The Open House was a huge success. The oldies radio station did a great job setting the mood with Christmas songs from the 1950s. Tons of people showed up, many in costume. Women wore everything from poodle skirts to aprons and pearls to movie-star glam, and men dressed like Elvis, beatniks and dreamboats.
At times there were so many people in costume in the store that Addie couldn’t help imagining that was how it must have looked during that first Christmas season years ago. She kept busy serving cookies and punch and didn’t even shy away when people asked to have a picture taken with her.
The day went by quickly, and just after six, as the sky grew dark and the lights all over town began to come up, they put the finishing touches on the huge live tree. They had decorated it according to a photograph of one of the Christmas trees that the Eisenhowers had had in the White House. Everyone oohed and ahhed over it.
“I liked ours better,” Nate whispered as he dropped into the couch next to her and pointed to the little pink tree tucked away in a corner of the kitchen set.
“Ten, nine, eight…” The crowd began the countdown to the big light up.
“I liked ours better, too.” Ours. Addie liked saying it, even if she knew it could never be.
“Seven, six, five…”
Doc stood at the ready with an extension cord in one hand and the plug from the lights of the tree in the other.
“Four, three, two…”
Jesse came up to Addie and Nate, exhausted, and crawled into Addie’s lap. She hugged the boy tightly, thinking that even though it would all be over soon, for just this one moment she had everything she’d ever wanted for Christmas.
“Merry Christmas, Goodlife family,” Nate said to the two of them.
“Merry Christmas,” she whispered back, trying not to tear up.
“One! Merry Christmas everybody!” the crowd cried in unison as Doc pushed the plug into the extension cord socket and…the whole store went dark.
Not just the store, but parts of the downtown, as well.
A moment of confusion followed.
Addie held Jesse close to her so he wouldn’t get hurt in the shuffle of customers.
Doc went to the front of the room and flipped on all the switches they had dimmed to better highlight the tree.
Nothing.
“I’m afraid that might be my fault.” Bivvy rushed forward, noticeable even in the dark with her jingle-bell earrings jingling and Christmas-trimmed party dress flashing. “Since I’ve had my house online and gotten TV attention, it seems more people have decorated this year, and a nice man from the electric company told me it’s been causing brownouts in small segments of town at a time.”
The crowd grumbled.
Goodwin’s security guards moved swiftly to the front doors to keep people from rushing to them. Everyone was asked to come to the front area of the store, to stay calm and wait while a call was made to the Star City Electric Company to see how soon they could restore power.
People began to shuffle and complain.
Jesse slipped from Addie’s lap. She made a grab for him but came up empty-handed.
From somewhere in the crowded store a child bellowed, “I want to see the tree. It’s not like Christmas without a tree!”
“In our family, we make a big deal about the crèche.” A small boy’s voice rose above the low rumble of the restless group. Then a bright halo of light illuminated the coffee table and the Nativity scene that Addie and Jesse had made over the past week.
The whole room fell silent.
Nate put his arm around Addie. She put her hand out to the little redheaded boy. Jesse came to her, and after she pulled him close she began to sing, softly, “Away in a manger, no crib for his bed…”
And in a moment the whole crowd had joined in singing softly but clearly in the stillness of the powerless night about the baby who had come into the world so humbly that He had no place to lay His head.
Once they had finished singing that, someone else started another song. And after that another.
Jesse moved from the table to the place where Doc and Maimie had planted themselves beside the front doors and slid his hands in theirs.
“What did I tell you?” Addie said to Nate as they sat side by side on the couch surrounded by the sweetness of the moment that no one, no matter how hard they worked behind the scenes or how much they stood out from the crowd, could have orchestrated. “It’s the imperfections, the unexpected, that make Christmas special. It’s being caught off guard by—”
“Love,” Nate finished for her.
“I was going to say joy, but love is good,” she murmured. The flashlight gave off just enough brightness so that she could see his face.
“Love is very good.”
With the darkness to give them privacy, Nate put his hand behind Addie’s neck and kissed her. Not the fleeting kind of kiss she had given him under the mistletoe the first time they met, but a real kiss. The kind of kiss that could change the whole way a person saw her world.
Or the way the whole world saw her.
Just then the lights came up. Not just the ones on the giant tree but all the lights that Doc had flipped on when the power first went off. It was as if spotlights and searchlights had been thrown on Addie and Nate. Kissing.
A cheer went up.
Addie stood, looked around at all the happy faces staring at her.
“That’s my girl!” Bivvy said in a show of motherly approval.
The group laughed.
Addie’s head spun. Nobody here was ever going to take her seriously. She would always be Bivvy’s daughter or Maimie’s lackey or the girl caught kissing the guy who flew off to California. Her heart raced.
Nate reached over to take her hand, but she jerked it free. She had to get out of there. She had to breathe. She pushed past the coffee table, the customers, the Goodwins. She pushed her way out the front doors and ran as fast as her aching feet could take her.