Page 1 of Christmas Rings

Prologue

This was not how her life was supposed to go.

Alissa wasn’t supposed to be in a social worker’s office that smelled of burned coffee on a cold night in December. Alone. Without Mommy and Daddy.Please wake up, she thought.Let this be a bad dream.

But dreams didn’t have smells. Nightmares were over faster than this. If she called out from her cozy bed in their warm house, her mother came. Not now. Her mother was dead. She would never comfort Alissa in the middle of the night ever again.

The social worker, Mrs. Keele, had left her in the office to wait while she wrapped up some details. Alissa didn’t know what details meant, only that she was to be sent to a foster home because her mother and father were dead.

Shaking, she pulled her sweater tighter around her middle. She’d had her jacket on after her school concert, but she didn’t now. Where had her jacket gone? A space heater in the corner made a humming insect sound but no heat warmed the room. Her tired, puffy eyes stung. A split in the orange plastic cushion of the chair dug into her leg as shelooked around the small office. Layers of paper and folders littered a gray metal desk. A calendar with a photograph of kittens playing with a ball of string hung on the wall behind the desk.

The scent of burned coffee reminded her of the time her mother forgot to turn the electric pot off, and the stench had filled the house. Daddy had teased Mommy, saying she was an absentminded professor. This was their joke because they were both professors and equally forgetful. They’d never forgotten Alissa though. She’d been their whole world. Hadn’t Mommy just said that to her last week?

The accident had been at night, coming home from her school holiday recital. Her fourth-grade class had sung “Frosty the Snowman.” Alissa was the smallest in her class, so the teacher had put her on the bottom rung of the bleachers. Her parents had been in the front row with their video camera. They’d smiled and clapped extra hard when the song finished.

Going home, the roads were icy. Daddy said not to worry. He was a great driver even with ice because he was extra careful because of the precious cargo he carried. “That’s us,” Mommy said, as she glanced back at Alissa.

A car had lurched into their lane like a bumper car ride at the county fair they’d been to last summer. She remembered that. Mommy screamed. Then, everything went black. Alissa woke up in a hospital bed. Her head and body ached. Her mouth so dry. A nurse with hair like a mushroom and creases in her cheeks had given her ice-cold water in a plastic cup with a bendy straw. “Where’s my mommy and daddy?” she’d asked.

The nurse with the mushroom hair zipped her lips together and avoided eye contact, then scurried away. A policeman in a blue uniform and a round stomach came to talk to her. He’d spoken softly, like they were at the library.

Her parents hadn’t survived the accident. “They were killed instantly,” he said. “They didn’t suffer.”

“But I heard Mommy scream,” Alissa said.

The rims of the police officer’s eyes turned pink. “I’m sorry, Alissa.”

She was an orphan now. She asked him what would happen to her. He said social services would come. “They’ll find a place for you to go,” he said.

“A place?”

“A home with a family. A foster home,” he said. “Or a relative who wants you.”

There was no one. Her parents were only children. Alissa’s grandparents had all died before she was born. Mommy had once told her that she and Daddy had been drawn to each other because of their similar experiences, having lost their single mothers young. “We became each other’s family,” she’d said.

So, that meant she would go to a foster home. She’d heard of those. A girl in her grade had been in one. She came to school in dirty, ragged clothes, and her eyes reminded Alissa of a dog’s eyes she’d seen in an advertisement for a pet rescue society, haunted and defeated. Mommy had once said that it was a special type of person who would offer their home to a child in need. Was she now a child in need? She didn’t want to be.

Now, she waited for Mrs. Keele to return and tell her where she would go next. The vastness of that question made her chest burn. She would not go back to her own house with her pink room and unicorn pillows. She would no longer wake to the smell of bacon and pancakes. She would no longer fall asleep after a bedtime story. They’d only been halfway through the Harry Potter series. Would she ever know what happened to Harry, Ron and Hermione?

“We’ve done a search and there’s no one in either of yourparents’ families who is available to take you,” Mrs. Keele had said.

“I know,” Alissa had replied. She could have told Mrs. Keele that, but no one asked her anything. They just set her aside like leftover Chinese food going bad in the back of the refrigerator.

“We’ll find a nice family for you,” Mrs. Keele had said, as her large hands moved papers around her desk. Her skin looked chapped and her cuticles red and irritated. Alissa wanted to offer some of Mommy’s lotions that she’d always carried in her purse. Where was Mommy’s purse? Had it been thrown from the car? Was it out on the highway somewhere? Were Mommy’s friends sending texts to a phone that would never be picked up again?

Mommy and Daddy.

Tears came. Alissa tried to stop them, but it was useless. Grief filled her, pushing away everything but the awful bleak hopelessness. She hugged her knees and sobbed. A terrible darkness lived in her chest now. She was lost, adrift. Alone. Mrs. Keele said she couldn’t go back to school. She’d no longer be best friends with Sophie. Probably that horrible Roxanne would worm her way in and become Sophie’s new best friend. She’d never see Mrs. Johnson, her favorite teacher, ever again.

Everyone she loved was gone.

What would happen to their Christmas tree? There were presents under there too. Who would take them? The shell frame she’d made at school for Mommy and Daddy was under there, wrapped in sparkly blue paper. What would happen to it? And what about all their things?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Mrs. Keele’s return. “Time to go, dear.”

Go? Where?

Alissa was in Mrs. Kirby’s kitchen. Gingerbread cookies were stacked on a platter shaped like Santa. Alissa had been allowed to have a cookie even though they hadn’t yet had dinner. The sweetness remained in her mouth even after taking a sip of milk.

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