Mary felt a dozen different emotions as she walked up the aisle toward Mac. He turned and looked at her calmly, as if he’d been waiting. The expression in his eyes unwound something deep in her chest. Did she really have the capacity to forgive him? Or was she just too exhausted to be angry anymore? She sat down in the same pew, and for a moment they both looked at the rebuilt silver star that now hung in the top of the sanctuary. She remembered the time in the steeple, when they went to look for that star.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mac said in a hoarse voice, “how to apologize to you, but everything I come up with falls short. What I did was awful. I should be able to say something meaningful, you know, eloquent, to make up for it. But all I keep thinking is that my run-on mouth is what got me into this to begin with.” He looked up at her, his green eyes piercing the darkness. “I never meant to hurt you. Not in a million years. But I did, and I’m beyond sorry.”
“Did you mean what you said earlier? That you first thought about telling your story to help me?”
“Yeah,” he conceded. “Twisted as it was.” He managed a weak laugh. “It didn’t quite turn out the way I planned.”
“Thanks. For trying to help, I mean.” She surveyed the sanctuary, imagining the crowd of people who’d been in here earlier. “Everybody knows now and I’m still alive. I suppose in some respects you were right—it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I’d turned it into some kind of horrible thing in my mind.”
“We can do that, you know. Twist things up in our minds. God can give us a good idea and we can foul it up something fierce.” He paused for a moment before he leaned back in the pew and looked up at the ceiling. “Like running for mayor,” he said softly. “I know God wanted me to run, but I thought it was so that I could be a big shot, the guy who could take on Howard.”
“And now?”
“Now I know God wanted me to run so I could clean up my own house.”
Mary wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that. She leaned over to try and decipher the feelings exposed on his face, but the shadows hid his features. “How so?”
He turned toward her, and Mary felt her heart jolt at the sight of his expression. The man before her had been stripped of his bravado, of his clever words and fancy plans. This is what it felt like to look into someone’s soul—unedited, unprotected, exposed. “I’m not ready to run for mayor. Maybe someday, but I’ve got a load of work to do on the inside before I try and change the world. I’ll be thirty in seven days and I’ve never felt less grown up. I let one guy goad me into hurting someone I…someone I’ve come to care a whole lot about. That’s not a guy who should be mayor.”
Mary thought it would be a long, hard process, but it wasn’t. It was a single, clear moment that swept across her like a breeze. “I forgive you,” she said, amazed how the words felt both large and effortless at the same time.
He looked at her with a startled amazement. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I’m such a jerk—I think God allowed me to believe I was helping you because I’d have never ’fessed up on my own.”
“Maybe God fixed it so you told because I’d have chickened out of telling on my own. I don’t suppose that really matters at this point.” She sighed. “Now what? The town’s in worse shape than when I started.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe this wasn’t one of those things you could fix creatively. We had to tackle it up front, out in the open, ugly and all.” Mac let his head fall back against the pew. “I think down deep we all still like each other. We’ve just got to find our way back to that.”
That was it, wasn’t it? Could she find her way back to the affection she felt for Mac after what he’d done? He’d said it himself, that his original intent had been to help. His failings had gotten in the way of his intent. Could she say much differently? Hadn’t her original intent to do a good job been hampered by her own faults?
“I want to find a way back,” she proclaimed, turning to him. A way back for Middleburg, and maybe even a way back for the two of them.
“Hanged if I know how,” he admitted, more to the empty room than to her.
“Actually,” Mary revealed, sitting up, “I think maybe I do.”
“Oh,” groaned Mac, “you’re not talking about the potluck, are you?”
“Oh, I am. Besides,” she concluded, amazed she could find it within herself to smile, “now you have to come.”
This is my Christmas gift to myself. Mary took a deep breath, grabbed her phone and dialed the number the following morning.
“Mary, darling!” Thornton’s overly dramatic greeting was too loud and too cavalier. He was almost shouting; she could hear the noises of a city bar in full swing behind him. “I just knew I’d be hearing from you today. How are you out in the middle of nowhere, wherever you are?”
It would be hard to pack more untruths into three short sentences: Mary was by no means his “darling,” he had no right whatsoever to expect to hear from her ever again—much less on Christmas Eve—she doubted he cared one bit how she was doing and he knew exactly where she was. It surprised her, at just that moment, how she’d allowed this man to hold such power over her. The time for that was over, and she was ready to end it.
“I’m great actually. Very happy.”
“No kidding.” Thornton’s voice dripped with doubt. “And here I was sure you were calling to ask for your old job back for Christmas. You can have it, you know.” His tone implied that he’d be the big man and forgive her the terrible sin of leaving him.
“No thanks, Thornton. I just wanted to call and say Merry Christmas. This will be our last phone conversation. And there will be no more mail. No more communication. I’m done, and I just wanted to tell you myself.”
He didn’t speak for a moment; Mary heard only the yelling and revelry from wherever he was. People trying too hard to be happy. It sounded so empty.
“Come on now…” he finally said in the fumbling way of someone who can’t think of anything better to say.
“No, really. You can tell whoever asks that I wrote the song, but you ought to also tell them that I’m not inclined to give interviews. And if I catch you giving out this number to anyone, I won’t be nice about it. I mean it, Thornton.”
She heard glasses clinking, as if he’d just taken a swig of a drink. “No, you don’t.”
“Oh, I do.”
Thornton let out a string of the colorful adjectives for which he was famous. Actually, she’d expected to be called far worse—Thornton wasn’t at all used to people cutting him off. The language fell sharp and repulsive on her ears. “Be that way,” he snapped at the end of the off-color diatribe.
“I’m happy where I am, Thornton. Leave me alone now.”
“No problem,” he practically shouted in her ear. “You just dropped off the radar, sweetheart.”
“I really do wish you a Merry Christmas, Thornton. The Bippo Bear campaign looks like it was everything you wanted it to be. Enjoy your success.”
“What’s with the holier-than-thou attitude?”
She could just imagine him, pacing the hallway of some posh Chicago bar, tie loosened, drink spilling out of one hand.
“You know what, doll? I’m glad you’re gone. Everyone’s replaceable. I got people lining up for your job, and none of them will spout sermons at me. You’re gone.”
With that pronouncement, Thornton hung up on her. And she didn’t mind.
She was gone. Long gone, and glad of it. Mary wondered, as she hit the disconnect button on her phone, how she’d ever been so afraid of that man. With a flourish, she deleted his contact information from her cell phone. It didn’t matter who knew what she’d been, because she knew now who she was. And Whose she was.
Emily’s shop smelled fabulous when Mary pushed open the door half an hour later. The cinnamon-pine-berry scent of whatever potpourri she had set out—and Emily always had something fragrant and wonderful set out—filled Mary’s head with visions of a Dickens Christmas. She could almost imagine a pie baking somewhere behind Emily’s counter. Music-box versions of Christmas carols filled the air. Mary placed a small wrapped gift on the counter just as Emily came out from the stock room in the back of her shop. “Oh,” Emily said with a bright smile, coming around the counter in a welcoming rush, “it’s you. I’m so glad to see you this morning.” She wrapped Mary in an enormous hug. “Merry Christmas Eve. How are you? I mean really, after yesterday and all, how are you? I’ve been sending up prayers for you all night.”
“Well, I’m not as bad as I thought. I decided to stay away from the TV news today—if Bippo Bear brawls are breaking out in cities across the country, I’d just as soon not know about it.” She could actually joke about Bippo Bears. Mary wasn’t sure that day would ever come, much less come on Christmas Eve.
“I think that’s a great idea. I’m sure I won’t have a free moment to turn one on today, either. I used to stay open late on Christmas Eve, back before Gil.” Mary had since learned the long and painful story of Emily and Gil’s courtship. It was part of the reason she was here this morning, actually. “Now I close at the regular time—even a bit early this year.” She struck a theatrical pose. “I have a performance to prepare for.”
Emily’s transformation from shy reluctance to a wonderful performance was one of the most rewarding things about Mary’s new life in Middleburg. It was so satisfying to watch someone discover a strength or talent. So much more satisfying than even her largest bonus checks at Maxwell Advertising. Mary discovered she could actually thank God for all He’d done in her life this year, even now. She had struggled, no doubt, but the struggles God sent could be trusted as good things. “You’ll be great tonight,” Mary said to Emily, meaning it. “I know last night was shaky, but I feel good about tonight. So I brought you this.” She pointed toward the box. “To say thanks for all your kindness, and decorations, and support, and a little advice I’m about to ask for.”
Emily pulled off the wrapping paper to find a box of exotic Chinese tea. “It smells divine.” She looked up at Mary with a narrowed eye. “Advice, hm? How about we brew some of this up and have a chat over some tea?”
Mary smiled. “That’s exactly what I had in mind.”
When the pair had been settled in the little chintz-covered table by Emily’s window, and the fragrance of jasmine mixed with the holiday scents around the room, Emily wrapped her hands around her mug and said, “So, what’s on your mind?”
“Well,” Mary began, “first of all, I wanted to ask you what people think. I know a few people are upset about the Bippo Bear thing, and I understand that, but I don’t know how many people are upset with me because I don’t think they know me well enough to come to me personally. Yet.”
“Are you that worried about what people think?”
“Well, that’s just the thing of it. I’m not sure how worried a Christian ought to be about what other people think. I mean look at Mac. He needed to worry, and I’m not sure he did. Should I worry?”
Emily sat back in the little wrought iron chair. “Well, that’s a tricky point. One, actually, that Gil has to deal with all the time, especially with all the guys. When you reform young criminals on your farm, you can’t ignore what people think, but you can’t let it dictate what you do, either. I think the best thing is to ask yourself if what you’re doing honors God, and honors what you believe God’s will for you is at the time. And you have to be ready for His answers. God likes to shake up our idea of what’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, I’m coming to understand that part. I thought it was a good idea to hide my former life at first, but I think I would have avoided a lot of problems if I’d told a few people earlier. I needed the Mac Five about a week before I got it, if you ask me.”
Emily raised an eyebrow. “The ‘Mac Five’?”
“Mac’s trademark crisis management plan. Sort of a ‘pick five people you can trust and let them help you solve the problem’ thing. Involving circles and diagrams and all that engineering stuff Mac loves. You were in my Mac Five, by the way, I just never got around to talking to anyone but Mac and Pastor Dave before it all…well, you know.”
“Oh, boy, do I know.” She gave Mary an inquisitive look. “But why do I think I don’t know all of it?”
Dinah had talked about Emily’s canny intuition. It seemed like Middleburg was filled with women who knew what anyone really wanted to talk about before they could get the words out of their mouths. “Well, I wanted to ask you, actually, about Gil. About you and Gil.”
Emily smiled. “No, you didn’t. You wanted to ask me if it’s okay to fall for someone like Mac even though he hurt you.”
Mary tried not to knock over her tea. It was a full minute of choking before she could say, “Wow, you’re good.”
“No, just observant. You two couldn’t take your eyes off each other at the party. And he talks about you a lot. And I could see how miserable you both were last night. And, yes, I have a little experience with a wounded heart.” The tender way Emily put a hand on Mary’s arm, Mary thought her feelings of shock and exposure must be flooding her face.
“I don’t know what to do,” Mary admitted finally, surprised to find tears gathering behind her eyes. “I don’t know what to feel or think. I shouldn’t care for him. Not now, not so soon. The timing’s all wrong.”
“Maybe only to you,” Emily replied. “The two of you have been through a lot in a short time, it’s true. But sometimes that’s just God’s way of getting our attention.”
Mary watched the steam from the tea make graceful curves in the air. “I forgave him last night. I didn’t think I had it in me, but when he explained how he felt, it was like I suddenly had the ability to do it when I never thought I would. And it was both very hard and not hard at all, which makes no sense.”
“It makes a whole lot of sense to me,” Emily asserted. “That’s what faith does. It gives us the ability to do things that should feel impossible. Mercy is always undeserved. It can never be earned, only given.” Her smile was warm and understanding. “I’m a big believer in mercy. It took me a while to get there, but that’s a story for another time. Do you think there’s something worthwhile between you and Mac?”
“I do.” Mary couldn’t believe a tear was finding its way down her cheek. This all seemed to be ridiculously melodramatic, but she couldn’t seem to stop the flood of emotions. “I know it’s crazy, but I do.”
“Then you should know I had a particular customer this morning. A man—oh, I’d say just a few days shy of thirty—looking for the perfect gift for someone. He drove an orange sports car, by the way. He wanted a star for the top of a young lady’s tree. The absolute best star I had, because he said they had a history of trouble with stars, and that he had a lot to make up to her, but that she meant a lot to him.” Emily smiled. “You have any idea who that might be?”
Mary’s pulse started racing. She’d noticed Mac wasn’t in the office this morning. Mary felt something electric run down her spine. A giddy energy that made her unable to hide the blushing grin she felt break out on her face. “Mac was here?”
“Good thing you’ve got it for that man something fierce, because from where I sit, he’s got it something fierce for you. Go on home. We can finish our tea another time, and I believe you have someone waiting for you there.”
I could be sitting at my desk. I could be getting work done. Well, I could be pretending to get work done. Mac sat on the steps leading up to Mary’s apartment and fiddled with the yellow gift bag from Emily’s shop. He’d once kidded Gil for holding one of those bags—Emily always stuffed her bags so full of frilly tissue that no man could hold his head upright while carrying the thing. Gil’s face had looked exactly like he now felt. Ridiculous but unable to help himself.
It can wait.
No, it can’t.
He had to know things were set right between himself and Mary. He had to declare his…his what? He didn’t really know. He mostly just had to know if she felt what he felt. If that thing that wouldn’t let him alone—the thing that wouldn’t let him think or sleep and drove him to do things like ’fess up decades-old secrets—if that thing wouldn’t let her alone, either. He’d seen it, well, glimpses of it for weeks and even last night in spite of all the pain. What was that old saying about “you only hurt the ones you love?”
Did he love her? Maybe. She sure affected him as no other woman ever did. She was beautiful—she’d practically knocked the breath out of him when she came down the stairs in that soft green sweater for Gil’s Christmas party—but it was more than that. He’d always been an ambitious man, but Mary somehow pulled inner aspirations out of him. Urges to be a different kind of man, to reach for a different, deeper faith. Mostly he knew that if she ever looked at him again with the hurt and betrayal she had yesterday afternoon in his office, he wouldn’t live through it. And so he was willing to do anything and everything—including sitting on some steps bearing a frilly yellow bag—to win her favor.
Oh, Jesus, I won’t last another half hour. Have mercy on me, I’m dying here. Mac tunneled one hand through his hair and pushed out a breath. If it’s all going to go sour, just get it over with. But please, please don’t let it go sour. I don’t know how You did all this, but I’m willing to see it through to the end if You’ll just cut me a little slack here.
He looked up and saw Mary through the window in the door at the bottom of the stairway. She was standing in the foyer that joined her door, his office door, and Dinah’s bakery; peering into his office window. Looking for him. Oh, Lord, please let her be looking for me and not looking to avoid me.
She stepped to the door and fumbled for her keys, and Mac felt his blood go still. He’d know the second she looked at him. It would all be there in her eyes—it was always there in her eyes—and he’d know if he stood any chance at all. He’d never deserved mercy less or craved it more.
She looked up, held his eyes for a moment that seemed to last all day, and let a tender smile steal across her face. She pushed open the door and stood at the bottom of the stairs, gazing up at him. She was, at that moment, the most welcome sight in all of history. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and feelings scattered across his chest like shock waves. “Hi,” she said softly, putting one foot on the first step.
“Are you okay this morning?” He felt as inelegant as a sixth grade boy, about to break out in sweat any minute.
“Yeah, actually I am. I think it’s going to be okay tonight. How’d it go with Howard?”
Mac swallowed. “Harder than I thought, but better than I thought. He made no bones about agreeing I should pull out of the race. I wouldn’t exactly call him gracious. He could have put it better than ‘you’ve got some growing up to do.’”
Mary came up a step. “Even I know Howard doesn’t do subtle. To him, you’re still in your twenties, which means you’re a young’un. Just a smart-aleck kid.”
“‘Young’un’? Aren’t you from Chicago? Besides, I like to think I’m becoming a wise man.”
“No, the wise men don’t show up until scene four tonight. But you do have a history of seeking stars, so there’s hope for you yet.”
Taking a deep breath, Mac held up the bag. “Merry Christmas,” he said, his voice feeling foreign in his own throat. “It’s not a bear, I promise.” He realized, with an absurd relief, that she was as flustered as he was. He chose to believe that meant he stood a chance. “I’m coming tonight.”
“Breaking with MacCarthy tradition?” Her smile broadened and she came up more steps.
Time to go for broke. “Because you asked me to.” He saw her pull in a breath. She was two steps below him, her face even with him as he sat on the pair of steps above her. He thought if he stood up now, the way the oxygen seemed to be thinning right out of the room, he’d fall clean down the stairs in a stunned heap of nerves. He placed the bag in her hands. “I need you to have this.”
She blushed, then pulled at the tissue paper until it revealed the spun glass star with silver and gold strands spiraling around each other in the glass. It was an exquisite, exorbitant piece of artwork, a stunning sculpture, and he’d have gladly paid three times what Emily charged him just to put it in Mary’s hands this morning. They’d shared that first moment of secrets in the steeple beside the broken star. She’d forgiven him under the big star in the sanctuary. He wanted to—had to be the one to give her a star for her tree today, Christmas Eve.
“Oh, Mac, it’s beautiful.” She ran her hand across the delicate angles and Mac felt it down the back of his neck. “You didn’t have to….”
“Yes,” he interrupted, “I did. I…I need to know we can get past all this. I need to know I haven’t thrown away what…” the rest of the words tangled up in his throat.
“You want to help me get this on top of the tree?”
Her voice was warm and soft and charmingly nervous. He hadn’t lost his chance with her. The realization sent relief pouring through him.
“More than anything.” That sounded dorky, but he was past caring.
She let him into her apartment, the morning sun streaming through the big front windows. It was a blue-skied Kentucky winter’s day, and her bedecked tree shimmered in the splashes of sunlight. It was a huge tree—probably twice the size she’d have chosen for herself—and he’d nearly thrown his back out getting that behemoth up her stairs and through her front door. Still, he was glad to notice there was still a foot or two between the top of the tree and her apartment’s high ceilings. “You’ll need a chair to get up there,” he remarked, walking into the kitchen. He carried a kitchen chair into the living room and planted it next to the tree while she put down the bag and slipped the final tags off the star.
“I wasn’t sure there’d be room,” she joked as she brought the star over to the tree.
Mac held out his hand to help her up onto the chair. It felt small and perfect in his palm, and he was sure she sucked her breath in the way he did when they touched. With one hand holding hers and the other gripping the chair to keep her safe, he helped her step up. Then, to his reluctant joy, he found it necessary to hold her waist while she used both hands to settle the star on top of the tree. So much for his original intentions to keep a restrained distance from her.
“Oops…wait a minute…there, I got it. Yep, it just fits.” She made a delightful sighing sound. “Oh, Mac, it’s perfect.”
She turned in the chair so that Mac was holding her waist as she stood above him, and it struck him again how absolutely beautiful she was. She placed her hands on his shoulders, and any shreds of control he had left evaporated into the sunlight that gilt her hair. He hoisted her down from the chair and stood dumbstruck by the color of her eyes. “I’m so glad,” he said in a wobbly voice that didn’t even seem to belong to him.
After a moment—or maybe it was an hour, he couldn’t be sure—she lay her fingers against his jaw. Her face bore a pleased but puzzled expression, as if she was trying to work out a very happy riddle.
“How’d we get here?”
Even though it was a vague question, he knew exactly what she meant. He’d asked it of himself—of God—repeatedly over the last day. How had they managed this rocky path to the brink of such an implausible relationship? “I reckon that’s one of the things God does best,” he said, settling his hands around her, astounded by how perfectly she fit in his arms. “He knows what we need better than we do, and just how to get us to sit up and take notice. I’m pretty sure I’d have never figured this out on my own.”
She let her full hand settle against his jaw. “It’s harder than I thought. But it’s better than I thought, too.”
“Ain’t it?” Mac couldn’t stand it anymore. He leaned down and kissed her. Carefully, tenderly at first, until she brought both arms up to circle his neck and shot his restraint to pieces. They kissed with surprise and wonder and freedom until Mac pulled away, nearly gasping from the power of it. “That was better than I thought. And I thought about that way too much.”
Mary laughed and settled herself into the perfect spot under his chin. Mac let his head touch her hair and decided the world had achieved perfection. Middleburg’s first-ever Christmas Eve Drama and Potluck could implode to ashes and he’d still call this the Best Christmas Ever.
“Dave was right,” Mary said as she twisted her head up to meet his gaze.
“Pastor Dave? How so?”
“He said that even when it looks awful, you can count on God’s plan because His end is always better than anything we could dream up for ourselves.”
“Yep,” Mac agreed, kissing the top of her forehead just because it felt so wonderful to do so. “I think Dave’s right on the money.” He kissed another perfect spot, this one above her right eye. “Merry Christmas, Mary Thorpe.”
“Merry Christmas…hey, your first name’s Joe, isn’t it?”
Mac applied a teasingly sour face. “We try not to mention that around these parts.”
She snuggled against him with a sigh he felt to the soles of his feet. “Mary and Joseph. It’s just too funny.”
“No it’s not. It’s absurd.”
“This from the man with the operatic cockatoo.”
Mac let out a breath. He’d forgotten all about that. “Yeah, about Curly…”
“Oh, no,” Mary said, “I really like him, I was just kidding you.”
Mac pulled away. “No, I mean there’s something about Curly.” In the intensity of the morning, Mac hadn’t yet had the chance to bring up his current dilemma. “I learned something about Curly while I was gone last night.”
“What?”
Mac picked up the chair and returned it to the kitchen table. “It seems my feathered friend doesn’t care for your little blue buddies. I left my nephew’s Bippo Bear out on the dining room table while we were at rehearsal last night so I could wrap it this morning, and well, Curly had at it.” He threw his hands up in the air. “That mangy bird shredded it. I came home to a very expensive fuzzy blue blizzard.”
Mary gasped, wide-eyed. “Curly ate your Bippo Bear?”
“Not exactly. He just demolished it. I found one ear on top of my refrigerator and an eye in my bathtub. The only way I can give Robby his Bippo Bear now is in a plastic bag. I’m done for.”
“Good thing you know someone on the inside,” she smiled. Now it was her turn to pretend at annoyance. “I happen to have a spare Bippo Bear or two in my own personal collection. I’ve kept them hidden in the bottom of my closet. But it’ll cost you something fierce.”
“You have no idea how much I was hoping you’d say that. Name your price. I’m prepared to pay anything.”
Those creamy arms wrapped around his neck again, and Mac thought there wasn’t a single thing she couldn’t ask of him. “A potluck dish, one perfect performance and maybe a few more of those kisses.”
Mac leaned in, delighted to oblige. “Wow. Best bargain ever.”