Carla Neggers - A Knights Bridge Christmas

Even if the offer was to assuage his guilt at getting caught being impatient with the receptionist, Clare accepted. “I’d love to meet Mrs. Farrell,” she said.

Daisy Farrell’s grandson was clearly out of his element in a small-town assisted-living facility, talking to the local librarian. As Clare followed him down the hall, she wondered what kind of work he did and where he lived. Boston? Hartford? Somewhere farther afield—had he flown in to visit his widowed grandmother?

The door was open to a small apartment, where an elderly white-haired woman was standing on a chair, hammer in hand. She had on baggy yoga pants, a pink hoodie and silver sneakers.

Logan sucked in an audible breath. “Gran,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Hanging my sampler.”

Clare noticed a cross-stitched sampler on a chest of drawers. Neatly stitched flowers and farm animals created a frame for the simple inscription:

The only way to have a friend is to be one .

Daisy Farrell in a nutshell, Clare suspected.

“I can hang the sampler for you, Gran.” Logan put a hand out. “Come on.”

She grinned at him. “Getting up here was easy. I figured I’d need help getting down.”

“Had a plan, did you?”

“Enough of one. Let me finish and—”

“We have company,” he said. “We can finish in a few minutes.”

She sighed. “All right, all right.”

He took her hammer and helped her down from the chair. “Gran, this is Clare Morgan, the new librarian in town. Clare, my grandmother, Daisy Farrell.”

“A pleasure, Mrs. Farrell,” Clare said.

“Same here,” the older woman said politely. “You’re not from town, are you?”

Clare shook her head. “My parents moved to Amherst after my sister and I went to college, but we grew up outside Boston. I lived in Boston until I relocated to Knights Bridge in November. My son’s in first grade.” She smiled. “We’re both adjusting.”

“Then you’re married?” Daisy Farrell asked. “What’s your husband do?”

“I’m widowed, Mrs. Farrell.”

Clare noticed Logan’s sharp look, as if he hadn’t considered such a thing.

“Oh, dear,” Daisy said, shaking her head. “You’re so young. A fresh start here will be good for you. Knights Bridge is a wonderful town—not that I’ve known any other. Well, until now. I lived in the same house all my life. I was born in an upstairs bedroom.”

Logan touched her elbow. “Here, have a seat, Gran. We’ll get your sampler hung. It’ll help this place feel more like home.”

“It will, but I’m not feeling sorry for myself. You and your father didn’t drag me kicking and spitting into seeing I had to move. I knew it had to be done.” She sank into a chair upholstered in a cheerful fabric. “Grace Webster says she’ll let me borrow her binoculars until I get a pair, so I can watch the birds, and Audrey Frost wants to sign me up for yoga. What do you think of that, Logan? Audrey’s younger than I am. Can I handle yoga?”

“I’ll check with your internist, but I don’t see why not, if it’s designed for seniors.”

“Well, I won’t be doing headstands, I can tell you that.”

“I just got you off a chair, Gran.”

She waved a hand. “Life is full of perils.”

Logan rolled his eyes, good-natured with his grandmother. “That’s not an excuse for being reckless.”

“Reckless.” Daisy snorted and turned to Clare. “I fell doing the dishes. I’ve done the dishes every day for the past eighty years. Fortunately I didn’t break anything when I fell. All’s well that ends well.” She leaned forward. “You can tell that to Dr. Farrell.”

Dr. Farrell? Clare glanced at him and decided she wasn’t surprised that he was a doctor.

“Dr. Farrell is glad you didn’t break your hip,” he said.

“I am, too. I’d have hated to have one of the Sloan brothers find me half-dead on the kitchen floor. I had them in to fix a leak in the cellar before winter set in.”

Owen would be playing with the sons of one of the five Sloan brothers by now, Clare thought. Sloan & Sons was an established, respected construction firm in town. She hadn’t figured out all their stories yet, but she did know that the sixth Sloan sibling was a woman and a main player in her family’s company.

Clare nodded to the sampler. “It’s lovely. Did you do the stitching yourself, Mrs. Farrell?”

“My mother did. I hung it in the kitchen where I could see it every morning.” She sighed, staring at the simple stitches, then seemed to force herself out of her drifting thoughts. “Logan, don’t you have more boxes to bring in from the car?”

“A couple more, Gran.”

“I can help,” Clare said without thinking, already moving into the hall.

“Thank you,” Logan said, catching up with her.

His car, of course, was the expensive one parked next to hers. He opened the back door. “I have everything out of the trunk. I had a delivery service do most of the big stuff. Gran had everything set to go.”

“She planned the move?”

“It was her idea.” He lifted a cardboard box out of the backseat. “She said she wanted to make it easier on us by making the decision to move herself.”

“That’s sweet.”

“That’s my gran.” He nodded to the box in his arms. “It’s some linens she wants here with her. It’s not heavy.”

“I’ll manage,” Clare said, taking the box. “I’m used to hauling books.”

He took a bigger, bulkier box from the backseat—clothes, he said—and they went back inside. “Let’s hope she’s not back up on that chair,” he said as he and Clare came to his grandmother’s apartment.

She was sitting in her chair, flipping through a small, obviously old photo album. “Here it is,” she said, lifting out a faded black-and-white photograph. “This is the house decorated for the first Christmas after the end of the war. World War II,” she added, as if Logan might not know. She handed the photograph to him. “I have one favor to ask, Logan. Can you decorate the house again, for one last Christmas before it’s sold?”

“Gran...you know you don’t have to sell the place.”

“We’ll talk about that later. You can decorate the house however you want, but if you look closely at the picture, you’ll see a candle in the front window.” She paused, touching the photograph. “Place a candle there, won’t you? In that same window?”

“Of course,” Logan said, clearly mystified by his grandmother’s request.

“A real candle. Then light it on Christmas Eve, or get someone to light it.”

He bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “I will, Gran, and we’ll light it together on Christmas Eve. They do let you out of here, you know.”

“You’ll be in town for Christmas?”

He smiled. “I will now.”

“But your work...” She frowned at him. “There are always a lot of accidents in Boston at Christmas. I don’t want you to miss helping someone because you feel sorry for me.”

“If I’m not at the hospital, Gran, another doctor will be. The emergency department has more than one qualified doctor.”

“But you’re their best,” Daisy said.

Logan stood straight. “That’s kind of you to say, Gran.”

She shifted to Clare. “If I were in an accident, I would want Logan in the ER to stop the bleeding.”

He changed the subject, asking her if she wanted him to unload the two boxes. Clare quickly set hers on a dresser. An ER. An accident. Winter...Christmas...

She noticed Logan narrowing his eyes on her with obvious concern and realized she was breathing rapidly. It was as if the exchange between him and his grandmother had transported her into her own past.