She yawned and rolled over, catching sight of the Santa suit in the dimly lit room. She began reconsidering the note she’d discovered in the jacket pocket. Who was Carlette, she wondered, and her daddy? And had Santa brought him safely home?
Her thoughts drifted to her own childhood, when she’d posed a similarly impossible request to the mall Santa she’d visited with her grandmother. Somewhere, maybe in the boxes the movers would bring on Monday, she had a photo that documented that visit. Little Ivy Perkins, age six, with the unfortunate bangs her grandmother had insisted upon styling herself, dressed in an itchy green and white smocked dress with clown-like puffed sleeves.
In the photo, her eyes looked sorrowfully upon the mall Santa, an irritable man with halitosis, who’d laughed uncomfortably at her one and only request. “We’ll see,” he’d said, and then he’d shoved her into the waiting arms of a helper elf who’d given her a broken candy cane and a coloring book.
After her grandmother shelled out the $5.99 for the photo, they’d had dinner at the mall’s food court. Ivy had been allowed to order the most exotic dish she’d ever seen, kung pao chicken, and egg rolls from a steam table. Nana had coffee and a slice of pie.
“What did you ask Santa to bring you for Christmas?” Nana asked.
“It’s a secret,” Ivy had whispered, toying with the syrupy orange chicken.
Her grandmother smiled and patted her hand. “Well, you’ve been a very good girl, so I’m sure whatever it is, Santa will do his best to get it for you.”
She got violently carsick on the way home, and the hated green and white dress had to be thrown away.
On Christmas morning, when her father woke her up and escorted her downstairs to the Christmas tree, Ivy found an American Girl doll with a trunk full of clothes. In between unwrapping gifts, Ivy kept peering toward the front door, hoping and praying that between Mall Santa and Baby Jesus, who was cradled in her grandmother’s china manger scene, her one wish would be granted.
Finally, at dinnertime, she’d figured it out. Nana’s table was set with the good damask cloth and real napkins and the plates with the tiny blue flowers and gold edging that only came out for the holidays. There were candles in the silver candlesticks. But only three plates were set at the table.
“When is Mama coming home?”
Her father exchanged a troubled glance with Nana.
“As soon as she’s better,” Nana said.
It was the last time Ivy had trusted Santa Claus.
Chapter 3
She called Ezra Wheeler first thing in the morning. “There’s no heat,” she announced. “My inspection report said the house had central heating.”
“Good morning to you too,” he said. “The furnace works just fine. But remember, the house has been closed up for months and months.”
“I couldn’t even find a thermostat,” she groused. She was standing in the kitchen, in an admittedly foul mood because she hadn’t packed her coffeemaker.
“It’s at the end of the hallway.”
“Oh.” Her voice was meek. She hadn’t been able to get the Santa note out of her mind. “Thanks. You don’t happen to have the seller’s phone number, do you? I have a couple of questions for him.”
“As a matter of fact, James is leaving town this morning, but he asked if it would be okay if he stopped by this morning to pick up a family photo album,” Ezra said.
“That’d be fine.”
“Also, I can have a truck there tomorrow, to pick up the furniture you want donated.”
“Great. Thanks. And thanks for the wine and the cookies.”
* * *
James Heywood retrieved the photo album from the bookshelf in the back bedroom, and then he showed Ivy where the thermostat was located.
“My in-laws were pretty thrifty people,” he explained. “They didn’t have the central heat installed here until the eighties.”
Ivy was grateful for the stream of warm air now flowing through the floor vents.
“Did Ezra happen to mention the Santa suit I found?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. I’d forgotten all about that. Feel free to donate it with the rest of the old clothes and stuff.”
“You don’t want it? I assumed it was a family heirloom.”
“I guess I’m not very sentimental. The suit belonged to my father-in-law. Big Bob, that’s what everyone in town called him, and Betty Rae, they played Santa and Mrs. Claus all over this part of the North Carolina mountains, at Atkins Department Store, before they closed, and then the VFW and the Elks Lodge, and at the children’s home.”
Ivy handed him the note. “The thing is, I found this in the jacket pocket of the Santa suit. And I was wondering who Carlette was? And her father.”
His face softened as he read the Santa note. “Oh, wow. That’s so sad. I guess maybe this little girl’s daddy was in Vietnam? But I have no idea who these people might be. I didn’t grow up here. My wife was the local.”
“Maybe she knew the family?”
James’s smile faded. “I wish I could ask her. Sandi died two years ago. Breast cancer. She never would sell the house after her parents passed. But now, she’s gone and my kids have no interest in living in this ‘hick town,’ as they call it.”
“To each his own,” Ivy said lightly as she showed him to the front door.
The chicks were awake now and peeping loudly from their cardboard box.
“Are those chickens?” James asked, looking amused.
“Yep.” She left it at that.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You mean, what’s a nice, single, big-city girl like me doing in a hick town like Tarburton?”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
She shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure I know myself. I guess I was ready for a change.”
“Big change, coming from Atlanta to a burg with a population of fifteen hundred people.”
“Blame it on the chickens,” Ivy said.
“Huh?”
“When I was a little girl, my great-aunt lived way out in the country in a little farmhouse. And she had chickens. They’d come and sit on your lap and eat out of your hand. You can’t keep chickens in just any old place, you know. Turns out, there are all kinds of rules. So, when I started house hunting, I decided to find a place where I could keep chickens.”
James gazed out the window. “Betty Rae, my mother-in-law, used to keep chickens, back in the day. There might still be an old coop somewhere out back.”
“It’s on my list of things to check out,” Ivy said. “Thanks again for stopping by.”
He took one last, long, wistful look around the living room. “There are a lot of good memories in this old house. Bob and Betty Rae were wonderful folks. They were mainstays in this community for a lot of years. I hope you’ll love this place as much as they did.”
* * *
She spent the next hour boxing up what seemed like several generations of the Rose family’s clothing to donate to charity. But she didn’t have the heart to donate the Santa suit. It had been special to Bob and Betty Rae Rose, and maybe someday it would be special to someone again. In the meantime, there was no harm in keeping it right here at their former homeplace.