A Little Country Christmas - Carolyn Brown Page 0,145
of coffee and staring out at the angry winter ocean pounding along the sand. She didn’t need a weatherman to know that a storm was coming. The northeast winds were driving the surf up the beach and whipping the waves into foam. She should probably close the hurricane shutters before she headed off to work. She shivered. It was freezing out there.
She was just pulling on her parka when her phone rang. It was Momma.
“Have you seen the weather report?” Momma said when Brenda connected the call.
“You know I don’t have a TV out here.”
“Well, you should turn on the radio then. They’re saying we could have another blizzard, you know, like the last one.”
“The last one” was understood as the Blizzard of 1989. Over the decades, South Carolina had seen occasional snowstorms that left trace amounts of the white stuff. But the big storm would forever be the one that took Daddy away from them.
“Oh,” Brenda said before the words dried up in her mouth.
“Honey, you need to put up the storm shutters and pack a bag. You’re staying in town with me tonight. They say the snow will start this afternoon, and we could get inches of it. I’ll bet Louella closes A Stitch in Time early today.”
“Oh,” Brenda said again.
“Honey, are you okay?” Momma knew her fears.
“Yeah. I was just going out to put up the shutters. The ocean looks angry today. I’ll be over after work.”
“If it starts snowing early, you leave your car in town and walk home, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am. But what about you? Do you have supplies? Do I need to stop at the market?”
“Honey, the store is sold out of anything worth having. We’ll have to make do with what’s in the freezer.” Living alone all these years, Momma had become a champion at freezing leftovers. They wouldn’t starve, assuming they didn’t lose power and the ability to run the oven and microwave.
“I’m going to have to cancel tonight’s rehearsal,” Brenda said, disappointment nipping at her. Funny how she’d been looking forward to it all week, and to the performance this coming Saturday.
“If we get a foot of snow and it stays cold like it’s been, the whole show might have to be canceled or postponed.”
Brenda stared out at the pounding surf. It would take days to clear a foot of snow. They’d have to wait for the sun to come out and melt it all, and if it got below freezing, then they’d have to deal with black ice. A deep sense of regret or guilt or sorrow—she couldn’t quite name the emotion—settled into her head, making her feel heavy and useless.
Momma was right. They might have to cancel. And she would err on the side of safety every time. She didn’t want anyone else getting hurt trying to make it to a performance she was directing.
“You might be right,” Brenda said, the heaviness weighing down her shoulders.
“And then you’ll be free of this obligation.”
Brenda swallowed back a retort. She probably deserved that soft-spoken comment after the way she’d refused Jim at the beginning. But it wasn’t her wish to have a foot of snow fall on the woefully unprepared town. And after agreeing to direct the chorale, she didn’t want the performance canceled either. Jim had somehow infected her with his Christmas spirit—or something. But she wasn’t ready to tell Momma that.
“I’m going to get the storm shutters up. I need to go,” she said instead. “I’ll see you after work.”
Brenda pushed the guilt and regret to the back of her mind and got busy boarding up the windows and packing a bag with enough clothes to last a week. When she had the bag stored in the back of her car, she stopped and gave Jim a call, which went straight to voice mail.
She left a message telling him she would send out an email canceling tonight’s rehearsal and asking him his opinion about canceling or postponing Saturday’s event.
The snow hadn’t started by the time she reached work, but the sky had gone the color of gray flannel, and the temperatures continued to hover in the low twenties. It was too cold for rain.
“Looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas,” Louella said as Brenda settled into work.
“White Christmases are highly overrated,” Brenda grumped, remembering the snow that lay on the ground the day of Daddy’s funeral. It had been just a few days after Christmas and five days after the blizzard.