Bonnie Winn - Jingle Bell Blessings

“The days are shorter,” Chloe commented, sounding nervous. “Gets dark so early.” She pointed toward the sky. “Good there’s moonlight.”

“Are you a stargazer, Miss Reed?”

“Chloe,” she insisted. “Yes, I suppose I am. Not that I’ve had time to—”

“How do you spend your time? Convincing people to make bad decisions?”

Anger flashed in her sea-green eyes. She was right. The light from the moon aided the gas lights enough to read her expression. Chloe’s mouth opened, then she firmed her lips into a resolute line as she pulled her shoulders back. “I work, if you must know.”

“That’s what you call it?”

The anger in her face intensified. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

So, she had a temper. “Surely it’s clear, even to you, that Wainwright’s plan isn’t going to work.”

“Why are you so negative? You act as though Jimmy has some sort of disease. He’s a wonderful child!”

“I didn’t say he isn’t.” The boy seemed like a good kid. On the quiet side, but Evan didn’t expect anything different after what Jimmy had been through.

“Then what is it?” Exasperation spilled into her voice.

“I told you my answer is no.”

Chloe paused, tilting her face so that the moonlight enhanced the beguiling heart shape of her face. “Your father seems to have a different opinion.”

Evan tried to ignore the unwanted feeling her proximity caused. “It’s not going to work, regardless of what my father says. There’s no room in my life for a child. I’m fighting to keep the business alive. I have twenty-seven employees who depend on me for their livelihood. Do you expect me to forget about them?”

“Of course not.” The exasperation had left her voice. Concern replaced it. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t do both. You have help—your father, Thelma and Ned.”

“What is it about no that you don’t understand? This isn’t like a pet rescue. I can’t turn Jimmy out in the yard with Bailey if I don’t want him close to me. He needs parents, not a guardian.”

“But with time—”

“There isn’t going to be any time.” Evan’s constant anguish flared so fiercely it felt like a physical blow. The back door opened and Jimmy ran outside, followed more slowly by Gordon.

“Guess what?” Jimmy asked Chloe with a glimmer of excitement. “Tomorrow we’re going to see the school.”

All four adults looked at one another. Chloe seemed uncertain. Gordon was determined. And Evan knew he had to stop this from happening. At all costs.

Chloe and Jimmy had disappeared upstairs. Evan made certain of it before he confronted his father. “What were you thinking? Telling the boy you’ll show him our school?”

Gordon knocked the ashes from his pipe into an ashtray. “Why shouldn’t he see it?”

“You know exactly why. Jimmy will think that means he’ll be staying on for a while.”

“Son, he needs us.”

Evan snorted. “There are thousands of orphaned children who need homes. Are we going to take them in as well?”

Gordon packed cherry tobacco into the bowl of his worn pipe. “He’s family.”

Evan felt his chest heave with pain. Family would never again mean the same thing for him. “Are you planning to take care of him?”

“We had that talk when Wainwright first called.”

Slumping into a deep leather chair, Evan sighed. “Why are you doing this to me, Dad?”

Gordon stopped tamping down the tobacco, which didn’t really matter since he never lit the pipe. “It’s not to you, son. It’s for you. When we first lost Robin and Sean, I knew it would take you a long time to accept that you still have a life. It’s natural.”

“Accept it? I’ll never accept it. There was no reason for them to die.”

“You did everything you could to—”

“But the Lord didn’t!” Furious, he rose.

“We don’t always understand—”

“I’ve heard it all before. And I don’t want to hear it again.”

Gordon sighed. “This boy is another chance for you, son. The Lord knows of the hole in your heart.”

“A replacement?” Evan laughed bitterly. “A cosmic reparation? No. I lost the only son I’ll ever have.”

“Evan, you—”

“If you persist in having them stay here, he’s your responsibility.”

“Son, it doesn’t do you any good to be angry at the Lord.”

Sadness and pain settled in Evan’s heart. “I’m not angry at Him. I’m disappointed. And that won’t ever change.”

“All the grades go together?” Jimmy asked in a hushed voice, tightening his grip on Chloe’s hand as they stood in the main hall of Rosewood Community Church’s school.

“Not in the same room,” Chloe explained, although she wasn’t certain just how the school was organized.

Gordon nodded. “That’s how it was when I was a boy.”

Jimmy looked at him in awe, as though the older man had said he had attended school with the dinosaurs. “You went to school here?”

Chloe and Gordon both chuckled.

“Yep. We’d invented fire by then.” Gordon clapped one hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, giving him a small hug while he exchanged an amused glance with Chloe.

Just then a pretty woman walked out of the office.

“Well, hello, Grace.”

“Gordon!” She smiled, a generous smile that lit up her blue-gray eyes. “I heard the hunting went very well.”

He turned to Chloe. “Ah, the bane of small towns. Can’t get by with much that everybody doesn’t know about.”

“Afraid that’s true,” Grace agreed.

“I’m forgetting my manners. Grace, this is Chloe Reed and Jimmy Mitchell.”

“So good to meet you,” she said to Chloe, then extended her hand to Jimmy. “Always glad to meet another Mitchell man.”

Pleased, but shy, Jimmy grinned.

“I don’t have a class this hour,” Grace continued. “Can I help you find anything?”

“Thought it’d be nice to show them around. You know, a little tour, before they meet the principal,” Gordon explained.

“I’d be glad to help. I teach part-time in the upper grades, but I know all the buildings.” She leaned down slightly toward Jimmy and confided, “The kids call me old lady Brady.”

Chloe couldn’t restrain her laughter. “We’re probably close in age. Didn’t realize I was in that category yet.”

Grace laughed with her. “Came as quite a shock to me, too. Teaching is my second and best career. Didn’t realize it would age me so!”

Gordon groaned. “You kids are killing me.”

“You are a sweetheart,” Grace declared as she turned to Chloe. “See why I love the Mitchell men?”

Chloe had seen plenty of reasons, even in Evan. Because for all his protests, she suspected he was covering a deep and grievous hurt.

Grace led them down the main hall. “We’re in the administration building. Besides the office, the cafeteria, library and auditorium are in this building. There are separate buildings for elementary, junior high and senior high. Since it’s a church school, we’re not funded by the government but we have private donors. I imagine you’d like to see the elementary building.”

The cheerful building was filled with colorful banners and posters. “Kindergarten through fifth-grade classes,” Grace explained as they passed individual classrooms. “There’s also a smaller, all-purpose room for the youngest grades. The plays and larger performances are held in the auditorium. More room for all the doting parents and grandparents.” Grace paused in front of one classroom. “This is a first-grade class.”

“Is there more than one?” Chloe asked, liking the positive energy in the school.

“That depends on enrollment. Our elementary teachers are certified to teach two or three grades. That way we can adjust to make sure class sizes aren’t too large.”