Christmas Cake by Lynne Hinton Read Free Book Online

preferred to the new pastor’s way, which was more of a “take control” attitude.
    In the few times he had visited Margaret about one thing or another, it was as if the man couldn’t sit with silence, needed to fill a room with words. And sometimes, even if they were lovely words, they seemed insincere, out of place. When she felt sad or worried or disconnected, Margaret preferred silence to words. But, she thought, as she left the bedroom and headed back into the kitchen, it didn’t matter anyway. Charlotte was in New Mexico and her pastor was now Reverend Tom Joles. He talked too much but he was attentive to her. It was as it was, and there was nothing to do about it.
    Margaret walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out the pitcher of tea. When she shut the door, she noticed the photograph that Charlotte had sent about two years ago. She slid it out from under the magnet and held it.
    The photograph was of the young woman standing on top of a mountain. The sky was pink and red and orange, the sun dropping behind her. There weren’t many trees, it was a barren landscape, but it was breathtakingly beautiful, and Margaret loved the picture. Charlotte’s face was glowing, as if she had just hiked to the summit; and the older woman could never remember seeing her friend look so healthy and alive.
    When they had spoken on the phone after Margaret received the photograph, she had kidded Charlotte that she must have fallen in love, she looked so happy. The young woman had simply said, “No, Margaret, it’s just how it is out here. I know it sounds weird,” Charlotte had added, “but I feel like myself here, like I can breathe here. It’s like I’ve come to a place of perfect peace.”
    And in some way that she couldn’t explain, Margaret had understood. She had recognized that expression from the photograph. She knew what her young friend meant. She knew what Charlotte was talking about because she had felt that way too, but only once.
    It had been a very long time ago. She was just a child when she felt it and she grew up thinking that after that one time, she would never feel that way again, and she was right, she hadn’t.
    It had happened when she was ten, and it was just a few months before her mother died. The family had driven to her mother’s home place, Goodlett, Texas, just near the border of Oklahoma. They had all piled into the car and driven for hours just to get her mother home. Margaret didn’t know at the time that her mother was dying; she onlythought they were going to visit family, spend Christmas with her grandparents, with cousins and aunts and uncles she had never met.
    The moment of perfect peace happened when they went to church late on Christmas Eve. It was cold and dark, and the church was decorated with candles and smelled of cedar and pine. The choir was singing and Margaret was sitting next to her mother, and she glanced around at her family all together, the warmth of it all, the loveliness of it, and she turned to look at her mother and her mother was glowing. Just like an angel, Margaret had thought. She had never seen her so beautiful. And Margaret remembered thinking that this was the finest, the best moment of her life. And for that one moment, it was.
    The next day, after opening a few gifts and eating a big meal, the family left. Margaret and her siblings and her father got back in the car and drove home, leaving her mother with her family, “just to visit,” she had told her youngest daughter. But Margaret learned later it was to die. Her mother had gone home to be cared for by her mother and her sisters, and she had died in her childhood home.
    For the rest of her life, Margaret had never had a moment of peace like that again. And she had never returned to Texas. Later in the final days of that winter season when her mother did die, all her brothers and sisters went