A.C. Arthur - One Mistletoe Wish

The town could also be as traditional and heartwarming as an old black-and-white movie with things such as the annual Christmas Eve celebration, which included the play that Morgan and her crew of youngsters were now painstakingly rehearsing. There were two things Morgan loved about living in Temptation—the traditions and the resilience of the citizens. No matter what the people of this town had gone through—from the Civil War to the dark days of the Great Depression and the hostile times of the Civil Rights movement—they’d always bounced back and they never stopped doing the things that made the town so special in the first place. The families were the heart of Temptation, as they were determined to live in harmony in their little part of the world. More recent and localized catastrophes had hit Temptation and now, sadly, Morgan found herself living through her own test as a citizen of the town.

“You should put him out, Mama.”

The soft voice of Morgan’s five-year-old daughter, Lily, interrupted her thoughts.

“What?” Morgan asked.

Lily looked up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor with an unruly stack of twinkle lights in her lap. Her little hands had been moving over the strands in an attempt to separate the tangled mass for the last half hour. There hadn’t been much progress but Lily was much more patient than Morgan would ever claim to be. She was also the prettiest little girl Morgan had seen in all her twenty-eight years.

Her daughter shook her head, two long ponytails swaying with the motion.

“He’s a mess,” she told Morgan. “A hot mess, like Aunt Wendy says all the time.”

Morgan couldn’t help it, she smiled. Wendy, her older sister by barely a year, talked a mile a minute and Lily always seemed to be around soaking up each and every word that fell out of Wendy’s mouth, good or bad.

“He’s trying,” Morgan told her, knowing without any doubt who her daughter thought was a hot mess. “We have to give him a chance.”

Lily shook her head again. “No, we don’t. You’re in charge.”

She was, Morgan thought, even if she didn’t feel that way. She hadn’t wanted Ethan for the lead in the play in the first place. But Rayford had stopped by her house the Monday before Thanksgiving and told her in no uncertain terms that he expected his “boy” to have a prominent part in the play this year. Especially since this was most likely the last year the community center would be open to house the play and the Christmas celebration. Morgan and a good majority of the town had been worried about this hundred-year-old building and two others—the Plympton House, which had been converted into a hospital during the war, then restored, expanded and renamed All Saints Hospital in the sixties, and the Taylor House, a now almost dilapidated Victorian that had once been the home of the town’s biggest financial benefactor. She’d been so concerned with the possible loss of three of the town’s historic buildings that she hadn’t had the energy to fight with Rayford about something as trivial as his son’s part in a play. Now, however, she wished she’d mustered up some resistance because Lily was right, Ethan was a hot mess.

“I wanna load the presents,” another child’s voice called from behind Morgan and before she could move a hand, there was tugging on the hem of her shirt.

“Didn’t you say it was my turn to load the presents in the sleigh, Mama? You told me last night, ’cause I’m tall enough to do it.”

Morgan turned around ready to reply to her son with his dark brown eyes—slanted slightly in the corners as a result of his father’s half Korean, half African American heritage—and butter-toned complexion, courtesy of Morgan’s mother and grandmother, who were descendants of the Creole-born Bonets of Louisiana. His twin sister had the same features. Jack and Lily were different, not only by their gender, but they also had opposite personalities. Where Lily was quiet and somewhat serious, Jack was boisterous and playful. They were sometimes like night and day, but always the very best of Morgan and her late husband, James. Each day she looked into their precious little faces she was reminded of that fact and, at the same time, overwhelmed with love and grief.

James Stuart Hill had been a wonderful man. Kind, loving, compassionate and totally committed to his young wife and family. Morgan had met him in Baltimore, during her senior year of college. He’d been on leave from the army to finalize the sale of his late mother’s convenience store and her house. An American-born Korean, Mary Kim had raised her only child alone, after his African American father had been shot to death in an attempted robbery. Although Morgan had never met Mary, she felt she’d known the woman through the great man she’d raised.

Their courtship had been fast and passionate and by the time Morgan graduated from college, she’d learned that she was pregnant. James was leaving for a year-long tour in Hawaii two weeks later. So they married quickly in Granny’s backyard and then traveled to Honolulu, where she gave birth to her two precious jewels. A year later James received a temporary assignment in Virginia and Morgan came home to Temptation with her twins, where the four of them had lived a happy, normal life. Until James was shipped off to Afghanistan. He was killed a week before the twins’ second birthday. Three years later, the pain of that day still had the power to take Morgan’s breath away.

“Some people are only in your life for a season,” Granny had said as she’d stood leaning on her cane.

They’d been at the cemetery then, the one in Maryland right next to where James had buried his mother. Hours later they were back in Temptation and Morgan was tasked with raising her two young children alone. With the love and support from her grandmother and her sister, she’d managed to make it through those first tough weeks. She’d taken a job as a first-grade teacher at the elementary school, went to church on Sundays and played all day with her babies on Saturdays. Her life had managed to move on even though there were still some days when all she wanted to do was cry for all the possibilities that had been lost.

“Marley’s coming! Marley’s coming!” Alana, a six-year-old playing one of Bob Cratchit’s children, yelled from where she was sitting at the end of the stage.

“It’s not time yet,” Ethan complained. “I’m not finished saying ‘bah, hamburger.’”

“He needs to shut up,” Lily said with a sigh.

“You’re not adding the chains this time, Mama,” Jack stated loudly. As if the noisier he said it, the faster she would start doing it.

Usually, when it was time for Jacob Marley—played by Malcolm Washington, who was missing one of his front teeth—to make his ghostly appearance, Wendy, who was her part-time assistant whenever she wasn’t on duty at the hospital, would knock on the desk to make the footstep sounds and rattle the bike chains in her bag. But Ethan was right, it wasn’t time for Jacob’s appearance quite yet.

Still, Morgan could not deny the sound of footsteps coming fast and almost furiously down the hallway toward the hall where they were rehearsing.

“Hush, children,” she said as she stood.

Morgan was walking toward the door, or rather tiptoeing like she actually expected to see the ghost of Jacob Marley come through that doorway, just like she knew the now-quiet children were. The footsteps continued and so did Morgan. She was wearing her bright orange-and-fuchsia tennis shoes today, along with her black running suit, which Wendy said made her look more like a teenage track star than a grown woman. Morgan tended to ignore her older sister when it came to dressing because Wendy was a proud member of the single, sexy and seriously looking club. Whereas Morgan was a mother and a teacher and she was perfectly content with that.