storm battering the windows of the White Pond Inn—Emma White had rechristened it the White Christmas Inn just this morning—was being compared by the radio announcer to the Great Ice Storm of 1998 that had wreaked havoc on this region of Atlantic Canada, not to mention Quebec, Ontario, New York and New England.
Christmas was clearly going to be ruined.
“Just like always,” Emma murmured out loud to herself, her voice seeming to echo through the empty inn.
Her optimism was not in the least bolstered by the fire crackling cheerfully in the hearth, by her exquisite up-country holiday decorations in the great room, or by her bright-red Santa hat and her lovely red wool sweater with the white angora snowflakes on its front.
In fact, speaking the thought out loud—that Christmas was going to be ruined, just like always—invited a little girl, the ghost of herself, to join her in the room.
The little girl had long, dark wavy hair and was staring at an opened package that held a doll with jaggedly cut hair and blue ink stains on its face, clearly not Clara, the doll she had whispered to Santa that she coveted, but rather a cast-off of one of the children her mother cleaned houses for.
“Shut up,” Emma ordered herself, but for some reason the little ghost girl wanted her to remember how she had pretended to be happy. For her mother.
Her mother, Lynelle, who had finally agreed to come for Christmas. Emma could not wait to show her the refurbished house that Lynelle had grown up in but not returned to since she was sixteen, not even when Grandma had died.
Emma tried not to think that her mother had sounded backed into a corner rather than enthused about spending Christmas here. And she had agreed to come only on Christmas Eve, taking a miss on the seasonal celebrations at the inn: the ten-day pre-Christmas celebration, Holiday Happenings. But still Lynelle would be here for the culmination of all Emma’s hard work and planning, Christmas Day Dream.
Lynelle’s lack of enthusiasm probably meant she was distracted. In Emma’s experience that usually meant a new man.
It was probably uncharitable—and unChristmaslike—but when Emma sent the bus ticket, she was sending fare for a single passenger.
The radio cut into her thoughts, but only to add to her sense of unease and gloom. “This just in, the highway closed at Harvey all the way through to the U.S. border.”
Emma got up and deliberately snapped off the radio, thoughts of her mother and her memories. She tried to focus on the facts, to be pragmatic, though the inn was plenty of evidence that pragmatism did not come naturally to her. The inn was the project of a dreamer, not a realist.
Okay, she told herself, visitors would not be making the scenic drive up from Maine tonight. Maybe it was just as well. Her aging neighbor, Tim Fenshaw, had already called to say he couldn’t bring the horses out in this, so there would be no sleigh rides. The phone line had gone dead before he had said good-bye.
And just before the last light had died in the evening sky, Emma had looked out her back window at her pond and seen that it was being covered with snow faster than she could hope to clear it. So, no skating, either.
“Holiday Happenings is not happening,” Emma announced to herself. Or at least not happening tonight, which was to have been the opening night of ten days of skating and sleigh rides right up until Christmas Eve.
It was all adding up to a big fat zero. No sledding, no sleigh rides, no skating, no admission fees, no hot dog sales, no craft sales, no cookie sales. All the things Emma had counted on finally to bring the inn firmly into the black.
And to finance her Christmas Day Dream.
“Would one little miracle be so much to ask for?” she asked out loud, sending an irritated look heavenward.
The Christmas Day Dream was Emma’s plan to provide a very special Christmas for those who did not have fantasy Christmases. The disappointments of her childhood had not all occurred at Christmas. But somehow, at that time of year in particular, she had waited for the miracle that didn’t come.
Last year she’d thought she had left all of that behind her. She was an adult now, and she had looked forward, finally, to the best Christmas of all. Her then fiancé, Dr. Peter Henderson, had invited her to spend Christmas with his family. The very memory tasted of bitterness. Was it possible last year had been worse than all the rest combined?
Emma had learned her lesson! She was not putting her expectations in the hands of others, not her mother, and not a man!
This year she was in charge. She was devoted to eradicating Christmas disappointments. She was determined to make Christmas joyous, not just for herself, but for a world she knew from personal experience was grimly in need of a dose of true Christmas spirit.
In collusion with several area churches and a homeless shelter, a dozen of the neediest families in this region had received invitations to spend Christmas Day at the inn.
The invitations targeted families with nothing to hope for, families who could not have Christmas, or could not have it as they dreamed it should be.
On Christmas Day Emma was throwing open the doors to fifty-one confirmed guests who would arrive on a chartered bus.
Emma knew the people coming: the oldest a seventy-six-year-old grandmother who was the sole guardian of her three grandchildren, one of whom was the youngest, a nine-month-old baby whose two siblings were under age five. The largest group was a family of eight whose father had been hurt in an accident early last year, and had not been able to work since; the smallest was a single mother and her handicapped son.
And, of course, her mother, who understood Christmases with nothing—one year they had not even had a tree—would be there to share in the joy. There would be gifts for everyone. Brand-new. No hairless ink-stained dolls. But more than gifts, the feeling would be there. Emma had been collecting skates, and having them sharpened in anticipation of skating, Tim was hooking up the Clydes to give sleigh rides.
His daughter-in-law, Mona, and two granddaughters, Sue and Peggy, who were staying with him while Tim, Jr., served with the Canadian Armed Forces overseas, had practically been living here preparing for Holiday Happenings and the Christmas Day Dream.
Not even last year, anticipating Christmas with the Hendersons, had filled Emma with this sense that by giving this gift to others, she would know the secret of the season, would share in its universal peace.
Now, her dreams felt precarious. Naive. She could hear Peter’s voice as if he stood next to her.
“How am I going to pay for everything?” she whispered. How was she going to pay the Fenshaws for all the time they had given her? And, indeed, for Christmas Day Dream? And the stacks of wonderful brand-new gifts she’d been foolish enough to put on credit, her optimism had been so high? She hadn’t been able to see how Holiday Happenings could possibly fail. She’d been having a dozen calls a day about it since she’d put the posters up in mid-November.
The St. Martin’s Church youth group had sent her the admissions in full for thirty-two kids—who were supposed to come tonight. She remembered how gleeful she had been when she had used their money to make a deposit on the chartered bus for her Christmas-Day guests.
Emma could feel a familiar headache pulling between her eyebrows, knotting above the bridge of her nose.
