A Sandy’s Seashell Shop Christmas Read online

  A Sandy’s Seashell Shop Christmas

  (An Outer Banks E-short)

  By National Bestselling Author

  Lisa Wingate

  Other Carolina selections from Lisa Wingate:

  The Sea Glass Sisters

  The Prayer Box

  The Tidewater Sisters

  The Story Keeper

  The Sandcastle Sister (coming July 2015)

  The Sea Keeper’s Daughters (coming Sept 2015)

  "I am in awe of Lisa Wingate's talent.” – Debbie Macomber, New York Times #1 Bestselling Author

  “Lisa Wingate never disappoints.” – USA Today

  A Sandy’s Seashell Shop Christmas

  A magical place, an island Christmas Eve, a broken family in need of healing…

  For young military widow, Tiff Riley, Christmas isn’t just another day… it’s the worst of all days. Hiding out on Hatteras Island with three-and-a-half year old Micah, she’s desperate to once again ignore the anniversary of tragedy. The winter-season quiet of North Carolina’s Outer Banks is the perfect place to escape. It never feels like Christmas at the beach.

  But in tiny Hatteras Village, the crew at Sandy’s Seashell Shop is determined to make sure no one is forgotten at Christmas. Is it possible for a magical Christmas Eve at the Seashell Shop to help to mend one damaged life? On a night of miracles, in a place of miracles, can a young widow’s heart be reopened to joy, hope… and even love?

  © Copyright 2014 Wingate Media, LLC

  Kindle Edition

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information visit:

  www.LisaWingate.com

  Dedicated to military kids and their families

  Proceeds from this novella will fund a donation to Operation Military Kids, which provides services for children and youth impacted by deployment. OMK offers activities and support and helps kids connect with local services to achieve a sense of community. Scribelight Media and Lisa Wingate are not affiliated with OMK, other than in making a charitable donation.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  About the Author

  About the Carolina Collection

  Chapter 1

  I lay back and close my eyes, lie very still and wait for Aaron to come closer. I feel him beside me on the sand, his limbs sturdy and strong, his hand resting over mine, growing heavier and warmer and more real. I hear his breath. It’s soft, relaxed, in no hurry. He needs this time. He needs this time to shed the cares, the worries, the haunted look in his beautiful brown eyes. He needs this time to be free, but I wonder if he will ever be free. The things he’s seen, will they always haunt him? Will they find him wherever he goes?

  Will they always travel with me? Is there a quiet place, even here by the sea?

  I want to lean over, ask Aaron the answer. What would he tell me if he could speak? What would he say?

  I long to roll into him, to cuddle on his shoulder and not speak. Not ask questions, or catch up on all the things we’ve missed, or do anything but just breathe. Together.

  I wrap my hand around his, try to hold on tight. I want to be… I say without speaking…I want to be where you are.

  Plastic slaps against plastic. The noise tugs at me. Fabric shudders, popping like a flag in the breeze. The sharp sound pulls me further. Sand slips through my fingers. My skin is cold. Micah’s teeth chatter.

  Aaron vanishes.

  The day is practically gone. It was a pretender anyway, unusually tropical for the Outer Banks in midwinter – the sort of Indian-giver day that tells you summer is here, when it’s not. The balmy afternoon was as much an illusion as Aaron, a trick almost as sweet and almost as cruel as the one I’ve played on myself.

  This isn’t summer. Tomorrow is Christmas. It comes to Hatteras Island, too. It comes everywhere. There is no getting away from that fact, no matter how hard I try.

  Aaron isn’t here. There’s no escaping that, either. It’s been three years since Christmas was Christmas. Three years is only the beginning of forever. Forever stretches on and on and on like the ocean, endlessly rolling, fathomlessly deep, an easy place to get lost… or to drown.

  I can go back in time, but only for a moment or two. I can go back to Aaron, but I can never take Micah. Micah is part of the here and now. At the moment, he’s freezing. He doesn’t want to give up the day either. He’s lost in the sand at the edge of the blanket. He’s creating roads and mountains and little shelters.

  Just like his daddy.

  They would’ve been such good buddies by now. At three-and-a-half, Micah would’ve been romping around the little twenty-acre spread we’d planned to buy. He’d be following Aaron’s every footstep and riding in pickup trucks or on the ATV Aaron was determined to buy. I’d fought tooth and nail against that one – too dangerous.

  Aaron had just laughed. “Everything is dangerous. You still gotta live, Tiff. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  He was correct in one of those two assumptions. Everything is dangerous, but you don’t have to live. You can walk around breathing, get up, go to work, cook dinners, wash dishes, pay the bills, fold laundry, nurse a baby, watch that baby grow into a toddler… and not be living at all. I’ve proven it.

  Living is dangerous. Aaron knew that. For a soldier, it’s even more so. I should understand better than most. I’ve worked to patch up wounds I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. I’ve volunteered for cultural support teams that would take me outside the wire with special ops task forces. There was a time when I relished all things risky and potentially self-destructive. But that was before Aaron, before Micah, before love. Before I completed my last deployment in Afghanistan and came home to wait for Aaron, pregnant.

  Just over four years ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

  I sit up, pull my knees to my chest, rest my cheek on them and watch Micah, caught up in his game of let’s pretend, so sweetly unaware of all that’s wrong. He’s like the kids in Kabul, playing in gutters, making castles from rubble. His long lashes brush his cheek, his lips vibrate as he adds motor sounds while pushing a pickup truck along. I don’t even know where he learned that. Maybe it’s genetic in boys. Maybe that’s Aaron coming out. I’d like to believe that Micah picked up the sound from his daddy in the two weeks they had together before Aaron went back to finish his tour, just a couple more months.

  We’ll have Christmas after I get back. The last words he’d said before he’d kissed us both and gotten on the plane without even looking back. It was like him to be that focused, to leave behind husband and dad, to become one hundred percent soldier. Soldier was the role he’d filled the longest. In truth, it was the only role either one of us ever thought we’d have… until we met. I’d never believed in love at first sight, not before the day I looked across a crowded tent and watched Aaron walk in for breakfast. He’d glanced my way, and that was that. It was proof that, where the heart is concerned, anything is possible. In the space of a few months, all the goals I’d held for myself had changed.

  Life switched tracks.

  Wife, mother, widow. Me.

  I look at Micah and I wonder if I would do it all again, and then I hate myself because the answer doesn’t come fast enough. Of course. Of course I would. A small piece of Aaron lives inside this little boy. Aaron would be so proud of him. Micah is sweet and smart. He has his dad’s brown eyes and my blond hair. It gives him an angelic look, but he’s one hundred percent boy.

  “Hey, buddy, we’re packing it up in three minutes.” I give Micah the warning. The warning helps in avoiding all-ou
t meltdowns when it’s time to pack up the toys. I have learned a few things about motherhood, but that doesn’t make me a good mother. Micah deserves so much more than I can give him. He deserves Christmas, for one thing. How long before he figures out that there’s something missing here? That the whole rest of the world celebrates a time of year I can’t even bear to think about? That other kids have daddies and he doesn’t? That other kids’ moms live in the present, rather than just moving through it like fog?

  “Three minutes,” I say again, because Micah still hasn’t answered.

  “D-d-dokie, d-dokie,” his answer chatters along with his teeth. His sandy little hands are red and raw, his chubby cheeks cherry-pink where the golden curls protrude from his windbreaker hood. His nose is sandy where he’s been wiping it. Even that is cute.

  I turn back to the sea. I’ve said three minutes, but I’ll give him five.

  “Is I makin’ da woad, Mommy?” Micah launches a clever diversionary tactic. He’s trying to lure me toward the game, thinking if he can draw me in, maybe we’ll stay.

  “Yup. You sure are.”

  “Is a good woad?”

  “A real good road. A super-duper road,” I mutter, still watching the water.

  “Wook!” Micah insists. He’s getting old enough to know when I’m here, but not really here.

  A cocklebur blooms in my throat unexpectedly and I swallow hard, reaching down to lay a hand on my son’s head. I close my eyes, squeeze tight, because Micah is old enough to want to know why, when he sees someone crying. I try not to do it in front of him anymore.

  “You eyes hut?” He asks.

  “Yeah. My eyes hurt.” That’s usually my excuse when this happens. Micah has it memorized.

  Accepting the explanation, he slips from my grasp to move miniature cars along tiny paths. Motor sounds grow and wane and then go silent. He must have parked the truck.

  A stiff wind slips around the dunes and catches me broadside. “One more minute, Micah.”

  No answer.

  “One minute, Micah.”

  Nothing. When a boy goes silent, it’s time to panic. I open my eyes, and he’s left the blanket, which he’s not supposed to do. He’s already several steps away. A red piece of paper has flitted by in the wind, and he’s after it, plowing through the sand in a chubby-legged toddler run, trying to catch the paper. A mommy-scolding doesn’t even make it all the way to my lips before a chuckle pushes it out of the way. I can’t help myself. Wobbling in the deep sand, Micah looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy trying to recover a fumbled football.

  “Get it, Micah! Get it!”

  A whirlwind sweeps through last year’s sea grass, whisks up the paper and twirls it over Micah’s head. He reaches up, tries to jump, tumbles in the sand and pushes back to his feet as the paper sails over his head, then falls, finally resting near the tideline.

  Micah turns and makes the ssshhh sign at me, as if now he’ll sneak up on the beast. It’s gone before he can, of course. I leave the blanket and join the chase, surprised by how stiff my legs are.

  “Ged-dat, Mommy!” Micah cheers, and we stumble-run around the sand. By the time Micah belly flops onto of our prey, I’m laughing and he’s squealing at the top of his lungs. The sound is ear-piercing, but it doesn’t matter. The beaches of the Outer Banks are empty this time of year and most of the rental houses are, too. That’s why I take vacation from my nursing job back home in Arkansas and come here over the holidays. The off-season rentals are cheap and there’s no one around to worry about the reality that, for us, it’s not Christmas.

  That and the fact that Aaron loved this place. He talked a lot about coastal fishing trips with his dad when he was a kid. They’d get up early and drive across North Carolina, fish the northern Outer Banks that evening, stay overnight, then drive down to Hatteras and fish the next day. When they were all done, they’d take the ferry across to Swan Quarter, kayak fish the lowland marshes for a day, and finally head home. Aaron couldn’t wait to show me this place, once we both made it back home and got settled. He was sure he could convince me to give up the Ozark Mountains and move to North Carolina. He probably could have. There wasn’t much to hold me in Arkansas, anyway.

  Micah wobbles to his feet, gripping his new prize and examining it. “Wook!” he points at the paper. “It’s Santa Cwaus!” Squealing with glee, he shows me the clipart image of Santa on the top of the flyer next to the words,

  Christmas at Sandy’s Seashell Shop!

  An Ocean of Possibilities

  I don’t even know where Micah learned about Santa – at the hospital’s in-house daycare, I guess. Last year, he was too young to understand or care.

  My heart squeezes and wrings dry. Now he knows.

  Something has to change, but I can’t even stand the thought of it. Changing means letting go. It means allowing Christmas to become Christmas again and not the time of year when Aaron’s body came home in a flag-draped coffin.

  Chapter 2

  Christmas at Sandy’s Seashell Shop!

  An Ocean of Possibilities

  You’re Invited!

  Join the Sisterhood of the Seashell Shop for A Hatteras Community Christmas. Food, festivities, holiday fun. Bring a covered dish and a beach-themed “white octopus” gift, or just bring yourself.

  Semi-live seaside nativity, gift exchange, photos with Santa Claus beginning at 7:30-ish.

  This ticket admits one, or ten. No reservations needed.

  Fishermen, come as you are.

  I pass the kitchen counter and see the flyer again and wonder why I haven’t thrown it away. I start to reach for it, then stop again, shake my head at myself. It’s dark out. Micah has already taken his bath and he’s snuggled into his footsie pajamas. So am I, more or less. Sweats. Slippers. Hair in a blond headed messy bun. We’ve ordered pizza. We’re home for the evening. In another hour, I can put Micah to bed early, crash on the sofa, try to find something on TV that isn’t Christmas themed. With any luck, the weather will be nice tomorrow and we can spend the day at the beach. It never seems like Christmas at the beach.

  So why do I feel incredibly guilty? Why do I feel like I’m letting everyone down – myself, Micah, Aaron?

  Micah hasn’t even asked about Santa Claus again. He’s moved on to a construction project with his Duplo blocks, and he’s chattering away about building an engine shed like the ones on his Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs.

  The Sandy’s Seashell Shop flyer is up high, where Micah can’t see it. All is well. All is calm. We’re set to endure Christmas. Having grown up in a family that was never stable enough to celebrate the holidays regularly, that’s not such a big stretch for me.

  But don’t you want something better for Micah? The thought comes out of nowhere and it stings. The one thing I’d always told myself, after telling myself that I wasn’t marriage-house-and-kids material, was that if I ever did have a family, I’d make a home, a real one.

  I growl in my throat, turn away from the flyer. Enough. Enough, enough, enough already.

  How would it be honoring Aaron’s memory if I took his son to a party and plopped him down on some stranger’s lap to spew out Christmas wishes?

  Next year, I strike a silent bargain. Next year I’ll do it. By then, perhaps I’ll have figured out how to balance the season of hope with the season of loss. Right now, maybe a book instead of TV. No sense accidentally running into a television Santa and starting the whole thing up again. Micah and I visited the little bookstore in Buxton earlier today. I loaded up on some cheap beach reads, perfect for staying busy and distracted this week between Christmas and the New Year.

  “Micah, Mommy has to go upstairs a minute. If somebody knocks at the door, you holler at me, okay?” The pizza delivery should be coming soon. Luckily, Micah can’t unlock the door by himself.

  “Dokie, dokie,” Micah chirps, and I check the front door before going to the bedroom to peruse my book bag. The minute I set it on the bed and open it, I recognize something that the
shopkeeper must have tucked in the top along with my receipt. There’s a red flyer, Christmas at Sandy’s Seashell Shop, blah, blah, blah…

  “Geez!” Snatching it out of the bag, I open the nightstand drawer and throw the smiling Santa inside and slap the drawer shut. Even his proximity troubles me, so I just grab the first book off the stack and head back down. On the second floor, Micah is still playing with trains and Duplos and there’s no sign of the pizza.

  Micah’s chatter slowly weaves its way into my thoughts as I stand in the kitchen, reading the back cover of my book. Micah is engaged in a conversation with his trucks and trains. “An we goin’ to see Santa Cwaus. Where Santa? Whe-e-e-re Santa? Wook! Dere is Santa, Thomas! Don’t be no mo’ gwumpy, ‘kay?”

  I turn slowly, the book still dangling in my hand, and there’s my little boy, with the Sandy’s Seashell Shop flyer propped against the fireplace ledge so his cars can drive up and meet Santa face to face.

  I swivel toward the counter, and yes the flyer is missing. Overhead, the vent is on, a convenience store receipt fluttering slightly beside my purse. Did the flyer catch a draft and fly off? Did Micah levitate up here and take it?

  “Ho-oh-ho! Mew-eee Cwis-mas, Thomas T-wain!” Santa suddenly has a voice… and a slight speech impediment as well. “Mew-eee Cwis-mas, Mew-eee Cwis-mas, Fowd F-100 Twuck, Mew-eee Cwis-mas, Chebby Twuck!”

  Desperate tears hit me before I can stop them, and suddenly I want to throw open the door, run through it and keep running until I fall down on the sand somewhere, too exhausted to care.

  The knock outside makes me jump. Micah doesn’t even notice. He’s too wrapped up in his game. I wipe my eyes and answer, but there’s no hiding the truth. Tears run like rivers the minute I see another human face. On the other side, the smile of a teenaged delivery boy slowly melts. No doubt, I’ve scared him half to death. He cranes past me to see what might be going on inside. He’s wearing a cap that reads, Hatteras Volunteer Fire Department.