Read The Christmas Promise (Christmas Hope) for Free Online Page A

What is wrong with you, Gloria? I thought. Running after people like a bull after a red cape. I hurried toward Wilson’s and my feet slid out beneath me, taking my breath away.
    Robert Layton was the first to my side. “Morning, Glory!”
    I blew the curls out of my face and searched the back of my head for the bobby pin. “That joke never gets old, does it, Robert?” He laughed, helping me up. “I wasn’t made for winter.” He held me steady as I straightened my coat, shoving the yellow hat back onto my head. One pant leg was riding above my boot and I pulled it down, stamping my foot to knock off the slushy mess on top of it.
    “I saw you running after a man, Gloria. Has it really come to that?” I laughed. Robert picked up my gloves and handed them to me. “Besides your pride, is anything broken, cracked, or wounded?”
    I brushed snow from my backside. “Well, my mother always told me that if I was going to fall to do so in front of a young man because he’d still be able to bend over and pick me up.”
    “I can’t imagine that anyone in my office would call me young,” Robert said, laughing. I had met Robert three years earlier at a charity function. He was an old friend of Dalton and Heddy’s, and I found him to be pleasant and unassuming, quite the opposite of what I’d always imagined for a lawyer. “Is your work keeping you busy, Gloria?”
    I clapped my hands together. “Just a few days ago I got a car. That doesn’t happen very often, you know. That’s very exciting for me and Heddy.”
    Robert pulled up the collar of his overcoat. “I bet it is.”
    I needed to get home, and I stepped into the street. “But I have to find a mechanic before my neighbor gets back into town.”
    Robert took me by the arm and opened the car door. “Call Jack Andrews at City Auto Service. He’s done my work for years.”
    “I can’t pay a lot,” I said.
    “He won’t ask a lot. Gloria, you need a place where you can put all the stuff you collect.”
    “I got a place. My garage.” I started the car and rolled down the window. “Thank you, Robert. Say hi to Kate.”
    He walked back to the sidewalk, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. “You bet. Let me know if I can ever do anything to help.”
    I scribbled Jack Andrews’s name on a pad I kept in the car, and watched as a homeless man across the square pulled a hat farther down on his head. It was getting colder. I squinted to see who he was, wondering if he was new to town, but the light turned green before I could see his face, so I drove away.
     

    My kitchen and living room were strewn with boxes filled with shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, and toothbrushes. Dalton and Heddy were helping me inventory what we had so we could figure out what items were still needed for care packages we’d be giving to the families with whom we worked and to the street people downtown. It was our fourth year putting the packages together, and each year we managed to add more things. I heard a car and looked up from the kitchen table to see Miriam pulling into her driveway.
    “Do you hear that?” Heddy said. “Dogs have stopped barking. Birds have stopped chirping.”
    “She has a way of doing that,” I said, watching Miriam drive into her garage. She’d been gone five days, but it felt like one glorious year without her next door. I worked at breaking down a box, but stopped when I heard something. “What was that?”
    “Probably Jack working on the Silver Fox,” Dalton said.
    Heddy and I looked out the window when the noise grew louder, and saw Miriam shouting on her cell phone, waving her arms. I pressed closer to the window. “What is she doing?” Miriam’s voice grew strident and shrill, and Heddy and I ran to the front door, leaving Dalton at the table.
    “Everything! I mean everything,” Miriam shouted. “How soon? I can’t wait that long. I need someone over here now. Forget it!” She snapped the phone closed.
    Jack Andrews was bent over