We started by heading away from town, toward the zoo, where Grandfather had gone all out with the decorations. In addition to an immense quantity of evergreens, red ribbons, and twinkly white lights, he’d set up a series of moving light displays atop the fence that surrounded the zoo and its parking lot. One set of lights outlined an elephant lifting and lowering a wrapped present atop his trunk. Another featured a seal balancing a spinning red ornament on his nose. A bear in a Santa costume emerged from a fireplace, held his belly and shook it, as if shouting “ho, ho, ho!” and then vanished into the fireplace again. And at the far end of the parking lot, in pride of place, a larger-than-life-sized Santa rode in a sleigh pulled by the eight rank-and-file reindeer, with Rudolph at the front, his large red nose blinking on and off.
On the way back to town we passed by the New Life Baptist Church, where every single architectural feature of the building was outlined in multicolored lights that matched those on the soaring Christmas tree gracing the front lawn. And then by Trinity Episcopal, which didn’t have quite so many lights, but made up for it with a display of three life-sized papier-mâché camels decked with elaborate bejeweled bridles and saddles, tethered to a wooden rail just outside the front door. Josh and Jamie, who had contributed significantly to the production of the camels, were justly proud of the display. So was I, as one of the parents who’d figured out how to waterproof them so we didn’t have to haul them inside the sanctuary every time our weather apps predicted precipitation.
And then on to the town. By this far in the holiday season, I’d worked out my optimal route for showing visiting friends and family the sights. I knew which blocks were entirely decorated with over-the-top Christmas, Hanukkah, and nonpartisan winter decorations. I knew where to find quiet streets with mostly evergreens and a few window candles that added up to a look of old-fashioned charm. Instead of competing with each other, more and more townspeople joined forces with their neighbors to produce an increasing number of theme blocks, like the Christmas with Dinosaurs block and the Charlie Brown Christmas block.
We circled around to take a second look at one of my favorite houses, whose owners spent the first of November transforming their over-the-top house-and-yard Halloween decorations into the world’s spookiest Christmas display. Skeleton Santa appeared to be grinning wildly as he climbed out of his black-and-silver sleigh, pulled by eight lively skeleton reindeer, and his spider-web present sack was filled with grinning skulls and assorted toy bats. The skeleton nativity scene had been expanded with several skeleton sheep. But the new pièce de résistance was the skeleton Santa’s workshop, with half a dozen skeleton elves—would they be skelves?—using bone hammers and saws to craft an amazing variety of creepy toys.
After that it was on to the town square—although not until I’d reminded everyone that this close to the holiday, the tourist traffic would be incredible, so it would probably take at least half an hour to make the slow, one-way circuit around the square. But my passengers all thought it was worth it—after all, we’d get to see all the shops around the square, decorated to the nines … the several bands of singers and musicians in Dickensian costume, serenading the passersby … the giant Santa sitting on the edge of the town hall’s roof, appearing to throw trails of light down at the onlookers … the life-sized nativity scene on the front lawn of the Methodist church … and of course the town Christmas tree, which either was or wasn’t a smidgen taller than the National Christmas Tree, depending on whether the speaker thought exceeding that mark was a good thing or a bad thing.
It made a fine ending to our tour. We dropped Adam off at his house and headed home, eager to find out what Michael was bringing for dinner.
“We should have Christmas more often,” Josh said.
“No, then it wouldn’t be as special,” Jamie countered. “I like it just the way it is.”
We passed a few more Christmas decorations on the way home. The Washingtons, whose farm was only a little down the road from our house, had a giant star on top of their enormous barn, shedding light around the entire countryside. It certainly added a note of authenticity to the display Seth Early set up across the street from us—he dressed half a dozen secondhand store dummies as shepherds, and had them abiding in his field, surrounded by his sheep. Last year, he’d made the shepherds’ robes out of something that was apparently irresistibly delicious to the sheep, who had nibbled repeatedly and succeeded in denuding their keepers long before the holiday season was over. I was relieved that this time around he’d reclothed the dummies in something the sheep had, so far, turned up their noses at. Although something about the way he’d posed the shepherds this year made them seem a surly, feckless lot, lounging lazily against the fence, for all the world like a pack of aspiring juvenile delinquents taking a cigarette break between misdemeanors. But then, maybe this was true to life—nothing I’d ever heard about the first noel had ever suggested the shepherds were also angels. Only that after getting over being terrified by the angel’s appearance they had been curious enough to hike into Bethlehem to check out the new arrival. Since that was exactly what most of my friends and neighbors would have done if the Nativity had been happening nearby—and, for that matter, exactly what I would have done—it made the shepherds all the more relatable.
“I’m going to freshen up before dinner,” Cordelia said when we reached the house. “Boys, can you bring in those boxes I put in the back?”
She strode toward the house. I waited until I was sure the boys had heard her request, then followed, more slowly.
“There’s no place like home.” I didn’t tap my heels together, like Dorothy in Oz. I didn’t even say it out loud when I walked through the front door. But I think my sigh of contentment and relief was audible.
“Yes, it is rather spectacular, isn’t it?” Rose Noire beamed happily up at the hall’s elaborate Christmas decorations. “I’ll let your mother know you like the new additions.”
New additions? I glanced around. Probably a good thing to let Rose Noire relay my appreciation, since I had no idea what new additions I was supposed to be impressed by.
Mother, who was in charge of all our holiday decorations, believed in doing the hallway up as elaborately as possible, on the theory that a dramatic initial impression improved the whole tone of the house. This year she had gone in heavily for prisms and mirrors in addition to the usual evergreen, ribbons, and blown-glass balls. Prisms and mirrors turned our hall light fixture into a good impersonation of the kind of chandelier you’d find in an ornate turn-of-the-century opera house. Prisms and mirrors shared branch space with lights, glass balls, and garlands on the tall, narrow Christmas tree Mother had found to fit into a corner of the hall. Prisms and mirrors were scattered all along the evergreen and ribbon garlands that festooned the upper third of the hallway walls. And all of them reflected light and colored glass and red velvet and evergreen needles so the whole thing looked even more extravagant than usual.
But while the prisms and mirrors were new for this year, they’d been up for weeks, and if Mother had added more things for them to reflect, I had no idea what was new.
Maybe the boys would figure out what the difference was. They’d lingered by the Twinmobile, their heads bent together over Josh’s phone. Probably conspiring with someone about presents. But now they entered with a burst of cold air and holiday spirits.
“This was a good day,” Josh announced, as he hung up his coat.
“Yes,” Jamie said. “It’s always a good day when you get to go someplace you really want to go, and then get to leave exactly when you’re ready to come home.”
“So dinner on our own was a good choice for tonight?” I asked.
“Definitely,” Jamie said.
“That depends on what we’re having for dinner,” Josh said, in his usual contrarian fashion.
“And that depends on your dad,” I said, glancing at Michael, who had just appeared in the hallway.
“Food’s in the library,” he said. “I did a run to the Shack.”
“Awesome.” The Shack was a local favorite, a no-frills barbecue restaurant run by a branch of the Shiffley family. Josh knocked a couple of coats off the hall coat tree in his eagerness to get to the food.
“Thanks, Dad,” Jamie said, as he helped me pick up the fallen coats.
“How’d it go?” Michael asked, as he greeted me with a quick kiss.
“Pretty well.” I fell into step beside him as we headed for the library. “I was kind of worried—I’ve heard stories about true-crime fans being a little obsessive about the cases they’re interested in and getting into flame wars and spats. But I didn’t see any of that. Almost everyone there was sane and well-behaved.”
“Almost everyone?”
“Only one real pain in the neck,” I said. “And we managed to kick him out.”
“Permanently? Or just for the day?”
“Cordelia didn’t actually come right out and say so, but yeah, he’s definitely out for the rest of this conference, and I expect he’s banned for life.”
“Good—oh, by the way, Iris Rafferty’s having dinner with us,” he added.
“Oh, good.” I enjoyed Iris’s company. She was a lovely woman and a good neighbor—technically one of our next-door neighbors, but out of sight, thanks to the several fields and stretches of woodlands between us. Lately, though, we hadn’t seen as much of her. She’d become increasingly absent-minded—Dad was worried that at ninety she might be in the early stages of dementia—and her three children and one adult granddaughter had been taking turns staying with her. “Only Iris? She doesn’t have any visitors?”
“Her granddaughter brought her by to drop off some Christmas cookies,” Michael said. “I invited them both to stay, but the granddaughter—her name’s Mary-something, isn’t it?”
“Merrilee,” I said, and spelled it.
“Merrilee said she couldn’t stay, but Iris can let her know when she wants to be picked up.”
“Or we can drop Iris off,” I said. “It’s not far, and I think Merrilee’s got a lot on her plate these days. She might enjoy having the night off.”
“I guessed as much.”
When we entered the library, the boys were already seated on the floor at Delaney’s feet, inhaling enormous helpings of food while telling her, Rose Noire, and Iris Rafferty all about the conference. Well, mostly all about the Gadfly’s cruel treatment of Ruth and the important part they’d played in revealing his crimes. I didn’t begrudge them the spotlight, and their listeners appeared to be enjoying their tale.
“Ought to put that despicable wretch under the jail,” Iris said. She was a tall, angular woman—she’d probably have been eye to eye with me at five ten before losing a few inches to aging and a mild case of what the old-timers would call dowager’s hump and Dad would refer to as kyphosis. And she was still remarkably fit and active. Which probably didn’t make Merrilee’s job any easier. Iris’s snow-white hair was pulled back in an old-fashioned bun, but anyone who mistook her for a sweet, old-fashioned little old lady would be in for a rude shock. She was wearing a red-and-white Die Hard–themed Christmas sweater over black yoga pants and sipping what I suspected was a very dry martini. Michael had learned to make them to her exacting specifications.
Michael and I filled our plates from the buffet he’d set up on one of the sturdy Mission-style oak tables in the library. I forced myself to take only small helpings of everything, but when the spread included ribs, pulled pork, barbecued chicken, brisket, steak fries, corn bread, hush puppies, corn on the cob, green beans, tossed salad, and several other sides, even the small helpings filled up my plate.
“Where’s everyone else?” Delaney asked. “Michael brought enough to feed an army.”
“We’ll have good leftovers,” Josh said, through a mouthful of corn bread.
“Planned-overs,” Michael said. “I had no idea how many people would show, but I figured all of this will heat up just fine if we don’t finish it all.”
“Dad and Grandfather and Festus are all dining out with various people from the conference,” I said. “Cordelia should be here—she rode home with me.”
“She went up to take a nap,” Rose Noire said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the nap turns into going to bed early. Today tired her out. I’m going to see if she wants me to bring up a tray. And your mother will be here later. She recruited Rob to take her shopping. They didn’t say where, so they’re probably doing presents for some of us. We can warm plates for them if they come home hungry.”
“I told Horace to drop by when he got his dinner break,” Michael said. “And to let the rest of the deputies know they were welcome, too. Everything here will heat up beautifully for the latecomers. But for now, let’s savor the rare peace and quiet—and dig in.”
And we did.