Chapter 6

6

* * *

“How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.”

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“That is no light part of my penance,” pursued the Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.”

A tiny bit of clarity had seeped into Charlie by the time she returned to the cottage—one medium-sized White Christmas Mocha resting in the console cup holder beside her. And even though disappointed that she’d not had any real one-on-one time with Dusty, something about being with Ashlynne and Will had centered her. Helped her see . . .

As much as she hated to admit it, John Dixon was in fact Sis’s son. And his words—“I saw you leave”—kept rolling around in her mind, helping Charlie realize that a certain level of respect for her feelings had been at play.

Possibly by both John and Sis.

Still, the absence of the car with the West Virginia tag in the driveway came as sweet relief.

And then it dawned on her—the car hadn’t been an old clunker as she’d fully expect an ex-convict to drive but a fairly new model. Dark blue. Four doors. A family-style car. Maybe a rental?

She shook her head as she parked, then reached for the peace offering that had filled her car with a faint scent of chocolate.

“Sis?” she called out when she entered through the side door, hoping her voice sounded friendly.

“I’m in here.”

Alone? She wanted to ask but didn’t. Instead she followed the voice into the family room where Sis had hung a large wreath with white twinkly lights and a large red bow over the mantel, replaced the sofa’s everyday pillows with Christmas-themed ones in various sizes, and draped a candy cane quilt over her rocker.

“Sis . . .”

Her grandmother stood over one of the bins, a strand of cascading evergreen garland stretched between her extended hands. “I thought I’d get started,” she said, stepping over the bin and toward the fireplace. “Care to help me hang this?”

Charlie placed the coffee on the low coffee table, then hurried to the far side of the fireplace. “We always do this together,” she said. Looking up, she added, “Please tell me you didn’t climb on something and hang that wreath all by yourself.”

Sis hooked her side of the garland to the end of the mantel, and Charlie did the same. “As if I could.” She worked the garland with her fingers, presenting it just so. “Your—my—” She sighed. “John helped.” She shrugged. “He hung it. I directed.”

Charlie imitated her grandmother’s handiwork at the other end, fluffing the previously flattened branches. “Listen, Sis . . . about that . . .”

Sis returned to the bin. “You had every right to be shocked. Angry.”

“And you have every right to have John here. He’s your son. This is your house. I was just—”

Sis pulled two handmade stockings from the bin. “We should have hung these first.”

Charlie walked over and took the one stitched with her name. “We can make it work.”

“Are we talking about the stockings or our dysfunctional family?”

Charlie walked the stocking to the mantel and slipped the loop under the greenery. “We’re not dysfunctional,” she mumbled.

Sis guffawed. “What would you call it then?”

Charlie stared at her grandmother, reading the sadness clouding her eyes. Indeed, what would she call it? “I brought your coffee,” she said, pointing to the coffee table. “But I’m sure it needs to be reheated now.”

“Put it in the fridge. I’ll heat it up with our dinner.” She smiled at Charlie. “I might even share.”

Charlie complied, then returned to the living room to find Sis seated in the rocker, the quilt wrapped around her shoulders. “Are you cold?”

“A tad.”

“I’ll make a fire.”

“You know, Charlie,” Sis began, “it might help if you ask some questions. Even one or two will help, I think.”

Charlie knelt at the hearth and pulled newspaper from the brass bucket where Sis kept old editions and tinder. “Like what?” She looked over her shoulder. “And that doesn’t count as a question, just so you know.”

Sis smiled.

Charlie twisted the newspaper before placing it on the grate where the ashy remains of last night’s fire remained. “I’ll clean this out good tomorrow,” she said. “So, he lives in West Virginia?”

“No . . . He lives in Morganton.”

Charlie’s head whipped toward her grandmother. “What?” she barely breathed out.

“Your father is directing the homeless shelter in Burke County.”

Charlie couldn’t respond. After a silent moment, she turned back to reach for two large logs at the top of the firewood rack.

Sis continued. “After his last time in prison, John went into a halfway house up in West Virginia. While he was there, he took a job working at a homeless shelter. The director took a liking to him, treating him more like a son than a criminal. In time, he became the assistant director and then . . .”

Charlie struck a match and lit the newspaper. “Then?” She didn’t bother to look at her grandmother. She couldn’t.

“There was an opening in Morganton, and he took it.”

Charlie sat back on her feet as the flames licked the wood and ate up the paper. “And when did you first hear from him?”

“About six months ago while he was still in West Virginia. We wrote back and forth a few times, then he called. He’s . . .”

Charlie folded her hands in her lap. The fire heated her skin, even as her heart grew more impenetrable. Burn me, but I will not topple. I will not cave.

She took a deep breath, stood, and walked to the sofa without looking at her grandmother. “He’s . . . ?”

“Changed.”

“Not by me, he hasn’t.” She fiddled with a hangnail.

“He’s been out of prison for three years, Charlie. He’s held an honest job the entire time. He’s respected in his work. In three months he’s done amazing things with the shelter.”

Charlie looked up. “Who are you trying to convince? Me or yourself?”

Sis crossed her arms. “I don’t need convincing.”

“Well, I do,” Charlie answered quietly.

“I understand that. So does he.”

Charlie shook her head. “Then why hasn’t he bothered to contact me?”

“I told him not to. To give you time. I’d planned . . . I’d planned to talk to you about it while you were here, but then I found out that you’d lost your job, and I thought this might not be the best time.”

“Hmm.”

“So then I thought we’d talk about it over these next few weeks. Maybe by Christmas.”

Charlie’s mind worked overtime. By Christmas? Memories of sitting around the tree, wrapping paper and bows strung here and there, her father near her while her mother sat curled in an overstuffed chair, her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of cocoa.

Served with marshmallows, like back then . . .

Before they’d chosen a life of drugs and everything that went with it. Lying. Stealing. Ignoring their only child.

“Does he know anything about my—about Gayle?”

“I asked him once. He said he’d looked her up online. She’s no longer in the prison system, if that’s any consolation. But he did find a marriage license in her name from a few years back. She married a horse farmer in Kentucky.”

Charlie waited, imagining her mother wrangling horses or driving around in a rusty, beat-up truck. When her grandmother said nothing more, she asked, “Is that it?”

“He said he didn’t need to know anything else. She knows where you are, and he knows where you are. At least he’s trying to make his way back, Charlie.”

Charlie jumped up from the sofa. “I’m hungry,” she said. “What are your thoughts to go with the mocha?”

“Charlie?”

She turned. Her grandmother had stood and was replacing the quilt, just so.

“Do you know why Charles Dickens had such concern for the impoverished?”

Charlie turned. “The era demanded it, I suppose.”

Sis looked at her and asked, “But why Dickens? Why the poor? Exactly what was he responding to when he wrote A Christmas Carol?”

“I admit I don’t know.”

Sis smiled then, although it seemed more out of sadness than cheer. “Why don’t you find out?”

The words were not really a question but a request. And she knew all too well why Sis wanted her to find out.

But the question remained between them, and Charlie wasn’t sure if she was up to knowing the answer.