Season's Readings: KYOWA Writers, #3

By KYOWA Writers

Winter holiday short stories by members of KYOWA Writers in various genres.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fat Cat Books
• Release date: Jul 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393556633

Book preview

Published by Fat Cat Books

Fat Cat Books

920 Blackburn Avenue

Ashland, Ky. 41101

Season’s Readings

Copyright 2019 KYOWA Writers/Fat Cat Books

Edited by Mark Shaffer

Cover art by Fat Cat Books

WARNING: ALL RIGHTS reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of the copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $25,000.

Electronic release: July 2019

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living and dead, places or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

Holly, Ivy, and Mistletoe

by Fonda Warnock

Holly Noel hated Christmas . She hated everything about it. She hated the way it seeped into every aspect of her life. The way it inundated and held all your senses hostage – sight, sound, smell, taste – even touch, and each year it started earlier and earlier. She hated that come Monday morning, Christmas music would begin its annual assault of her auditory nerves here at work. But mostly, she hated that on the day before Thanksgiving, she was decorating Christmas cookies – one hundred stinking dozen of them. Twelve hundred cookies that had to be ready for Friday night’s fund raising gala for The New Community’s Children’s Charities.

The New Community was a recent arrival in their town. A non-profit organization that touted change in the form of help for the families of the drug and alcohol addicted and the addicts themselves. Holly had steered clear of their functions so far. What good was another bunch of bleeding-heart do-gooders who’d buy a pile of cheap presents at the dollar store, get all dressed up to pass them out so they could feel all righteous in their Christian charity, after which they’d disappear for the rest of the year and leave the lot of those deserving kids to go hungry.

Playing with knock-off Barbie dolls and faux Avenger action figures didn’t make your stomach rumble any less on those bleak February and March weekends when the only food in the house was half a bag of stale pretzels that had to be split three ways. Holly knew how it worked. She and her sisters had been on the receiving end often enough.

Her sisters. Poor dead Ivy and sweet little Mistletoe, Misty as they’d called her. A wave of sadness washed over Holly as she wondered what had become of Misty. Holly remembered how she and Ivy had cried as the people from Children’s Services took their baby sister away. The woman at the foster home where they’d been staying told them they should be happy for Misty. She was being adopted. She was going to have a whole new family, a permanent family. But Holly wasn’t happy. She and Ivy were Misty’s family. Her vision blurred as her eyes welled with unshed tears. Holly had tried for years to find her baby sister to no avail.

She laid the decorating bag aside and headed for the rest room. She had to get control of her emotions. She’d made the commitment to work all day today and tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day. The cookies had to be finished and she couldn’t afford to waste time lamenting over something she could never change – then or now.

THE BAKERY WAS USUALLY closed on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but since she had to be here anyway, Holly came in early and made up a few dozen cinnamon rolls and half a dozen pies – three pumpkin and three pecan. Their little downtown wouldn’t be busy today. Everyone would be trying to score those fantastic Black Friday bargains at the mall or the big box stores, twenty-five miles away. Holly didn’t own the bakery but she oversaw the day to day operation for Mr. Constantine. He was pushing ninety and hardly ever came into the shop these days.

By eleven o’clock, Holly finished boxing all the cookies and managed to sell all six of the pies, four of them to Mrs. Maynard who wasn’t having her holiday dinner until Saturday and declared Holly to be an angel straight from Heaven. She also sold all but one dozen of the cinnamon rolls. She still had six of the rolls in the display case and kept the other six back for herself. She poured a cup of coffee and sat down with her sketchbook and second cinnamon roll of the morning. She’d work on sketches for new wedding cake designs while she waited for the representative of New Community who was supposed to show up by noon.

The fifteen hundred dollars New Community was paying for the one hundred dozen cookies would help with the updates the shop needed. Mr. Constantine promised he’d earmark the profits specifically for the updates if any of the workers would commit to the task. Holly had volunteered. After all, she was by far the best decorator they had. And, it wasn’t like she needed to be home to fix Thanksgiving dinner for anyone.

The intricately decorated cookies usually sold for a dollar and a half each, but Mr. Constantine had given New Community a three dollar per dozen discount and promised Holly a nice Christmas bonus for taking on the project. That probably meant fifty dollars, instead of the usual twenty-five he doled out to each of his four employees every year.

Holly continued to sketch as twelve o’clock came and went. One o’clock came and went. Two o’clock came and went. Three o’clock came and went, and Holly was still waiting. It wasn’t that she had anywhere to be, it was the principle of the matter. They said they’d be there by noon. They should keep their word.

She had a moment of panic. What if they never came? What if no one ever heard from them again and the whole town was left holding the bag for all their big ideas and promises? A loss on an order this big would really hurt the bakery. Maybe she could go house to house and sell the cookies to mitigate the loss, albeit at a reduced price. There weren’t that many households in town that could afford the deluxe price tag for these particular Christmas cookies. She’d be lucky if she could recoup the cost of ingredients. Forget about the cost of her labor and her nice bonus. Just one more reason to hate this jacked-up, out of