“Coryn! Wake up, dear.”
Her mother’s voice and her hand gently shaking her shoulder roused Coryn from a deep slumber. Coryn sat up, blinking sleepily. When she saw her mother standing by the side of her bed, she came immediately wide-awake. Clare was deathly pale, deep shadows circled her eyes, her expression was pained.
“Mom! What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to waken you, dear, but I have a beastly headache, probably a migraine. The medicine, the only one that touches this kind, is starting to have some effect, but it will keep me in bed for most of the day, I’m afraid. That’s why I had to wake you up. I need to ask a favor.”
“Sure, Mom, anything. An ice bag for your head? Some tea?”
“No, thanks, dear. Nothing like that. I’ll just have to sleep this off for a couple of hours. What I need you to do is go to the church in my place. I volunteered to help pack Christmas baskets for the needy.”
Coryn reached for her robe, threw back the covers and searched for her slippers.
“Of course, Mom. What time should I be there?”
“At ten. It’s just a little after nine now.”
“I can make that. I’ll jump in the shower and be ready in a jiff. Are you sure there isn’t something I can do for you before I leave?”
Her mother shook her head. “No, dear, that’s all. That relieves me. I dislike not fulfilling a commitment. It’s such a worthy cause and so few show up to do the job. I hate to let them down. Now that you’re going, I can rest easy. Thank you, Coryn,” she said as she left the room.
“No problem, Mom.”
Coryn showered quickly, dressed in sweater, slacks. She peeked in her mother’s bedroom before she went downstairs and saw her lying with an eye mask on, already asleep. Good. In the past, Clare occasionally had this sort of debilitating headache, but Coryn didn’t recall ever seeing her look that bad. Could something more serious be the cause? Coupled with some of the other things she’d noticed about her mother, Coryn couldn’t help worrying. A slowgrowing tumor? That could account for some of it. Heavens, but she hoped it was nothing as serious as that! Only a headache, she assured herself.
In the kitchen she drank some juice and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then took her mother’s car keys off the peg where she kept them and went out to the garage.
Good Shepherd Church was only a short drive. Her mother was a faithful member of the congregation. Coryn had gone to Sunday school here and had belonged to the youth group in high school. At college Coryn had gone to chapel service but in the last few years she had not regularly attended church. Certainly not in L.A. There, Sundays were usually spent around the pool of their apartment complex or at brunch parties that had become a trendy way to entertain. As she pulled into a space in the parking lot, Coryn felt a little guilty, like the black sheep turning up at the fold.
There were four ladies already working in the parish hall when Coryn entered. They looked at her curiously as she came in the door. Then one, a stout, gray-haired woman with sparkling brown eyes and a generous smile, greeted her, “Why, it’s Coryn Dodge, isn’t it? Hello there, I’m Mildred McCurry.” She came over, both hands extended. “Your mother called earlier to say you’d be coming.” Then she said sympathetically, “I hope she’ll be feeling better. Those headaches are awful.”
She took Coryn by the arm and led her over to a long table where the other volunteers were working and introduced her. They were busy filling baskets from cardboard cartons filled with canned food, bakery goods, boxes of cereal and dry milk, bags of flour and other groceries.
“You can work beside me, Coryn,” Mrs. McCurry told her. “I’ll show you the order in which we pack the baskets, staples on the bottom, crushables and perishables on top. Later, we check our lists. Families with children get a few extras, little toys, candy, some special sort of treat.”
Coryn took off her jacket, hung it up and got to work.
It was slow going at first, moving down the table following instructions as to what and how much went into each basket. She soon caught on and got into the rhythm. She had been working steadily for some time when one of the ladies called, “Break time.” The smell of fresh coffee permeated the room and someone had set up a delicious buffet lunch for the workers.
“One thing about working for the church, you always get fed!” joked Mrs. McCurry.
“It’s scriptural even,” declared a lady Coryn had been introduced to as Emily Austin. “Cast your bread on the water and it returns to you buttered.”
“Emily!” remonstrated another volunteer. “That’s not out of the Bible!”
“I’m paraphrasing,” retorted Emily, and they all laughed.
Whatever the theological truth, there was indeed not only buttered bread, but a platter of cold cuts, three different kinds of salad, two pies and a maplewalnut layer cake.
“Virtue rewarded,” commented Mrs. McCurry as she refilled everyone’s coffee mug.
Although all the volunteers were her mother’s age or older, Coryn felt welcome and comfortable in this group. She knew they were all committed Christians and that a great deal of their life was centered in their church activities. She wondered how big a part this played in her mother’s life. It was something they had never really discussed. Clare just quietly lived her faith in everything. It was so much a part of her.
Coryn felt a kind of emptiness inside, realizing that she had not developed more of those values her mother had tried to instill in her. She had neglected that part of her life during the last few years. No wonder she had made such poor choices, such wrong decisions, hadn’t been able to tell the difference between the counterfeit and the real.
“All right, ladies, back to work. We’ve only got a few more baskets to go,” Mrs. McCurry announced.
Shortly after they all returned to their posts, they heard dozens of feet scuffling along the corridor outside and children’s voices. Soon, from an adjoining room, came the slightly off-key singing of Christmas carols.
“Hark, the herald angels sing!” quipped the irrepressible Emily.
“The junior choir rehearsing for the Christmas program,” Dorothy, one of the other volunteers, explained to Coryn.
It did seem to add a special touch to their work hearing them. Finally all the baskets were filled, tagged, ready to go to another set of volunteers who would deliver them on Christmas Eve.
As Coryn got ready to leave, Mrs. McCurry said, “Thank you so much for coming to help us. It would have taken us much longer if you hadn’t pitched in with your young energy and willing hands.”
“I really enjoyed it, Mrs. McCurry,” Coryn told her, realizing she really had.
Outside, the wind was cold and Coryn hurried to her car. She was just unlocking her door, when she heard a horn tapped lightly. Turning, she saw Mark Emery sitting behind the wheel of his station wagon. He rolled down the window and called, “Hi!”
She turned and waved. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for Ginny. She’s practicing for her big moment as an angel in the Christmas program.”
“She won’t have to practice very hard, she is one.” Coryn smiled.
“Thanks. I could ask you the same question, I mean, what you’re doing here?”
“Actually, filling in for my mother,” she said. “Of course, we used to come here as a family.” She paused. “I always wanted to be an angel in the Christmas program but they always picked the girls with long blond curls.”
“They’re more liberal about angels nowadays.” Mark grinned.
“I certainly hope so.” Coryn stood there for a minute. But there really wasn’t anything more to say. “Well, I’m off. Merry Christmas,” she said, and got in her car.
Mark watched her thinking he wished he’d said something more. Asked her for a date. Date! He hated that word. It seemed so juvenile somehow. But what else could he call it? He liked Coryn Dodge, he’d thought from the beginning she was someone he’d like to know. She was—well, a lot of things, and how else could he find out more unless he called her and asked her out?
Coryn waved to him again after she’d backed out and passed his car. Funny, running into him again. Here, of all places. And to find out Ginny attended Sunday school at the same church Coryn had as a child. And that she was in the Christmas pageant.
What a special guy Mark Emery must be. Obviously a great father. She remembered the reasons he’d told her for moving to Rockport. His values were certainly in the right place. Tragic about his wife. As she drove home, Coryn wondered what his wife had been like, Ginny’s mother. It must be hard for Mark doing the things alone that ought to be shared.
From deep inside of Coryn came a longing for something, for someone to love, some fulfilling purpose to her life.