Publication Date: September 28, 2021
Publisher: MIRA Books
The best Christmas giftsโfamily, friendship, and second chancesโare all waiting to be unwrapped in this sparkling new novel from USA Today bestselling author Sheila Roberts.
Single mom Lexie Bell hopes to make this first Christmas in their new home special for her six-year-old son, Brock. Festive lights and homemade fudge, check. Friendly neighbors? Uh, no. The reclusive widower next door is more grinchy than nice. But maybe he just needs a reminder of what matters most. At least sharing some holiday cheer with him will distract her from her own lack of romanceโฆ
Stanley Mann lost his Christmas spirit when he lost his wife and he sees no point in looking for it. Until she shows up in his dreams and informs him itโs time to ditch his Scroogey attitude. Stanley digs in his heels but sheโs determined to haunt him until he wakes up and rediscovers the joys of the season. He can start by being a little more neighborly to the single mom next door. In spite of his protests heโs soon making snowmen and decorating Christmas trees. How will it all end?
Merrily, of course. A certain Christmas ghost is going to make sure of that!
Excerpt
1
It was the sixth call in two days, all from the same person. Wouldnโt you think, if a man didnโt answer his phone the first five times, that the pest would get the message and quit bugging him?
But no, and now Stanley Mann was irritated enough to pick up and say a gruff โHello.โ Translation: Why are you bugging me?
โItโs about time you answered,โ said his sister-in-law, Amy. โI was beginning to wonder if you were okay.โ
Of course, he wasnโt okay. He hadnโt been okay since Carol had died.
โIโm fine. Thanks for checking.โ
The words didnโt come out with any sense of warmth or appreciation for her concern to encourage conversation, but Amy soldiered on. โStan, we all want you to come down for Thanksgiving. You havenโt seen the family in ages.โ
Not since the memorial service, and he hadnโt really missed them. He liked his brother-in-law well enough, but his wifeโs younger sister was a ding-dong, her daughters were drama queens and their husbands were idiots. The younger generation were all into their selfies and their jobs and their crazy vacations where they swam with sharks. Who in their right mind swam with sharks? He had better things to do than subject himself to spending an entire day with them.
He did have enough manners left to thank Amy for the invite before turning her down.
โYou really should come,โ she persisted.
No, he shouldnโt.
โDonโt you want to see the new great-niece?โ
No, he didnโt. โIโve got plans.โ
โWhat? To hole up in the house with a turkey frozen dinner?โ
โNo.โ Not turkey. He hated turkey. It made him sleepy.
โYou know Carol would want you to be with us.โ
Heโd been with them pretty much every Thanksgiving of his married life. Heโd paid his dues.
โYou donโt have any family of your own.โ
Thanks for rubbing it in. Heโd lost his brother ten years earlier to a heart attack, and both his parents were gone now as well. He and Carol had never had any kids of their own.
But he was fine. He was perfectly happy in his own company.
โIโm good, Amy. Donโt worry about me.โ
โI canโt help it. You know, Carol was always afraid that if something happened to her youโd become a hermit.โ
Hermits were scruffy old buzzards with bad teeth and long beards who hated people. Stanley didnโt hate people. He just didnโt need to be around them all the time. There was a difference. And he wasnโt scruffy. He brushed his teeth. And he shaved...every once in a while.
โAmy, Iโm fine. Donโt worry. Happy Thanksgiving, and tell Jimmy he can have my share of the turkey,โ Stanley said, then ended the call before she could grill him further regarding those plans heโd said he had.
They were perfectly good plans. He was going to pick up a frozen pizza and watch something on TV. That sure beat driving all the way from Fairwood, Washington, to Gresham, Oregon, to be alternately bored and irritated by his in-laws. If Amy really wanted to do something good for him, she could leave him alone.
At first everyone had. He was a man in mourning. Then came COVID-19, and he was a senior self-quarantining. Now, however, it appeared he was supposed to be ready to party on. Well, he wasnโt.
Two days before Thanksgiving he made the one-mile journey to the grocery store, figuring heโd dodge the crowd. Heโd figured wrong, and the store was packed with people finishing up the shopping for their holiday meal. The turkey supply in the meat freezer was running dangerously low, and half a dozen women and a lone man crowded around it like miners at the riverโs edge, searching for gold, each trying to snag the best bird from the selection that remained. A woman rolled past him with a mini-mountain of food in her cart, a wailing toddler in the seat and two kids dragging along behind her, one of them pointing to the chips aisle and whining.
โI said no,โ she snapped. โWe donโt need chips.โ
Nope. That woman needed a stiff drink.
Stanley grabbed his pizza and some pumpkin ice cream and got in the checkout line.
Two men around his age stood in front of him, talking. โTheyโre out of black olives,โ said the first one. โI got green instead.โ
The second man shook his head. โYour wife ainโt gonna like that. Everyone knows you got to have black olives at Thanksgiving.โ
โI canโt help it if thereโs none left on the shelves. Anyway, the only one who eats โem is her brother, and the loser can suck it up and do without.โ
Yep, family togetherness. Stanley wasnโt going to miss that.
Heโd miss being with Carol, though. He missed her every day. Her absence was an ache that never left him, and resentment kept it ever fresh.
Theyโd reached what was often referred to as the Golden Circle, that time in life when you had enough money to travel and enjoy yourself, when your health was still good and you could carry your own luggage. Theyโd enjoyed traveling and had planned on doing so much more togetherโtaking a world cruise, renting a beach house in California for a summer, even going deep-sea fishing in Mexico. Their golden years were going to be great.
Those golden years turned to brass the day she died. She didnโt even die of cancer or a stroke or something he could have accepted. She was killed in a car accident. A drunk driver in a truck had done her in and walked away with nothing more than some bruises from his airbag. It wasnโt right, and it wasnโt fair. And Stanley didnโt really have anything to be thankful about. He didnโt like Thanksgiving.
There would be worse to follow. After Thanksgiving it would be Merry Christmas!, Happy Hanukkah!, Happy Kwanzaa!, you name it. All that happy would finally get tied up in a big Happy New Year! bow. As if buying a new calendar magically made everything better. Well, it didnโt.
Stanley spent his Thanksgiving Day in lonely splendor, watching football on TV and eating his pizza. Itโs not delivery. Itโs DiGiorno. Worked for him. He ate two-thirds of it before deciding he should pace himself. Got to save room for dessert. Pumpkin ice creamโjust as good as the traditional pie and whipped cream, and it didnโt come with any irritating in-laws. Ice cream was the food of the gods. After his pizza, he pulled out a large bowl, filled it and dug in.
When they got older, Carol had turned into the ice cream police, limiting his consumption. Sheโd pat his belly and say, โNow, Manly Stanley, too much of that and youโll end up looking like a big, fat snowman. Plus youโll clog your arteries, and thatโs not good. I donโt want to risk losing you.โ
Ironic. Heโd wound up losing her instead.
Between all the ice cream and the beer heโd been consuming with no one to police him, he was starting to look a little like Frosty the Snowman. (Before he melted.) But who cared? He got himself a second bowl of ice cream.
He topped it off with a couple of beers and a movie along with some store-bought cookies. There you go. Happy Thanksgiving.
For a while, anyway. Until everything got together in his stomach and began to misbehave. He shouldnโt have eaten so much. Especially the pizza. He really couldnโt do spicy now that he was older. Telling everyone down there that all would soon be well, he took a couple of antacids.
No one down there was listening, and all that food had its own Turkey Day football game still going in his gut when he went to bed. He tossed and turned and groaned until, finally, he fell into an uneasy sleep.
โPepperoni and sausage?โ scolded a voice in his ear. โYou know better than to eat that spicy food, Stanley.โ
โI know, I know,โ he muttered. โYouโre right, Carol.โ
Carol! Stanley rolled over and saw his wife standing by the side of his bed. She was wearing the black nightie he always loved to see her in. And then out of. Her eyes were as blue as ever. How heโd missed that sweet face!
But what was she doing here?
He blinked. โIs it really you?โ He thought heโd never see her again in this lifetime, but there she was. His heart turned over.
โYes, itโs really me,โ she said.
She looked radiant and so kissable, but that quickly changed. Suddenly, her body language wasnโt very lovey-dovey. She frowned and put her hands on her hips, a sure sign she was about to let him have it.
โWhat were you thinking?โ she demanded.
He didnโt have to ask what she was referring to. He knew.
โItโs Thanksgiving. I was celebrating,โ he said.
She frowned. โAll by yourself.โ
โI happen to like my own company. You know that.โ
โThereโs liking your own company, and thereโs hiding.โ
โI am not hiding,โ he insisted.
โYes, you are. I gave you time to mourn, time to adjust, but enough is enough. Life is short, Stanley. Itโs like living off your savings. Each day you take another withdrawal, and pretty soon thereโs nothing left. You have to spend those days wisely. Youโre wasting yours, dribbling away the last of your savings.โ
โThatโs fine with me,โ he insisted. โI hate my life.โ
He hated waking up to find her side of the bed empty and ached for her smile. Without her the house felt deserted. He felt deserted.
โYou still like ice cream, donโt you?โ she argued.
Except for when he paired it with pizza.
โStanley, you need to get out there and...live.โ
โWhat do you think Iโm doing?โ he grumped.
โGoing through the motions, hanging in limbo.โ
What else could she expect? โItโs not the same without you,โ he protested.
โOf course itโs not. But youโre still here, and youโre here for a reason. Donโt make what happened to me a double waste. Somebody snatched my life from me, and I wasnโt done with it. I want you to go on living for the both of us.โ
โHow can I do that? This isnโt a life, not without you sharing it.โ
โItโs a different kind of life, thatโs all.โ
It was a subpar, meager existence. โI miss you, Carol. I miss you sitting across from me at the breakfast table. I miss us doing things together and sitting together at night, watching TV. I miss...your touch.โ He finished on a sob.
โI know.โ She sat down on the bed next to him, and he couldnโt help noticing how the blankets didnโt shift under her. โBut you have to start filling those empty places, Stanley.โ
โI donโt want to,โ he cried. โI donโt want to.โ
He was still muttering โI donโt want toโ when he woke up.
Alone. For a moment there, her presence had felt so real.
โShe wasnโt there at all, you dope,โ he muttered.
Except why was there a faint scent of peppermint in the bedroom? It made him think of the chocolate Christmas cookies she used to make with the mint-candy frosting and sprinkles on them. After a few big sniffs, he couldnโt detect so much as a whiff of peppermint and shook his head in disgust. Indigestion and memory. That was all she was.
Excerpted from A Little Christmas Spirit by Sheila Roberts. Copyright ยฉ 2021 by Roberts Ink LLC. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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