Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  { First Sugarplum }

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 1

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 2

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 3

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 4

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 5

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home: Chapter 6

  { Second Sugarplum }

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 1

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 2

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 3

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 4

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 5

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 6

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 7

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 8

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 9

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 10

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 11

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 12

  Border Collie Christmas: Chapter 13

  { Third Sugarplum }

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 1

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 2

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 3

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 4

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 5

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 6

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 6

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 8

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 9

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 10

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 11

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 12

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 13

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 14

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 14

  The Twelve Dates of Christmas: Chapter 15

  Other by Books by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  SUGARPLUM TRIO

  { Three Romantic Christmas Stories }

  Nancy Warren

  Ambleside Publishing

  Copyright © 2014 Nancy Weatherley Warren

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Ambleside Publishing

  1427 Bellevue Avenue

  PO Box 91585

  West Vancouver, BC

  V7V 3P3

  www.nancywarren.net

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Sugarplum Trio / Nancy Warren. -- 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-928145-08-0

  To my dear friend Bobby and to Max, with love.

  { Contents }

  { First Sugarplum }

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home

  { Second Sugarplum }

  Border Collie Christmas

  { Third Sugarplum }

  The 12 Dates of Christmas

  Other Books by Nancy Warren

  About the Author

  { First Sugarplum }

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home

  Nancy Warren

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home

  { 1 }

  “I’m not cooking a turkey this year,” Sandy Forbes told her son, Michael over the phone. She was trying out the words to see how they’d sound. They sounded good to her.

  Not so good to Michael. “What are you talking about, Ma? You always cook a turkey at Christmas.”

  “Well, I’m not doing it this year.” She referred to the yellow pad on which she’d done her calculations. “I’ve cooked fifty-five Christmas turkeys in my time. That’s one a year since my mother died when I was sixteen years old. I don’t want to cook one this year.” The more she heard herself speak, the truer the words sounded.

  Michael didn’t argue. He was the youngest of her three boys, the easy-going one, and as such he always referred all problems to his two older brothers.

  Michael hung up and she waited, knowing the family telegraph system was as fast as it was efficient.

  Easing back a little at her age wasn’t a crime, she reminded herself as she prepared chocolate chip cookie dough in her old mixer in the big yellow kitchen of the big old house where she’d raised her three boys. Now she baked cookies for her seven grandchildren who visited regularly -- often for long stretches of time while their parents were busy. She’d bought the house with her husband back when they were first married and she’d lived here ever since, through marriage, three kids, widowhood. A life of ups and downs. She still cleaned the place top to bottom every week and did all her own gardening.

  Five minutes later her phone rang. She wiped her floury hands on a towel and answered the insistent ring. It was her second son, Jim. “Hey, Ma. I’ve got the Christmas list from the boys. They both want video games. I’ve made a list of titles and emailed it to you.”

  “Thank you, Jim.” He did not, she noted, ask what was on her Christmas list. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to give you plenty of warning. I’m not cooking a turkey this year.” As if Michael hadn’t already told him.

  “Why not?” She could almost picture his scowl. Jim liked things to stay the same.

  “Because I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat turkey.”

  “So? You’ve been a veg since before I was born. You always cook the bird.”

  “Well, this year I’m not doing it.” Couldn’t they even try to understand?

  “You cooked one at Thanksgiving.” The memory of that meal was enough to toughen her spine.

  “I know. Elspeth and Bill had a fight and then he stormed out, Brady got drunk and you threw a turkey thigh at him. The younger boys got into a fistfight and broke a lamp.” Then they’d left her with all the dishes, the broken lamp, and the knowledge that on Thanksgiving not one member of her family had thought to thank her. The memory made her so mad she said, “In fact, I’m not even hosting the meal.”

  “What?” The sound exploded down the line. “But that’s, I mean-- I gotta go. I can’t even talk to you right now.”

  The scent of fresh-baked cookies filled the air when the phone rang yet again an hour later. “Hello, Elspeth,” she said. Elspeth was her daughter-in-law. The wife of her eldest son, who was the town dentist and far too busy to be bothered by family conflict. His wife handled all that, along with everything else in his life from paying his bills to raising their three kids.

  Elspeth, at least, wasn’t devious. She came right to the point. “Jim says you’re not hosting Christmas this year. Are you okay?”

  At least someone was thinking of her. Even a little bit.

  “I’m fine. I’m simply tired of always hosting every family occasion. I’m seventy-two years old. I think someone else should take a turn.”

  “But your house is so homey, so lived in.” Elspeth’s house, on the other hand, was neither of those things. She and her husband shared a compulsive neatness trait. Their designer kitchen always gleamed since they ate most of their meals out. Dust was never allowed to settle on the surfaces of their expensive furniture. Even the garden was rigidly perfect. She’d once caught her son on his hands and knees on the velvet lawn, using a pair of scissors to snip stray blades of grass the gardeners had missed. There was no possibility that her wealthy son and his wife would host Christmas dinner at their house. The mess would be intolerable.

  “Thank you for saying so. But I’m not cooking the turkey dinner this year.” Every time she said the words she felt a little better about them. “I’m tired.”

  Sandy lived in the small town of Tarlo, Washington, a city that had boomed in the early twentieth century as a logging hub. Now it limped along, losing more residents than it kept, but her family was here and it was home. Even so, she sometimes thought they were a little too close. She was beginning to realize that she’d spent a lot of years giving, giving, giving. And she loved doing it, but for some reason the disastrous Thanksgiving she’d hosted kept popping up like the Ghost of Christmas Dinner Yet to Come and she felt her body and mind rebel. No, she thought. For this one year, she was stepping down. She supposed she was waiting for someone else in the family to take on the job just this once.

  Her sister dropped by the next morning with store bought donuts. Sandy put on a pot of coffee and they chatted in her kitchen for a few minutes before Karen said, “Your boys are very upset that you’re letting them down for Christmas.” She scolded as though the boys were helpless lads instead of grown men in their forties. Okay, they were still helpless lads but Sandy was beginning to see that it was partly her fault. “They’ll be fine,” she said.

  Karen looked genuinely shocked. “I can’t believe you’re being so self
ish.”

  “I know,” Sandy said, stifling a giggle. “I can’t believe it either.”

  “You can’t ruin Christmas for the entire family. Who’s going to cook the dinner?”

  “What about you?”

  Her sister was ten years younger, though she’d let herself go in the last few years gaining far too much weight and spending half her life at the doctor with one complaint or another. “How can you even ask that of me? You know how much my back pains me.” Her sister put a hand to her back and winced. “I only wish I was strong enough to host the meal.”

  Sandy put up with a week of cajoling, badgering and whining. Even her eldest son, Bill the dentist, found time to call her on his cell phone on his way home from work.

  “What’s this I hear about Christmas?”

  “I’m not hosting it this year,” she said for what sounded like the hundredth time.

  “What are we supposed to do?” His indignation crackled over the line, and Sandy realized at that moment that no one else was going to take on one holiday dinner. Instead they had a clear plan to browbeat her until she submitted. She didn’t get mad very often, but she felt a surge of anger in that moment.

  “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going out of town for Christmas.”

  She was glad he couldn’t see her face. She was so shocked at the words that came out of her mouth she couldn’t seem to get her jaw working fast enough to unsay them, to tell her firstborn that she was only kidding.

  Amazingly, he believed her. “What about the mail?” he snapped.

  Sandy ran the local post office. It was true, mail delivery was busiest at this time of year, but there were two other employees who could fill in for her and in truth she’d been thinking it might be time to retire anyway. She was as tired of selling postage stamps and shipping packages as she was of cooking turkey.

  “Everyone in Tarlo will still get their mail. Don’t worry.”

  “Go ahead, Ma. Have your holiday and leave your family in the lurch. Don’t think anyone’s driving you to the airport.”

  “Fine. I’ll take a cab.”

  There came a point in the enterprise when it was simply too late to back out. Everyone in town knew that Sandy Forbes was going away. At Christmas! And leaving her family. There were whispers of dementia and kindly old Dr. Stevens, who was older than she was and should have retired years ago, actually called on her to have a little chat.

  “How are you eating?” he asked her as he sipped tea in her living room.

  “I eat well, thank you.” So did he from the size of his belly. “Have another chocolate chip cookie.” They were her home made ones and she was famous for them though in truth the only secret was that she put extra chocolate chips in her dough.

  “Are you sleeping all right?”

  “Yes,” she lied. She wasn’t sleeping all that well, torn between excitement at the idea of going away and guilt that she really should cook turkey number 56.

  “And how’s the memory?” he asked her.

  “Dr. Stevens, I don’t have Alzheimer’s. I looked up the symptoms on the Internet. I am fine.”

  “Well, if you’re using the Internet, your brain function is very good,” he said, grinning so she’d know he was joking. “I’ve never been able to figure out computers.” He settled back and gave her his kindly look. She used to think it was comforting, now she found it patronizing. “Sometimes, Sandy, when we get older we do irrational things that we might end up regretting.”

  “I’m leaving town for a week. What on earth can happen to me?”

  The Christmas Grandma Ran Away from Home

  { 2 }

  Where do you go when you’ve never been anywhere?

  Sandy did a Google search of ‘best places to spend Christmas.’ The consensus of all the sites and articles that popped up was that you go somewhere exotic, preferably hot and expensive. Taos, New Mexico, Florida, St. Miquel something or other in Mexico. She clicked through one spectacular locale after another. When she got to Tromslo, Norway, she gave up on Google. She wasn’t looking for an exotic vacation with cabanas and drinks in coconut shells, not was she desperate to fly thousands of miles to see the Northern Lights. She didn’t want to go anywhere where she needed to pack Imodium or get shots before leaving home.

  All she wanted was a nice, safe place not too far from home where she could be waited on for a change. She wanted a hotel with room service and a good restaurant where a woman of a certain age eating alone on Christmas night would not raise eyebrows. There should be some nice places to walk. And, she decided, her getaway destination should not be listed on Google as a top Christmas holiday spot.

  She looked at the postmarks of the mail coming through the Tarlo post office for ideas. And finally, one day, she saw it. The postmark read, Blossom Creek, Oregon. She made a sound: a sigh, a yip and a laugh all rolled uncomfortably into one choking cough that had Irv, the other postal attendant on duty, coming over to pat her on the back and ask if she was okay.

  His pale blue eyes looked concerned behind the big black-framed glasses he wore ever since his wife had told him he looked like Martin Scorcese. He didn’t look like the movie director. He looked like a short, homely, near-sighted postal clerk. But he had dreams of leaving Tarlo and making a new start, even though he never did anything that would get him to his goals. She had a sneaking fondness for him. “I’m fine.” She showed him the envelope.

  The concern she read on his face deepened. Obviously the dementia rumors had reached him. “It’s a Christmas card. Lot of folks getting them this time of year.”

  She shook her head, impatient at how obtuse he was being. “Look at the postmark.”

  He pulled the envelope closer and squinted. “Blossom Creek, Oregon.”

  “Right. And that is where I will be spending Christmas.”

  He pondered her words for a moment. “Probably aren’t a lot of blossoms this time of year.”

  Maybe there wouldn’t be blossoms in December in Blossom Creek, Oregon. Sandy didn’t care. She looked the town up on her computer and discovered the destination fulfilled all her requirements. She could fly there in a couple of hours. There were several hotels and restaurants, parks and a good bus service.

  Best of all, she would not spend the entire month of December cooking, planning, worrying and then exhausting herself on the 25th . She wouldn’t have to play peace keeper between siblings who should have got over sibling rivalry years ago. She wouldn’t have to remember which cousins were feuding and sit them far apart, or worry that Bill’s kids spent too much time on their electronic devices and were becoming antisocial, or that Karen’s daughter Ashley clearly hadn’t conquered the Bulimia. And, once the meal was over, she wouldn’t spend the next few days cleaning up and putting away. This year she was going to be a very selfish woman.

  At times she almost lost her nerve, but every time she did, she’d see in her mind her son berating his wife until she yelled back at him, at which point Bill had thrown his napkin down and stormed out. She’d see a greasy turkey thigh sailing through the air like a poultry scud missile, as her second son launched it at their drunk cousin Brady, who wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t duck, so the grease and gravy soaked thigh had thwacked into her dining room curtains – requiring an expensive visit to the dry cleaners.

  When her will weakened she forced herself to do something. Book her ticket. Book a hotel. Get directions by bus from the airport in Blossom Creek to her hotel.

  Sandy bought and wrapped gifts for her seven grandchildren and mailed them from the post office.

  Elspeth called her a few days before she was leaving and said, “I’d love to drive you to the airport, but you know what Bill’s like. If he found out he’d kill me.”

  “I know, dear. It’s sweet of you to offer.”

  Elspeth took a breath. “I hope you have a wonderful time. Merry Christmas.”

  She worried about Elspeth, knowing her marriage wasn’t ideal, but then she worried about them all. “I’ll have my cell phone with me if you want to talk. Merry Christmas to you, too.”