Christmas decorations lighten even a shop-fronted newspaper office. Ann had arrived early. The Christmas open house was in full swing. Spiced cider scented the room. A large angel tree loaded with presents sat in the window. Free copies of a booklet of Christmas carols was melting away along with all the Christmas cookies that Ann, Erica, and their mothers had made. Leo and the high school jazz band was playing in a corner. A large clump of mistletoe hung from the archway at the back of the office.

  Erica refreshed a stack of Christmas carol booklets. They'd long ago run through the six dozen cookies she and her mother had baked. Snow was dusting the sidewalks outside. The bell tinkled, and cold wind tickled her neck when the door opened. She didn't look up or turn around but righted the booklets set ajar by the wind. She picked up the empty box, scanned the table, and headed to the back room. She could pick up more coffee on her way back.

  She saw his shadow before she heard him. Her heart stopped. He was here. She reached out instinctively, flipped the on the light switch and stepped into the room. She kept her back to him while she fought for control of her emotions. She put the box down on a stack of empty boxes and turned around. He filled the doorway.

  She couldn't speak as if God, Himself, had shut her mouth.

  He looked better than she remembered. His amber eyes caught her and held.

  "Erica."

  Her tongue loosened enough to say, "Was it you?"

  "Aldred?"

  She shook her head, still not able to speak. His words had been with her these past weeks as she had re-read each of his books, but it was the last one that had the most effect. Aldred's path from a man of vice to a man of virtue was profound.

  "Yes, well, mostly. He is a composite, but the essence is my journey."

  She stepped closer. "I'm sorry I misjudged you."

  "No need,” he reached for her. She reached back.

  He kissed her softly, sweetly. When he pulled back she rested her forehead on his shoulder.

  "I met Ben ten years ago. I met Jesus eight years ago. I didn't struggle with my new life until I met you." His deep voice resonated from his chest into her. "For a year, I struggled so much that I put aside the book I’d just outlined and researched. I had to write this one instead. I didn't know why until you came. Then I knew. I wrote it for you."

  "Me?" she choked out. He shook his head. That's why it had such a profound effect on her, so much so that she couldn't speak of it.

  "I have something else for you." He pulled away from her, yet she didn't feel cut away as she had before. Instead the warmth between them spanned the room. He picked up a rectangular package wrapped in brown paper leaning against the wall by the door.

  "Merry Christmas, Erica."

  She took the package. Could it be? A painting? Was it the fox that had looked at her in his workshop? Maybe one of the haunting trees?

  She peeled back the paper.

  Her own eyes looked back at her.

  Her heart overflowed at her eyes.

  He only painted people he loved.

  "Merry Christmas, Erica."

  "You love me?" She blinked up at him.

  “Yes. And I want to spend the rest of my life with just you.”

  Other Books by Izzy James

  Thank you for reading The Christmas Gift. I hope you enjoyed meeting Jack and Erica. If you did, won't you please take a moment to leave a review at your favorite retailer?

  God Bless,

  Izzy

  Discover other titles by Izzy James:

  Finding Boaz

  The Christmas Gift

  The Christmas Plainsong

  Max: A Yorktown Time Travel Novella

  Garrett: A Yorktown Time Travel Novella

  The Shopkeeper’s Widow

  The Dollmaker’s Daughter

  I'd be delighted to hear from you:

  Website: echull.com

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  Find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IzzyJamesAuthor/

  Excerpt

  A bonus excerpt from Finding Boaz…

  "It's ten o'clock at night. What do you want?"

  Abbey Ericksen was looking through the screened door at her ex-husband Brad. His breath was fogging up the glass in the top of the door. The cold March air swirled through the screen in the bottom of the door, past her knees and began to freeze her tiny cube of an apartment.

  There goes the budget, she thought.

  "Won't you let me in?" He pleaded. He never did like the cold.

  "Where's Suzie?" The door stayed locked between them.

  "She left me. Please let me in, it's cold out here."

  "What do you mean left?" Ordinarily she would have let a poor body in from the cold, but this particular body had left her and Chloe out in the cold when he left them for Suzie. So she would worry about the electric bill later–he could freeze.

  "I just wanted to talk to you." He rested his arm on the doorjamb and leaned in as if there were no glass between them. The fog got worse.

  "I just want to do the right thing here." He stepped away from the door and put his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  Her heart was banging as she opened the door. She used to dream of him coming back to her and Chloe. It was all so romantic in her fancy; Brad arriving home in the middle of the night ragged and torn from the violent struggle that it took to get back; sweeping her off her feet; finally carrying her away to Never Land or some such place. But that was a year and a half ago and she had given up those kinds of dreams. Now that he was actually here all she felt was anger and distrust. He stepped inside and leaned against the counter next to the back door. There were no signs of struggle. His blue Izod was completely intact under a black leather jacket that made her blue jeans and grandfather's old dress shirt feel frumpy.

  Well, the time away from her had been prosperous for him anyway, she thought.

  Abbey backed up to the counter, across the ten foot room, getting as far away from him as possible.

  "I miss you, Ab, and I miss Chloe, I believe that we should be together. It's the right thing to do, don't you think?"

  "I think you have a lotta nerve showing up here at my house in the middle of hte night unannounced when I haven't seen you in eighteen months. That's what I think. So, what do you mean she left." She crossed her arms over her chest.

  "Can we stop talking about Suzie for a minute?"

  "Don't you think she's relevant?"

  "God allows these things for a reason, Ab, and I think that maybe we should just, you know accept it." He opened is arms wide and started for her side of the room.

  Abbey sidestepped to the sink to clean up the tea glass she had sitting in there. What had he ever done but tout 'what God said' and do the opposite? He came up behind her and put his hands on her waist. She felt giddy like she might laugh, but it wasn't joy. Something wasn't right.

  "Don't." She pushed him away.

  He leaned against the counter next to her.

  Stay in control, she thought. Abbey turned to face him again.

  Beyond him she saw Chloe walk into the room.

  "Momma?" Chloe's voice cracked with sleep.

  Brad turned in time to see her eyes widen.

  "Daddy!" She ran and jumped into his arms.

  "Hello Chloe." Brad picked her up and held her close, but his eyes never left Abbey. He sat down in a chair with the child on his lap. Chloe sat there quietly, almost sleeping. Abbey leaned back against the sink armed crossed. Maybe he was sincere, if so, it was the first time in at least eighteen months, although the timeline of his betrayal was much longer than that. Just then a brown spider scurried across the counter. She grabbed a paper towel and cleaned away the intruder.

  "Ok, Chloe it's time to go back to bed." Abbey retrieved her baby from his arms and carried her back to her room. She pulled the covers over the three year old tucking them around her tightly.

  "Is Daddy staying with us Momma?" Brad's eyes looked at her from the small face of her daughter.

  "No."

  When she returned Brad was still sitting at the table, Abbey took a seat across from him.

  "What's all this?" He picked up one of the flyers laying in the midst of an organizational reorganization in the middle of the table. "Old Thyme Festival? So you're still into that music thing huh?" his mouth curled into a smirk.

  "Yep." She straightened the piles into two stacks and drew them to her side of the table.

  "I wonder how you have time to do that and work and take good care of Chloe." He said.

  "Oh, Chloe loved it."

  "So you brought her with you."

  "Of course–Mom came to help. She had a blast." He was doing it again, insinuating that she wasn't good enough. Anger resurged as she realized she was reacting in the same old way she always did with him, always explaining, trying to justify herself to him.

  "Well, what do you think?" He asked.

  "About what?"

  "Do you want to give it another try? For Chloe's sake?" His eyes were pleading.

  No I don't, for Chloe's sake she thought.

  "I have to think about it" she said aloud, surprised to hear herself say anything that would give him the slightest hope.

  He pulled out a business card with his name imprinted on one side, on the other side he had written in the phone numbers of the hotel where he was staying and handed it to her. Abbey took the card and laid it on the table between them. She had forgotten what ugly hands he had, they were too small and white; delicate like a woman's.

  "This is where I'll be. I'm transferring here. I'll be here for two weeks looking for a place to live. Would you like to have dinner tomorrow night?"

  "I don't know I have to think about it." She looked away from his gaze.

  "About dinner? You have to think about dinner?" He made a little laugh his mouth curling into that smirk again, "Look, I just want to take you and my little girl out for a meal, Ok?"

  "It's probably ok, just call me tomorrow."

  As soon as he was gone she threw all the locks and sat back down in her chair exhausted. He wants me back? There was no question about that. The mere thought made her sick.

  "I should have just said 'no'," she swiped her hand into the air, a gesture of finality. "No."

  Frustrated, Abbey marched up and down the short room, but what about Choe?

  "How could he just show up here out of the blue like that?" She asked aloud.

  The room was silent. Her dulcimer stood on its stand in the corner of the small living room. She closed Chloe's door over and sat on the couch to play. Perhaps then she could sort out what she should do next.

  The dulcimer sat comfortably in her lap. She put her music aside thinking to play unaided and free. At first she couldn't feel any rhythm, but after a few minutes music began to fill the air. Her soul began to pulse in time with the music she made and it soothed her rattled nerves. She floated freely from one song to the next losing her worries to the phrases and refrains as she sang.

  Tom Dooley...she had been playing Tom Dooley the day she first thought something was going on between Brad and Suzie.

  The sun had been high and hot on the fourth of July two years ago. Neighbors and friends had turned out for the annual block party. That year the buzz question had been whether or not Eddy Mullen would shoot a bottle rocket into a cop car as he had done the year before. Abbey had been jamming with Joe Smith and his wife Joan on a makeshift stage on the Mullen's front porch. Brad carried Chloe on his hip making tours of the food tables. Generally Abbey kept her eyes down on the fretboard or on her music when she was playing. If she didn't she couldn't go very fast and Joe was lightning on the banjo. But she knew Tom Dooley inside and out, and she was feeling free and easy, no pressure, just playing with friends. When she looked up she saw Brad hand Suzie something. Suzie wrapped her hands around his as she took whatever it was from him.

  Abbey looked quickly down, she couldn't hear the music, she wasn't sure where she was in the piece. It took a second to realize she hadn't stumbled. Her hands had kept the pace, she looked back up to catch Suzie's look of triumph. Brad had melted back into the crowd with Chloe.

  "Poor boy you're bound to die..."

  She let the dulcimer ring the last notes until it rested quiet.

  "Amazing grace...hooow sweet the sound..."

  Abbey played the old song slowly, purely, letting the lonesome sound resonate.

  Two days later he was gone. Near as she could figure the something she had seen was a set of keys and a lease. He and Suzie moved into an apartment across town and wouldn't tell her where. Brad came to see Chloe a couple of times, Abbey never saw Suzie again. Perhaps she was hiding out, ashamed to show her treacherous face to her friend.

  After they were divorced and sold the house, Abbey moved home to Ocean View. Ocean View was home not because she grew up there, but because it was where her mother lived. Abbey had not realized that she had missed the sea until she moved back within sight of it's shores. The ever present bigness of it had always helped her keep perspective on the size of her own troubles and the constant splash and roar of the waves brought solace.

  As Ocean View had grown to be her home her mother had grown to be her friend.

  There had been so many battles when she was younger, a whole five years ago she chuckled to herself.

  "Tis grace that brought me safe this far..."

  Her mother had been opposed to everything that Abbey had tried after high school. When Abbey found the Lord and a church Helen had violently protested. So when she hadn't liked Brad, Abbey hadn't been surprised. Abbey had attributed her mother’s resistance to Brad to be a part of her general cynicism and overall dislike of people as a rule. Abby now understood that as an emergency room nurse Helen had seen a lot of the bad side of humanity and as a result she had come to expect the worst of everyone. At the time, Abby hadn't understood her mothers concerns. Abby saw the world through new eyes, she trusted everything and everyone; her mother had been suspect of everything and everyone and she had been so right.

  The divorce had taken a full year to be final. The contact between she and Brad had been minimal. Chloe had never been an issue with him–Abbey wanted her Abbey could have her. Chloe would be better off that way he said. It made this present offer even more strange. She wondered if it would have been different if Chloe had been a boy.

  "Did you ever hear tell of Sweet Betsy from Pike, who crossed the wide prairies with her lover Ike?..." She played the old waltz quickly.

  And now here he was.

  She stopped playing.

  She should just say "No." Just no.

  It would be so much easier to have help with Chloe. She argued with herself. Brad was her father after all, he should be helping with the child. It could be good for Chloe. She needed to have a father and her own was probably the best bet to do a good job with her. And it would be so much easier to get by on more than just her income. Which she had no more as of today, she thought wryly.

  Imagine Stanley, her boss, a man at least thirty years older than herself, thinking she'd take a boat ride with him, his friend and a case of beer! Her stomach knotted as she remembered the twinkle in the older man's eye and the feel of his rough fingers on her forearm. She had said no and walked out. Unemployed.

  Could Brad be right? Did the Lord send him because of this present trouble? It wouldn't be the first time God had chosen an unbeliever to bring about his will.

  Technically Brad wasn't an unbeliever she guessed, but he had gotten so good a manipulating the truth that she no longer knew if he really was saved. There had been a time when she was sure of it, but no more.

  Abbey began to play the waltz again. Well, what about Chloe, she answered herself, if he's decided to act like her father then it will be good for her. He can have visitation. She stopped short. Would he steal her?

  Not likely, if he had wanted her so badly why would he have dumped her in the first place and not seen her in eighteen months?

  She began to play again.

  I just won't let him see her alone. If he wants to see her, he'll just have to see me too.

  Her thoughts turned to her interview on Monday. Perhaps that was what God had in store for them next. The idea of working for a company of charter boats intrigued her, there was romance in the thought of pirate ships and being free on the waves in the light of the moon, the friendly beacons of lighthouses and brisk breezes...

  Right, I'll likely freeze my knees. She laughed.

  Of course it might just be great.

  "And Betsy, well satisfied, said with a shout, 'Good-by you big lummox, I'm glad you backed out.'" Abbey finished the song with a flourish.

  After she returned the dulcimer to it's stand, she stood and stretched. The peace she felt radiated to her fingers and toes, she was ready for bed.

  All that was left was to tell Brad.

 

 

  Izzy James, The Christmas Gift

 

 

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