This story is a sequel to an earlier story, Christmas Light, but contains no particular spoilers for it and can easily be read separately.
Saturday, 19th December, 2009
Diana Belden considered the near-monochrome landscape through which she travelled. The arching branches of trees lining Glen Road appeared starkly black against the light, silvery clouds above. To either side of the dark strip of bitumen, snowdrifts lay. Even the evergreens looked more black than green. A pale patch in the western sky indicated that the day would soon be over.
She breathed a silent sigh of relief as they turned into the driveway of her husband’s childhood home, its front door bearing a large wreath with a huge, red bow and cheery yellow light spilling from most of the windows.
“Not a moment too soon,” Mart murmured, echoing her thoughts.
Their baby son Samuel made a fretful noise in the back seat, seeming to confirm the sentiment.
“I hear you, buddy, and I’ll let you out soon,” Mart promised him, just as he pulled up near the house.
The back door swung open and a figure hurried out to greet them. Helen Belden made a beeline for her grandson.
“I’m so glad you’re all here,” she greeted, even as she unbuckled the baby and scooped him up. “Come along inside where it’s warm. And don’t worry about your luggage; your father will get it for you a little later.”
The car door closed with a bang and Helen hurried on her way, but both Mart and Diana stayed where they were for a moment.
“She hardly even noticed us,” Mart noted, sounding just a little miffed. “I think I’ve been replaced.”
Diana smiled and patted his hand. “Oh, I know we’ve both been replaced. First grandchild on both sides. It’s a big deal.”
He turned his hand over to squeeze hers. “Well, let’s get ourselves inside. Maybe we can raid the cookie jar while Moms is occupied with our offspring.”
“As if we won’t be plied with as many cookies as we can hold, regardless of whether your mother is busy!” She sighed and picked up her handbag. “We can’t really leave everything to your father. I guess we’d better bring as much as we can carry in one trip.”
Mart shook his head. “Cookies first. I need fortification after that terrible drive.”
Smiling, Di shook her head at the exaggeration and got out of the car. She shivered a little as she walked, but did not hurry her steps. Slight aching in various parts of her body reminded her of the amount of time they had spent in the car that day. But the quiet of the countryside felt soothing after so long cooped up with an infant.
Her husband reached the house before her, but let her precede him inside. Di took a deep breath of the mingled scents of something savoury roasting in the oven, cinnamon and sugar.
“Oh, it’s so good to be here,” she murmured, as he closed the door behind them. “It always smells so good.”
“Help yourselves to coffee,” Helen called, through the doorway. “There’s a container of cookies on the table.”
“Thank you!” Diana answered her, then turned to her husband. “See? I told you there’d be plenty of cookies.”
Mart began fixing coffee for both of them. “But are there sufficient?” he asked.
It was all she could do not to snort. “It’s the size of a breadbox!” She peeked inside the lid. “And it’s full to the brim.”
“I’m very hungry,” he answered, eyes straying from his task.
“Not that hungry,” she countered.
After more than three years of marriage he knew better than to say it aloud, but she could almost read the words, “That’s what you think,” in his face.
A minute or two later, they entered the living room together, each carrying a cup of coffee and a small plate. Diana had chosen just one cookie for her snack. Mart’s plate held three – but probably would have been piled higher if she hadn’t been watching.
Her husband sank into an armchair opposite the Christmas tree and carefully placed his mug on the nearest table. He contemplated the choices before him and, after several moments’ consideration, picked up a pinwheel cookie in festive red and green. He leaned back in his chair to enjoy the treat, but arrested the movement with a cry of dismay.
“What is it?” Helen cried, hurrying into the room with their son in her arms. “Did you burn yourself?”
Mart waved his cookie at the tree. “Just what is that?” he demanded.
“I hope you’re not dropping crumbs everywhere,” his mother scolded and Mart hurriedly placed the cookie back on his plate.
He cast the tree an accusatory look, then straightened his face before turning to Helen. “What happened to our old ornaments?”
“I didn’t throw them out, if that’s what’s worrying you,” she reassured him. “They’re safely packed away in the attic. I just thought it might be time for something new.”
Mart’s brow creased just a little. “It’s not the same.”
Helen jiggled her grandson, who seemed to be half-way into a previously unknown outfit. “You’re grown up, now, Mart. And there are other people to consider. Aren’t there, sweetheart?”
Before he could answer, she whisked the baby away again, presumably to finish changing him.
Diana tried to assume a sympathetic look. She remembered quite well the feelings evoked by missing her own Christmas traditions when they stayed here the first Christmas after they married. But his outraged expression seemed just a little too comical to be real. Unable to show quite as much wifely concern as the occasion demanded, she walked over to examine the tree more closely.
“What, exactly, is wrong with it?” she asked, only partly turning to him. “I thought it looked beautiful.”
He waved the observation away with a frown. “What does it matter how it looks? We never worried about that before. And you very well know my attitude to the trees the decorators do at your parents’ and Manor House. Our tree is supposed to be personal. Eclectic, perhaps; even chaotic, but filled with meaning and individuality.”
She nodded and unhooked one of the new ornaments, a bird made from embroidered felt. “I think Honey made these.” She held it out to him to show his own name stitched on the reverse. “I think these are very personal.”
He took it from her and grudgingly nodded. “Okay. I guess that probably counts as personal. But those baubles? You can’t tell me they’re personal. They’re just shiny balls of red and white glass.”
“They’re adorable,” Di answered, picking off one of these as well. She gazed at it curiously, running her fingers over its surface. “And I don’t think they’re glass.”
“They’re papier-mâché,” her mother-in-law supplied, re-entering the room with a fully dressed baby Sam. “The reindeer are hand-painted, too. I chose them specially so that there would be nothing breakable.”
Mart’s gaze snapped to his small son. “But he’s not even crawling, yet. How could he possibly break anything?”
A flash of hurt crossed Helen’s face, suppressed in an instant, but unmistakeable nonetheless.
“I think that’s very thoughtful,” Diana hurried to reassure her. “Because heaven knows there are enough people around here who might break something and I’d hate for him to find a fragment of broken ornament on the floor. He might not be crawling, but he does roll. And what an adorable outfit!”
Helen smiled and the topic of the tree dropped. But even as she admired the new clothes, which really did look unbelievably cute in her opinion, Diana took note of her husband’s silence and the expression on his face. She hadn’t yet gotten to the bottom of the issue, she could tell.
The next few days flew past, filled with visits and visitors, and the problem of Mart’s reaction to the Christmas tree slipped out of Diana’s mind. She did not think of it again until Tuesday evening, when the pair of newly-weds who would be staying at Manor House arrived in Sleepyside and made their way down the hill to the farm.
“Brr! It’s colder out there than I thought,” Trixie pronounced, as she entered the house. “Maybe we shouldn’t have walked down, only it looked so nice out.”
“It’s lovely and warm in here,” Jim replied, as they entered the living room where Helen, Peter, Mart, Diana and Sam were enjoying the fire. “We’ll soon warm up again.”
In the jumble of greetings that followed, one moment caught Diana’s attention. Just as Mart had, Trixie stopped short when she saw the tree. But instead of the near-outrage Mart displayed, Trixie merely appeared mildly surprised. Then she cast her brother an enquiring look. He shrugged in reply and looked away.
Diana’s eyes narrowed as she watched her sister-in-law. Trixie turned away and began a lively conversation with her mother, effectively blocking that line of enquiry for the moment. Mart, his father and Jim stood talking, with Mart’s back to the tree. He held himself a little more stiffly than usual, she noticed, but offered no other clues to what was going on. Diana joined one of the conversations and bided her time.
Her opportunity came a little later when she found herself in one-on-one conversation with Trixie.
“There’s something I wanted your opinion on,” she told her friend. “Come with me to the guest room.”
Trixie followed along willingly. Once inside the room, Di almost slammed the door shut.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. At Trixie’s look of confusion, she clarified, “You. Mart. The Christmas tree.”
“It looks really nice. I told Moms so.”
“That doesn’t answer the question!”
“I’m not sure what you wanted me to say.” Trixie glanced around. “Moms sure has changed a lot of things to get ready for the baby, hasn’t she?”
Slowly, Diana nodded. “I didn’t mean to put her to so much extra work.”
Trixie stared at her. “She’s loving this. She doesn’t think it’s work.”
Di nodded again, accepting the truth of the words. “So, you’re really not going to tell me what’s going on? Neither you nor Mart?”
“As far as I can see, nothing is going on,” Trixie answered, while not quite looking at Di. “So, are we done here? Or do you have more questions?”
“We’re done,” she answered, opening the door. “But I’m not giving up.”
Thursday, 24th December, 2009
Neither Mart nor Trixie had given any more clues over the past couple of days, but Diana’s determination to find out what they had been up to had not abated. Whatever it was, it had discomforted her husband far more than his sister. Mart still seemed less than his usual cheerful self, though he hid it well.
After dinner, they handed the baby over to Helen to care for and settled into the living room for what was fast becoming a tradition for a Christmas Eve Bob-White gathering. Those staying elsewhere arrived all together and soon the room filled with chatter and bursts of laughter.
The seven played games and caught up on news, gradually getting more mellow as the evening wore on. The conversations became quieter and the mood more reflective. Diana cherished this part of the evening which led up to the time when they would go together to Midnight Mass, this year meeting the rest of her family there. The only thing troubling her was that she still did not have an answer to the puzzle.
Into her reflections, Dan dropped a question: “What’s that brown thing there, on the tree?”
Diana caught the chagrin on her husband’s face and the triumph on Trixie’s before she turned in that direction. There did, indeed, appear to be a brown thing nestled in the branches of the tree, right in the middle.
Brian got to his feet and went over to investigate.
“It appears to be a novelty reindeer just like the one Moms asked Mart to remove from the house last Christmas,” he observed, lifting it out. “The kind which dispenses brown, excrement-shaped candy through its rectum.”
Mart cringed. “That’s not the description I would give it.”
His brother smiled and caused the deer to dispense one of its treats into Trixie’s hand, she being the one who sat closest. She tossed it in her mouth with a grin. Honey accepted one rather more demurely as Brian settled back beside her.
“You dared him to put it there, didn’t you, Trixie?” Di accused, trying not to laugh. “That’s why he was so annoyed.”
Trixie’s grin widened. “He told me it would be easy and that no one would ever notice.”
Honey turned and considered the tree. “Usually, it probably would have been, what with all of the different ornaments you usually have, most of them one-of-a-kind, but with this scheme it was bound to stand out more than it usually would.”
“We could fix that,” Dan suggested, snagging one of baby Sam’s lost socks from under the sofa. “If we just add some things all over, it wouldn’t stand out at all.”
He laid the odd sock onto one of the branches, then looked around for other random objects. Honey took up a clean red paper napkin, gently separated the two layers and began to pleat it. Soon, they all had joined in, tucking all manner of small objects here and there: watches, car keys, pens, bits of paper and Honey’s napkin fans.
Last of all, Mart returned the reindeer to its spot. It peeked out between a fan and one of the baubles, only its nose visible. He stood back and admired the effect.
“Much better,” he decided, then sat down where he’d been before.
“Moms will still notice,” Trixie predicted.
“Right now, I don’t care any more,” he answered.
At that moment, a thin wail heralded his son’s approach.
Di glanced at the clock. “Time for a feed, I think.”
Helen entered the room with the baby a minute or two later and let out a heavy sigh. “Just once, I had hoped to have a nicely-decorated tree.”
“You don’t like our improvements?” Dan asked, with just a hint of a smirk.
“Temporary improvements,” Brian added. “I, for one, would like my car keys back fairly soon.”
“Nah. They’re there for the duration,” Dan quipped.
Brian shook his head. “That’s what you think.”
“And Mart, I thought I asked you not to display the pooping deer,” Helen added, casting him a look tinged with disappointment.
“Sorry, Moms,” he replied. “I’ll take it away again soon.”
She thanked him, handed the baby to Diana and returned upstairs.
Trixie’s face broke into a grin. “I just knew that she’d notice.”
“She probably heard us talking about it,” Brian pointed out.
Honey shook her head. “We weren’t that loud. And she was behind a closed door.”
“She knew what to look for,” Jim suggested, “which made it seem like she already knew.”
Diana left them to their debate, knowing that she had a limited amount of time to get her son fed and settled once more before they needed to leave for Mass.
By the time she returned, they had dropped the subject and returned the tree to its previous state – except for the reindeer.
“He can stay there a little longer,” Mart explained, glancing in the direction of the stairs. “Moms isn’t watching right now.”
“But you’ll remember to take him out before morning,” Di urged him.
Her husband smiled. “Of course. I don’t want to anger Moms on Christmas morning. Just think of all the wonderful things she might withhold from me if I did!”
Diana shook her head. “Your mother would do no such thing and you know it.”
“I do know it.” He drew her closer. “You don’t need to say it. I know I should never have taken that dare from Trixie. And I shouldn’t have been so upset when I knew it was going to go wrong. I just had a sudden suspicion that I’d been set up.”
“You thought Trixie knew that your mother was going to decorate differently this year?”
He shrugged. “I did at the time, but I don’t any more.” Then he sighed. “But even if she hadn’t decorated differently, I think Trixie was right anyway: Moms would have noticed. It’s what mothers do.”
Di’s gaze strayed off towards the guest room, where their son slept. “Do you think I’ll be able to do that, too, someday?”
He smiled. “Undoubtedly. And I can’t wait to see it.”
The End
Merry Christmas, Mary! I hope you enjoyed this rather belated sequel to the last Christmas story I wrote for you. Hugs!
Author’s notes: This story was written for the annual Jix authors’ Secret Santa for the lovely Mary N. (Dianafan). Mary has edited for me for many years now and put up with all of my wanderings off into stories outside of what she would probably choose to read herself. So, when it looked like I would have time to choose a second recipient, I knew who to choose right away.
A very big thank you to Fannie (Jedi1ant), who did a lightning-fast edit for me after I left this story to the very last minute.
Please note: Trixie Belden is a registered trademark of Random House Publishing. This site is in no way associated with Random House and no profit is being made from these pages.