Christmas Trees And Mistletoe

Chapter 2

It was still dark outside when Kathleen Johnson poured herself a cup of coffee and padded across the hardwood floor of her living room in her bunny slippers, a gift from her granddaughters the previous year. She stopped in front of the window, sipped the hot liquid, and looked down at the harbor.

The local sailing and boat club was nearly ready for the holiday festival of lights: the dozen or more boats moored in the harbor had multicolored lights strung from their decks to their masts, and the reflections sparkled delightfully on the water. They were ready for the Lights on the Harbor Sailpast, a decades-old tradition where the boats paraded past in their holiday splendor. It was scheduled to take place the first week of December, only nine days away.

Kathleen nodded her approval. This eagerly anticipated and well-attended event marked the beginning of the holiday season and brought much-needed foot traffic to the harbor—visitors who purchased gifts from the local merchants and her own well-stocked toy store.

She resisted the urge to think about work, enjoying instead the sun rising from the sea over the horizon. This was, after all, one of the reasons she’d returned to Sunshine Bay and bought this condo: to soak in the beauty of island life.

Sipping her coffee slowly, she waited until the sun had risen before flipping on the television to listen to her favorite morning show host, who always brought a smile to her face with quick humor and a daily feel-good cat or dog video. Her mind strayed again to the upcoming holiday season.

Her daughter Nicole and her family had joined her for dinner for the sailpast the year before, and they’d enjoyed a pleasant evening walking along the shore, sipping hot chocolate, and watching the festive boats and fireworks that lit up the harbor. If they came again this year, perhaps it would be the beginning of a family tradition, though she wasn’t holding her breath. Nicole rarely had time for Kathleen while she and her husband raised two active ten-year-old girls and grew their medical practice.

Still, she would ask them today. And if her daughter and son-in-law, Jason, couldn’t make it, maybe her granddaughters could spend the evening or even stay overnight. They could camp out in the living room, eat popcorn, and watch the lights. It could be fun for the girls, and it would give her another opportunity to get to know them. In the eighteen months since she’d returned to Sunshine Bay, opportunities to be with her granddaughters had been rarer than she liked.

Breaking news of an earthquake in Europe interrupted the upbeat report of a St. Bernard digging out his owner from under a snowslide, and soon disturbing images of the earthquake’s aftermath were flashing on the screen in front of her.

Recalling the advice her friend Sandy had given her soon after her separation two years before, Kathleen flipped to the next channel. “Focus on what’s working in your life,” Sandy had said, “and keep negative input to a minimum. It will help you deal with overwhelm.” And since Kathleen’s life was bordering on overwhelm again, she needed to remember Sandy’s advice. It had kept her from melting down during her divorce from Chris, her husband of thirty-two years. Sandy, whom she hadn’t seen since her relocation to Vancouver Island, had also advised her not to drink coffee.

She took another sip of her espresso, flipped the channel to a morning talk-show segment on holiday fashions, and congratulated herself on following at least one pearl of Sandy’s wisdom.

Half an hour later, she left the condo to walk the few short blocks to her store, Curious Kids Educational Toys. She had decisions to make and tasks to complete, the most important of which was to finalize the theme for her entry to the Community Tree Festival—an annual charity event where local businesses and organizations entered decorated Christmas trees for auction to raise money for the Sunshine Bay Children’s Center.

There would be time enough for that when she got to the store. Meanwhile, she tried to calm her mind and enjoy the walk. It was a clear day, unusual this time of year. Sunshine Bay was, despite its name, rarely sunny between November and March, when a perpetual cloud covered the little town. The upside was that snow gathered on the mountaintops, to the delight of skiers and those, like herself, who liked to appreciate its beauty from afar. She walked through the streets, deserted except for vendors out making deliveries and other shopkeepers arriving to open their own stores. It reminded her of what she liked most—aside from being closer to her daughter and granddaughter—about living here on island: the slower pace of life.

Despite her attempts to focus on the moment, her thoughts drifted, as they often did, back to the store. She had worked hard this past year and was determined not to repeat last year’s disastrous fourth quarter. This month, if she executed her marketing plan well, she would finally see the much-needed return on her investment in the business. And no one would ever have to know that she had been duped—again.

Her store, formerly Curious Kid Toys and Games, was the same store she had visited with her mother fifty years before. She had spent her allowance there on books and games, always careful to ask for educational toys she knew her mother would subsidize. Her mother, she thought now, would have approved of her purchasing the store, even though Kathleen’s kids, Nicole and her all-but-estranged son Terrence, had not.

“You’ve never owned a business. Why start now?” Nicole had asked.

“Because I want to build something of my own.” Something different from being the wife of a successful surgeon and the mother of two children who both followed their father into medicine, she thought grimly.

Something different from being the wife of a successful surgeon and the mother of two children who both followed their father into medicine“You know nothing about business!” Terrence had scoffed. “You’ll just screw it up like you did your marriage.”

She ignored that part of his statement, not wanting Terrence to know how much it hurt that he had taken his father’s side in the divorce.

“What do you think I was doing when I set up and managed your father’s practice for fifteen years?” she had asked him cryptically. But he had walked away. He was too young to know or remember that before Chris hired a series of office managers, she had managed his office and practice, as well as managing her children’s extra-curricular activities, organizing the charitable events that raised money for hospital equipment, running the household, and raising both kids as though she were a single parent. The arrangement had worked well until Chris hired Jolene to manage his office—and share his bed. This Jolene did for eight years before Kathleen discovered it. Eight years. How had she not seen it?

“I wish you would at least consult an expert before you sink money into this,” Nicole had warned.

“I’ll be fine,” Kathleen had said, confident that her new venture was just what she needed: a turnkey operation she could run as the previous owners had run it for years. Papa Jake, the former owner, had showed her the healthy amount of stock in the back room, passed on the employees who had been with him for decades, and given her a ten-year summary of the books that showed a healthy return on previous average sales.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Terrence before he returned to Vancouver and his demanding residency. “Dad thinks you’re getting in over your head.”

That he had discussed her future with Chris incensed her so much that she had forgone the consultant fees and plunged into her new adventure. How dare her ex-husband try to control her after what he had done?

She would never tell either of them that once Papa Jake had flown off to Arizona for a much-longed-for retirement, she had discovered several pitfalls with her new investment. The healthy stock consisted of items she couldn’t sell. The staff who had run things for years weren’t open to change, and, after several battles of will during the previous Christmas season, she had let two of them go, keeping only one trusted employee, Jackie, a woman with exceptional customer service skills and the ability to understand Kathleen’s need to overhaul the business model.

When Kathleen had sat down that January to take a serious look at what she had purchased, she realized that though the ten-year-average sales were indeed good, the operation had been losing money for the past two years. The store didn’t have a website, a healthy customer base, or product people wanted to buy.

Drawing on her considerable volunteer experience raising money for hospitals, Kathleen realized she had to create a new brand and find new and repeat customers, or else the business would fail—and so, as Terrence had predicted, would she.

The bell over the door tinkled as she pushed it open and stepped over the threshold. The little bell was one of the few items she’d kept from the original decor, and she loved her store now. It was bright, colorful, and filled with educational toys and crafts. It smelled of new books with glossy covers. It was a place where children, teachers, and parents could find quality, user-friendly, and hard-to-source products. And they could get live demonstrations of some of the newer technology before purchasing.

Her market research, her time spent in the schools earlier in the year, the new name and website, and her semi-weekly sales bulletins with educational tips had all paid off. This month, if all went as expected, she could finally pay herself a living wage, hire another full-time clerk, and put the business firmly in the black.

But today, she reminded herself, was decoration day. It was a good use of a Thursday morning, as business was often slow in the early part of the day. Behind the counter was a box of Christmas decorations Jackie had found in the storeroom the day before. At least the decorations were in good shape, and she could repurpose them this year.

When Jackie arrived, they could string the twinkle lights along the top shelves and around the inside of the display window. Kathleen pulled a stuffed turtle with a Santa hat out of the box and gave it a little squeeze before placing it on the shelf behind the cash register. The previous year some children seemed to enjoy searching for Trixie Turtle, who moved around the store every few days. The reward for spotting Trixie was a piece of candy, which she and Jackie now only gave out as children were leaving the store. She had learned the hard way that sticky fingers and toys did not mix.

She pulled out her phone and made a note to buy a box of candy before the weekend, when her website would announce that Trixie Turtle was back in town. Then she turned her attention to putting the float in the till. She was about to step out for a moment, to grab her second cup of coffee from the bakery next door, when her phone rang.

“Mom, it’s Nicole. Have you seen the news?”

“What news?”

“There’s been an earthquake in Italy—”

“Nic, I’ve got a lot going on. I’m sure it’s awful, what’s going on there, but I don’t need to know what’s happening in Italy.”

“Mom, Jason and I are on the roster to go this time.”

“What? To Italy?”

“Yes. Can you watch the kids?”

Oh, right. Kathleen put her hand to her brow. Nicole and her husband had recently joined an international emergency response agency.

Oh, right.“Are you sure it’s safe?” Nicole had a way of rushing into things despite the danger.

“Mom, we’ve talked about this. It’s what we want to do. You said you’d help with the kids.”

Dammit. She had said that she would help. She looked around at the work she had to do to get the store ready and thought of the newsletters she needed to write. This was not a good time. And as much as she loved her granddaughters, they were active ten-year-olds who needed a lot of attention.

Dammit.had“Mom? Are you still there?”

She sighed. “Yes, I’m here.” This was not a great time, but she had promised. And wasn’t this just the opportunity she was looking for to get to know Jade and Amber better?

“I need an answer now, Mom. I have a couple of friends I can call…”

“No. Don’t do that. Of course I can help.” She would figure out how to juggle it all for a few days. She had always been good at juggling.

“Thanks, Mom. Can you drop by? We’ll need some time to go over the girls’ schedule. A month’s not that long, but they’ve both got appointments. Plus activities we’ve signed them up for.”

A month? Surely she had misheard. “How long will you be away?”

“They think two to three weeks. We’re hoping to be home by Christmas.”

“That’s nearly five weeks away, honey.” For a physician, her daughter had an appalling lack of time sense.

“Right, yes, I know. Umm…”

Kathleen shook her head. Her daughter sounded scattered. Nicole had too much to deal with this morning, and she didn’t need her mother adding to her problems.

“Listen, dear.” She glanced up at the clock. “I just need to wait a few minutes until Jackie gets here.” She was going to need more help to pull this off. Maybe her two part-timers, Casey and Josh, could start taking on more hours. She made a mental note to follow up with them that afternoon.

The tiny bell over the door tinkled. Her assistant manager and right-hand person, Jackie, stepped into the store, two coffees in hand, grinning and ready to take on the day.

“Oh, great,” said Kathleen, reaching for the coffee. “Listen, honey, Jackie just stepped in. I’ll be there soon.” She took a coffee cup from Jackie’s outstretched hand and mouthed the words thank you.

thank youShe clicked off the phone and gave Jackie a quick update before hurrying home to get her car. Her daughter needed her. It was the first time that had happened since the twins had been born ten years earlier. It would be hard to juggle the kids and the store, but she would make it work.

For Nicole.