It Started With A Christmas Tree - A Lizzie Fuller Christmas Novella (7 page)

BOOK: It Started With A Christmas Tree - A Lizzie Fuller Christmas Novella
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All was going well with our tour until we
stopped for a look around one of the rooms. When Mum turned to ask Grandma what
she thought of it, Grandma had disappeared.

“She was just here,” I said, turning in
circles, in the hope that Grandma was right behind me.

“Where could she have gone?” asked Mum,
her voice much higher than her normal register.

“I’ll have a look,” said Molly. I looked
at Mum, then at Molly’s disappearing back and tried to decide what to do.

“It’s your fault!” said Mum, looking at
me.


What?
How is
it my fault?” I asked.

“It was your job to look after her.”

“Since when?” Honestly, I never got that
memo.

“It’ll be okay. She couldn’t have gone too
far,” said Jessica but I could see the look in her eye. She knew Grandma was
going to be a handful.

I quickly decided that following Molly was
the way to go, and hurried down the hall after her. We passed room after room
of men and women, some having a sleep whilst others watched television. We met
a few randy old men in the common room. Molly decided that maybe her shoes
screamed hooker more than she would like after one man tried to put some money
in the waistband of her jeans.

We found a lovely room filled with ladies
knitting and crocheting, but we didn’t find Grandma. Jessica did ask if Grandma
liked bingo, so maybe we should visit the bingo room. It was then that I
remembered what Grandma’s favourite pastime was.

“Do you have any nice looking men that
live here?” I asked.

Jessica looked at me with concern.

“Well…we…um…” She stopped and looked at me
bewildered. “Why do you want to know?”

“Oh, Grandma likes the men,” I smiled,
thinking back to Molly’s advice she gave Grandma about finding a new man. “It’s
not the first time she’s gone missing,” I explained. “If there is one in
particular who is attractive, that’s probably where we’ll find her.” I
shrugged. It was worth a try wasn’t it?

Jessica lead us to a room not far from
where we had stopped, and I noticed on the door was a nameplate that read James
Browning. She knocked and opened the door.

Sure enough there was Grandma, showing Mr.
Browning the scars from her knee replacement surgery.

We all let out the breath we were holding.
Mum was going to have a heart attack.

Walking back to the nurse’s station, Grandma
pushing her walker, Molly phoned Mum to tell her we had found Grandma and to
stop worrying.

“Mum’s on the oxygen,” explained Molly,
pushing her phone back into her bag. “And she thinks Grandma’s not ready for a
nursing home yet.”

 

****

 

Mum and Molly had moved ahead
of me, helping Grandma back into the car whilst I stayed and signed us all out
of the visitor’s book. As I was signing my name, a man approached the nurse’s
station and walked behind the counter. He was about sixty, had a nice shiny
bald patch on top of his head and wore navy trousers. His light blue shirt had
‘Allora Lodge Nursing Facility’ and ‘Colin’ embroidered on his left breast
pocket.

“Hey, Colin,” said the nurse looking up
from her keyboard. “I was chatting to Mrs. Johnson in room 22a. Apparently it’s
three years ago today her husband passed away and she wants to visit his grave
to place some flowers. Do you have time to take her this afternoon?”

Colin looked at his watch. “I can take her
about three o’clock if that suits. It would give her time for her visit and
still get back here in time for dinner.”

“Perfect. I’ll let her know,” replied the
nurse, shuffling through a folder on her desk. “This is the number of the grave
you need to take her to.” She scribbled something on a sticky note and handed
it to Colin.

“Oh geez. These things never make sense to
me,” said Colin, looking confused.

“What doesn’t make sense?”

“These numbers. How am I supposed to find
what I’m looking for? There’s thousands of graves out there.”

“Well, this is the location of the site. The
CE is Church of England, the 012 is the twelfth row and the 04 is the number of
graves in from the end of the row.” I heard Colin sigh. “Just don’t get
confused between the old section and the new. All the old graves are coded with
OLD after the religion so would be CEOLD. You’re just looking for CE. But they
do have sign posts up to help visitors.”

“Ok. That makes it a bit easier. I suppose
I can always ask for help when I get there.”

“That’s the spirit!” she smiled.

Listening to this conversation, a memory
stirred. There was something familiar about the location code of the grave the nurse
 
had just given Colin. Itpuzzled me. CE
012 04. CE? Church of England. The memory of the dream I’d had involving the
mysterious Christmas bauble and the message I had written down stirred.

I put the pen down and raced to Mum’s car,
hoping that my dream-induced scrawl was still scrunched up in the bottom of my
waste paper bin.

Chapter Six

 
 

I will admit, I probably
pulled into my driveway slightly faster than necessary. I slid on the gravel
and skidded to a halt, dust flying up around me. Getting out, I slammed the car
door closed and saw Helen, my neighbour, glare at me over the fence. Oops. Lets
hope the wind blows the dust
away
from her washing, otherwise I guarantee I
will be the main topic of conversation at the next Residents’ Association
meeting. I’d already given them months of gossip after my run in with my
stalker earlier this year. With all the burning my ears had been doing, they
really needed a break.

Riley’s truck was absent, so I knew he
must be at the hardware store or somewhere equally as thrilling, so I unlocked
my front door and made my way straight to the lounge room. Thankfully, I had
been lazy and had not emptied my bin, so I filtered my way through chocolate
wrappers (mmm, maybe I should reconsider my diet) and found the paper I was
looking for.

Walking to the kitchen, I unfolded it and
spread it flat on the table. There in my big loopy writing was CCOLD11200LL. Remembering
the conversation between the nurse and Colin, I thought maybe I had read my
scrawl wrong. Maybe instead of CCOLD it was CEOLD 112, but what could 00LL be? I
moved to the fridge and poured a glass of water, thinking about the dream. Maybe
Google could help. I opened my laptop and looked up the Westport Cemetery. It
didn’t take me long before I found a map of the sites and a truckload of
statistics. Apparently the cemetery is one hundred and forty five years old,
has forty four thousand three hundred and twenty two new residents since it
opened, and thirty five thousand visitors a year. Wow. I looked carefully at
the map but it didn’t give me any insight, so I looked at my writing again. I
counted the rows of graves in the CEOLD section on the map. There were twenty. I
counted the plots. Forty. I looked back at my writing and realized that maybe
the 00LL was actually 0011.

I felt the butterflies in my stomach wake
up with excitement and as they stirred, I moved back to the lounge room. At
that moment the sun broke free from the clouds and streamed through my bay
window, hitting the glass bauble and sending the coloured rays around the room.
I held my breath as the air pressure seemed to change around me and I waited
for the lady from my dream to reappear.

Watching the coloured lights dancing, I
tried to make out the patterns I had seen in my dream, but nothing happened.

No woman and no pattern appeared.

As the sun once again hid behind the
cloud, coolness swept through the room and I knew she had just been a dream.

 

****

 

Riley walked in the door about
an hour later. I was wrong about the hardware store, he’d been at his Grandma’s.
I always noticed that after Riley had spent some time with Grandma Mabel, he
liked to visit his own gran. Maybe he needed a reminder of what a normal grandmother
acts like.

Ruby Thomas is as beautiful as her
grandson. She is almost as short as me, has steel grey hair and wears her pearl
necklace with everything. She also has Riley’s eyes. The only problem I had
with Riley visiting her was that he hadn’t taken me with him.

“How is Ruby?” I asked.

“She’s good. She asked me to take her to
Grandpop’s grave tomorrow though. Christmas is not far away and she misses him
more at this time of year than at any other.”

“You would think that she would miss him
the most around the time of their wedding anniversary.”

“Yeah, but Christmas was always Grandpop’s
favourite time of year. You’re a lot like him in that way,” smiled Riley.

“Would you mind if I tagged along
tomorrow?” I asked, thinking I would like to visit grave number CEOLD 012 0011.

“Sure. Gran won’t mind. She loves you.”

“You love me too,” I smiled.

“Yes, I do,” he whispered, pulling me in
close. “Now are you going to get ready?”

“Ready for what?” I asked, perplexed.

“For dinner with my brother Jarrod and his
wife Shelly. I told you about it last week, remember?”

Obviously I
didn’t
remember.

“Oh yes, of course. I’ll just quickly get
changed. I won’t be long,” I trilled, keeping my eyes away from his. One look
at me and he would know I was lying.

Shit, shit and double shit. I’d been
hoping for a quiet night at home, snuggled up on Riley’s couch, reading a good
book. Oh well, worse things could happen I guess.

 

****

 

As I mentioned earlier, Riley
and I have been together for about six months, but even after all that time, I
still had to pinch myself when I woke up and the first thing I saw was his
gorgeous face. And right after I’d pinched myself, I snuck out of bed and
jumped in the shower. Even I had trouble looking at my hair first thing in the
morning, so I would have to have a wedding ring on my finger long before I
would show it to Riley.

We’d been spending the nights at Riley’s
house since the smell of fresh paint in my bedroom was too harsh for a good
night’s sleep. Riley lives in a converted church and it is absolutely one of my
favourite places in the world. Not only was it full of charm and good
decorating, but it was filled with Riley. Plus he had an exceptional massaging
spa head on his shower. I was just standing under it rinsing the conditioner
out of my hair when he walked in to use the toilet. We’d only been together for
a few weeks when he’d decided he was comfortable enough to pee in front of me. Also,
his house only has one toilet and it’s in the bathroom, so I think maybe it had
more to do with need than comfort.

“What time are we going to the cemetery?”
I asked.

“I told Gran we would pick her up about
eight. I think she wants to stop for some flowers and a coffee before heading
over there,” he replied, pushing the flush button. “Do you need a hand?” he
asked, walking towards me and opening the door.

“I don’t know. Do we have time?”

“We have all the time in the world. If
we’re late, I’ll tell Gran I was making wild passionate love to you and she’ll
understand.”

I laughed. “No. That’s what you would tell
Grandma Mabel. You’re more likely to tell Ruby you got caught in traffic.”

“You know me so well,” he said, pulling
off his boxers and stepping under the water.

 

****

 

Luckily, after we picked Ruby
up, we stopped by the river and had a cup of coffee. Once Riley had finished
with me in the shower, I’d hardly had any time to get dressed, let alone stop
for breakfast. Thinking back though, it was well worth the grumbling stomach. I
ordered a chocolate muffin with my cappuccino. I didn’t like cemeteries at the
best of time, but with Ruby and Riley, I had a feeling this morning was going
to be emotional. So that meant I needed chocolate.

The sadness enveloped us the second we
opened the car door and stepped outside. Riley walked around to his Gran and
gently took her arm to lead the way to George Thomas’ final resting place. Stepping
back, I allowed them some time alone.

I looked around at all the headstones
placed in perfect rows on the grass and looked at all flowers. I thought of the
lives and stories those people had experienced. I probably should clarify I
don’t like cemeteries because of the sadness that lies within them. Take that
away and I find them extremely interesting. I looked at Riley with his arm
around Ruby and thought what a lucky man George had been. Yes, I had never met
him, but I’d met his family and that was enough to tell me what a wonderful
life he would have lived.

Silently, I looked around the stones
nearby and started to read the inscriptions, making my way away from Riley and
towards the older section of the cemetery. It took me a while, but eventually I
found the grave I was looking for.

BOOK: It Started With A Christmas Tree - A Lizzie Fuller Christmas Novella
11.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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