Dear Santa(33)

“Mom, you should have woken me.” Lindy felt as though she was letting everyone down.

“I heard you talking on the phone last night and it was in the wee hours of the morning. You needed your rest. There’s nothing I can’t handle on my own. This is supposed to be your vacation, remember?”

Lindy refused to listen; she enjoyed cooking with her mother. Some of her favorite memories with her mom had taken place in this very kitchen. The recipes were ones handed down from her grandparents. From one generation to the next. The special fruit salad, the stuffing that went inside the turkey, and the homemade applesauce were the very dishes Lindy had grown up enjoying. One day she would prepare them for her own family.

    “I want to help,” Lindy insisted. “Now tell me what you’d like me to do.”

Ever organized, her mother had the recipe for the family’s favorite corn casserole laid out. Lindy collected what she needed and assembled it, and then placed it in the refrigerator, ready for the oven on Christmas Day.

“Aren’t you meeting Peggy for lunch?” her mother said, turning to look at the kitchen clock.

Her mother was right. Lindy needed to get a move on, or she’d be late. Kissing her mother’s cheek, Lindy headed out the door, eager to see her friend. Ever since Lindy had arrived, the two had spent a bit of time together each day.

Peggy was already at the pizza parlor when Lindy walked in the door. She’d ordered the margherita pizza they’d agreed on earlier.

“Merry Christmas,” Peggy said, smiling up at Lindy.

Pulling out a chair, Lindy took her seat. “Merry Christmas.”

The server came to get Lindy’s drink order and left. “I should probably ask for something stronger than diet soda,” she said.

    “Oh? I got your text from late last night, so tell me what’s going on.”

Lindy hardly knew where to start. Seeing that it was Christmas Eve, she wasn’t willing to weigh down their conversation. Now wasn’t the time to think about Celeste. She didn’t want to mention her early-morning conversation with Billy, either. Nevertheless, him asking her not to return to Seattle lingered in her mind.

“Stuff. You know. Life in general.”

“I’m glad you were able to meet me. Especially today.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“I know I casually mentioned this idea before, so I hope you’ll indulge me.”

This was interesting. “Okay. What idea? Another food scavenger hunt? A game to play at midnight tonight? A pub crawl?”

Peggy smiled and was about to speak when the pizza was delivered. They took a few minutes to enjoy a hot slice before her friend returned her attention to Lindy.

“I have a proposition for you,” Peggy said, and seemed to have trouble holding back her excitement. Her face lit up and she all but squirmed in her seat. “And it’s one I think you’re going to like.”

“What kind of proposition?” Lindy couldn’t help being curious, seeing how Peggy’s beautiful dark eyes glowed with delight.

    Waving her hand, Peggy said, “I don’t want you to make a decision right away. You’re in town another week, and I want you to promise me you’ll use that time to mull this over.”

“I’m listening.”

“Earlier this week, you helped me with a small glitch on my website that I was having.” She mentioned this as if it was something Lindy might have forgotten.

“Yes.” It’d taken her all of fifteen minutes to get the information arranged for Peggy the way that worked best. It was nothing. Lindy could have managed it in her sleep.

“Greg, one of the guys in the office, happened to mention it to Marcus, a friend of his who owns the Rose Bud, a flower shop in town.” She paused, as if this was of significance. “Greg also told Marcus you’d been the one to work on the Wine Press’s website. Now Marcus wants to know if you’d be willing to help him with his website.”

Instantly an idea for a flower shop popped into her head like a giant jack-in-the-box, leaping forward. This was exactly the kind of creative work Lindy enjoyed most. The back-end stuff took time and effort, but the graphics portion was the fun part for her, and she was good at it. She wasn’t being immodest. Lindy knew her strengths and weaknesses. The CEO at Media Blast saw her work and believed she was the best fit for the company, which was why he’d hired her over Laurie.

    “When Greg mentioned it to me, I told him I wouldn’t even ask. This is your vacation time, and besides, it’s Christmas.”

The words went over her head until she realized what Peggy had said. “But you did ask me?” Lindy figured there was a reason her friend had relented.

“And…being in the business I’m in, I have contacts with several small-business owners in the area. People who have invested their time, energy, and funds to build opportunity for themselves and their families. These family-operated businesses are the very backbone of America.”

Peggy didn’t need to sing their praises to Lindy. She could see with her own eyes the hard work and long hours Billy had put into his restaurant. It worried her that he was running himself into the ground, looking to make the most of his investment.

“The problem is that while Marcus is brilliant when it comes to knowing flowers and arranging them in creative, beautiful ways, he knows next to nothing about social media and user-friendly websites. His investment went into starting up his business. Like Billy, he’s trying to fit marketing in among running the store, filling orders, and balancing his inventory purchases with cash flow.”