Christmas at the Hummingbird House Read Online Free PDF Page A

she?  It being Christmas and all.  Speaking of Christmas, when are you all going to put up your tree?”
    “Trees,” corrected Paul.  “The Hummingbird House will have multiple trees on display. Each room will be a different vignette, which is another reason we simply can’t have children …”
    “Well, I’d get to it if I was you,” she said.  “Fifteen days till Christmas and all.  I know a place you can cut your own for twenty dollars, any size. Just let me know.”  She grasped the handle of the vacuum cleaner and started to turn back the way she had come, then caught sight of the check that was still in Derrick’s hand.  She peered closer.  “Lord have mercy,” she said, “just look at all those commas.  You folks really don’t know when to count your blessings, do you?  I’ll be back after lunch,” she added, straightening up, “and I’m cleaning that office whether you like it or not.”
    The two men stood in the corridor for a moment after she was gone, Derrick gazing down rather guiltily at the check in his hand, and Paul staring at Derrick.  Paul said, “Did you hear what she said?”
    Derrick nodded.  “She’s right.  We really do need to stop and count our blessings.”
    “No,” Paul said impatiently. “Not that.  Christmas is only fifteen days away!”
    Derrick lifted his eyes slowly to Paul’s as understanding dawned.  “Oh good heavens,” he said.  “We haven’t put up a single vignette.”
    “And if Harmony’s not going to be here to hang the garland and arrange the flowers …”
    “Not to mention the tablescapes …”
    “Or the outdoor lighting …”
    “Or the Christmas trees!” Derrick took a single deep sobering breath.  “We have got to get busy,” he said.
    “We have to get help,” clarified Paul.
    Derrick gave a decisive nod.  “We have to talk to the girls,” he said.
     

 
     
     
     
    THREE
     
     
    The Sunflower Room
     
    “ M iracles,” intoned Geoffery Allen Windsor, “are usually identified as supernatural events, divine intervention on the behalf of human beings in crisis. And as you’ve seen from some of the examples in this book, this is very often the case.  But another way to define a miracle is when you find exactly what you need when you need it.  If you look at it like that, I think you’ll start to see miracles all around you, every single day.”
      He took off his glasses, looking over the lectern at the small clutch of people gathered in the back room of the bookstore.  He was an aging, slightly stooped-shouldered man with thinning hair who had said those same words a thousand times, taken off his glasses just like that a thousand times, and smiled that same smile a thousand times before.  “Thank you for coming. Each and every one of you is certainly a miracle in my life.  I’ll be happy to sign copies or answer any questions you have.”
    A handful of people came up to ask him to sign copies—most of them purchased from a used bookstore, he couldn’t help but notice—or to tell him their own amazing story of the sister whose ten-pound tumor disappeared or the dog who came back home after five years.  He listened with a polite smile and glazed-over eyes, and signed his name with a simple “Happy holidays” inscription.  “I love the story of the angel at the Twin Towers,” one plump, middle-aged woman confided.  There was always at least one. “Do you think it really happened?”  He told her, as he always did, that he only collected the stories, he hadn’t witnessed them, but that he believed all things were possible with faith. 
    In his line of work, it was important to be able to tell a good lie.
    Eventually the room cleared and he walked out with Bobbie, who was waiting at the back of the room dying for a smoke.  He knew he should stop to thank the store manager, but she was busy at one of the registers, ringing up wrapping paper and stereo headphones and DVDs of the latest zombie apocalypse