Page 63 of Wishing for Christmas
Mrs. Roberts shook her head. “It was a surprise to us all. She had always been so healthy. It goes to show, you never know how much time you have left. We never could have imagined that summertime trip to Paris would be her last one.” She shook her head and clicked her tongue.
Clara stared ahead in utter astonishment.
Mrs. Roberts turned her attention back to Max as he began to pull her in the direction he wanted to go. “Well, let me know if you need help going through her things. I know it can be a lot of work. I’ll be around. Merry Christmas, dear.” Mrs. Roberts and Max left her standing alone in shock on her grandmother’s front porch.
Clara’s head started spinning as she grasped the reality of the crushing situation. Grams had died. She held an arm against her stomach and leaned over, hardly able to stand.
Grams wasn’t in Paris with her parents. She was gone. It was why she hadn’t been able to get her help through any of this—help she badly needed. She would never get her grandmother’s help on anything ever again. She would neverseeGrams again. There would be no more Christmases at her house. No more cocoa by the fire, no more cozy fireside chats. Clara had missed her grandmother’s last months of life.
What had she done? Clara dropped to her knees on her grandmother’s porch and burst into tears. How could she have been so stupid as to make that wish? How could she have deprived herself of all that precious time with the person she loved more than anyone in the world? How could she have been so short-sighted as to skip right over an entire year of her life? She felt as if she were swimming in an enormous sea of regret,fighting the current of her choices. Her thoughts whirled around in her head. Her hands clutched her throat.
With time being so valuable, especially with loved ones, Clara couldn’t believe she had squandered so much of hers the way she did. And for what? It had all been to simply avoid an unwanted experience. One that didn’t cooperate with her desired timeline. And just look at what it cost her.
Clara sat on the front steps, her entire body heaving as she sobbed. She had no control over the tears that poured out and no control over her violent shaking. She had no control of anything anymore.
She had lost Grams. And she had lost Brent. She felt like she had the previous night at the Darlington—when she had just wanted to snap her fingers and disappear.
But she couldn’t do that. No, she needed to do something harder than that—she needed to fix this. Suddenly, Clara decided to stop crying and set things right, once and for all. She needed to push through despite the crushing darkness. She needed to roll up her sleeves and take care of what needed to be done. She needed to undo that wish.
Clara got up from the porch steps with a determined nod, wiping her coat sleeve against her eyes. She turned the key in the lock to let herself in and headed straight through the darkness of the empty house and up to the attic. She found the box of Christmas decorations right away and dug through it.
Her eyes grew big. Sparkling like the brilliant Christmas star leading her in the right direction, the ornament appeared before her eyes. She opened it, stared at the pocket watch, and shook her head. She looked at the photo of her grandparents and spoke aloud to it.
“I should have been here to spend that last Christmas with you, Grams.”
Her eyes landed on something else in the box. It appeared to be an old stack of weathered letters tied up in a red bow. She wasn’t sure why they were in there with the Christmas decorations, but her gut told her she needed to look at them.
Clara carefully untied the ribbon and sifted through the letters. They were written decades ago by her grandparents. The latest one was dated November 1967. That was one month before that photo was taken. One month before the Christmas they met and fell in love.
They had known each other before that Christmas? From the bundle of letters in her hand, it appeared they had been writing to each other for months before that fateful holiday. Clara unfolded the letter that sat on the top of the stack and read.
My dearest Phyllis, I’ll be finally coming home soon, just in time for Christmas. I can’t wait to see you in person after all this time. The letters we have written each other over the past year have provided me with a comfort that my words could never explain. I am so grateful for that serendipitous note you sent on a whim to boost the spirits of some lonely soldier you’d never met. From that first correspondence, I knew there was something special about you. Now, after all these months of writing to each other, I feel as though I’ve known you my entire life. I can’t wait to get home and spend the holidays together. My Christmas wish will soon come true.
Love, Frank
She thought again about what her grandmother had told her about that first Christmas with her grandfather. Clara had always assumed it had been so easy, some enchanted force that brought them together one evening. Evidently, it hadn’t been that simple at all. Clara had known that her grandfather had just returned from war before they spent that first Christmas together. What she hadnotknown was that they had written each other dozens of letters over that time, truly getting to know each other. That one holiday—that magical Christmas—was the culmination of months and months of communication. Of connection. She finally understood the real magic that was involved in her grandparents’ love. It was the same one that had brought her and Brent together.
The simple truth was that there was no magic fix when it came to falling in love. It took time. It took hard work. It took patience.
She read the inscription on the ornament again. It was the same one she had read the other day, only now, she saw it in a whole new light.
Time is precious when love is new,
A Christmas wish will soon come true.
She read the first line again.Time is precious when love is new. Clara finally understood what it meant. Time is precious, and time together—shared experiences—is what makes it so valuable. She thought again about everything that wish had deprived her of.I have to make this right.Clara squeezed the ornament in her hand tightly, exactly as she had before. Mustering every ounce of faith in Christmas magic she could,Clara wished for what she now wanted more than anything in the world.
She wished she could have been around to spend the past year with Grams. She wished she could have been at Lily’s wedding. She wished she had taken the time to get the experience she needed to achieve her career goals. Most importantly, she wished she had gone through that yearlong deployment with Brent. She needed to do the hard stuff and not take the easy way out—for herself, for Brent, and for their relationship. Clara closed her eyes and wished she had never made that wish at all.
The room instantly went black, leaving her once again, completely in the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY
CLARA
Clara awoke to the sound of “Jingle Bells” coming from her phone. Startled out of a deep sleep, she rolled over to check it.
It was just a text, although a long one. Clara read it sleepily, her eyes still blurry from one of the best nights of sleep in a long time.
