One Week In December by Holly Chamberlin

Author:Holly Chamberlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

29

The two women sat in companionable silence. Nora was knitting, her workbag at her feet, neatly organized. Her granddaughter sat cross-legged on her grandmother’s bed, idly twisting a length of yarn.

Lily looked now at the tall pine dresser against the wall. A white lacy cloth was laid across the top. On it, next to a photo of Nora and Thomas on their fortieth wedding anniversary, sat a small square object. It was a daisy, first pressed in a book and then glued to a piece of wood and coated with shellac. It was a keepsake from Nora’s first date with Thomas. She had been fifteen and Thomas, just turned sixteen.

Lily had always thought it terribly romantic of her grandmother to keep such a token of remembrance. She herself had saved a ticket stub from the first movie she and Cliff had seen together. But when just a few months later Cliff professed to not remembering ever having seen the movie, let alone with Lily, she’d tucked the stub into an old book, figuring she’d find a more meaningful token of their relationship someday, something that mattered to both of them. And now, looking around her grandmother’s room, Lily realized that she never had found such a token and she wondered why.

Nora had kept other things, too, each one representing a member of her family. A cat’s eye made of purple and lilac wool that Olivia had made in grammar school hung over the bed. In a case on a shelf sat David’s various medals for excellence in high school science. A framed photograph of Becca as an oak tree in a first-grade play stood on the dresser, alongside a terribly juvenile poem Lily had written and framed for her grandmother’s birthday many years before.

All these things were evidence of love. They were gifts given because the givers had wanted to give them, not because they were forced. They were items Nora had chosen to keep because they held a special meaning or evoked a special memory. Unlike the “gift” that Mr. Pollen had brought to the house . . .

“By the way, Grandma,” Lily asked, breaking the long silence between them, “what did you do with that—thing—Mr. Pollen gave us? I’ve got nothing against pinecones on a tree or in a wreath but . . . as tableware?”

Nora looked up from her knitting and grimaced. “I put it in a plastic bag and asked your father to keep it somewhere in his studio. Preferably out of sight. I didn’t have the heart to throw it out after poor Mr. Pollen went through so much trouble to make it for us.”

“Maybe he made it for you, Grandma. Maybe he has a crush on you.”

Her grandmother gave her a look. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Because the thought of living under the same roof as Mr. Pollen—which, quite possibly, is made of pinecones—just might kill me. And what about the ghost of Flying Hammer Hattie?”

Lily laughed. “I’m sorry. I was only kidding.

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