A Piggly Wiggly Christmas Read Free Page A

happen at work?”
    He seemed reluctant to answer at first, twitching his lip from side to side, but finally relented. “It’s just that it looks like you’re gonna have to take over as my secretary a little sooner than we thought, and I didn’t know how you would react. The last thing I’d want would be for you to be overwhelmed.”
    Gaylie Girl quickly reviewed the status of her husband’s ever cheerful but pregnant young secretary, Cherish Hempstead. Having suffered a couple miscarriages earlier in her marriage, she had been advised by her obstetrician to take maternity leave sooner rather than later, and the informal agreement was that Gaylie Girl would fill in until her return. The most recent understanding was that Cherish would withdraw from her duties around Thanksgiving.
    “How soon is sooner?” Gaylie Girl asked, not particularly disturbed by the news.
    He answered in a hushed, awkward tone. “End of the month, she says. Doctor’s orders. She says certain things aren’t going as well as expected with the pregnancy, although it’s really nothin’ serious. Just the mornin’ sickness goin’ on a tad bit longer and stronger than usual. They don’t want to take any chances, and I can’t say I blame ’em. I have noticed that Cherish has been excusin’ herself to go to the ladies’ room a lot lately.”
    Gaylie Girl’s maternal instincts rose to the forefront, her memories of the trouble she had had carrying her own Petey and Amanda crowding in. The doctors had eventually resorted to C-sections both times because of her prolonged labor all those long decades ago. “I’m completely sympathetic. No reason for Cherish to take risks. Besides, I can multitask as well as the next person. I know I can handle the caroling project and all those secretarial duties at the same time.”
    Mr. Choppy immediately appeared more sanguine and picked up his fork. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions, though. The office is always fulla people askin’ for favors, and then there are the ones with the most unbelievable, ticky-tack complaints in the world, as well as the councilmen and all their territorial business. It’s not like dealin’ with the Nitwitts.”
    “I’m not so sure about that,” Gaylie Girl replied, keeping her amusement in check. “Favors, ticky-tack complaints, territorial business. Sounds an awful lot like the girls to me.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    Gaylie Girl laughed brightly. “Of course I do. So you want me to start the first of October?”
    “Thereabouts, I think.”
    “Call it a done deal.”
    “You’re a trooper, Gaylie Girl.”
    “Ha! I’m a Nitwitt. One of the newer ones, granted. But I’m getting the hang of it rather quickly.”
    They began eating their dinner in earnest, occasionally pausing to give each other the sort of vaguely wicked smiles that had filled their honeymoon days and nights. Over Mr. Choppy’s favorite dessert of black walnut ice cream sprinkled with cocoa powder, Gaylie Girl decided to tell him all about her Santa Fe feeling and how it had been the impetus for her current Nitwitt Christmas project.
    “The first time I laid eyes on Santa Fe, Peter had just bought our vacation house and he asked me to decorate it from stem to stern. So I immersed myself in that, and it took several trips out from Chicago to do it right. I scoured all the Santa Fe shops and galleries for that Southwest touch. But each time we visited, I became more and more at home. So many people seemed to have come to live and work with their special agendas. It was so different from Lake Forest and my life with Peter up there. That was so regimented. Santa Fe had a flexibility to it, allowing people to come and bend it this way and that. But they never broke it. It seemed to mold them as much as they molded the city. I know for a fact that Peter and I were so much better together in Santa Fe than we ever were in Chicago.” Then Gaylie Girl brought herself up short. “Oh, Hale, I