Montana Sky Christmas: A Sweetwater Springs Short Story Collection Read Online Free PDF Page B

into the room. He stood and sent a loving glance at the photograph of Emmeline on the mantle.
    Abe shed his heavy wool coat, sat on the bed, and slid on the slippers his wife had made for him the last Christmas of her life. She’d embroidered his monogram on the uppers, and had teased him that his feet looked elegant. He’d replied that too bad the rest of him didn’t match, and they both laughed.
    Abe sighed. Melancholy always hung heavy upon him after he returned from a visit to Emmeline’s grave. His grief weighed more as another holiday approached that he’d spend without her. Yet, even so, his pain seemed to ease some when he sat and talked with her for a while, sharing the stories about their children and grandchildren that he stored up. He usually had plenty to tell.
    Why won’t Barbara talk about her mother? Even if she doesn’t want to share with me, the children have a right to those memories.
    The question ate at him. After the first months, when the two of them had often cried together, his daughter no longer mentioned her mother—not to him and not, as far as he could tell, to her children. He didn’t want to bring up the topic, remind her of old grief; yet he had a powerful need to talk about his wife. So he’d settled for slipping any possible mention of her into conversations with friends and acquaintances. Wasn’t quite the same, though, as talking to kin.
    His grandchildren had taken to following their mother’s example. He was fairly certain the older boys remembered their grandmother, but the younger children wouldn’t, and the baby had been born after Emmeline’s death. He fretted that they wouldn’t learn about their grandma … know how special she was, and how very much she’d loved them.
    He stood, feeling his joints ache. When I’m gone, will they forget me so soon, too?  
    A knock sounded at the door and a sweet voice piped. “Grandpa, can I come in?”
    Emmy . He called for her to enter.
    The girl peered around the door and threw him a gap-toothed smile. She sidled into the room and shut the door behind her. “Tell me a story, Grandpa.”
    The child always seemed to sense his sadness. She often tried, in her own way, to ease his pain, showing a kindness so like her grandmother’s.
    Abe settled on the bed with his granddaughter and tucked the crazy quilt her grandma had made around them. He thought for a while, debating which of the Grimm’s fairytales he’d choose. Before starting a story, he needed to think it through and purge any element that would upset softhearted Emmy. No stories of Bluebeard for her. Sometimes, he even changed the endings.
    But now as he gazed down at his granddaughter’s expectant face turned up to his, and saw his beloved wife’s eyes reflected back at him, something inside him rebelled. No brothers Grimm today.
    He tucked her closer against his side. “One day when I was a whippersnapper your brother Silas’ age, I met this little girl named Emmeline. Well, actually not so little. Even though she was a tad younger than me, she was taller than me by a hand.” He spanned the air with his hands to show the distance.  
    Emmy giggled. “Grandma?”
    “Yep. She looked a lot like you, though.” With a wide smile, he tapped her nose with his finger. “One of the first things I did was pull her braid…”
    ~ ~ ~
    After a storm had dumped a foot of snow on the town, the weather settled into crisp, clear days. The Almanac called for nice weather for Christmas—at least as nice as it got in western Montana in December. But the Almanac had been known to err, and the children prayed that St. Nicholas would make it in time for the holiday.
    Although Abe and Emmeline had always celebrated Christmas with Barbara’s family, this was the first time he’d experienced the build-up to the holiday with them. In the past, he and Emmeline usually arrived on Christmas Day after the milking was done and left after supper to be home by milking time.
    Because of