Getting In the Spirit: a Sapphire Falls novella Read Free Page A

grimaced and was glad she wasn’t skyping with Kate so her friend couldn’t see her. “I’m sorry you’re so bummed out.”
    “Christmas just kind of sucks for me. Always has.”
    Kate Leggot was twenty-nine and lived in San Francisco. She had never even been to Nebraska, not to mention tiny little Sapphire Falls. She was gorgeous, sophisticated and intelligent. She was an environmental engineer who was studying a number of climate change issues that required her to travel to DC to meet and educate politicians. Phoebe didn’t understand everything Kate was doing, but she was used to that being friends with brilliant scientists like Mason and Lauren. Phoebe’s husband, Joe, worked for Innovative Agricultural Solutions, a company that was developing new cutting-edge farming techniques for use in third-world countries and sustainable farming for poorer areas of the US. Phoebe and Kate had ended up seated next to one another at a fund-raising dinner in DC about a year ago and had instantly hit it off. They had very little in common and yet enjoyed each other’s company immensely.
    “Christmas is my favorite,” Phoebe said. She grabbed a bag of diapers from the shelf and added it to her shopping cart. “Why don’t you like it?”
    Kate sighed. “My mom never liked Christmas, so we never celebrated when I was a kid.”
    “You never had Christmas as a kid?” Phoebe asked. “That’s terrible.”
    Kate laughed softly. “Well, I didn’t know what I was missing for a long time. But obviously as I got older it was pretty hard to miss all around me, all the kids talking about it at school and stuff.”
    “I’m sure.” Phoebe knew, of course, that Christmas was not celebrated by everyone, but she’d grown up in Sapphire Falls. It was a wonderful, accepting place but it was not a very diverse place. Everyone in Sapphire Falls celebrated Christmas. “Is your family Jewish?” That hadn’t even occurred to her. That was terrible.
    “No,” Kate said. “My mom just hates Christmas. So we left for Hawaii every year before Thanksgiving and didn’t come back until well after the New Year.”
    “Mid-November to mid-January in Hawaii?” Phoebe asked with a laugh. “You poor thing.”
    “Yeah, I know it sounds great. But Hawaii isn’t Christmasy, you know?”
    “Honey, you live in California. It’s not like you guys sing “Let It Snow” right?”
    Kate sighed. “I know. I guess I always wished that I had a grandmother or aunt or something that lived somewhere that it snowed. I used to watch those Christmas specials on TV and think that Christmas was so much cooler for people who had snow.”
    Phoebe snorted. “It’s definitely cooler.”
    Kate actually laughed softly at that. “For years, I begged my parents to go skiing or something instead of to Hawaii. Even if we didn’t do Christmas, I just wanted snow. But they never went for that idea.”
    “Wow. Your parents had money?” Phoebe asked, adding eggs to her cart and then taking them back out. She and Joe were going to be gone for four days. She should stick with non-perishables for now. They’d have to eat cereal for breakfast in the morning. She did grab milk though. Kaelyn would need milk tonight and tomorrow morning.
    “My parents had—have—lots of money.”
    “Now that you say that, I can see it. You have that sophisticated I-ride-in-limos air about you,” Phoebe said.
    “I’m not going to ask if that’s a good thing.”
    “It’s not good or bad. Joe grew up with money and limos too,” Phoebe said. “I grew up with pickup trucks. Pros and cons to both.”
    “I guess.” Kate sighed.
    “So you hate Christmas because you never got to have snow? Surely you’ve traveled to places with snow?” Phoebe asked, adding coffee to her cart. She also grabbed a box of wheat flakes that she knew she should eat, pushed the cart about three feet, then backed up and exchanged the wheat flakes for the sugary fruity O’s she loved. Next time she’d