Read Miz Scarlet and the Holiday Houseguests (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery #3) for Free Online

me.”
    “There was no reason to throw out a
perfectly good shirt. Sometimes it just takes a little ingenuity
and creativity,” my mother announced.
    “You’re the best,” was the reply as the
teenager wrapped her arms around Laurel and hugged her tightly. My
mother beamed, happy that she had given Jenny something meaningful.
Mozzie, watching his excited mistress, gave a little bark. “I know,
boy! Isn’t it great?”
    We spent the rest of the
night basking in the glow of Christmas lights, as we sat down to
watch It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time.
    “It was my mother’s favorite movie,”
the teenager told us as she, Lacey and I crowded onto the sofa,
Huck and Mozzie tucked between us. My mother and January were
snuggled next to us in the wing chair. My mother had her feet up on
the ottoman, her legs covered by her Black Watch
blanket.
    “Don’t you just love how George finally
figures it all out?” I asked, as I cued up the movie. “He’s so sure
everything is hopeless, that he doesn’t have a ghost of a chance to
turn it all around.”
    “Sometimes the best gift at Christmas
is to believe in life again,” Laurel decided. “When your spirit is
refreshed, all things are possible. I think that’s why I never get
tired of this story.”
    “True, true,” the other Googins girl
agreed, as she dug into her bowl of popcorn. “It’s always best to
find the real meaning of Christmas. It’s never about the material
goods. It’s about the relationships you have. People
matter.”
    “You have to invest in those people who
will make a difference,” my mother declared, “the ones who will go
out and get things done. They’ll inspire other people to do the
same. You can’t waste your time on folks who don’t get it and don’t
want to get it.”
    “Pearls before swine,” Lacey nodded as
she waxed philosophical. “People have to accept, even embrace,
their responsibility to make the world a better place, or they just
squander the opportunities.”
    I glanced at Jenny, sitting beside me.
Her eyes were on the TV screen, but I saw the corners of her lips
curl into a smile as she listened to the Googins girls discuss
their views. These were words she needed to hear. They would
sustain her through those tenuous moments of doubt, when life was
hard and unfair. They would remind her to reach out, to believe
that humans could do incredible things if they set their minds to
it. Maybe all these hokey holiday traditions we shared as a family
were what helped to keep us together, and what brought this teenage
to the Four Acorns Inn. Jenny had lost so much in her young life,
and she probably never thought she could ever belong
again.
    But even as she joined our ever-growing
circle, Jenny wasn’t just taking from us. She was also giving. We
needed her energy, her spirit, her promise...even her youth. The
Googins girls were fountains of wisdom on occasion, but without
anyone to share it with they were sometimes prone to believe that
nothing really mattered in society any more. Having Jenny living
here at the inn gave them a new connection to a world that
sometimes seemed to disappoint of late. When they saw the
excitement, the wonder in her eyes, they could believe again. And
when she reached out to them, for comfort, for compassion, they
knew they still had work to do in the here-and-now. They were not
ancient, lumbering creatures doomed to extinction. They were
vibrant, interesting people who mattered to a teenager who needed
them.
    And if I was honest with myself, the
same held true for me. Sitting there, I realized how much richer my
life was with this teenager in it. Jenny was the daughter I never
had the chance to have, and I was a better person for taking that
big risk back in Bay Head, New Jersey. I let her into my car and
into my heart, and I was so glad I did.
     

Chapter Five --
     
    I stood in the front hall with Jenny
the next day, waiting for Bur to pull the car up to the front
porch. She had a