Carla Neggers - A Knights Bridge Christmas

Tom Farrell was walking with her? Daisy warned herself not to read anything into it, but she felt her heart jump. She knew her cheeks had to be flushed, but she could blame the cold weather. She wore a secondhand tweed wool coat from a cousin over a dress she’d sewn herself, with kneesocks and lace-up shoes. She’d knitted her hat herself but hadn’t worn mittens. Tom had on old clothes, hand-me-downs, no doubt, from his older brother. Angus Farrell had been killed in Holland last year. That was all Daisy knew. It was something no one talked about. She remembered him, always laughing, always with a good word for everyone. He’d been a medic in the army, and it was hard to believe he wouldn’t be coming home to Knights Bridge.

Her father was out front when she and Tom arrived at the house. For a moment, Daisy thought her father might have relented about decorating, but then she saw he was sweeping the porch steps, grumbling about the postman’s muddy feet. Unexpected guests were worse, even, than postmen with muddy boots. She was afraid he was about to lash out at both her and Tom, but Tom quickly stepped forward with a disarming smile. “Good to see you, Mr. Blanchard.”

“Tom.”

“I think we’re due for a big snowstorm, don’t you?”

“Could be. We’ll know when it happens.”

For a moment, Daisy thought her father might smile, but he didn’t, just resumed his sweeping. Embarrassed, she turned to Tom. “Good luck with your book report.”

“Good luck with your Latin verbs.”

“Maybe I’ll check out A Christmas Carol when you’re finished with it. It’s an inspiring story. A cheap, grouchy man learns not to give in to despair and bitterness.”

Tom eyed her, then her father, who didn’t look up from his sweeping. More heat poured into her cheeks, this time because she’d been caught. She could see in Tom’s expression he knew why she’d made her comment.

“I’ll see you around, Daisy,” he said amiably.

She watched him as he ambled across South Main to the common and made his way to the fire station. When she turned around again, her father had gone inside, shutting the front door behind him. He hadn’t said a word or made a sound.

How much time were they supposed to give him? He simply wasn’t the same man who’d left Knights Bridge in 1942. He and her mother had moved to town just before Daisy was born, scraping enough money together to buy the old house on the common. Married as teenagers, they’d been forced to leave their home in the Swift River Valley town of Greenwich, wiped off the map to make way for Quabbin Reservoir.

When her father left for the war after Pearl Harbor, the dams blocking the Swift River and Beaver Brook were doing their work, allowing the valley—stripped bare of everything from houses and businesses to trees and graves—to fill with drinking water for Boston to the east. When he returned in September, the seven-year process of filling the reservoir was almost complete. The town his family had called home for generations was gone, underwater. Hills he’d once sledded down were now islands.

Sometimes Daisy wondered if her father must feel as if he was back home in the valley, drowning under all that water.

She mounted the steps to the porch, neatly swept and barren of Christmas decorations. What would he do if she made a wreath and hung it on the front door? What would her mother do? But Daisy knew she wouldn’t find out. She would respect her mother’s wishes and give her father time.

As she opened the bare front door, she looked back at the common, Tom now out of sight. She was a more dedicated student than he was, but it wasn’t just that. Homework gave her an excuse to stay in her room, away from her Scrooge of a father.

* * *

Two days later, Tom arrived at the Blanchard house with ice skates, the laces tied together, slung over one shoulder and a small metal box in his hands. Daisy had answered the doorbell, but her father was right behind her. She was caught off guard and didn’t know what to say. “Did you finish your report?” she finally asked.

Tom grinned. “With minutes to spare. How did you do with your Latin verbs?”

“They’re not due until tomorrow.”

“But you’re done, right? Good for you. I’m meeting friends on Echo Lake to go skating.” His expression changed as he made eye contact with her father. Confident Tom Farrell suddenly looked uncertain and awkward. “Sir... Mr. Blanchard...” Tom cleared his throat. “I’d like to ask you a favor.”

Daisy felt her father stiffen as he eased in next to her in the doorway. “A favor?” He grunted, clearly skeptical. “What kind of favor?”

Tom hesitated, then opened the box. Inside was a white candle, or what was left of it. Its wick was blackened, and melted wax had congealed on the sides, reducing it to a misshapen mass. Daisy saw that her father was frowning at it, too.

Either Tom didn’t notice their expressions or was simply undeterred. He held the box toward her father. “I wonder if you would place this candle in your front window and light it on Christmas Eve.”

“Why?” her father asked.

“For my brother.”

Daisy gasped but her father remained still and silent.

“My mother made the candle when Angus joined the army. She promised to burn it every Christmas until he came home. Well...” Tom took in an audible breath. “He’s not coming home, even to bury. Mom can’t bear to burn the candle herself, but she said it would be all right if someone in the village did.”

“Tom,” Daisy’s father said, his voice strangled. “Son...”

“I’ll understand if it’s too much to ask—”

“It’s not too much.” He put out a calloused hand and took the box. “We’d be honored, wouldn’t we, Daisy?”

She nodded and managed to mumble a yes.

Tom smiled, tears shining in his hazel eyes. “Thank you.”

With tears in her own eyes, Daisy watched the rugged, easygoing teenager cross South Main to the common, picking up his pace as he waved and called cheerfully to his friends.

It was at that moment she fell in love with Tom Farrell.

One

“He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember on Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

CLARE MORGAN HADN’T felt this happy in a long time. A very long time, she thought as she gathered up books to take to Rivendell, the local assisted-living facility. She prided herself on her self-sufficiency and independence—her professionalism as a librarian—and she was happy in countless ways, but this was different. This was happiness born of contentment. The uncertainties of the past few months were lifting and confidence settling in that she’d made the right decision to leave Boston and come to out-of-the-way Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.

New to the town and its small, charming library, Clare was getting a feel for the reading preferences of the seniors at Rivendell. Audrey Frost liked cozy mysteries, particularly ones set in England. Grace Webster would read anything but was partial to literary fiction and classic adventure novels. Arthur Potter had asked Clare to bring him all the Harry Potter books, since he and Harry shared the same last name and he’d always wanted to be a wizard. Daisy Farrell, Rivendell’s newest resident, had requested A Christmas Carol , the classic Dickens story apparently a favorite with her and her late husband.

Almost everyone at the facility was widowed, but Clare gathered that many had enjoyed long marriages.

Except one feisty woman in her late eighties whose name Clare had forgotten. “I’ve never lived alone until four years, three months and eighteen days ago,” she’d said when Clare had delivered her a stack of biographies. “It’s heaven on earth.”