Holly and Ivy by Fern Michaels (1)

Pine City, North Carolina
December 2008

 

“We’ll be just fine, Ivy. They were great on the flight to Charlotte, it’s a quick one. We’ll be home by the time you’re having your first cup of coffee,” John Fine explained to his wife of five years. “Of course this all depends if our flight arrives on time,” he added.

Ivy smiled. “Dad would spit nails if he heard you say that.” John had taken their twins, Elizabeth and James, for a three-day trip to Charlotte to visit his sister, who was home on a short leave from the military. Ivy’s sister-in-law had never met her niece and nephew, and they had both decided this was a great time, since Piper was spending the few days in Charlotte with her and John’s parents. They had flown courtesy of Macintosh Airlines, owned by Ivy’s family, and most recently touted as the fastest-growing airline in the country. She had had a mandatory meeting she couldn’t get out of, but felt sure John would do fine on his own. It was only for three days.

“Then make sure you don’t tell him I said that,” John teased.

“I won’t. Don’t forget to give Elizabeth Mr. Tibbles when you put her to bed tonight.”

John had called her their first night away, explaining that Elizabeth refused to go to bed without Mr. Tibbles, a stuffed bear Elizabeth had become attached to when Ivy had moved her into her big-girl bedroom a month ago. Being a twin, her daughter was extremely attached to her older-by-three-minutes brother, James. It was at James’s insistence that Ivy had decided they were old enough for rooms of their own. Added to that was the fact that her son made it very clear that he did not like girly dolls in his room. After all, he was three years old.

Ivy thought of her daughter’s cherubic little face and smiled at the memory of her waving good-bye as they had boarded the plane. Now she was glad she’d remembered to tuck Mr. Tibbles in the suitcase at the last minute.

“Trust me, after last night’s fiasco hunting for that bear, it’ll be a long time before I ever forget Mr. Tibbles.”

“I should have told you, I could’ve saved you a bedtime fit,” Ivy said, a smile spreading across her face. John hadn’t witnessed their bedtime ritual since they had put Elizabeth in a room of her own.

“We’ll both put her to bed tomorrow,” John added.

Ivy knew this was his way of telling her he was sorry he hadn’t been at home to put the kids to bed lately, but she understood. He was her father’s right-hand man at the airline and traveled frequently; though he tried to work his schedule around their family, it wasn’t always possible. She worked for her father’s airline as well, but since she’d had the kids, she had tried to keep her hours as close to nine to five as one could. Yesterday’s meeting, however, had been mandatory, so John took the kids on his own. He was a great father, and Ivy hadn’t given a second thought to his flying to Charlotte with the twins. His first time flying with the kids without her.

“I’ll hold you to that. Now, let me tell them good night. They’ve got an early morning ahead of them.”

She heard John call Elizabeth and James to the phone, their excited voices becoming louder as they neared the phone.

“Mommy, I want to kiss you,” Elizabeth said. “Make the noise like Daddy does, okay?”

Ivy smiled. On the nights John wasn’t home, whenever possible, he called them at bedtime, and he would make lip-puckering, sloppy-kiss noises over the phone. Both kids would giggle, asking him to repeat it over and over, and now, it seemed, it was her turn.

She did her best to replicate John’s kisses, but Elizabeth told her she wasn’t as noisy as Daddy, but it was okay. James, her little man, informed her he was too big for phone kisses, and said good night, he would see her tomorrow.

Ivy could hear John, Piper, and her in-laws laughing in the background. Poor James—at three, he was already an old soul.

“I’ll say good night, and we’ll see you in the morning,” John said before hanging up.

Content with the evening’s end, Ivy had decided earlier in the day to surprise John and the kids with a giant Christmas tree, which they could spend the day decorating. At lunchtime, she had gone to Baker’s Tree Farm, one of the oldest family-owned tree farms in Pine City, and picked out a twelve-foot Fraser fir, making arrangements for it to be delivered to the house this afternoon. It was only ten days until Christmas, and they had never waited this long to put up their tree. With her bout of bronchitis turning into pneumonia, then both kids coming down with the chicken pox, it simply had not been any kind of priority.

Better late than never, she thought as she made herself a cup of hot tea before heading into the living room, where she’d had the tree set up. The hundreds of tiny white lights Kyle Baker had added made her job so much easier. While she loved decorating the tree, in the past she had been tangled up in too many strings of Christmas lights to really enjoy it, so Baker’s effort had taken care of this for her.

She inhaled the fresh pine scent and sighed. This was her favorite time of year, and she never tired of dragging the dozens of boxes downstairs, one by one, removing the ornaments, each with its own special memory. She had placed the boxes next to the dark brown leather sofa. Placing her cup of tea on the coffee table, she carefully removed the tissue paper from the first ornament.

It was a small crystal angel etched in gold trim, which was now barely visible, its soft blue eyes had faded with time. It had a small chip on its left wing, and Ivy teared up every year when she removed this ornament from her special box. The angel was the last ornament given to her by her mother before she had died, when Ivy was just nine years old. She’d cherished it her entire life. There were only a few clear memories left of her mother, as the woman had been ill ever since Ivy was a baby, but she never failed to remember her mother’s excitement during the Christmas holiday. She seemed to come alive just for the month of December; then, when the cold, stark month of January rolled around, she would return to her room upstairs and spend her days and nights being cared for by Lila, her nurse and the mother of one of Ivy’s friends.

Her mother had given her the angel on their last Christmas together. Ivy would never forget her words when she’d presented the small ornament to her.

“Every time you hang this on the Christmas tree, know I am with you.”

She hadn’t really understood the significance at the time, but as she got older, she knew exactly what her mother’s words meant. And each year, she would hang the ornament at the very top of the tree, knowing that her mother was looking down from heaven and was always with her. She carefully placed the angel aside, as this would be added to the tree later, when Elizabeth and James had their chance to decorate with their own three-year-old-appropriate ornaments. They were still little, and she didn’t want to risk her special ornaments getting broken. Ivy understood three-year-old hands weren’t as careful as her twenty-eight-year-old ones.

She spent the next two hours unpacking boxes of tiny sleighs, smiling snowmen, and dozens of bells in red and green. She left the colored balls in their boxes, but stacked them beside the tree, counting each box to make sure she had divided them evenly. Three boxes apiece should be enough. One for each year should just about cover their limited attention spans.

Ivy planned to spend the next week frantically shopping for the kids; then she and John would remain at home until after the New Year. They had talked briefly about taking the kids on a skiing vacation, but neither had committed just yet. Making last-minute plans was one of the perks of having a father who owned an airline. They never had to wait for discounted tickets, blackout dates were unheard of, and the long lines through security were avoided, since she, John, and the kids had applied and received TSA security clearance as soon as the service was available to the public.

They tried to keep their home life as routine as possible, but there were times when both she and John were called away. Her mother’s former nurse, Lila, had a daughter, Rebecca, who was three years older than Ivy. They’d been friends since they were kids, and now Rebecca was as good as family. Elizabeth and James called her Aunt Becca, and Rebecca had saved Ivy on numerous occasions when she and John had to leave on urgent business trips. With luck, they could all stay home the next few weeks and simply enjoy being a family.

While Ivy missed her mother terribly, she had never felt as though she had missed things other girls her age had. Her father, an incredible man, had made it his life’s mission to see that her needs were met in the same way that girls her age who had mothers were. He had encouraged her friendship with Rebecca, and even though at the time of her mother’s death, the three-year age difference between them seemed enormous, they’d been as close as sisters and remained so. Her father took great pride in being a hands-on parent. Even though the airline often took him all over the world, she was never in any doubt that she was the most important person in his life. Ivy would accompany him sometimes, and these trips made her decide to follow in her father’s footsteps. She had attended Duke University, received her master’s degree in business, and to this day enjoyed every minute of the business her father had worked so hard to make a success. And it was a major success. Its main hub was in Charlotte, a short plane ride from Pine City, but most of her business could be conducted in the Pine City branch office. Ivy did her best to be a loving wife and mother, put her family first, and if the light in John’s eyes and the joy she saw in her children’s faces were any indication of her success, she thought she was doing a pretty darn good job at this family thing. She smiled, as that was John’s favorite way of referring to her as a mother and himself as a father. Their family thing.

For the next hour, she added the ornaments that required a special connection to the strands of lights. When she finished, she viewed her handiwork. While she would never be the next Martha Stewart, so far the tree looked pretty festive and smelled divine. Once the kids added their decorations, it would be complete. She reached for her mug of tea, took a sip of its now-cold contents, made a face, and headed to the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea, hoping its calming effects would relax her enough so she could rest. She planned to get up before the kids arrived to make their favorite breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and cheesy scrambled eggs. She filled her cup with water and heated it in the microwave. Normally, she would use her teakettle to heat the water, but she just wanted to take her cup upstairs and unwind with a hot bath.

Ten minutes later, she was soaking in a steaming tub of hot water, the master bathroom filled with the luscious-smelling gardenia-scented bath bombs she’d purchased at a local shop in Pine City, which had just opened last month. Ivy frequented as many local businesses as possible. Shopping in malls and chain stores was fine for the most part, but she had always preferred to shop locally. It was more personal, plus she had made a few good friends by doing so throughout the years. There was a new children’s shop that had opened in the summer, and she hadn’t had a chance to check it out. Rebecca told her it specialized in unique toys and handmade clothes. This might be the perfect place for her to get a jump start on her late holiday shopping.

She quickly rinsed off and stepped out of the tub. If she wanted to be up before John and the kids arrived, she’d best call it a night. Making fast work of combing out her long honey blond–colored hair, the exact shade as her mother’s had been, she quickly worked through the tangles. She remembered as a child how her father would brush her mother’s long hair, and her mother’s smile, one of total bliss and just a hint of mischievousness. Or it may have been another kind of bliss, one that she was too young to acknowledge at the time. She gazed into the mirror and saw much of her mother in her reflection. Yet there was a great deal of her father, too. She had his viridian-colored eyes, John always said, and she would correct him stating that they were just green. James and Elizabeth did, too, yet they had John’s toffee-colored hair, along with the curls she’d found so sexy the first time she spotted him lounging under a giant oak tree on Duke’s campus one Saturday afternoon after she’d spent the morning in the Perkins Library researching a term paper. Their eyes locked, he smiled at her, and as they say, the rest is history.

She slipped into her pajamas, checked the alarm system, clicked the downstairs lights off, then returned to the master bedroom. After she had settled in bed, she tossed and turned, restless. Tired, but wound-up, she sat up in bed and reached over to switch on the lamp. The book she’d been reading lay open, waiting for her to finish it. She read for a few minutes, but the novel that had gripped her yesterday couldn’t hold her interest tonight. Tossing the book to John’s side of the bed, she found the TV remote and flicked the television onto a twenty-four-hour news station.

Focusing on the headlines long enough for the network to repeat itself over and over finally lulled her to a deep, dream-filled sleep.

The jarring ring of the telephone woke Ivy from her insane dream. As she shook her head, fragments of her dream clung to the edge of her mind, reminding her of her father’s current construction project in Pine City—the new assisted-living facility he was planning to call The Upside. The land was currently being excavated for the project to begin. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock on the bedside table. Bright red numerals read 5:10 A.M. She grabbed the telephone. “Hello?” She spoke into the phone, her hoarse voice still heavy with sleep.

“Mrs. Fine?” a deep male voice asked.

“Yes. Who is this?” She switched the bedside light on and raked her hand through her hair. As she did so, she saw the cable news station that had lulled her to sleep hours ago was now blasting a giant ticker across the screen in bold red letters: BREAKING NEWS!

Ivy dropped the phone without bothering to disconnect. Her last coherent thought before the room began to spin, her vision nothing more than a pinpoint of light before turning completely black, was: Her entire family had just died in a plane crash.