Ryan Gregory’s mother died from advanced stage breast cancer a day before Christmas Eve. The next morning, she arrived at his front door, rang the doorbell, and waited outside with a basket full of nothing but air and folded paper.
Having been present when Melanie exhaled her final breath, Ryan was not convinced of his mother’s reanimation and subsequent escape from the morgue. He studied his unlikely guest and began to understand his mistake.
Her hair was a deep chestnut brown, curled in excess, and her squat frame was covered in several layers of sweaters and overcoats. A perpetual look of irritation came courtesy of deep crow’s feet and laugh lines around her freckle-pocked face. Her resemblances to the recently-departed Melanie were there--curly hair, thick midsection, charm bracelets on left wrist--but she was not his mother. She was too young, for one thing, about fifty or sixty. Melanie died at the age of eighty-eight.
They shared an uncomfortable moment of confusion and startled silence, him in sweatpants and a T-shirt, her fiddling with the old-fashioned basket. Their impasse would have escalated into a standoff had the lady not stuck out her free hand.
“Hello. It’s nice to meet you.” Her gravelly voice further proved to Ryan that she was, in fact, not his mother but a close ringer nonetheless.
“Yeah. Um, it’s nice to meet you too. And you are...?”
“I’m sorry; where are my manners? My name is Maryann Glasser. You’re Mr. Gregory, right? Melanie’s son?”
Ryan’s wounds were still raw, and he felt tears brimming at the mention of his mother’s name.
“Your mother spoke very fondly of you, Mr. Gregory.”
“I’m sorry, I...I don’t know you,” Ryan said.
“No, of course you don’t. I’ve never introduced myself before, but I am here now. It is very cold out here, good sir.”
Bafflement turned into embarrassment, and Ryan stepped aside to let the lady enter his house. Still sniffling and swiping away tears, he closed the door and followed her into the foyer.
The house was empty. Mara had taken the kids to the doctor’s office: Lacy had to undergo dialysis and Eric had a physical that needed to be done before spring soccer started at school.
“My, what a lovely home you have. Melanie spoke of it often, and how nice it was to come visit you in such a lovely abode. She certainly wasn’t lying.”
Ryan had to admit that his house was unique, and in a time when most homeowners were drowning in mortgages and impending foreclosures, he owed not a cent to anyone.
Deep orange walls rose to vaulted oak ceilings in the dining room and adjoining living room, and were accented by industrial steel beams criss-crossing overhead. Beige leather sofas, rocking chair, and carpet were laid out in a recessed kind of family area. Family artwork and portraits graced the walls, most of them taken before Lacy’s degradation. A Christmas tree appeared to be supporting the ceiling. It was covered in garland, lights, tinsel, and a hundred kinds of balls. Lights were strung up around the walls, and stockings were hung above the decorative fireplace.
Maryann turned to him with a smile. “You’re a writer, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You must be a good writer to afford a place like this. What kind of books do you write?”
“Mystery.”
“Ah. I doubt I’ve read any, but I’m sure they’re wonderful. Now, let me get to the point, young man, before I forget why I came in the first place.”
Ryan wasn’t sure what ruffled him more: being called a young man or hearing such light words when his life was falling apart. At thirty-eight, he was far from considering himself young, certainly not with a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. And listening to Maryann’s voice seemed to calm him somewhat, even though they were strangers.
If for no other reason than that, he was interested in what she had to say.
“Please, Maryann, how did you know my mother?”
She plopped herself down in the rocking chair and kept the basket on her lap. “I was with her in the hospital. I was there for most of her stay, actually. She and I talked. At first we were just cordial friends, but our relationship grew. We began exchanging information. As I said, she spoke a lot of you. We came to know each other so well it sometimes felt as though we were one person. Now, I’m here because your mother asked me to come. In her final days, she became very introspective. She told me that when she passed, she wanted me to pay you a visit and bring you a gift, but not before I talk to you about your daughter, Lacy.” She paused, and added, “Do you understand, dear? Because you look like you’re about to faint.”
He was

about to faint. Ryan sank onto the couch and took a deep breath, savoring the pressure of air in his lungs. It was too soon after her death, and the mention of Lacy only made it worse.
“I’m going to leave this basket here,” Maryann said, rising. “You don’t look like you’re ready to see just yet, or hear what I have to say. I’ll see myself out, dear.”
She set the basket on the floor next to the rocking chair and was halfway to the door when Ryan managed to rise. Tears were once again welling in his eyes. “Maryann, please, what...what did my mother say to you?”
When she turned, she gave him a smile that nearly erased the wrinkles on her face. “I’ll tell you later. I live just down the street now, at the old Gilbert place--just moved in--and I’ll come back. You need to hear my words, though, I can see that. Your house is an homage to Christmas for Dummies.”
“Christmas for...what? Excuse me?”
The smile remained. “You’ll see, dear. Adios for now.”
An angry gust of wind fluttered Ryan’s hair. He remained, dumbstruck, for several minutes after her departure.


“She really said that? Christmas for Dummies?”
“Yep. I’m telling you, it weirded me out so bad that I spent the rest of the day staring at the damn basket. I was convinced some kind of magical genie would pop out and demand my soul.”
Mara gave him a peck on the cheek and winked. “Ah, a writer’s imagination. I never tire of it.”
“You’re the one who married me.”
“Yeah, because I’m one of the few women who doesn’t mind your constant imaginative streak.”
“You’re a doll.”
“Damn right.”
He pulled her close. She smelled of lemon. It always startled Ryan how much she could affect him, even after all these years: seeing her hazel eyes, slightly cleft lip that drew her smile into a wondrous smirk, and feeling her slender body made his heart thump wildly.
They shared a kiss.
“God, Mom. We’ve only been gone a few hours; you don’t have to make out like you haven’t seen him in years.”
Ryan turned to see Eric pulling off his jacket and shaking a few snowflakes out of his red hair. The twelve-year-old hurried up the stairs, shaking his head.
“It’s good to see you, too, Eric,” he called.
“Yep,” the kid answered.
Ryan turned to his wife. “He’s in a lovely mood.”
“Physicals always set people in the holiday spirit, don’t they?”
Mara had bought a few bags of groceries, and she started unpacking them. Her grip on the milk carton was hard enough to make cauliflower-like streaks on her knuckles.
They had broached the subject of doctors. No amount of holiday décor could lighten that discussion. With their family, it meant one bad report after another.
“How is she?” Ryan asked.
“The same.”
“Nothing new?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
Whenever he thought of Lacy’s condition, he reverted to a state he’d come to think of as a faux heart attack: his pulse became thick in his neck, as if his blood had been transfused with viscous tar; breathing was accompanied by an awful wheeze; every muscle felt like it had just undergone an intense workout; his eyesight blurred with tears. Last night, at the hospital, he’d been certain a real heart attack had claimed him. When Melanie Gregory’s chest fell for the last time and the machines screamed their monotonous song, his own breathing had ceased. His throat had clenched tighter than it was ever supposed to. No amount of willpower could make his lungs release their gaseous prisoners, and stars had crept up in his vision. The nurses on duty had to call for a separate unit just to take him away and get him help.
It happened now as it had happened before.
Ryan wondered if he would ever again feel true, untainted happiness or a moment of levity not overshadowed by grief.
“I’m going to go see her.”
“She’s upstairs,” Mara said.
As if their daughter would be anywhere else.


Her room was cold. The curtains were pulled because she claimed the sun bothered her; a single bulb overhead made all the shadows lengthen, warp. She sat on her bed, coloring in her oversized sketch book Ryan had bought for her eighth birthday a few months ago. The walls were covered in childish depictions of fantastical creatures, families, dragons, wizards, farms, plants, buildings, and animals.
Her skin was paler than usual, and her gaunt face appeared as little more than a sack thrown over brittle bones. Long strands of brown hair fell in limp braids on either side of her face. Though she wore a regular white T-shirt and blue jeans, her shoulders and legs did little in the way of filling out the cloth.
“Hey sweetheart,” Ryan said.
“Hey Daddy,” she said, putting aside her colored pencil and smiling up at him.
Ryan gave her a hug and sat. “How’d it go today?”
“Okay. You know I don’t like sitting there for so long. You weren’t there to play our game, either, so it got awfully boring.”
Hemodialysis, a procedure usually lasting four hours, was necessary to filter her blood and keep her from degrading farther. Ryan tried to accompany his daughter on most of her visits, and they played Graceful Santa, a writing game he’d made up to take Lacy’s mind off the constant cycling of her blood. This time, he’d been unable to grab the courage to go in the wake of his mother’s death.
Guilt plucked a somber tune on his nerve strings.
“You tired?”
“Nah. Just a bit.”
“You know tomorrow’s Christmas?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem very excited.”
“I’m sad about Grandma. I miss her already, and she hasn’t been gone for a day. Don’t you miss her, Daddy?”
Ryan’s throat closed off again, but he nodded and took Lacy’s hand. Her skin was clammy. “I know this is rough. But we’re going to get through it, you understand? All of us. We’re a family, and that’s what families do. They stick together and help each other through rough times like these. Okay?”
“Okay. But I don’t think I’ll be here for very long.”
Of all the statements his daughter could make, all the utterances and curse words and sexual references possible, that one statement brought tears as never before. They poured almost as freely as if squeezed from an eyedropper, but he dared not turn away in fear of Lacy regarding the move as cold or uncaring. Hearing talk of her own mortality, the possibility of death, especially in an eight-year-old child

, made Ryan feel terribly inadequate as a man and as a father.
Her diagnosis of Chronic Kidney Disease almost a year ago had come as a shock, and nothing that happened after was in any way fortunate. First, he and Mara found out that they couldn’t donate a kidney: he was only born

with one kidney, thus having none to spare, and a Helical CT scan picked up the presence of cysts within Mara’s kidneys. While Ryan would gladly have sacrificed his remaining kidney for his daughter, nothing short of a gunpoint rampage on the hospital would convince them to perform the operation.
Next, her condition deteriorated so rapidly that she had to begin dialysis a month ago; she was in renal failure and in desperate need of a suitable donor.
And of course, Melanie’s sudden announcement of breast cancer had complicated matters even more.
“Daddy? You okay?” Lacy’s hand squeezed his and he tried to swipe away his tears.
“Honey, why would you say something like that? Why?”
She shrugged. “She told me so.”
That was not the answer he’d expected. “Who told you?”
“The lady with the basket.”
Ryan felt a sense of chaos slam upon him. He was inexplicably convinced that Maryann Glasser, the lady with the basket, was watching from the shadows in Lacy’s closet, or perhaps from under the bed. He resisted an urge to grab his daughter and run for the blessed safety of the family room.
“Where did you see this lady?”
“At the doctor’s office. She said that my time might be coming, and I might not be long in this world. Is that true, Daddy? Is what she said true?”
Their gazes met. He’d always considered her eyes to be the most beautiful he’d ever seen: they were the green of a bright dew-coated meadow.
“No. It most certainly isn’t true, and I want you to forget all about what the lady said.”
“So she lied?”
“Yes.”
“Lying’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Which is why you must forget about it. You’re getting a new kidney, honey. Very soon.”
“How do you know?”
Ryan forced a smile. “I saw it in my crystal ball.”
“There’s no such things as crystal balls!”
“Oh, but there are.”
“Then how come I haven’t seen it? And why didn’t the lady with the basket know?”
“She probably doesn’t have one. I made mine by myself. It took years of hard work.”
“Daddy

!”
Thankfully, Lacy’s sense of levity had not diminished even when her body did. To interact with his daughter was the one thing Ryan cherished more than anything else, and their friendly banter had been commonplace for years. At this moment, watching her face peeled up in a laugh at his talk of crystal balls, eyes a-glimmer, he would have leveled cities if it meant restoring her health.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. A solitary tear dribbled out of her eye. “I love you, Daddy,” she said.
“And I love you, Lacy. I trust my crystal ball, so you should too.”
She giggled. “Whatever you say.”
Ryan stood up and pulled Lacy with him. “Come on, honey. I need your help downstairs with lunch. You’re hungry, right?”
“Yep.” Her tear--the single one--had not given way to more, and Ryan was eager to occupy his mind with other tasks before he went insane thinking about things beyond his control.
Only when he was walking down the stairs and began shaking did Ryan realize her badly her comments had unnerved him.


She returned a few minutes before one o’clock in the afternoon. This time Mara answered the door.
Ryan was in the living room, playing a game of tennis with Eric and Lacy on the Wii. He heard voices and assumed it was merely a well-wisher stopping by to offer condolences for their loss.
When Maryann Glasser stepped into view, wearing the same coat and sweaters as earlier, he paused the game and pointed a finger at the woman. “You. How dare you come back here after what you did?”
Mara gasped. “Ryan! That is no way to speak to our guest.” Ryan had not yet told his wife of Lacy’s words.
“No. Lady, I let you into my home because you said you knew my mother. I’m beginning to doubt that you even knew her at all. You have no right to tell my daughter the things you did.”
Maryann smiled. “My words were true. I did indeed know your mother, and I would be most happy to prove it to you, if you would allow me to explain.”
The lights flickered. The TV went black, although no one had touched the remote. Strands of bulbs layered around the tree flashed on and off, on and off, in a stroboscopic array of red, blue, green, blue, purple, red, green, blue. A blast of hot air, as from a heated oven, blew back Mara’s hair and made her gasp. Lacy uttered a single grunt of surprise. Eric might have cursed under his breath.
Maryann walked to the rocking chair and sat in it, seemingly unaware that everyone around her was agape. Ryan instinctively reached for Lacy, but she had already moved to him and hid behind his body.
“Sit, all of you,” Maryann said.
Within seconds they had all congregated on the couch. Their guest studied them all one at a time.
“I am here because you need my help. Melanie wanted me to see to it that I came and showed you what I have to show you, and I intend to follow her wishes.”
“Who...?” Mara began, but Maryann’s gaze silenced her. She sought out Ryan’s hand and squeezed it.
Maryann said, “I understand you are at a rough time in your lives. You are grieving for Melanie’s loss, as I am. But in times of stress and heartache, we cannot forget what it means to be thankful.”
The lights on the tree flickered again. Ryan felt Lacy’s arm around his waist tighten, and he squeezed her shoulder. The room grew warmer with each passing second.
“Christmas is supposed to be a time for giving, a time for being thankful and loving one another. We’ve all been brought up to expect presents, decorations, and a sense of belonging.”
A breeze blew in from nowhere and spiked the hairs on Ryan’s neck. The bells on the fireplace jangled and fell silent, jangled and fell silent, as if on a metronomic click. Still the air grew warmer.
“You are celebrating Christmas for Dummies. A tradition so engrained in your lives that you’ve forgotten at all why

you’re doing it or why

you continue. It is like going to work every day; you do it because everyone else does and because you’ve been taught that it’s what’s normal. I am here to rid you of those perceptions.”
Mara’s hand became sweaty against his palm. Ryan wanted to speak up--it was his own house

, for God’s sake!--but Maryann’s words leeched all the saliva out of his mouth, rendering him speechless.
“Why is it that you need a specific day to give each other gifts? Why do you need a special day in which to celebrate life and family, and to spend a dinner together? Is it not something you should strive for every day, and is it not foolish to save all your well-wishes for a predetermined day with no relevance to your lives? Christmas for Dummies has pervaded this world and rendered humankind impotent when it comes to love.”
Lacy whispered something under her breath. When he managed to tear his gaze away from Maryann for a second, Ryan saw Eric with his mouth ajar, eyes wide, as if he’d laid eyes on a nude woman for the first time in his life. Lights flickered. Bells clanged.
“A true Christmas is a celebration of the love you’ve given each other over the past year. Forget religious purposes and traditional wisdom. If every day you give the gift of love to those around you, if every day you strive to spend time together, and if every day you can acknowledge your gifts in life, then

Christmas can be special. Otherwise, it’s a nonsensical holiday for those blind enough to require society’s implementation of a time where it’s okay to be loving and give gifts.”
Now Maryann smiled. Ryan again saw the resemblance to his mother.
“Now, Ryan,” she said, “We’re going to play a game. It’s not one you’ll like, but I feel it is necessary for you to accept what it is that I’m telling you. Your mother wanted you to understand--she wanted it more than anything--and I am going to make you see logic.”
“Wait!” Ryan managed to say, but Maryann had already raised her hand.
“First we will remove your wife. And your son.”
Mara’s grip on his hand weakened. Ryan whirled on the couch and gasped when he saw both her and Eric shimmer and fade. Their skin grew transparent; their clothes vanished; he reached out a hand but swiped only warm air and dust.
Lacy cried out and fell off the couch. Her eyes were wide, unbelieving, and she looked ready to scream. Ryan groped at the air where just moments ago Mara had sat, as if he could dig her out of an invisible hole in the fabric of space itself.
“They are safe,” Maryann said from her rocking chair. “I have sent them away while we talk. My message is for you, Ryan Gregory, and no one else.”
“What...what are you? What have you done?” he asked.
“I am Maryann Glasser. Right now, I am bringing the message your mother wanted you to understand. And you will.” She stood. “You have been celebrating Christmas only because society tells you too. You are guilty of celebrating a hollow day without purpose or substance. Let’s say your daughter takes a turn for the worst.”
As she spoke those last words, Lacy went rigid on the floor. Her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth opened in a grimace. Veins bulged, pressing against her skin like miniature rivulets of a great river. Ryan could see the muscles in her neck taut as she struggled against pain.
He slid onto the floor and grabbed her, hoisted her into his lap. Her breathing was shallow and weak, almost panting.
“This is what could happen,” Maryann said. “Her kidneys could initiate other complications. Cardiovascular problems. Respiratory problems. This pain could happen.”
“Stop it!” Ryan screamed. “Whatever you’re doing, stop! Can’t you see she’s in pain?”
“I can see it, Ryan, and you would do well to see it yourself. This is reality, hitting you hard and fast. Her kidneys have shut down. Her body is revolting against itself.”
He felt for Lacy’s pulse. It was erratic. For a moment the pain seemed to recede, and she opened her eyes. Tears spilled across her cheeks when she looked at Ryan. Her mouth worked to try and form words, but all that came out was a whimper. She reached a hand up and managed to touch his chin.
“Please stop,” he begged, wrapping his hand around Lacy’s. Her green eyes darted between his and the ceiling, and her grip began to relax. “Please.”
“She is dying,” Maryann said. “You can see it. Life is leaving her body just as your mother’s life left hers. And what are you thinking at this moment? Are you reliving the wonderful memories you’ve had with her? Or are you wishing that you’d spent a little extra time really seeing

, instead of waiting for a holiday to see her?”
Lacy’s head rolled back onto his forearm, and her body started quivering. Like intense shivers, they racked her until Ryan thought he held a vibrating toy instead of his daughter. She began to utter sounds that were little more than slurred moans: “...ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah...”

Ryan grabbed her tighter, drawn by the conviction that if he squeezed hard enough, held her close enough, the spell would pass. Fueled by whatever powers Maryann Glasser gave, however, this was not a battle to be won.
Lacy’s eyes rolled in wild circles. Her keening stopped but was replaced with a raspy, hoarse cough. She breathed once, deep, and Ryan knew what was coming next. He loosed a scream as she exhaled the breath and fell still. Her eyes, those brilliantly striated emeralds, forever latched onto a space just above his chest.
As Maryann watched, untroubled by this event, Ryan bawled. He cried as he’d never cried before, not even last night when his mother passed. Seeing someone elderly die was different, because that person had lived life for a great many years and knew what it was to be happy, to love, to struggle, but a child’s death was a thousand times more heartbreaking, even if the child was a stranger, since that child would never understand what it meant to be free or to laugh with a friend in college or to accomplish a lifelong dream, and now here was his daughter, lifeless, drained of hope as callously as flour dumped from a sack, much too young for any amount of suffering, but it had come to her anyway--oh, it had piled upon her without mercy, with diseases and treatments and the disillusionment of dreams--because life was cruel, heartless, uncaring about wealth or the acquisition of property; now that Lacy was gone Ryan wanted to die, but he couldn’t even do that since his body had almost entirely shut down, so the only thing he could do was sag against his couch and squeeze his daughter’s hand and cry

.
“Your mother found out long ago the real meaning of the holidays,” Maryann said. “She sought to make every day a holiday, and make every person in her life feel special each time she met with them. You would do well to follow her example, Mr. Gregory, because Christmas for Dummies will lead you down the path you are experiencing right now: your daughter, dead. Grief will eat away at your heart because you weren’t freed from the shackles of society. Is that what you want?”
Ryan shook his head.
Lacy’s body against his legs vanished. He flinched, looked down, and saw only his curled lower body. No girl. No death.
“What...?”
“I sent you a present this morning,” Maryann said, gesturing to the basket squeezed between rocking chair and couch. “When you are ready, open it. My time here is limited, but I think you understand enough for your mother to rest.”
Ryan somehow got to his feet, even though he had little feeling in his limbs. He said, “Lacy...!”
Maryann smiled and wagged her finger at him. “She is a most precious child. I spoke to her earlier, as she no doubt told you. It was necessary for you to understand my words. Your mother’s words. Take heed, Ryan Gregory, and do not be a follower when it comes to your family.”
She walked out of the living room. Before entering the foyer, she turned to look at Ryan.
He saw his mother. Maryann’s hair paled into grey and her face sagged. She had a crooked smile, and Melanie Gregory stood on his foyer as she had stood there many times during her life.
Ryan sank into the couch as his legs finally gave way.
“Mom,” he whispered.
The smile fell and she walked out of sight.
He cried again.
The lights went out. The jangling of ornaments over the fireplace ceased. The void left from those noises was as deep and complete as a vacuum in the cold of space.
His eyes rolled up in his sockets and he slept.


Ryan Gregory awoke in bed with Mara slumped over his chest, her breathing shallow in sleep. His left arm tingled from the weight of her body. Light from a morning sun touched the covers.
Though his body was tired, he was alert almost instantly. He gently pushed Mara aside, pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt, and went into the hallway.
The house was without movement, and a few floorboards creaked as if in frustration at his early-morning trek.
Ryan went straight to Lacy’s room and entered. Thankfully, the rug disguised his footfalls.
She was curled on her side, left arm under her cheek, right leg curled to her stomach. The steady rise and fall of her chest under red Santa Claus pajamas was like seeing a reincarnation of the Holy Spirit. Ryan squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to break into tears.
He exited Lacy’s room and went downstairs to check on Eric. The boy was also asleep, sprawled with his left arm and leg dangling off the bed. His snores were soft. Ryan took a moment to watch his son’s slumber before retreating to the family room.
It was a dream? Or am I going insane?

He checked his cell phone. It was December 25. Christmas day. So yesterday really happened, or at least...

something happened

.
He slipped on a pair of shoes and went outside, down the sidewalk, and turned right.
No one else walked the street. Frost on the parked cars, speared by sunlight, looked like nacreous scales torn from some reptilian entity.
The Gilbert residence was a three story, Victorian-style home at the end of the block. Ryan walked up the sidewalk and rang the doorbell. He waited for a good minute before ringing it twice more.
He was about to ring it a third time when a portly man of about fifty opened the door and stepped out in his boxer shorts. The man’s belly hung well over the cuff of his underwear; cherries looked to have been crushed and implanted under his cheeks.
“What the hell do you want? You realize what time it is? And on Christmas morning, for crying out loud.”
Ryan, prepared to meet a petite woman with curly hair, was disarmed. “I-I’m sorry. Who are you?” he stammered.
“You got a lot of nerve mister. My name is Clay Gilbert. I know you--you’re the writer. Now what in the bloody hell do you want that you had to drag me out into this cold?”
Ryan took a step off the porch, backing away from the pluming breath of an incensed Mr. Gilbert. “Sorry, sir. I uh, I thought...I thought someone else lived here. Excuse me.”
He didn’t look back, for fear of seeing the guy lumbering down the sidewalk in pursuit of his unwelcome visitor.


After opening presents, exclaiming over the gifts received by each person--one of the perks of being a bestselling author was that Ryan could afford to give meaningful gifts to everyone--the Gregory family went into the kitchen for customary hot chocolate and graham crackers.
While Mara and Eric poured and scooped, Lacy tugged on her father’s shirt sleeve as they sat at the table. Her pallor had lessened overnight, and she seemed to have more energy than usual. Each time Ryan looked at her, he was overcome by a tingling sensation: he remembered fragments of the dream, and certainly the part where Lacy had died and a hole tore through his innards. That she was still alive, breathing, relatively healthy--if a bit too skinny--was all the Christmas gift he needed.
“Daddy?” she asked.
“Yeah? What’s up, sweetie?”
“What’s in the basket?”
“What basket?”
“The basket the old woman left. The one by the rocking chair.”
To show him, she walked over and came back with a brown, medium-sized basket with a cloth covering the top.
Mara and Eric returned with mugs of hot chocolate and plates of cinnamon graham crackers. When they saw the basket in Lacy’s hands, they nearly fumbled the porcelain; it all clattered on the table.
“Is that what I think it is?” Mara asked.
“I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I...I’m so confused.”
“Don’t be, Daddy,” Lacy said. “She brought it, remember? The old woman. She said it was a gift. Open it!”
“Yeah Dad,” Eric agreed. “Open it.” The boy rested against a chair, an anxious look on his face.
With trembling hands, Ryan peeled back the rosy cloth and at first thought it was empty. Then he saw a folded note taped to the bottom. He reached in and grabbed it.
“Well, go on,” Lacy urged. “I wanna know what it says!”
A part of him wanted to toss the basket and note far into the street, because he remembered how insanely awful

he’d felt when subjected to a vision of his daughter’s death. Instead, in part because his family was eager to see as well, he unfolded the note. On it was written:

Arlene Bentz, 33 years old.
Two functioning kidneys.
She will be in touch shortly.
My gift to a family who no longer
celebrates Christmas for Dummies.
MG

Ryan read the note to himself, then read it out loud and passed it to Mara who also read it aloud. Lacy grabbed it from her mother and read it very slowly. Her eyes scanned each word for a good two seconds.
“Is...I mean...does that mean...?” Mara stifled a gasp and fell into a chair.
Ryan’s heart thumped. He took the note again and read it through, half convinced that the words would scatter and form a cryptic code beyond explanation.
It was a dream, though, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it

?
“She did this,” he whispered. “Maryann. Or...” he trailed off, unsure of what he was about to say.
“Dad?” Eric asked. It was strange to hear the twelve-year-old’s voice crack with emotion.
“Yeah, Eric?”
“What does it mean--that last part about Christmas? Who are the dummies?”
“I...I don’t think anyone is. At least...not anymore. And it means...well, it means that our Christmas decorations will be up longer this year. Much longer.”
Lacy’s eyes were wide and wet. She found his hand. “Why, Daddy?”
Ryan smiled. “As a reminder, honey. A reminder to us all.”

Impressum

Texte: Cover Photo taken from Google Images
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 05.12.2011

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