A Family Christmas. Carrie Alexander

at her eye.

      “I say it all the time,” the girl encouraged.

      “Does it work?”

      Her face puckered doubtfully.

      Rose blurted, “Zipperzap.”

      “Better?”

      “Yeah.” She blinked the tears away. “It worked.”

      “Princess Ella Umbrella Pumpkinella Fantabuzella says zipperzap to make her wishes come true.”

      Rose didn’t get children. “Uh. Sure.”

      The girl came closer, stepping off the mown field into the underbrush. “It’s a very good story. You should read it.”

      “Maybe I will.”

      “The liberry has all the Princess Ella books.” The girl stared. “You go to the liberry?”

      “Yeah, I do.”

      “I saw you there. But I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.” The girl came closer, though she stayed on the other side of the sapling that had struck Rose. She was thin and pale and seemed very delicate, almost weightless. An unzipped pink windbreaker flapped on her small body and her pants had cartoon characters on them. She wore frilled anklets under her pink jelly sandals. Clean, tidy and quiet. Not much like the boisterous kids who came tearing into the Buck Stop, the only type of youngsters Rose usually encountered. Families didn’t stay at Maxine’s Cottages.

      “My name is Rose.”

      The girl’s eyes were blue marbles. “Lucy,” she said in a whisper.

      “Hi, Lucy. Nice to meet you. But you’d better go back where you came from now.”

      “My dad said I could play in the woods if I wanted.”

      “Then I’ll go.” Rose looked through the screen of yellowing poplar leaves as runners approached. The boys of the basketball team wouldn’t be running outdoors much longer. Soon all their time would be spent in the gym, where watching Danny was impossible for her.

      Rose faded back. “Is your father nearby?” she asked Lucy.

      Lucy nodded and pointed toward the open field. “Coach Grant.”

      Of course. Rose remembered that she’d seen him with a little girl. She just hadn’t paid a lot of attention to faces or names, tending to be occupied with her own concerns whenever he was around.

      Rose winced to herself. Lucy would tell Evan about her encounter with the woman in the woods. Asking the girl not to say anything would make the situation even worse.

      She had come here with a cover story—the usual, sketching in the outdoors, which wasn’t even a lie. But it was best to leave immediately, even if she hadn’t managed to get a long look at Danny. She could wait. Good training for the years ahead, when she’d be plunged back into the void of no contact at all.

      Sneakered feet pounded the track. Rose drew deeper into the woods. Above the heavy breathing of the laboring runners, she heard Evan Grant’s voice, urging them to keep up the pace. He was a good coach, even-tempered, disciplined, encouraging, yet still intense enough to rally the team at game time.

      “Where’s your mom?” Rose asked Lucy after the runners had gone by. She couldn’t remember there being a Mrs. Grant at the games. A proper citizen recognized every face in small-town Alouette, but Rose kept to herself.

      And skulked.

      Lucy had caught at her bottom lip with a row of small white baby teeth. One gap. Her narrow shoulders sloped. “My mom’s in heaven.”

      Rose gulped. “Sorry.”

      Lucy’s shiny lip pooched out a little. “She’s there for a very long time. Daddy says she won’t ever come back.”

      There was a pause between them, awkward on Rose’s side.

      “No, she won’t.” Rose had no talent for talking to children. She hoped it was okay to tell the girl the truth. “My dad is in heaven, too.” Most folks would say Black Jack had gone straight to hell, but even Rose knew that Lucy didn’t need to hear that particular truth.

      “Then he could be an angel, like my mom.”

      Rose smiled at the thought of Black Jack in flowing white robes. She’d never seen him wear anything but worn work clothes topped by a smelly fishing vest and hat. Soap couldn’t touch his grime. A halo was out of the question.

      Lucy had followed Rose deeper into the trees. She pointed. “What’s that?”

      “My sketchbook.”

      “I have one, too. But it’s in my backpack. I left it in the car. My baby-sitter is getting a root canal. That’s an operation on a tooth.”

      “Oh.”

      Lucy’s head tilted. “Do you draw nice pictures?”

      “I guess so.”

      The girl exhaled expectantly, looking at Rose with her shining eyes.

      Rose knelt near a fallen log so old it had gone all soft and mossy. She put her sketchbook on it and opened to the first page. “Would you like to see?”

      “Yes, please.” Lucy came close, standing beside Rose as she flipped through the pages. The book contained ink drawings, pencil sketches and small watercolors of outdoor scenes. She’d made a number of detailed studies of leaves, flowers, birds, clouds. Amateur stuff.

      No princesses or flying dragons to delight a child. Rose’s dreams were as mundane as her reality, but she’d captured on paper the only beauty she knew. The only goodness that was everlasting.

      “Pretty,” Lucy said, stopping Rose at a watercolor of the climbing rose vines that blanketed one side of her little stone house. “I like pink flowers.”

      “They’re roses.” The painting did have a fairy-tale quality, she realized. Misleading as that was.

      “Like your name.”

      “Yes. Wild roses.” They clung to the stones, somehow surviving the harsh winters to return each spring. She’d painted the cottage scene just last week, knowing the roses wouldn’t last much longer. On impulse, she tore the page from the book. “Would you like to have it?”

      Lucy made a small sound of pleasure. “Thank you very much.”

      “Put it in your pocket so you don’t lose it.” Rose helped Lucy slide the small watercolor into the kangaroo pocket of her windbreaker, thinking too late about her father’s reaction. Well, he’d have to live with it. She’d done nothing wrong.

      “I wish I could draw like you,” Lucy said.

      “Keep practicing.” That sounded about right, like something a wise adult would say to a child. “And try this—” Rose pulled a pen out of her pocket and flipped the sketchbook to a clean page. “I always work from nature.” She plucked a leaf from a maple sapling and laid it on the paper, then gave Lucy the pen. “Trace the leaf.”

      Lucy dropped to her knees in the mulch. Leaning over the book with a look of utter concentration, she carefully drew around the leaf. “Is that right?”

      “That’s a tracing. But now your fingers know what to do and you can draw the leaf on your own.” Rose tapped an empty space on the page. “Go ahead and try it.”

      Lucy put the pen nib to the paper, squinting hard at the leaf.

      “Uh-uh. Not that way.” Rose covered the leaf and the tracing with one hand. “Draw it from the picture of a leaf in your head. Your fingers will know how.”

      Lucy was doubtful. With her small face all scrunched up, she drew a fair approximation of the leaf. She studied the lopsided sketch. “It’s not as good as the other one.”

      “It’s