Free Decorate My Palm Tree by M. Garnet

Chapter One
     
     
    Gigi pulled into the short driveway up against the useless garage door. The sad peeling paint on the panels reflected back at her in the bright headlights. She had worked late again. She turned the car off, waiting for the automatic lights to shut down. In the darkness, she could see the holiday lights on the neighbors’ houses on both sides.
    The blow-up, giant, artificial snowballs along with lighted candy canes outlining driveways were only the start. Each house seemed to find something else to put lights on, including the pointed bushes in the yards and the palm trees. Each home that had a palm had found a different way to string lights on them. They wrapped the long knobby trunks in colors and put white lights on the fronds. Some had big red bows and large lighted balls hanging on them.
    Her neighbors probably thought she was either Jewish or an atheist. In fact, in the cluttered block of small old homes, most only about nine hundred to twelve hundred square feet, hers was the only one without a single Christmas decoration of any type.
    The area was lower class, but reasonably safe, full of small families and retirees who had been in these homes for many years. She looked at the decorations around her as she lugged her plastic bags of food into the house. Most of the trimmings were either very old or a lot of the cheap items found at the local chain stores. Yet, what always amazed her were the decorations in the palm trees.
    Her company transferred her to Florida and she had admitted when asked about moving by her superior in the Lansing, Michigan office how she felt about moving to a warm climate, she told the truth. It just didn’t matter. Nothing had mattered after a car had wiped out her parents’ auto, killing them on impact.
    She had been close to her parents as an only child. Dad had attended every one of her softball games and Mom had helped her choose her prom dress. The close little family celebrated Christmas by going to church on Christmas Eve and then going to the local family services center to give out the donated presents for the children.
    They had a great and silly Christmas morning exchanging, at least one equally silly gift as well as several thoughtful items, then it was back to the church to help dish up the turkey dinner for all the people who showed up for the free meal. This had gone on for years as they went home in the cold winter night to their outdoor lights and the tree with its many glass ornaments.
    All of that ended when the drunk hit her parents’ car in the side, wiping their car out as the vehicle was pushed between the front end of the SUV and the wall of steel that had been erected to prevent anyone from going over the embankment at the river. No, they didn’t go over the embankment, instead they were so smashed within the wreckage, it took two sets of Jaws-of-Life to pull their mangled bodies from their fairly new sedan.
    The drunk driver and his equally intoxicated passenger walked away with a few scratches because of their airbags.
    She had been picked up at work and escorted to the hospital by a polite policeman to identify her parents’ bodies. That was where she saw the driver and the passenger sitting in the hall. By this time, she had gotten the final shock of the whole event. The drunken driver that had killed her parents was her fiancé and the woman with him was obviously a prostitute, and a cheap one at that, with the heavy make-up, blond wig, and skirt that did not cover her ass. To confirm Gigi’s suspicion, the whore had on a pair of handcuffs that belonged to the officer next to her.
    Gigi never spoke to him since then, no matter how many attempts he made to get in contact with her, direct or through his attorney. He even tried through friends.
    She read in the paper how long he would be a member of the local jail brigade. She put a block on her home phone to his jail phone calls and got a new cell phone. After the funeral of her parents,