“I don’t know what’s wrong with me— I had a nightmare, except that I wasn’t asleep. Where are we?”

“We went through Reading twenty minutes ago. I’d say we’re almost there. Are you going to be okay?”

Over the public-address system came the announcement that the next station stop would be Didmarsh Halt.

So far as they could tell in the thick mist, they were the only people to leave the train at Didmarsh.

Miss Shivers was in the booking hall, a gaunt-faced, tense woman of about fifty, with cropped silver hair and red-framed glasses. Her hand was cold, but she shook Fran’s firmly and lingered before letting it go.

She drove them in an old Maxi Estate to a cottage set back from the road not more than five minutes from the station. Christmas-tree lights were visible through the leaded window. The smell of roast turkey wafted from the door when she opened it. Jim handed across the bottle of wine he had thoughtfully brought.

“We’re wondering how you heard of us.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” the woman answered, addressing herself more to Fran than Jim. “My name is Edith. I was your mother’s best friend for ten years, but we fell out over a misunderstanding. You see. Fran. I loved your father.”

Fran stiffened and turned to Jim. “I don’t think we should stay.”

“Please.” said the woman, and she sounded close to desperation, “we did nothing wrong. I have something on my conscience, but it isn’t adultery, whatever you were led to believe.”

They consented to stay and eat the meal. Conversation was strained, but the food was superb. And when at last they sat in front of the fire sipping coffee, Edith Shivers explained why she had invited them. “As I said, I loved your father Harry. A crush, we called it in those days when it wasn’t mutual. He was kind to me, took me out, kissed me sometimes, but that was all. He really loved your mother. Adored her.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Fran grimly.

“No, your mother was mistaken. Tragically mistaken. I know what she believed, and nothing I could say or do would shake her. I tried writing, phoning, calling personally. She shut me out of her life completely.”

“That much I can accept,” said Fran. “She never mentioned you to me.”

“Did she never talk about the train crash—the night your father was killed, just down the line from here?”

“Just once. After that it was a closed book. He betrayed her dreadfully. She was pregnant, expecting me. It was traumatic. She hardly ever mentioned my father after that. She didn’t even keep a photograph.”

Miss Shivers put out her hand and pressed it over Fran’s. “My dear, for both their sakes I want you to know the truth. Thirty-seven people died in that crash, twenty-five years ago this very evening. Your mother was shocked to learn that he was on the train, because he’d said nothing whatsoever to her about it. He’d told her he was working late. She read about the crash without supposing for a moment that Harry was one of the dead. When she was given the news, just a day or two before you were born, the grief was worse because he’d lied to her. Then she learned that I’d been a passenger on the same train, as indeed I had, and escaped unhurt. Fran, that was chance—pure chance. I happened to work in the City. My name was published in the press, and your mother saw it and came to a totally wrong conclusion.”

“That my father and you—”

“Yes. And that wasn’t all. Some days after the accident, Harry’s personal effects were returned to her. and in the pocket of his jacket they found a receipt from a Bond Street shop for a nightdress.”

“Elaine Ducharme,” said Fran in a flat voice.

“You know?

“Yes.”

“The shop was very famous. They went out of business in 1969. You see—”

“He’d bought it for her,” said Fran, “as a surprise.”

Edith Shivers withdrew her hand from Fran’s and put it to her mouth. “Then you know about me?”

“No.”

Their hostess drew herself up in her chair. “I must tell you. Quite by chance on that night twenty-five years ago. I saw him getting on the train. I still loved him and he was alone, so I walked along the corridor and joined him. He was carrying a bag containing the nightdress. In the course of the journey he showed it to me, not realizing that it wounded me to see how much he loved her still. He told me how he’d gone into the shop—”

“Yes,” said Fran expressionlessly. “And after Reading, the train crashed.”

“He was killed instantly. The side of the carriage crushed him. But I was flung clear—bruised, cut in the forehead, but really unhurt. I could see that Harry was dead. Amazingly, the box with the nightdress wasn’t damaged.” Miss Shivers stared into the fire. “I coveted it. I told myself if I left it, someone would pick it up and steal it. Instead, I did. I stole it. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.”

Fran had listened in a trancelike way. thinking all the time about her meeting in the train.

Miss Shivers was saying, “If you hate me for what I did, I understand. You see. your mother assumed that Harry bought the nightdress for me. Whatever I said to the contrary, she wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Probably not,” said Fran. “What happened to it?”

Miss Shivers got up and crossed the room to a sideboard, opened a drawer, and withdrew a box—the box Fran had handled only an hour or two previously. “I never wore it. It was never meant for me. I want you to have it, Fran. He would have wished that.”

Fran’s hands trembled as she opened the box and laid aside the tissue. She stroked the silk. She thought of what had happened, how she hadn’t for a moment suspected that she had seen a ghost. She refused to think of him as that. She rejoiced in the miracle that she had met her own father, who had died before she was born—met him in the prime of his young life, when he was her own age.

Still holding the box. she got up and kissed Edith Shivers on the forehead. “My parents are at peace now. I’m sure of it. This is a wonderful Christmas present,” she said.

APPALACHIAN BLACKMAIL – Jacqueline Vivelo

My great-aunt Molly Hardison was a wealthy woman. By the standards of the coal mining town that was home to my family, she was fabulously rich. We didn’t have any particular claim on her; she had nearer relatives. Still, she never forgot us children—and there were eight of us—at Christmastime. Once in every two or three years, she would come and spend the holiday with us.

Mama said Christmas with us was more like Aunt Molly’s own childhood holidays than Christmas at her grand house or with her sons and their snooty wives.

We were poor all the time, and some years we were poorer than others. Nevertheless, at Christmas our house would be filled with evergreen boughs, pine cones, and red ribbons. Mama would keep hot cider simmering on the back of the woodstove so the house always smelled of cinnamon and cloves. No matter how bad things were Papa could take his hunting dog, first Ol’ Elsie and then later her son Ol’ Ben, and bring in game. He brought home quail by the dozens, deer, wild turkeys.

Sometimes he’d be the only person we knew who had found a turkey, but he’d always get ours for the holiday. I think he was smart in the ways of turkeys. I was his tomboy and counted myself in on his discussions about hunting with my brothers. Papa would follow a goodsized turkey gobbler for weeks, learning its ways and finding its roosts. Turkeys like to move around, which is why they fool so many hunters, and they almost always have more than one roost.

I listened to all my father could tell us about hunting and would have gone with him when he began to take Joe and Cliff, but Mama put her foot down. I had to content myself with taking care of the hunting dog.

“Maybe someday, Betsy,” Papa consoled me. “You’d make a fine hunter.”

In any case, our house looked and smelled good at Christmas. It was filled with all the food a resourceful country family could provide. In our neck of the woods that was better than most city families, poor or rich, could do.

So, fairly regularly Aunt Molly would come and spend Christmas in our bustling, over-crowded house. Whether she was there or not, she always sent presents. Her sister, our own grandmother, was dead, which made her something of a stand-in. But we children understood that presents for Christmas and our birthdays would be all we could expect from Aunt Molly, except, of course, for my sister Molly.

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