Connor began playing, and the music filled the room. As it did, several of the residents found handkerchiefs from their purses or pockets and dabbed their eyes.
“‘Silent night, holy night . . .’” The Baxter Bunch sang in unison in a key that was close to right. And all around the room the residents sang along.
John subtly reached for Elaine’s hand, and because of the closeness of their group, he was sure no one else noticed. It felt right, here with so much emotion filling one room, that he could connect this way with the woman who had become very special to him. John looked at the faces of the residents around him. He could only imagine the stories each one of them had to tell. Stories of lives lived and children grown and love lost.
And maybe—for some of them—stories of learning to love again.
Ashley shifted Devin to her other hip and kissed his cheek. She could barely sing.
The residents watched them with rapt attention, bobbing their heads to the slow, steady rhythm of “Silent Night,” happy tears streaming down some of their faces. In their eyes was a shining sweetness that said somehow the song had transported them back to long-ago Christmases when they were young and vibrant, surrounded by people they loved—the way the Baxter family was surrounded now.
“‘Sleep in heavenly peace. . . .’” Connor’s voice cracked as the note went high, but no one laughed. No one in the audience seemed to notice. This wasn’t a performance; it was a privilege to spend time with these older people, men and women with wisdom and experience that here in this place almost always went untapped.
Ashley stroked Devin’s downy hair with her free hand. The residents reminded her so much of her dear friends at the Sunset Hills Adult Care Home. She still kept in touch with Lu, the owner. Of the residents that Ashley had cared for at Sunset Hills, only Helen was still alive. She was less lucid now than ever, the short, brilliant moments of clarity with her daughter, Sue, forever gone.
When they started the second verse of “Silent Night,” Ashley focused on the members of the audience. At a far table was a couple—one of only a few in attendance. They had to be in their late eighties or early nineties, and they wore matching red sweaters. They sat side by side, their arms linked. Halfway through the stanza, the woman rested her head on the man’s shoulder.
Sad, Ashley thought. Her parents would never share a moment like this. No matter how old her father lived to be, he wouldn’t spend these quiet, reflective years in the company of the wife he so dearly loved. Ashley glanced at her father and Elaine. They were standing close enough together to be holding hands. But Ashley doubted they were that far along in their feelings for each other.
And even if they were, she could do nothing about it. She didn’t want to do anything. Her father had a right to his own life. Landon had been helping her figure that out. When she talked with Elaine earlier tonight, she’d felt good. The woman was kind and pleasant, and in that way she reminded Ashley of her mother. But she was also very different. She kept to herself more and said less.
Still, she deserved Ashley’s friendship and respect, because that’s how the Baxter family treated other people. Every one of them missed Mom, especially at this time of the year. But a person couldn’t lie in bed the rest of his life and will himself to die of grief. Life was for the living. Landon had told her that also.
Next to her, Landon’s voice was rich and on key. Just being in his presence made her feel blessed and humbly grateful. Their relationship so easily could’ve wound up differently. It made her think about sweet Irvel, the resident at Sunset Hills who had most affected her. The woman had lost her husband, Hank, but she lived every day as if he were just down the road fishing with the boys. He might’ve died, but Irvel’s love for him, her belief in his presence, never did.
It was the way Ashley wanted to spend her life, loving Landon the way Irvel had loved Hank.
Landon seemed to notice she was thinking about him. He leaned in near her ear and whispered, “You have the most beautiful hair. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Hmmm.” She smiled through fresh tears. “I was thinking of her too.” Ashley focused on a woman who could’ve been Irvel. Dear Irvel had suffered from Alzheimer’s and could easily forget what she’d said from one minute to the next. She had a fascination with Ashley’s hair and commented on it sometimes eight times in an hour. It was something Landon had teased Ashley about when she had worked at Sunset Hills.
Devin had a pacifier in his mouth, but he took it out now and waved it at the audience. His joyful cries blended with the closing verse of the song, and several of the people clapped in response, delighted at his happy sounds.
Only then did Ashley spot the white-haired man in the wheelchair. He sat near the back of the cozy dining area. He was dressed in a pale blue sweater, one that hung slightly askew on his shoulders. He was alone, and as they finished the song, he wasn’t crying quiet tears. He was sobbing.
Landon gently elbowed her and nodded toward the older man. She told Landon with her eyes that she’d seen the same thing. For the next thirty minutes as they sang, Ashley couldn’t take her eyes off the old guy. What was his story? Why was he so affected by their songs, their presence? Maybe he had regrets or family who never visited. Ashley had no idea, but she was determined to find out.
When they finished singing, they went into the second phase of their visit. The residents of Knollwood couldn’t accept cookies. But they could take a hug or a handshake.
As Connor played the final notes of “Frosty the Snowman,” the group fanned out into the dining room and made sure each resident received some personal time. Cole, Maddie, Hayley, and Jessie were wonderful, making the rounds and talking to everyone in the room.
After visiting with a few ladies at the closest table, Ashley passed Devin to her father and took Landon’s hand. Together they worked their way to the back of the room, where the frail-looking man in the pale blue sweater sat alone, still sobbing in a silent, gut-wrenching way.
Ashley reached him first. She pulled up a chair beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Hi. I’m Ashley.” She looked at Landon. “This is my husband, Landon.”
The man seemed suddenly self-conscious about his tears and the way his nose was running. He fumbled around the table in front of him until he had hold of a napkin. Then he wiped at his tears and blew his nose. “I’m Eddie. Eddie Buckley.” He held out a shaky hand and greeted each of them. Then he pointed to his belt buckle.
Ashley wasn’t sure if the man was confused or maybe delusional, but she and Landon both looked at the buckle. Engraved on it was an insignia Ashley didn’t recognize.
Landon figured it out first. “You’re a fireman!” He patted the man’s shoulder. “Right? Is that it?”
Ashley loved how the man’s face lit up. “Yes. A fireman.” He put his hand over his chest. “I’m a fireman.”
Landon pulled up a chair on the other side of Eddie. “Bloomington Fire Department? On Fourth Street?”
“Yes, sir. Hired in 1932.”
“I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of changes.”
Eddie tried to speak. He opened his mouth, but his eyes welled up again.
Ashley changed the subject. “How long have you lived at Knollwood, Eddie?”
A concerned look filled his face. He looked around the room. “You know where I live? Where the roses are? On that street with the roses?”
Ashley and Landon exchanged a look. Ashley knew how to handle a situation like this. It was exactly the sort of thing she’d done at Sunset Hills. “Yes, Eddie.” She patted his hand. “I know that place. Is that where you live?”
“Yes.” His features relaxed. “On Fourth Street. Where the roses are.”
Landon mouthed to Ashley, “The fire station.”
And then she understood too. Eddie thought he lived at the fire station. Ashley noticed that the rest of the group was still visiting with the residents. She was glad. She wasn’t ready to leave Eddie Buckley just yet.
“Yeah, I know that place, Eddie. Tell me about the fires.” Landon leaned in close, and it was clear that he didn’t want to miss a word.
“First big one was a blaze at the Indiana Theater. Spread to the jewelers and the sporting goods store.” Eddie was more composed now. “Lots of damage, but we saved the building. Did a good job.”
“I heard about that.”
“And then February 6, 1935.” His words were slow and not altogether clear. But the memory of these fires was clearly vivid. “Big fire at the Monroe County Jail.” He narrowed his eyes. “You heard of that one?”
“The roof collapsed.” Landon knew his history.
Ashley sat mesmerized. Except for the decades that separated them, Landon and Eddie could’ve been colleagues. Brothers from the same fraternity, anchored at the same fire department.
“Roof fell and five of us ran for our lives.” Eddie shook at the memory. “Wicked fire. I was one of the five who got out. Saved our lives but lost the building that time.”
Landon’s tone grew softer. “So . . . you remember the Greyhound wreck . . . 1950, I think.”
Eddie lowered his brow, and gradually his mouth hung open and he started crying again. Deep, silent sobs shook him, and he held up his hand toward Landon as if he desperately wanted to say something.
Ashley considered changing the subject, but the man seemed so determined to speak.
Finally Eddie swallowed a few times and found his voice. “August 10 . . . 1949. Bus crashed and caught fire. I was there and . . .” His nose began to run again, and he fumbled for his napkin. “I had one foot inside the bus . . . one foot.” He squeezed his eyes shut and sobbed a few more times. When he opened his eyes, it was as if he were seeing the fire happening before his eyes once more. “I heard the girl . . . crying, screaming for help. I couldn’t reach her . . . couldn’t get through the flames.”
Landon helped Eddie use the napkin on his wet face. “Sixteen people died.”
“Sixteen.” Eddie squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, clearly devastated. “I can . . . I can still hear her screaming.”
Again Ashley was amazed. The man didn’t know where he lived, but he could recount with vivid detail the events and dates of fires that had happened half a century ago. In her experience, this was always true. Whatever had made up the days of a person’s life stayed with them in their final season. She was grateful for Landon’s interest in the man, touched by the way he took time to listen and validate the old guy’s heroics, his worth. Because that was all Eddie lived for now.
The stories and the belt buckle.
And of course, when people were passionate about their work—the way firefighters were—they were bound to spend their days reliving each call. Fighting fires wasn’t a job so much as it was a calling, and Ashley could picture Landon like this far, far down the road when he was ninety-five—recounting the apartment fire where he’d saved the life of a little boy but nearly died in the process or the clean-up efforts at Ground Zero, where he’d spent three months looking for the body of his buddy Jalen.
Ashley could only pray that when that day came, she’d be sitting beside Landon, holding his hand. That when Cole and Devin were grown with families of their own and time had stolen enough from her that she needed a place like Knollwood or Sunset Hills, Landon would be with her. And at Christmastime, when carolers came with little children, she and Landon would watch through teary eyes as they sang “Silent Night,” and Landon might share his fire stories with a young gun the way Eddie had.
If so, Ashley was sure of one thing. She would be hanging on every word. Because these were the years they would remember.
As the group left Knollwood for a series of caroling and cookie stops at the homes of their various friends, she thanked God that when it mattered most, she and Landon were passionate about things that would stay with them forever.
Their faith, their family . . . and for Landon, the fires.
All his life Dayne had dreamed of a Christmas like this one. He had worked on films with a Christmas theme and pretended to be part of a family with a wife and children and a Christmas tree. But he’d never experienced it firsthand. Never had a Christmas tree except the artificial one he put up each year in the living room of his Malibu beach home, never gone caroling, and never attended a Christmas Eve service. He certainly never imagined sharing Christmas dinner with the family he’d seen walking across the hospital parking lot that long-ago summer day, back when even finding these people seemed impossible.
He and Katy walked into the Bloomington Community Church Christmas Eve service, part of a group of almost twenty members of his family, and Dayne was completely captured. First the caroling last night and now this. Pew after pew of families entered the church—all together to celebrate the birth of Christ.
The way it should be celebrated.
Dayne kept his head low as they walked in. He’d been to church with Katy every Sunday since the one after Thanksgiving, and they always found a quiet spot near the back. He’d gotten a few double takes from people, but no one had stopped him or talked to him about his celebrity. He’d had no requests for autographs.
“I could get used to this,” he whispered to Katy. “I feel almost normal.”
Katy grinned at him. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Dayne had his arm around her, and as they filed into a pew near the middle of the building, he could feel his heart practically bursting inside him—to be surrounded by his sisters and brother and their families, by a father who had loved him all his life without his ever knowing it.
As they sat down, as the soft refrains of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” played and the candles across the front of the church flickered in reverent wonder, Dayne remembered one Christmas in particular. He had been fourteen years old, too old to take part in the annual Christmas pageant at the Indonesian missionary boarding school and too young to attend the teenage Christmas party on the first floor of the west dorm wing. Neither his parents nor Bob Asher’s parents made it home that Christmas weekend.
He and Bob were the same age, and that year—feeling like they didn’t fit in anywhere—they’d found a couple of old chairs outside the cafeteria and spent Christmas Eve looking at the starry sky and dreaming about what Christmas might be like.
“I picture lots of red and green,” Bob had said. “With a candlelit Christmas Eve service, the kind in the movies.”
“Yeah.” Dayne had watched a shooting star. “I picture family. Mom, Dad, and a bunch of kids around a Christmas tree. There’re presents and music and homemade cookies, but none of that matters as much as the people.” He turned to Bob. “Know what I mean?”
“A whole family. Sisters and brothers and aunts and stuff.”
Dayne had smiled. “It’ll never happen. But it’s the Christmas I like to imagine.”
The memory faded, and Dayne wove his fingers between Katy’s. “I dreamed about this once.”
Katy slid a little closer to him. “Recently?”
“When I was fourteen.” How could he ever have known back then that one day the dream would come true? Back when he had no connection with any family other than the two parents who only sometimes made it back from the jungle at Christmastime?
Being here made Dayne wonder how he’d ever go back to Hollywood.
Beside him, Katy whispered, “Isn’t it beautiful?”
He studied her, and he saw the blonde small-town children’s theater director standing in the middle of a group of kids, the concern on her face as she walked with him around Lake Monroe and warned him about Kabbalah, and the tenderness in her eyes the first time they kissed. He could see her in the occasional flash of lightning, with the electricity out at the Flanigans’ house, and lying beneath a dusty old Christmas tree prop on the stage at the Bloomington theater, minutes before he proposed. And here, in the glow of soft candles and Christmas wreaths surrounded by the Baxter family.
“Yes.” He smiled at her. “It’s the most beautifu
l thing I’ve ever seen.”
At the crack of dawn, the Flanigan boys scampered up the stairs to Katy’s apartment and knocked on the door. “Wake up, Katy! Merry Christmas!”
She’d lived with them long enough to know the routine. Without so much as a look in the mirror, she found her bathrobe and slippers and met the boys in the stairwell. “Let’s go! Where’re Bailey and Connor?”
Ricky looked disgusted. “We woke ’em up, but they said, ‘Five more minutes! Go get Katy first!’” He glanced at his brothers. “On Christmas morning? Who wants sleep?”
The five of them hurried downstairs, through the family room, and up another set of stairs to Bailey’s room. “Merry Christmas! Time to get up!”
Katy smiled at the older kids’ reaction. All six of them had slept in sleeping bags on the floor of Bailey’s room on Christmas Eve. Last night, in keeping with the other part of the tradition, they’d stayed up talking and listening to music until the early morning hours.
Now it was barely seven o’clock; no wonder Bailey and Connor were having trouble waking up. Even so, they sat up and stretched.
“Merry Christmas!” Bailey grinned at them through bleary eyes.
“I keep waiting for you to turn off lights at midnight on Christmas Eve.” Katy sat on the edge of Bailey’s bed. “Silly heads, staying up all night and getting a couple hours of sleep.”
Connor was up now, and in a few minutes he was as hyper and animated as his brothers.
When Bailey was on her feet, she motioned for the others to follow. “Time for the story. Come on.”
Katy loved this part most of all. The fact that these six children—knowing they had presents waiting for them downstairs—would enjoy the idea of heading to their parents’ room first. Because that’s where Jim would read them the Christmas story from the Bible. Jim and Jenny stayed up late every Christmas Eve assembling an air hockey table or bicycle or some other toy and wrapping presents. As per tradition, they slept in sweatpants and T-shirts so they’d be ready whenever the kids woke up in the morning.