The Christmas Note Read Online Free PDF

my back or take the flowers out of my hand and clunk them over my head. None of the scenarios are looking good. I know I can’t really afford a bouquet from the florist, so I pull into the grocery store for one there. “All I have to do is tie a ribbon around this and it will look just like we bought it from a florist,” I say, picking up a small glass vase.
    “Can she dry these?” Emma asks, holding a small bouquet.
    I look at the flowers. “No, not really. These aren’t good ones for drying.”
    “Then we need to get ones she can dry.” She looks up at me. “Like you did with all our flowers.”
    “But those flowers were for your dad and … I don’t think Melissa was very close to her mom, so I don’t think these flowers are going to mean as much as—” They’re both looking at me. I set the flowers back in the container and pull out a bunch with more roses in it. “These will dry much better.”
    The card is still tacky when we get home, and it takes me far too long to convince the kids that we really should wait for it to dry before we deliver it. Part of me just wants to get it over with, but the other part clearly wants to put this off until Emma’s college graduation. I spend the greater part of the morning on the phone while the kids play, and when I’m finishing the last conversation with Kyle’s parents, both Em and Ethan are staring at me and patting their bellies. We eat sandwiches and chips, and I dread one of them bringing up the card and flowers. To my surprise and delight they both forget and run back to their room to continue playing, when Ethan yells from the hall, “Hey! What about our card, Mom? When are we taking it over?”
    “Right now,” I say, as if I had it planned all along. I make the kids put on their coats or else we’ll just stand out on Melissa’s porch looking like those toy monkeys with the chattering teeth and clanging cymbals. Ethan is the first to her door and knocks on it, way too loud to be polite, and I stop his hand from knocking again. I groan when I hear footsteps and put on a pleasant, barely-there smile when I know Melissa’s looking at us through the peephole. The door opens and Ethan shoves the card through the slim opening.
    “We made this for you,” he says, propping his fisted hands onto his hips.
    “Thanks,” Melissa says, glancing at the card.
    I work hard at a smile but feel awkward.
    “We got these for you, too,” Emma says, handing her the vase full of flowers.
    “Thanks.”
    All four of us stand in gangly silence before she says thanks again. “Okay, come on, kids,” I say, turning them back to our house. The door closes before I can even get the kids off the porch, and it takes all the willpower I have not to say something ugly. “There,” I say, opening our door. “That was a nice thing to do, and the flowers and card will be just the things to make her home a little happier.” I doubted this completely, but it sounded convincing enough so that the kids ran back to whatever they had been playing in their room.
    When Mom drops by later in the afternoon she is carrying a big pot. Mom doesn’t cook; she never did. My father did most of the cooking when they were married, but when it was up to Mom we mostly ate a lot of canned soups, boxed rice dishes, and noodle dinners. Mom’s third and final husband, Len, was a great cook. I still miss his sweet potato bread pudding he made every Thanksgiving. Len was a great fit for my mother, whereas she and Dad could rub each other the wrong way without even being in the same room. It wasn’t always that way. I remember them being happy together. I don’t know how things went south in their marriage.
    “I didn’t make this,” Mom says, reading my face. “Gloria made a huge pot of chicken and dumplings for you and the children.” I step forward to take it from her. “I did make a salad, though, along with a batch of chocolate chip cookies.”
    “You made cookies?”
    She stops on the