His Christmas Wish by Allie Pleiter

Author:Allie Pleiter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-08-12T18:40:22+00:00

* * *

The following Thursday evening, Emma pulled the door to her house shut and leaned against it with a weary sigh. She understood why they’d moved the preschool board meeting up a week on account of the holiday, but it just felt like piling more onto an already growing workload. Each of the week’s three school days had felt like endless struggles. December tenth, the day of her mother’s death, had come yesterday and left a swath of sadness in its wake. Christmas was now just two weeks away, and the children’s attention spans were fast dissolving while their wiggly energy had begun to jack up. The coming week would be worse, getting progressively crazier as the holiday drew near. Every preschool teacher dreaded the week before Christmas.

I can do this, she told herself. After all, the nativity plans were on schedule. All the costumes had been constructed, and fittings—and in one case, rippings—were well under way. Even a good menagerie of animals had been secured. She would pull this off, if Jake could be counted on to have the set finished in time.

She’d be lying if she said the prospect of her success hinging on Jake didn’t worry her a bit. After all, the library was far behind schedule. Still, the only person putting any urgency on that project was Jake himself. And perhaps Norma, who seemed eager—if not pleased—to watch the responsibilities pile on Emma’s plate. I can handle it. I’m tougher than you know, Norma Binton.

But what if it was more than Norma? Hadn’t Wyatt spoken as if there were multiple people gossiping about her? She’d been cautious recently, but that fear was enough to make her slump against her door tonight. The thought of someone peering through the trees at what she’d considered a private moment between herself and Jake made her stomach burn. She and Jake had been meticulous about keeping a wide professional margin between them. Even so, Emma hated how the worry over public scrutiny had made her glance around the church service and wonder each of the past two Sundays. Who had been in the woods? Who was gossiping and spreading their disapproval of something they couldn’t hope to understand? It had been two weeks since Thanksgiving, but no one had yet said anything directly to her about it. Had the incident blown over, or was it festering under the surface?

She had found Wander to be such a welcoming place. It touched her how the community had risen to help Sarah and then Jake. The way that interconnectedness had now turned on her felt like fast and mean whiplash. They didn’t know how hard these holidays were for her, how she was fighting this terrible sense of something looming.

They don’t know because you haven’t told them, Emma lectured herself. She hadn’t even told Zosia or Pastor Newton. It was her own fault no one knew why she and Jake shared grief and sorrow over this holiday. She’d chosen not to tell anyone about her family’s tragic past and its sad present.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.