LITMIR.BIZ

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existence. A job might do wonders for the doldrums she often suffered, and hopefully tire her enough to make her sleep better. At the very least, she would have something to think about besides the Fanon family.

      Lucas broke into her somber thoughts. “Ready for Christmas, Andrea? It’s not far off now, you know.”

      Andrea stuck her shovel into the snow and then leaned on it. She was neither ready for Christmas nor thrilled that the holiday season was upon her. Looking at Lucas’s pleasant face, ruddy from the cold, she wondered how to answer his question. He knew very little of her background, mere bits and pieces that she had thought were safe enough to pass on. One brief conversation had been about the death of her mother.

      She fell back on that. “With Mother gone, I’m afraid I’m not feeling very much holiday cheer, Lucas.”

      He stopped shoveling and conveyed embarrassment by clearing his throat. “Course you’re not. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

      Guilt struck Andrea. Sandra had rarely spent Christmas with her. Instead, she was off to the Bahamas, or Bermuda, or somewhere else elegant and sunny, with one man or another. Andrea’s Christmases had usually been spent with some of Sandra’s friends or with servants. That was during her childhood, of course. Once she was old enough to make her own decisions, she chose which of her own friends with whom she wanted to celebrate the holiday.

      The truth was that Christmas simply didn’t excite her. It never had.

      But it seemed important to Lucas, and he, too, was alone. His only offspring was a son living in Los Angeles, an extremely successful plastic surgeon, happily married, according to Lucas, and too busy to come home for the holidays.

      “Lucas, do you have any plans for Christmas Day?” she asked.

      He looked off into the distance, appearing wistful to Andrea. “I’ll probably do what I usually do, drop in on a few friends.”

      “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

      His head came around. “I don’t want to impose, Andrea.”

      “You wouldn’t be imposing. You’d be doing me a favor. I’ve been planning to cook a turkey with all the trimmings, and eating it alone wouldn’t be any fun.” She’d been planning no such thing, but once out of her mouth, it seemed like the best idea she’d had in a long time.

      A smile broke out on Lucas’s face. “Since you put it that way, yes, I’d love having Christmas dinner with you. Thanks for the invite.”

      Andrea smiled, too. “You’re very welcome. Hey, guess what? I’m suddenly looking forward to Christmas.” She realized it was true and smiled again as she started shoveling. She would even buy Lucas a present, nothing that would embarrass him because he didn’t have one for her. Just some little thing she could put under the tree.

      A tree? she thought with some amazement. My goodness, she really was getting into the holiday spirit, wasn’t she? Well, why not? She and Lucas could have a very nice day together, and neither of them would be alone and despondent.

      She thought of Lucas’s son, Dr. Shepler Wilde, who was too busy to visit his aging father on Christmas, and snorted derisively. He was probably a self-centered, inconsiderate, better-than-thou jerk.

      Maybe she could give Lucas a merry Christmas. It wouldn’t completely make up for his son’s negligence, but it would help.

      

      By that evening, Andrea had to admit she was really looking forward to Christmas Day. If nothing else, planning a holiday dinner took her mind off the Fanons. Ready for bed, with her dark auburn hair damp from a shower and wearing her nightgown and robe, she curled up in her favorite chair with a pad and pen to prepare a grocery list. Even though she wouldn’t be shopping for the ingredients for another week or so, she liked the idea of early organization.

      The list grew quickly, but after a while she had to stop to think about it. As she did, her gaze drifted around her cozy living room and ultimately fell on a black-bound notebook tucked into a small bookcase along with several dozen books, all of which she had purchased and read since coming to Rocky Ford. Her thoughts immediately turned from her grocery list to the contents of that notebook. Everything she knew about the Fanon family was in it, including handwritten notes describing her own observations and every newspaper article mentioning the Fanons she had run across in the Rocky Ford News, which she had neatly clipped and pasted on various pages. Her last entry was a newspaper accounting of Candace Fanon and Burke Mallory’s wedding. Burke had invited her to attend the affair, and she had wanted to go very badly. But she’d stayed away, knowing how uncomfortable she would be with Burke aware of her lurking in corners and spying on the Fanons, as she had done on several previous occasions when she’d been able to hide in a crowd. Then, however, no one had known who she was.

      That notebook disturbed her, blatantly reminding her that she was on the outside looking in, yet she couldn’t get rid of it. It was the most detailed documentation of any portion of her life, and destroying it would be like destroying a piece of herself.

      Sighing with a profound sense of unrest, she forced herself to concentrate on Christmas dinner again.

      

      For someone who had initially tried to ignore the holiday season, Andrea became very involved in it. Happy about it, too. She shopped for Lucas’s present in Rocky Ford’s stores, and enjoyed seeing the decorations the town had put up. Several businesses had outside speakers playing Christmas music, and every window in every shop was bright with holiday displays.

      On impulse, she went into the drugstore and spent an hour picking out Christmas cards to send to the friends she had left behind in California. Leaving without a goodbye hadn’t bothered her at the time; her mind had been overloaded with grief over her mother’s death and the shocks that had come after. But, in retrospect, her hasty, unannounced departure seemed terribly rude, particularly so with the man she had been dating, Hale Jackson. Not that theirs had been a serious relationship. Hale was an aspiring actor, as vain as they came and too involved in his career to give any woman top billing. But he knew a lot of people and had been fun to go out with. She picked out an especially nice card for Hale. She also bought a load of decorations for the tree she planned to purchase when she was finished with her other shopping.

      It surprised Andrea to walk past the Men’s Western Wear store a few minutes later and see a sign in the window among a nativity scene and various Christmas decorations. It said, in bold print, Under New Management.

      Lola Sheridan, Charlie’s niece, must have sold her store, Andrea thought with a small frown. The Fanons managed to always stay one step ahead of her, forever altering or changing their status in some way. Those changes shouldn’t disturb her peace of mind, but they did. The Fanons seemed to be a close-knit family, and maybe that was why she couldn’t bring herself to barge in and boldly pronounce herself to be one of them.

      Of course, she’d known nothing of Charlie’s family when she first got to town, and she’d done no bold announcing then, either. The truth, bitter as it was to accept, was that she was a spineless wimp when it came to Charlie. And it hurt because she wanted to meet the father she’d never known so much she ached from it. She wanted him to open his heart to her, to welcome her into the family.

      But would he?

      Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, she hurried on past the Men’s Western Wear store, returned to her car parked down the street and got in.

      But she wouldn’t let herself rush home to lick her wounds, as she had done so many times in the past months. Rather, she bravely lifted her chin and drove to the vacant lot on which someone was selling Christmas trees.

      

      The area had gone through several thaws and snowfalls since that first storm, and Andrea’s yard was patchy with old snow and bare ground. It pleased her to see softly falling snow on Christmas Day.

      By noon, she had everything well under control for a oneo’clock dinner. She had told Lucas they would eat early, watch old movies on TV, which

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