Happily Ever Christmas

~Five~

The kids were all doing a good job of keeping themselves entertained, though I checked on them often. Call me an overprotective mom, but since the divorce, I had just been feeling more vulnerable, about everything.

And it didn't help having extended family who kept asking me where Peter was this year.

Susan grabbed me at one point and asked me to help her with something that our grandma had asked her to do.

I groaned in dismay when I learned that we had to go outside and over to the neighbors. It meant I had to put on real clothes and get all bundled up with a scarf and boots and everything. Gross.

But I was a big girl and I pulled on my skinny jeans and my overly cheerful red Christmas sweater with a sparkly Rudolf stitched onto the front. I ran a comb through my mid-length ginger hair then stared at myself in the mirror for a moment. My green eyes looked dark and sad, even to me, and my skin was even more pale than usual.

I considered putting on makeup.

Nah.

It's not like I was trying to impress anyone.

Susan and I then trekked over to the Hamilton house next door. It wasn't exactly a long walk, but I was still dreading the trip because Mrs. Hamilton was incredibly old and deaf and full of hate. But she apparently had the extra chairs that we desperately needed and it wasn't like she needed them since she never had any visitors.

"Now, you ask her, okay?" Susan said to me, smoothing her auburn chignon nervously as we stood upon the stoop of the stately old house and rang the bell.

"Why me?!"

"She likes you!"

"Oh my gosh, she doesn't even remember me, I bet."

Mrs. Hamilton swung the door open so suddenly we both jumped.

"Ahh, Susan." The old woman said, her dark eyes disdainfully traveling over my slightly plump older sister. Then those dark eyes switched to me and I gulped. "And Ms. Emberly Decker."

Another gulp. So apparently she did remember me, she even knew my married name.

"Happy holidays, Mrs. Hamilton!" I said, bringing my hands together with false cheer. "And unfortunately it's, uhm, it's back to being just Emberly Faust, actually."

"Why unfortunately? Who needs a man?" Mrs. Hamilton coolly replied, and my sister and I laughed in surprise.

"Indeed, uhm, do you mind if we pop in for a moment, Mrs. Hamilton?" Susan asked in a high, fake British accent that made my lips twitch.

Mrs. Hamilton sighed heavily, patting the brooch at the throat of her simple black sweater. "Oh, if you must, I suppose? But please do be brief because I am entertaining an old friend this afternoon."

I was surprised to hear that she had a friend to entertain, but I was glad that she wasn't alone on Christmas; that was just too tragic.

Susan and I glanced at each other with a small smile then we followed after her down the long, dark hallway. The sound of her high heels ringing on the hardwood led us forward through her dim fortress.

"I suppose you want to borrow my chairs again." Mrs. Hamilton said shrewdly.

"Guilty as charged." I chuckled nervously as we finally stepped out into her front sitting room. She had no tree, but there was a red candle burning on the coffee table with a little, old, dusty wreath around it; that had to count for something.

"You're welcome to join us, though, Mrs. Hamilton!" I rushed to assure her. "Really, there's plenty of food and we would just love to have you, wouldn't we, Susan?"

Mrs. Hamilton snorted. "No, thank you, dears. I would rather sit alone in the dark than go over there and associate with the riffraff you people call your relatives."

Susan and I glanced at each other in the helpless way we always did when Mrs. Hamilton was being her candid old self and we just didn't know how to react. She had terrified us for as long as I could remember.

"Now, last time, when I said to return my antique chairs without so much as a scratch on them, I found a stain on one of the cushions, and a dog or child or something had clearly gnawed on the leg of one of the other ones!"

"Oh, I am so sorry about that, Mrs. Hamilton! Our grandmother tried really hard to get that stain out..."

Suddenly Susan's voice faded away in my head, however.

The door across the room had just opened and someonestrangely familiar stepped through.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Ooh, who could it be?!

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HRH