Sleigh Bell Dreams (Mistletoe Meadows Sweet Christmas #1)

Chapter 11

“Did you see what happened?” Tris asked Terry as soon as they saw each other at church. Which was when Terry pulled into the parking lot. Tris had been waiting to pounce on her.

“No? What happened?” Terry asked, looking around, wondering what she missed. It had to be something huge.

“Someone put the Christmas decorations up last night on Main Street!” she said, her voice a whisper, although Terry didn’t know why.

“Is this a secret?”

“No?” Tris said, looking at her strangely.

“I just wondered why you are shouting in a whisper.”

“Oh. I guess it’s just so...crazy, exciting.”

“Secret Saint,” Dolly said as she stepped up to them.

“Yeah. It has to be him. Her. I think it’s a girl,” Tris said, looking smug.

“Well, if it’s a girl, she is strong. Especially if she was working alone.”

“You think the decorations are heavy?” Tris asked.

“I know they are. I helped put them away last year. They’re definitely heavy.”

“Noted. Although, I don’t know why I need to know that.”

“That wouldn’t be something that you would need to know, unless you’re going to work on putting them up all night, and then you might want to spend a few weeks at the gym building up to it,” Terry said as she grabbed her Bible and notebook and got out of the car.

She was so happy to be back at her hometown church, even though the pastor was different than the one she grew up with. She heard he was really good. Her entire family had said that, and she had looked forward to the day she got to hear him, going to church, chatting with her family, and then looking forward to opening her clinic the next day.

Maybe she’d walk through it one last time, just make sure everything was in order.

“Terry McBride!” Mrs. Tucker said as she hurried up to the three friends.

Tris gave her a scared look, and Dolly said, “I just realized that I need to go back and make sure my husband’s okay. I’ll talk to you later.” She started to step away, waving. “Hi, Mrs. Tucker!” she said as she hurried in the opposite direction.

“I’d love to stay and chat too, but I’m teaching Sunday school, and I better go get my lesson ready,” Tris said as she also hurried off in a different direction. But not in the direction of Mrs. Tucker.

“Hi, Mrs. Tucker,” Terry said, making a mental note to thank her sister and her friend for standing with her through thick and thin, even if that involved Mrs. Tucker.

“Terry McBride. You are back among us,” Mrs. Tucker said, tapping her arm with the clipboard that she carried. She was obviously old-school, since it was not an iPad. “Or so your family tells me. They do know, right?”

“They do.” Her words were easy, although she couldn’t help the note of suspicion in her voice. And maybe a little bit of distance. But after the reaction that Dolly and Tris had had, she felt like maybe she should have run too.

“Well, sometimes people come back, just because they got fired or had some kind of scandal, and their small town welcomes them with open arms, loves them and cares for them and exclaims how happy they are to have them back, then when things die down, they leave us again. Is that going to be you?” she asked, looking at Terry over the rim of her glasses which were perched on the edge of her nose.

“I have every intention of staying here until I die, and even then I’m not planning on leaving if there’s room in the graveyard for me.”

“We’ll just cremate you and spread your ashes somewhere close,” Mrs. Tucker said breezily.

“I don’t want to be cremated,” she said. There was just something about cremation that didn’t seem to be biblical. She didn’t have a verse to quote, but the principle of respecting the body because it was made in the image of God just seemed too much to ignore.

She wasn’t quite sure how she got on the subject of cremation with Mrs. Tucker.

“Well, regardless, you’re alive and kicking, and that means you are prime game for me. I have a job I wanted to ask if you are interested in doing.”

“I’d love to serve in the church, if you want,” Terry said easily. Knowing that was true. She couldn’t do some things, like if Mrs. Tucker wanted her to lead the trumpet section or replace the roof.

“Well, this doesn’t exactly have to do with church. I just haven’t been able to catch up with you since you got here.”

“It’s only been three days,” Terry said.

“I know, but usually I work faster than this. It’s just the season, you know. I have family coming in, and I was trying to get everything arranged in town to make sure I don’t miss anything, and I have something that’s been going on, and I need you to help me with it.”

“Well, tell me what it is,” Terry said, remembering that she’d been warned and realizing that she never decided whether she was going to accept the position or not. Did she want to do it?

“We have a position open for social media poster. Now, you’re freshly back, so you might not know that someone has been doing anonymous good works around town, and they’ve signed several notes calling themselves the Secret Saint. I want you to get on the town’s social media page and post details. You can even speculate on who you think it might be and why.”

“All right, is that it?”

“I think that’s more than enough. We just had another hit yesterday last night sometime. When I left Main Street last night, there were no Christmas decorations up on the telephone poles, but this morning, both sides of Main Street are completely decorated, and I know it wasn’t Mr. Gregory, he’s had cancer and can barely get out of bed, although the township is too kind to fire him.”

“Maybe that’s because his health insurance wasn’t very good and they feel bad about it,” Terry surmised but was totally guessing, since she didn’t know.

“That could be. Good point.” Mrs. Tucker looked up then made a mark on her notebook. “Regardless, I’m here to try to fill the position of social media poster. I’d like to have a picture with every post if I can, and while I know you’re busy with your new practice, I know that you want to give back to the community, and this would be a great way to do that.”

“I see. All right, the pictures might be kind of hard since I’m planning on being in my clinic all day long. I can’t get pictures and stuff.”

“You can put your contact info in, and I would suggest making up an entirely new email account just for this, so people don’t get your actual email account and spam it or try to hack it. Regardless, they can send you pictures. You can ask for them, and you will find that our small town hasn’t changed at all. People are still eager to help.”

“All right. That’s good to know. I guess.”

“All right, it’s settled. Give me your phone number, and I will text you all the information you need in order to get into our account and get set up as an administrator.”

“All right,” Terry said, thinking that she had meant to say that she was going to think about it and get back to her, but somehow that didn’t happen. Had she not been clear or maybe not fast enough?

Before she knew it, Terry had given Mrs. Tucker her information, and Mrs. Tucker, true to type, had texted her the information to get on the social media page within five minutes.

Terry walked slowly toward the church, thinking that if she was going to survive in the small town, she needed to remember where her backbone was. Although, Mrs. Tucker could have asked her to do anything, and she probably would have agreed. Just because she liked helping out and she knew that it was essential to a small town’s viability.

She was still thinking as the sound of...bells caught her ear. Bells?

She turned her head around first to the right and then to the left, trying to pick up where the noise was coming from.

There were kids on the back of the wagon, and suddenly she realized Amy was standing with them, leading them in song. It was a fun hymn, and Terry felt her toe tapping as she listened, even as her eyes took in the scene. There were two horses pulling the wagon, two black horses like the ones that Terry had seen at Amy’s sanctuary that she had said belonged to someone who was renting space.

And then, she did a double take, because it sure looked like Judd in the wagon seat, driving the horses.

She blinked, trying to process that information.

Judd had left the duplex that morning before she had gotten out of bed. She heard the front door close and his steps on the front porch since her bed was right next to the window.

She figured he was going to work or something and felt a pang of disappointment. His prayer had been so good and inspiring yesterday, but...apparently he wasn’t going to church.

It was okay, a lot of people didn’t, but in order for her to continue to be a good Christian, she needed a weekly, or sometimes multiple times a week, reminder of what she was supposed to be working on and doing in her life. If she didn’t deliberately try to stay close to the Lord, she would fall away. It was just Murphy’s Law. Which applied to Christians as well as to non-Christians.

But not only was he intending to go to church, he got up early so that he could apparently go get the horses that were owned by someone, Amy hadn’t said who, and bring them down to town, and then pick kids up with them.

What a clever way to get children to go to church, first of all, and secondly, what a fun sight. It was true, there was no snow, so he wasn’t driving a sleigh, but...he had said he had grown up on a farm. She remembered that from last night, and she wanted to ask where it was, but she got sidetracked, because she’d been embarrassed that she’d gone to school with him for thirteen years and didn’t even know where he lived. It was a small town. She definitely should have known.

But whatever farm he had lived on, they must have had horses. He seemed to handle them well, or maybe it was just because they were so old.

Regardless, the sight made her smile, as the wagon, decorated with greenery and red ribbons that flowed in the breeze, shook a bit as the kids tumbled off, smiling and laughing and still singing.

Her sister Amy jumped off behind them, and then she threw a hand up to Judd, who nodded at her before clucking to his horses and they started off, their bells jingling.

Terry had not been expecting to see anything like that, and she couldn’t believe how it made her feel. Surprised, sure, but warm and happy, that there were people who would donate their time and abilities and even a team of horses to get kids to church.

If there was any hope for their country, they really needed to be teaching children a biblical foundation. After all, they weren’t getting it anywhere else.

It was a great need, but Judd had not struck her as the kind of person who worked with kids.

Although Amy was perfect for it. Bubbly and happy, with boundless energy. Although, she did seem to be more worried than she used to. Of course. Adulthood had a tendency to do that to people. And Terry was sure being responsible for all of those animals had to have a stress all of its own.

As she slowly walked into the sanctuary, nodding at the people she knew, she thought about the man that she’d been talking to the night before at supper. He shared supper with her, cooked enough for two, not even knowing that she would be home, just knowing it was a good thing to do.

And then, getting up early this morning and taking the kids to church in a horse-drawn wagon. It was something that he would have had to spend a good bit of time and effort preparing.

“Aunt Terry! You’re here!” Lucas, Gilbert’s oldest son, came running to her and wrapped his arms around her followed closely by his younger brother and sister.

“Did you guys ride to church on the wagon?” she asked, not having seen them.

“No. But Mr. Judd will give rides after church before he takes everyone else home for those of us who come with our parents.”

So it was like a bus ministry. He wasn’t picking up regular churchgoing kids, he was actually picking up kids whose parents weren’t here.

Wow. It was even more than what she thought.

“All right then. That sounds like fun!”

“He’ll take big people too,” little Robert volunteered, and Terry had to smile at his word for adults—big people.

“You should go, Aunt Terry!” Marissa said, standing with her arms around her waist and her head buried in her stomach. “And I’m glad you’re back.”

“I’m glad too. I should get to see you guys a lot more.”

Typically she would come in on her day off, which was often a day during the week, and sometimes the kids were at school. But she had tried to make a point of knowing them and having a relationship with them as much as she could, especially since she’d started working at the practice in Richmond. Being a resident and going through med school didn’t give her a whole lot of time.

“All right, guys,” Gilbert said, appearing at her side, smiling but looking tired and haggard. “Let’s get ourselves inside. It’s almost time to start.”

The kids gave Terry one last hug and tore off into the church.

“Mom said you were thinking about moving in with her. I hope I didn’t scare you off,” he said, falling into step beside her and walking at a much more sedate pace than his children had.

“You didn’t scare me, but right now, you need Mom. Your kids need her, and you guys need that space. I know I wouldn’t have been a problem. I’m not trying to say that I was or that you would have thought of me that way, I just wanted to make sure that you guys remain center stage. Does that make sense?”

“It does. But I feel bad. I didn’t intend to...move in with my mom at thirty...” His voice trailed off, and she could see the grief and tiredness on his very person almost pouring off him, and she didn’t have to ask how Sally was doing, although she was going to anyway because it was just good to ask about her. That way, Gilbert could go home today and tell her, in case she didn’t make it to the Sunday meal.