gone from his life, Dan put his hand over Trixie’s
and squeezed it. Was it too early
to start their Christmas morning traditions?
Well, it was only the 23rd, so technically it was
too early, he thought with a smile. But
this would be their Christmas morning, their first Christmas as husband and
wife, even if nobody else was aware of it.
He rolled over onto his back, chuckling under his breath as the two
females on either side of him grumbled in protest, sounding startlingly alike.
He propped himself up on his elbows and squinted through the darkness to
the clock that hung on the far wall. 4:20
a.m. Yeah, probably too early.
He rolled towards Trixie with a sigh, pulling her close and snuggling
under the quilt with her as Penny adjusted her position and curled up in the
crook behind his knees.
He envied Trixie’s
ability to adjust her internal clock seamlessly between work and training and
vacation. She had not been
particularly happy about the possibility of evolving into a morning person, up
before dawn most days to go running. Dan
always marveled at her reluctance; she had grown up on a farm, with three
brothers, and a sense of adventure that never slept, but when not “on duty”,
her body clicked off and Dan knew she would sleep until noon if he let her.
He, on the other hand,
was stuck in graveyard shift mode, even on his days off.
He was usually up well past midnight, working, thinking, reading,
watching endless sitcom reruns, wishing he could call Trixie and talk to her,
before finally drifting off to sleep when most people were getting up and
preparing for the workday.
So now, though he tried
in vain to go back to sleep, he could only stare at the front of the old brown
tweed sofa and listen to the clock tick its way slowly towards dawn.
When the dying fire and his pleasant daydreams no longer kept him warm,
he carefully extricated himself from Trixie’s arms and got up to add a few
logs to the fire and fix breakfast. It
was not quite 6:00 a.m., but they were due at Crabapple Farm around noon and he
wanted to make sure he and Trixie got to fully celebrate their first Christmas
morning alone.
He turned on the oven
and rummaged through the cupboards to see what sort of muffin mixes Edwin had on
hand. Maypenny was a good, if
rudimentary, cook; but he always claimed that nobody but Helen Belden and Betty
Crocker made muffins worth a darn. Today
he had three varieties to choose from – blueberry, apple cinnamon, and banana
walnut. Dan chose the apple
cinnamon, pulled out a mixing bowl from the next cabinet over and read the
directions on the box as he pulled out the remaining ingredients and measuring
devices he needed to get the job done.
As he cracked eggs and
measured vegetable oil, he heard a quiet whine behind him.
He turned to see Penny sitting politely at the door, tail wagging.
“Need out, girl?” he whispered.
She jumped up, the back
half of her body wriggling excitedly as Dan came over to her.
He grasped her collar before opening the door and carefully clipped her
to the run he had strung up between the cabin and a tree near the edge of the
clearing. He felt bad for
restraining the exuberant hound, who would have loved to explore the preserve,
nose firmly to the snowy ground, soaking in the panoply of woodsy scents; but
she was young and didn’t know the area and he didn’t want her getting lost.
He had already promised her that he would bring her down to Sleepyside
frequently come spring, so she could map out the area with her super-sniffer and
be free to roam as she pleased on their visits.
“No barking,” he
commanded gently, finger close to her black nose.
Despite her laughing brown eyes and lolling tongue, she still managed to
look like she would take his order seriously and quietly bounded off into the
snow as Dan shut the door behind her.
A whimpering protest
against the cold that blew into the cabin emanated from the vicinity of the
living room floor and as Dan peered over the back of the couch with a smile, he
saw Trixie burrowing further under the heavy quilt, only a smattering of tousled
curls still in sight.
Maypenny’s ancient
stove – Dan was surprised it wasn’t a potbelly wood-burning stove made by
Benjamin Franklin himself – finally clicked its readiness to cook at the
appropriate temperature and Dan slid the muffin pan in and set the timer.
He started a pot of coffee brewing – that would get Trixie up in no
time – and watched Penny through the kitchen window for several minutes.
When the coffeemaker trickled out its last few drops, he poured a cup of
coffee, loading it up with cream and sugar just the way his wife liked it, and
carried it to the living room. He
sat on the edge of the couch and waved the mug tantalizingly near where he
believed Trixie’s nose to be, still covered by the quilt.
He would have been
hard-pressed to describe the sounds that came from underneath the quilt just
then. With a high-pitched,
squealing, protesting, stretching, whining yawn, two hands appeared above the
tangled curls and stretched out in a long, luxuriating motion.
As he watched in fascination, two blue eyes peeped out and looked
longingly at the cup of coffee. “Please?”
she whispered, reaching her hands out for it.
Dangling it just out of
her reach, like a carrot in front of a sleepy filly, Dan encouraged her to sit
up and rest her back against the couch between his legs before handing her the
cup and planting a kiss on top of her head.
“Merry Christmas, Trix.”
Eyes still half closed,
Trixie took a grateful sip of the hot coffee before leaning back to offer her
lips to her husband. “Merry
Christmas, kind of.”
Dan rubbed her
shoulders as he spoke. “With the
kind of careers you and I plan to have, I figure the 25th could easily prove to
be a problem. So we’re going to
have to bite the bullet and be prepared to celebrate Christmas whenever we can
get it.”
“True, true.
You are wise beyond your years, young Mangan,” Trixie said sagely.
Her eye caught a glimmer of color near the tree.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing.
“Presents.”
“I thought we agreed
that with the wedding next year and all the flying back and forth we’re doing
to Georgia and Virginia that we weren’t going to spend money on each other at
Christmas this year.”
“Do you think I just
happened to find a limo and driver by the side of the road willing to volunteer
his services for free?”
Trixie pouted, looking
genuinely upset for a moment as she waited for the caffeine to kick in.
“That’s not fair. I
stuck by the pact. I didn’t get
you anything.”
Dan’s grin stretched
across his face as he said, “That’s quite all right.
I can think of any number of things you can give to me that won’t cost
you a dime.”
Appeased, Trixie began
seductively stroking the inside of his leg, moving her hand upwards inch by
inch. “Really?
Like what?”
“Well, for starters,
you could tell your mom and dad we’re already married.”
“Oh, that’s a great
idea,” Trixie muttered, rolling her eyes.
“Merry Christmas, Moms and Dad! I
thought I’d give you a stroke for Christmas.”
Dan chuckled then said,
“Anyway, it’s only three gifts and they’re really for both of us, not just
you.”
“What a neat
coincidence. The gift I have in
mind will make both of us happy as well.”
“Later, nympho.
Breakfast is about ready and then I want to open presents before we do
anything else.”
Trixie snorted. “You already know
what they are. Why are you so
excited?”
Penny yapped at the
door and Dan stood, swinging a long leg over Trixie’s head as he answered,
“Because I like to watch you open presents.”
He hurried to the door and let Penny in, wiping her paws dry and cleaning
the snow off her nose.
When he turned around,
he saw Trixie by the presents trying to peek through the corners of Dan’s
sloppy wrapping job. Sneaking up
behind her, he goosed her on the bottom and yelled, “What do you think
you’re doing, missy?”
Trixie shrieked and
jumped back. “You’re the one
who wanted me to open my presents!”
“Yes, while I watch.
Don’t sneak around behind my back trying to figure out what they
are!” He pulled her to her feet
and led her to the kitchen, making her sit down at the table and drink her
coffee while he prepared bacon and eggs and pulled the muffins out of the oven.
Soon enough though,
they were back in the living room, and Trixie was eagerly eyeing the gifts
again. “Which one do I open
first?”
“This one,” Dan
said, handing her one, trying to suppress the contagious excitement he was
picking up from Trixie.
She eagerly ripped into
the wrapping and gasped as she revealed a boxed digital camera.
“Dan! How can we afford
this?”
“They’re not all
that expensive, Trix. Besides,
it’s something we can both enjoy for many years to come.
It’ll end up a good investment. I
thought you could take it to Virginia with you and then email me pictures of you
and maybe I won’t miss you so much.”
Trixie leaned over and
kissed him. “And then when I come
see you in February, I’ll leave it with you and you can send me pictures of
you…but I’ll still miss you something awful.
And this is a really nice gift. You
shouldn’t have.”
“Well, it seemed a
more heartfelt gift than giving you the leftover disposable camera from our
wedding.”
Trixie laughed. “The one Arnold
never touched! I’m surprised Rose
didn’t confiscate it after she used hers all up!”
“Yeah, then we’d
have two rolls of pictures of her
thumb!”
They laughed as they
shared a tender kiss and a joyful memory of that magical summer afternoon by the
Atlantic Ocean. After a moment, Dan
murmured against her lips, “I know you’re just going to die if you don’t
see what’s in the other packages, so let’s get on with it.”
He picked up the
smallest box and held onto it a moment before relinquishing it to Trixie.
“I can take these back if you don’t like them.
I know we planned to do this together, but when I saw these, they just
looked perfect.”
Intrigued, Trixie
opened a black velvet box, revealing two wedding bands.
“Dan! They’re
gorgeous!” she whispered breathlessly.
“See how each one is
actually two rings interlocked? They
seemed kind of symbolic to me, I guess. Two
lives becoming one.”
”Our two weddings,” Trixie teased with a grin.
“Exactly!” Dan
exclaimed, grinning back at her. He
looked carefully at her, trying to ascertain for sure whether or not she liked
the rings he had picked out.
She looked up at him,
her eyes glistening. “I love
them, Dan! They’re perfect for
us!”
Dan breathed a sigh of
relief and picked up the last box. It
was the largest, but was lightweight and rustled a little when Trixie shook it
playfully. “Jigsaw puzzle?” she
asked with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Nope.
It’s what I hope will be a Christmas tradition for us.”
Before Trixie could open it, he placed his hands over hers.
“I never had a lot of holiday traditions when I was a kid.
Or maybe I just can’t remember them; maybe they died with my mother.
I’m really looking forward to starting traditions with you and
continuing them with our own family.”
“I’m looking
forward to that too,” Trixie said softly.
Holding up the box, she continued, “So what did you have in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking
how hard coordinating our schedules might be and I want us to try, no matter
what day it is, Christmas or no, to set aside a day just for us – get a tree,
decorate it, exchange special gifts…and do this.”
He nodded towards the box and Trixie opened it eagerly.
Inside was a stack of
unopened Christmas cards from family and friends.
White, blue, and cream envelopes with a variety of stamps and postmarks
filled the box. Trixie’s eyes
grew wider and wider as she looked at the return addresses.
Not only were there expected cards from her parents, out-of-state Beldens
and Johnsons, the Wheelers, Honey and Brian, the other Bob-Whites, Bill Regan,
and their Sleepyside friends, but cards from friends they had met on their many
adventures; cards from Bob Hubbell and his sister Barbara, Dexter Sloan,
Professor Chapman, Peter Kimball – maybe forty or more in all.
Trixie pulled out a handful of the cards and held them to her chest.
“Dan! What a wonderful
idea! How did you get all these
people to send us cards?”
Dan chuckled at her
amazement. “Sending out cards is
an accepted Christmas tradition, babe. I’m sure you’ve gotten Christmas
cards from them before. I’ll bet
they’d even send them on a yearly basis if they had a clue you were still
alive and still remembered them.” He
laughed at the embarrassed look on her face; Trixie’s correspondence skills
were worse than her cooking skills. “I
simply sent out cards from the two of us this year and mentioned my plan and how
much I would love to give you a card from them.
Looks like just about everybody responded.”
“I’ll say!”
She dug through the box and squealed with delight.
“There’s even some from overseas – the Tweedy sisters and Juliana
and Hans!”
Pulling her back snugly
against his chest, Dan leaned over and watched as she sorted delightfully
through the envelopes. “So I
thought each year, we could set aside a day to open all our Christmas cards
together and reminisce.”
Trixie turned her head
and kissed him on the cheek. “I
think it’s a wonderful idea, Dan! I
can’t believe you left them all unopened until now.”
”What can I say? Some people in
this world actually have patience.”
“Brat,” Trixie said
without malice; she was too excited about opening the cards in her hands.
“Look at this one!” she shouted.
“Our first card addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Mangan.”
It was from Arnold and Rose Walker; the only people who knew they were
‘The Mangans’, of course. Trixie
opened it eagerly and a small black and white photo fell out of the card.
On the back in a neat script was written “Our First Christmas”.
The picture showed
Arnold and Rose Walker in front of a tall Christmas tree.
Arnold had on his policeman’s dress uniform; Rose was dressed in a
stylish cocktail dress, her dark hair piled elegantly on top of her head.
“We should use our
new camera to take our picture in front of this Christmas tree,” Trixie stated
emphatically. “And we should do
that every year too.”
Dan hugged her closely.
“I think that’s a fabulous idea!”
He couldn’t express how happy he was to be adding another tradition to
his holiday season. He felt warm
and peaceful inside as he watched Trixie joyfully opening the cards.
As she opened each one, she would toss the envelope aside, where Penny
ferociously dismembered it into a flurry of paper snow all over the floor and
looked up eagerly for the next one.
Yes, his family was well on its way.
|
|
|
Author's Notes
Chapter
19 (5,938 words)
Well, this is the last of the “saved” stories.
Sigh... Although I haven’t
exhausted all my possibilities (shy of paying money I don’t have and can’t
justify on my non-profit-making fanfiction (that’s right Random House, no
money being made), it’s not looking good for the recovery of my work from my
old hard drive. So I guess the new
prayer is, please pray for my brain – that I can recreate these stories as I
need/want them – and my peace of mind – that I can accept the stories as
they are recreated and not fret myself to death about what I lose and what may
or may not be better the old way.
A big thank you to Annette for
saving this story that I sent to her for editing.
And thanks, as always, to Annette and Heather, my editors.
Any mistakes are mine, as I often fiddle after it comes back to me.
Another big thank you to Julie (macjest) for finding a picture of Dan and Trixie's wedding rings not once, but twice. You’re a peach, Julie! I looked everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) for exactly what I wanted for Dan and Trixie’s wedding rings. I don't know what searching magic that girl has, but she finds things when I can't find them and have lost all patience in looking. You totally rock, Julie! Oh...you want to see them too? Here they are: Dan and Trixie's wedding band.
Christmas traditions are so
important to me. It’s my favorite
time of the year and so many of our family traditions (even the ridiculously
silly ones) have been ongoing since I was a little girl (and that was a LONG
time ago *g*) and they are all precious to me.
I felt sad that Dan might not have, or might not remember, traditions
like that, so I’m glad I could create some for him.
I can’t guarantee that sex in the back of a limo will be a yearly
tradition though. *g*
Dan’s idea to sit and read
Christmas cards together all at once was inspired by my fellow Gatlingburg Girl,
Kay (KinNC) who mentioned being so busy last year that she didn’t get a chance
to read all of The Clubhouse Christmas Card Exchange cards for quite awhile.
Then she sat down with a cup of tea or cocoa or something and read them
all. I thought it was a lovely idea
and decided to incorporate it into my story.
Arboreal snafu...that’s for you, Annette. *wink*