Rituals of the Season

CHAPTER 23

If a lady’s domestic duties require her attention for several hours in the morning, whilst her list of acquaintances is large, and she has frequent morning calls, it is best to dress for callers before breakfast.

Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

Dwight hadn’t been kidding when he said “first thing tomorrow.” I was still in my robe and gown and had barely plugged in the coffeemaker when he drove into the yard. The back of his truck was filled with greenery and three red-cheeked children.

I poured coffee for both of us and tried not to show my dismay when he brought in the pine tree. It was tall enough, it was wide enough, but when he set it up in the cast-iron stand his mother had provided, I could see right through it.

“Nice,” I said bravely and handed him a steaming mug.

“Oh, we’re just getting started.” He glanced at his ragtag crew. “I did sort of promise them hot chocolate, though.”

“Three hot chocolates coming right up.” I pulled milk from the refrigerator and packets of cocoa mix from the cabinet. “And how about some waffles?”

While I puttered in the kitchen, Dwight and the kids transformed the tree. He had brought along the thickest pine branches he could find. The cut ends went down into the stand’s reservoir of water and were held in place with picture wire guyed out from the trunk of the tree. The boys went back and forth lugging in more branches, and Mary Pat washed her grubby little hands in the kitchen sink to set the table for me. By the time I put waffles, syrup, and a half-pound of bacon on the table, the “tree” was almost as thick and full as anything you could buy at a farmer’s market, and the room smelled like a pine grove.

“You really did build a tree,” I marveled.

After breakfast, we strung the lights and loaded the branches with all the ornaments the bar association had given us.

“Miss Deborah, what does Kama Sutra mean?” asked Mary Pat, holding up the angel my cousin Reid had embellished.

“It’s Hindu for ‘Merry Christmas,’” I said.

Dwight laughed and Mary Pat gave him a suspicious look.

I hastily asked Cal, “Did you see your room yet?”

“No,” he said, wary again.

Pointing toward the hallway, I said, “It’s down there at the end. The midnight blue one. Go see how you like it.”

I deliberately stayed where I was so that they could explore without self-consciousness. A few minutes later, we heard laughter and tumbling.

“Y’all better not be bouncing on that bed,” Dwight called.

Silence. Then giggles and the thumps began again.

“Thanks,” Dwight said.

“For what?”

He waved his hand across the messy table and the needle-strewn floor. “For all this. For making it easy for Cal.”

“He’s an easy kid to like,” I said lightly. “And the broom and dustpan are in the pantry there.”

I had loaded the dishwasher and the floor was free of woodsy pine litter when the children came back down the hall.

“It’s very nice,” Cal said politely.

“But there aren’t any sheets or blankets on his bed,” said Mary Pat.

“I know. I thought we could drive over to Dobbs and let you pick them out,” I told Cal.

“Can Mary Pat and Jake come, too?”

“If it’s okay with Miss Kate,” I said.

“And you come, too, Dad?”

“If it’s okay with Miss Deb’rah,” said Dwight.

Kate was over at Minnie’s when I chased her down by phone, and she was more than willing for me to take the kids off her hands so that she and Minnie and April could work out logistics for the reception.

“And don’t worry about helping us this morning,” she said. “We’ve got a crew here ready to go.”

Ninety minutes later, we stood in the bed linen section of a huge outlet store on the edge of Dobbs. We had looked at a dozen different sets of kid-friendly designs and Cal had narrowed his choices to either dinosaurs or footballs when Dwight’s pager went off. It was work, of course.

“Sorry,” he said when he’d called in, “but I’m going to have to go see what this is about.”

Since we’d driven over in my car, we all went out and piled in and Dwight drove to the courthouse.

Several officers were milling around a white SUV in the courthouse parking lot when we got there.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” said the middle-aged black man who owned the car. “I drove down to Georgia Friday night to see about my mother. She had a heart attack and was in the hospital. When it hit, I thought maybe it was a little rock thrown up from the road, but my brother took one look and said, ‘Uh-uh.’ Then I got back to Raleigh last night and my wife told me they were asking on TV if anybody’s car got shot about then, and—well, take a look.”

There in the left rear window was a neat bullet hole. All the other windows were intact.

Dwight looked at Mayleen Richards. “Get Denning out here,” he told her.

A few minutes later, Percy Denning hurried out to join us while his assistant drove the crime scene van over to the SUV.

“This is probably going to take a while,” said Dwight. “If you want to go on back to the farm, I’ll have someone drive me out.”

“Da-ad!” Cal protested.

“Sorry, buddy, but I have to stay.”

“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “We’ll go back and finish deciding which sheets, maybe do a little Christmas shopping and grab some lunch, then we’ll swing back here before we head home. If you can turn loose earlier, call me.”

“I really like Chinese,” said Mary Pat.

“Me too!” said Jake.

“Okay,” said Cal.