A Christmas Miracle. Anna Adams

Nearly encased in papier-mâché herself, she squared her shoulders, smoothed the white stuff off her hands onto the newspaper-covered table and smiled.

      “Good afternoon. May I help you?”

      Jason, bemused, didn’t have to answer. The two smallest girls bolted for Gabe and pummeled his suit with their sticky hands, shouting “Daddy!” with the elation of children who’d thought their father might have disappeared forever.

      One of the women looked at Fleming, her body language an expression of sheer helplessness. Fleming dampened a length of paper towel in a plastic tub of clean water and passed it to her.

      “Gabe,” the woman said, “maybe we should stay here in Bliss tonight. I think we’ve got the hang of this papier-mâché thing, and the girls want to finish their ornaments.”

      The older daughter, clearly bored and nowhere near as coated in goop and glue, shook her head. “I don’t.”

      “The girls want to finish their ornaments,” her mother said again. Then she lifted both hands, sticky still, and now slightly fluffy with paper-towel remnants. “And so do I.”

      “Then, by all means.” Gabe turned toward Jason. “Maybe you could give me directions to a good hotel?”

      “Sure.” Jason brought up the web page for Lyle’s place and texted a link to Gabe’s phone. “You can call and arrange for a room. Or just walk down the block. It’s on the right at the end of the square.”

      “Go ahead, Gabe,” his wife said. “We’ll meet you over there after we finish.”

      “Jason, this is Anita. Anita, my friend Jason. And these are my daughters. Starting with the tallest and least interested in hanging out with the family,” he said, grinning with affection, “Delia. And this one—” he flattened his hand in the air above a small, glue-laden head of brown hair “—is Kay. Last but not least, this limpet on my leg is Georgina.”

      The small redhead clung to him with all her gluey might. “Daddy, I come with you.”

      “After you finish your art project,” Gabe said with justifiable reluctance. “Jason, join us for dinner tonight.”

      He should welcome the break. Some time with people who didn’t owe his family or the bank anything and had no reason to resent him. But he dreaded more questions, and he suspected Fleming and her store might be a topic of dinner-table talk now that Gabe and his family had met her. “Thanks,” he said, “but—”

      Without thinking, he glanced at Fleming, and she ran her fingers through her hair, streaking it with white. She took a moment to decide to take mercy on him, but then came to his rescue. “Actually, Jason and some friends and I have plans for tonight. We’re planning...” She stopped, her blank expression certainly not helping Jason’s cause. “A Christmas thing. On the square. Caroling.” She finished with a look of triumph.

      Gabe’s smile was crooked with disbelief. He glanced at Jason assessingly, as if he couldn’t decide how best to make fun of him. “Okay. See you in a while. Anita, hose the kids down before you let them be seen in public, will you?”

      He hit the sidewalk, wiping at his suit.

      His wife made a face at his back as he walked away. “He was joking.” She dampened her hands again with the clear water. “I think.”

      “Jason, why don’t you come make an ornament?” Fleming asked, with irony in her voice as if she expected him to say no to the possibility of participating in something fun. “We’re doing a test run today, but we’re thinking our methods need a little work. Let us try some changes on you.” She waved toward the young woman behind the cash register. “This is Julia Walker. She’s our instructor for today.”

      “Julia.” He couldn’t help doubting her skills, because the place was covered in glue and globs of wet paper. He looked back at Fleming with a nod. Did she think she could scare him off with a challenge?

      She came around the counter, rubbing her hands together like a mad scientist on a bad television show. “We may have to turn these snowflakes into snowmen. Here we go again.”

      * * *

      “OF COURSE YOU turn out to be a papier-mâché prodigy,” Fleming said later that afternoon, as she scooped the last of the glue off the table with a scraping tool Julia had lent her before she’d left for a dinner date.

      Jason twirled his ruby-colored ornament above her head. “I think I’ll lacquer this.” He held it out to her. “You want it?”

      Somehow, his not wanting to keep it made her feel as if it didn’t matter to him. But why should it? He didn’t go in for things like tradition. “You aren’t planning to have a tree?”

      “I don’t even know where I’ll be on Christmas.”

      “With your family?” She couldn’t imagine Christmas without her mother and Hugh.

      Could Jason be that detached? Didn’t his family celebrate, even with several different mom-and-child combinations?

      He still hadn’t answered her question.

      “Aren’t you going home?” She handed him a moist paper towel, but he wasn’t entirely covered in glue the way everyone else had been: she and Julia and Anita Kaufman and the rest of the small class who’d agreed to be her guinea pigs.

      “Christmas is like Thanksgiving. It’s just a day, Fleming. I don’t have children. I don’t have to eat cookies for Santa or carrots for Rudolph.”