The Asheville Christmas Tradition (Carolina Christmas #4)

10. Noelle

Edna Covington had been out of town for a few days, so it took her a while to respond to Noelle’s text asking for a one-on-one meeting. But she finally agreed to one—on her terms, of course. It would be that very day, at her house, promptly at 11:00 a.m.

The meeting was important enough that Noelle canceled a gallery walk-through with a new buyer and shortened her morning session with a local artist. It was a shame, because the Brazilian woman’s portfolio of stunning watercolors was impressive and she hoped to carry her work.

With half an hour to spare when the floor manager clocked in, Noelle took off, driving to an address in South Asheville, arriving with five minutes to spare at a tidy brick house that she suspected belied Edna Covington’s true wealth.

Small and tucked into a sweet residential street, with a hand-painted “Santa Stop Here” sign in the driveway, the home was decked out with garlands wrapped around a quaint front porch.

As she walked up to the door, Noelle realized she didn’t really have a game plan for asking if any of Cassie’s ideas might be implemented. She hoped that a warm and friendly conversation would soften up her adversary, at least enough that she might consider a small change. If nothing else, she wanted to forge a better relationship with Edna, certain they’d gotten off to a rocky start.

Edna opened the door after the first ring, surprising Noelle again with just how diminutive she was.

She gestured her into a dimly-lit entryway where an endless array of Christmas decorations started and didn’t appear to stop.

“Is there a problem with the tree lighting?” Edna asked without much of a greeting.

“Absolutely not,” Noelle said, sliding out of her coat to hang it on a stand by the door without being invited to do so. “I just thought you and I might get to know each other a little bit so I can really understand your—well, Gil’s—vision for the event.”

That earned her a flick of an eyebrow and a nod to the kitchen. “I made coffee and store-bought cookies,” she said as they walked into a maple-and-Formica-heavy corner kitchen. “Not your fancy buffet setup, but never let it be said I can’t show Southern hospitality. Do you take cream and sugar?”

“Yes, both, please.” Noelle settled into a chair at a dated kitchen table. “Have you lived here long, Mrs. Covington?”

“Longer than you’ve been alive,” she said, coming over with two steaming cups on saucers.

The old-school coffee service made Noelle smile. “Thank you.”

“Gil and I got married in 1963 and moved in here not long after. Bought for a song, we did, though I don’t know what it’s worth. Don’t care because I’ll never leave.”

“What a wonderful history,” she said, looking around and wondering, had the kitchen been updated in those sixty years?

“Which is your way of saying it’s an old house. Yes, it is. But I’m an old woman—gonna be eighty-four on my next birthday—and I don’t like change. But you already knew that.”

“I know you like…tradition.” She clung to Cassie’s new favorite word.

“Well, I don’t like these big modern houses with no walls and a piece of marble in the middle big enough to skate on,” she scoffed. “If I wanted an island in my kitchen, I’d move to the Caribbean.”

Noelle chuckled at that.

“And I like my furniture, which is as old as the hills. Just like I like my bouffant hairdo, my handbag that doesn’t have sixteen zippers so you can’t find anything, and all the other old stuff. I like things as they are and so did Gil.” She gave a tight smile and maybe stole a breath after her speech. “So, honey, if you came over here to sweet-talk me into your silly lights or piped-in music, you wasted a drive to South Asheville. I don’t like change, period, end of story.”

Noelle leaned back, eyeing her and trying to figure out some way to win this ornery little lady over.

“I understand that you aren’t interested in those ideas,” she said, and meant it. “I came to get to know you and maybe have you know me, too.”

She snorted. “A busy woman like you with a successful art gallery just dropped everything to have coffee with an old lady? No agenda? I don’t believe it.”

Noelle also knew that you had to give information before you get it.

Taking another sip of coffee that tasted like it had been brewed yesterday, she slowly lowered the cup to the sweet saucer and looked across the table.

“I have a problem,” she started. “And I’m hoping to get your advice.”

Edna looked over the delicate rim of her cup. “I’ll do my best, but I won’t change a thing at the tree lighting.”

“I can’t seem to find a way to connect with the other retailers and shopkeepers in town,” she said. “I feel like an outsider and I know they all loved Sherry Kinsell, the former owner of my gallery.”

“And her husband,” Edna added.

“Of course, Zander. A true talent and his death was a huge blow to the art gallery.”

“It was a bigger blow to his friends and family,” she said dryly. “But you’re right, Sherry was a friend to all and a local girl. Zander opened the gallery decades ago and he was actually one of the first real famous artists to come out of Asheville. They were a source of pride and you are…a New Yorker.”

She said it as though it was a disease.

“Well, I’m actually local, too.”

“I know,” she said. “I know your parents came here in summers and at Christmas, and that your family has had that place up on Copper Creek Mountain forever. That doesn’t make you a local.”

Noelle nodded. “I get that. What would?”

To her credit, Edna considered the question carefully, taking a drink before answering.

“Well, for one thing, you don’t swoop in and change things just because you’re young and new and…hip.”

Noelle smiled. “I wouldn’t describe myself like that.”

“Lots of people have,” she countered. “And for another, you need time. So take it.” One more drink and she finished the coffee. “Was that all?”

Noelle nearly choked. No, that wasn’t even close to all. Talk about not connecting.

But Noelle Chambers Fleming didn’t give up that easily and at this point? She had nothing to lose.

“I have another little problem,” she continued.

Edna tried not to react with disdain, but she failed. “And that would be…”

“My daughter—my stepdaughter, to be precise—would like to sing at the tree lighting.”

Edna blinked and drew back. “Excuse me?”

“She has a beautiful voice,” Noelle said quickly. “Really a remarkable talent. She sang the solo in the church play last year?—”

“Then sign her up for America’s Got Talent , dear, but she isn’t auditioning at Gil’s tree lighting.”

“It’s so important to her,” Noelle insisted. “She’s such a good girl and hasn’t had a mother for her whole life?—”

“Oh, please. No.” She crossed her slender arms and sliced Noelle with a look. “Any other problems you want to drop on me?”

Was she really that heartless?

“I guess a parade of animals dressed as elves or letting people post wish cards on the tree or waving glow sticks is out of the question.”

Edna choked a laugh. “You guess right.”

She let out a sigh and pushed her coffee away to signal that she understood this little meeting was over. “I’ll be on my way.”

They both stood and Noelle looked down on the woman, a hundred different parting shots in her head. A wry comment about Gil and his flickering lights. A little joke about not liking change…even in her décor. A crack about anything from her nasty attitude to her bitter coffee.

But Jacqueline Chambers didn’t raise that woman.

“Thank you for your time,” she said instead, turning to walk toward the front door and retrieve her coat. She considered not even putting it on so she could make a quick getaway from the meeting that had blown up in her face.

She did slide her arms in, though, and reached for the doorknob just as a small but surprisingly strong hand landed on her shoulder.

“Wait.”

She froze for a second, then turned to the other woman, bracing for another dressing down and a reminder of all her flaws and how unfit she was to be a mother or store owner or committee chair.

Then she gasped softly at the tears filling Edna’s eyes.

“I think you should know something,” she said on a ragged whisper. “The Asheville tree lighting didn’t start fourteen years ago. It started a second time fourteen years ago.”

Noelle stared at her, silent and not sure why Edna was telling her this.

“It was a big deal back in the fifties and sixties,” she said. “Folks around here forget that, but when Asheville was a very, very small mountain town, we’d have a lighting right there on the same intersection, at the same park. Smaller tree, smaller crowd, but same atmosphere.”

“I…didn’t know that,” Noelle said.

“I had my first date there with a handsome boy named Gilbert Covington. And it was in front of that tree, on December fourteenth, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-two, where he kissed me as the tree lights came on. All white lights, which was unusual back then.”

“That’s…amazing,” Noelle said, and meant it, thinking of her own kiss at the tree lighting last year.

Edna gave a smile. “Gil called it my last first kiss. And it sure was. The tree lightings stopped in the sixties when hippies showed up and took over Asheville for a while. Then fifteen years ago, I think my Gil knew he didn’t have a lot of time left. He decided to start the whole thing again and…do it just like it was back in our day. All white lights, with the carolers, and everything the same. I think he wanted to recreate the moment for other young couples.”

“Oh.” The word slipped out as Noelle covered her lips. “I kissed Jace there last year for the first time in twenty-five years. It was…a last first kiss, too.”

“Well, there you have it. We were married less than six months later,” Edna said.

Noelle gasped. “So were we!”

Edna’s expression softened. “When those lights flicker…” She swallowed and forced herself to continue through a thick voice. “I know he’s watching over me. Every year at the tree lighting, he…shows up. Oh, I know people think it’s silly folklore, but it’s not…silly or folklore.”

She blinked, sending a tear over her crinkly cheek. “It’s the highlight of my year, Noelle. Please don’t take that from me. Don’t change the lights or the music or entertainment or…wait. Did you say an animal elf parade?”

Noelle let out a little laugh at her tone of disbelief. “That one’s a stretch.”

She blew out a sigh. “You tell your little girl I’m sorry but I can’t. When I’m dead, you can do all the changes you want. I’ll be with Gil. But until then? No changes. Glow sticks? What in tarnation are they, anyway?”

Noelle laughed, her whole being lighter. “Nothing you have to worry about, Mrs. Covington.”

“It’s Edna. Goodbye, dear.”

“Goodbye…Edna.”

Noelle had no idea why, but she left with a much happier heart than she’d had when she arrived.

Somebody else might have their last first kiss at that tree with the flickering white lights, and Noelle wasn’t going to be the person to bring that tradition to an end.

Noelle found Cassie singing in the barn late that afternoon. She was belting out her favorite Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” and sounded even better than she had last year on stage, dressed as a sheep next to the manger.

It was time to break the bad news.

“Need help?” Noelle asked, reaching for her mucking boots that sat in the corner of the small structure that housed Sprinkles, two cats, and Tom Bertram’s mare, who was still struggling with a respiratory infection.

The horse, a stately dappled girl, stood looking out of her stall, watching Cassie work and no doubt enjoying the song.

“Yes, please,” Cassie said, holding out her muck rake. “I’m ready for a break.”

She rarely complained about her chores, so the comment surprised Noelle. “You okay?”

“Yeah…I just…” She folded onto a hay bale and looked up, her big blue eyes wide and genuine. “I don’t have enough money.”

Noelle almost laughed at the incredibly mature admission, but she could see that Cassie was serious. “What do you need money for?”

“Christmas presents!” She sounded shocked that Noelle didn’t know that. “I have cousins now?—”

“You don’t have to buy them presents, Cass.”

“Oh, I do. I have a big family now that Daddy married you.” She held out her hands and started counting on her fingers. “Three boy cousins, a baby cousin, a teenage cousin, two new aunts, and Uncle Sonny and Aunt Bitsy!” Then she waved the one finger left over. “And you and Daddy. I don’t have enough money even after I get paid for all my chores.”

“I could…lend you some.”

“Nope. Not for gifts. It’s a rule.”

“Well, you certainly don’t have to get me a present,” Noelle said, getting a dropped jaw and an “are you kidding” look in response. “I’m serious, Cass. Save your money on me. And what if we set up a Secret Santa and you and your cousins pull names and only get a gift for that one person?”

“I already got Sawyer a paperweight with a bear inside and I found barrettes for Brooke.”

“You shopped?”

“We have a gift thing at school where kids can buy presents for people,” she explained. “But I’m running out of”—she rubbed her fingers together in the universal sign for money—“moolah, as Daddy says.”

“Well, we’ll figure something out.” Noelle dragged the rake over the hay and thought about the real reason she’d come out here—to break the news to Cassie. “So I had a meeting with the lady who controls the tree lighting ceremony today.”

“I thought that was you.”

“Well, she’s the lady with…” Noelle mimicked the moolah gesture. “And she gets the final say. Sadly, none of your ideas passed muster.”

“Why would you pass mustard?”

Noelle chuckled. “It’s an expression and it means we got shot down. I’m sorry, Cass.”

She made a face as she considered the news. “She didn’t like any of them?”

“She…wants this event to never change. It’s tradition, you know, and part of the tradition is that it’s the same every year.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “Why?” she asked, proving that she might not know what “pass muster” meant, but this child was wise beyond her years. Edna’s motivation didn’t make sense…unless she knew the truth.

On a sigh, Noelle leaned on the rake and studied her little girl, making a decision to share more than she might with the average eight-year-old, but absolutely nothing about Cassie Fleming was average.

“Her husband, who died years ago, came up with the whole idea a long time ago, and she made him a promise that she wouldn’t change a thing,” Noelle explained. “So it’s very important to her that nothing new or different is introduced at the tree lighting.”

“Huh.” Cassie thought about that for a minute, then squished her face. “That’s kind of sad, because sometimes new is better.”

“I’m with you, girl, but she calls the shots.”

Shaking her head, Cassie huffed out a breath. “I mean, I get the elf parade. But why would he care if I sang? People sing at that thing all the time. And they dress weird. I could be an elf…”

Noelle could hear the ache in her voice, and it touched her. Leaning the rake against the rough-hewn wood, she crouched down in front of Cassie on the hay bale.

“Every year, since even before he died, the tree lights along the bottom two rows have flickered, turning off and on really fast. It happened when old Gil was alive, and it’s happened every year.”

“Then they need new lights,” she replied, making Noelle smile. So wise.

“Except that Mrs. Covington thinks those lights are a sign from her husband that he’s watching her from heaven and he completely approves of the tree lighting.”

She inched back with an expression of total disbelief. “That’s…” Then she thought about it for a second. “Wait. Can that happen? Can dead people do that? Daddy says we don’t believe in ghosts. They’re not in the Bible.”

“They’re not and we don’t, but this is very comforting to Mrs. Covington because she’s very, very sad that her husband died.”

“Maybe it’s true.”

“No, no,” Noelle insisted. “That’s not how it happens. Things can remind you of someone you lost—like when I see cardinals in the winter, I always think of my mother. But it’s not…her.”

Cassie looked just uncertain enough to make Noelle think she might buy the Covington Theory of seeing dead people.

“But Cassie?—”

“It’s fine, Miss Noelle. I won’t sing and I won’t do anything to change the tree lighting. That old lady should…see her husband.”

Torn between fighting her on logic and hugging her for having such a soft heart, Noelle just nodded. “I think that’s the best gift we can give her. And speaking of gifts, maybe I could take you shopping for some of the ones you’re missing and we could make them from both of us.”

“Daddy would say you’re bending the rules.”

Noelle just smiled. “Bending, not breaking. Come on, let’s finish mucking so we have time to watch another Christmas movie tonight.”

“Yay!” And proving she was still a very little girl, Cassie easily moved to the next highlight in her life and hopefully let go of this one.