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“You don’t mind?”
“No. Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean you should be.”
“Rachel?”
“Yes, Dad?”
“Would you like your mother’s angels?”
Her eyes prickled and burned all over again. For a moment she couldn’t speak. “Yes, I would.”
At home, Rachel dug through her closet, moving shoe boxes and suitcases to find the bulletin board she’d pinned all her hopes and dreams on back when she was a college coed, and carried the board to her bed, where she propped it up against the pale blue pillows.
The vision board looked a lot like her desk drawer—orderly, clean, beautifully organized with everything in its place. Her goals were typed, listed in numeric form. Goals were very specific, too—her desired income, retirement nest egg, means to achieving financial stability, promotions. The sole visual on her board was the photo of a smiling blonde woman in a nice gray suit standing in the middle of a large, glossy office. And that was Rachel’s vision for her life, and her future. A single woman in a suit, standing alone in a big, impersonal, but luxurious, office.
Rachel exhaled and sat down on the foot of the bed, wondering at the girl who’d thought this was the picture of success.
But then, the girl who made this was the one who’d gone through years of grieving for a mother who’d died too young. That girl was afraid of emotions, afraid of attachment. That girl just wanted security, and control.
Rachel read through the goals and they were all very impressive, but there was no room for friends, no room for a boyfriend, no room to fall in love. How could she ever fall in love when love would break her heart? How could she want a family when someone might die?
She could hear Atticus’s voice in her head. Change happens with or without your approval. That’s just life.
Being alone wasn’t going to protect her. Keeping everyone at arm’s length wouldn’t save her. She was going to have to take risks and live.
She thought of Atticus and her heart ached. Was he back in Houston, or had he gone to Galveston to join his family? She envied his family and friends for still having him. She’d given him up rather than adjust her goals. So stupid. Rachel despised herself for being a coward. At the rate she was going, she would die alone, surrounded by very nice things.
Horrendous.
She looked at her vision board and exhaled hard. Was this really what she wanted for herself? Things, not people? Work, not love? What a lonely future. What a bleak life it would be.
Fighting tears, she jumped up and tore the advertisement of the woman in the glossy office off the bulletin board, and then she ripped the list of goals down next and shredded it into a dozen pieces. She kept ripping it apart until it was just a bare corkboard and then she cried, tears she never cried, tears for the girl who missed her mother terribly, and felt so much guilt for not being stronger for her mother when her mother needed her. She cried for the girl who believed that numbers would somehow protect her.
Numbers couldn’t protect her from disappointment. Being defensive was stunting her. She needed to be proactive. She needed a new dream.
The ringing of her doorbell forced her to scrub her face dry and pull herself together. Opening the door, she discovered her father on her doorstep with two medium cardboard boxes.
“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. I thought maybe we could put the angels out tonight.”
For a moment she was speechless, and then she hugged her dad tightly, emotion making it impossible to speak.
Together they unwrapped the angels, and Rachel lightly touching one of the angels’ sweet face, before placing the pair in the middle of her dining table, a table she’d never once used since she didn’t entertain and usually ate at her desk or on the couch. Then she unpacked the rest of the boxes, discovering two cartons of glass ornaments, a handful of ornaments made by Rachel as a little girl in Girl Scouts. There were a half-dozen Christmas records, and two books.
She reached for the book with the brilliant crimson cover, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, and opened it. The book had been inscribed,
To Dottie & Bessie
Merry Christmas
From the Sondersons
1919
Dottie and Bessie. She recognized those names. There had been a whole box of books with those names in the back room of Paradise Books.
“Dad, who was Dottie and Bessie?” she asked, looking up at her father. “Why would Mom have this book?”
He leaned over her shoulder to read the elegant penmanship. “If I’m remembering correctly, Bessie was the nickname for your mother’s grandmother, Elizabeth. Dottie was her sister. I knew Grandmother Elizabeth, but I never met her great-aunt, Dottie. She’d passed away a number of years before I met Mom.”
“Where did they live?”
“Montana. They moved around a bit as their father worked for the railroad.”
Rachel reached for the other children’s book. The Secret Garden, and this one had Bessie in it, too, and Rachel flashed back to the books she’d catalogued in Marietta, the set of Five Little Peppers, The Red Cross Girls, along with the well-loved edition of Little Men.
Bessie. Elizabeth.
All those boxes of books in the backroom at Paradise Books, boxes of books that hadn’t been shelved.
“I need to call Lesley,” she said.
Her father frowned. “Why?”
“I have questions.”
“I thought you’d decided to sell the store.”
“But it hasn’t sold, and it’s still mine, and there are things I want to know.”
“You got the promotion you wanted, Rachel.”
“I know, but what if this isn’t right for me? What if it’s time to do something else?”
“All you’ve wanted for the past ten years is security.”
“But maybe I’m going about it all wrong. Maybe my dream is changing.” She saw from his expression that he didn’t understand. “I set all these goals when I was young, and grieving, and afraid to be hurt. I created goals that kept people out. I’m not that same girl anymore. I’m ready to take chance. Ready to let people in.”
“That makes sense,” he said gruffly. “Just be careful though. You don’t want to throw away everything you’ve worked for.”
She gave him a hug. “That won’t happen, Dad,” she whispered against his shoulder. “I’m too practical.”
After her dad left Rachel calculated the time in Queensland. Eight o’clock Monday night was one o’clock Tuesday for Lesley, which meant it was already Christmas Eve for Lesley.
Rachel didn’t leave a message the first time she called, but when she phoned back an hour later, she again got Lesley’s cheery voice saying she wasn’t available but please leave a message and she’d return the call.
Merry Christmas, Lesley, it’s Rachel Mills, your goddaughter. I’d love to talk to you about the bookstore, and some of the books I’ve found.
She waited another hour, and then phoned again.
Lesley, it’s Rachel again. I’m not sure if you’re home for the holidays or with your sister, but I’d love to talk to you about the bookstore, and something I found in my mom’s things. Could you please call me back? You can call me collect, anytime, too.
Lesley never called, and Rachel went to bed troubled. When she woke up, she sipped her coffee and looked at the angels sitting on the dining room and wondered if Lesley was okay. Had something happened to her?
Rachel gathered her courage and texted Atticus. “I’ve been calling Lesley and leaving messages. Do you know if she’s okay?”
He answered twenty minutes later. “Are you calling her landline? That might be why she was not answering. Lesley and her family have arrived in Marietta for Christmas.”
Lesley was in Marietta?
And how did Atticus know that? Was he also in Montana? “Are you in Marietta?” She typed before she could change her mind.
“Just until the morning, and then it’s home for Christmas.”
And just like that, Rachel knew where she wanted to be.
Chapter Ten
There were no cheap last-minute flights to Bozeman. In fact, there were almost no flights at all. Getting to Bozeman meant three connecting flights, with a long layover in Salt Lake City, but she didn’t mind if it meant she could get in tonight because she was desperate to see Atticus before he left tomorrow.
It was seven o’clock now, and in Salt Lake for a two-hour layover, waiting for the third and final leg of her trip. The Bozeman flight was delayed due to a storm in Atlanta, but at least her flight was scheduled to still go out whereas others were being canceled right and left.
But as the evening wore on, and her flight continued to be pushed back, she tried to stay positive. As long as her flight wasn’t canceled, she’d still get there. It didn’t matter if she arrived midnight Christmas Eve, as long as she arrived. She was trying not to think about what she’d do if her flight was canceled because at this point it wasn’t an option.
She’d debated all day whether she should let Atticus know she was coming. She didn’t know why she was reluctant to tell him. Did she think just surprising him in the morning would make everything better?
