“I expected Grandmother to push harder for me to be involved. She refused. I got angry.”
“Oh.”
“Looking back, now, I wish it had all gone differently of course. I wish a bunch of stuff, actually,” Del said, using his napkin to catch a tear on his cheek. “Was she ill?”
“No. Nothing that would have prepared us. Nothing that I knew of.”
“And you would have?”
“I would.” Baily took a deep breath. “Let’s, um, check the calendar. It’s in the front room, on the mantel, right behind the cornucopia, I bet.”
Sure enough, the antique advent calendar, about the size of a cat food box, was right where Baily thought it would be, ready for Katherine to set it front and center in place of the woven horn of plenty out for Thanksgiving.
“When did this start?” Del asked.
The advent calendar had a gree
