Free One Last Weekend by Linda Lael Miller

on.”
    Lissie was the picture of her late mother, with her short, dark and impossibly thick hair, bright hazel eyes, and all those pesky freckles. Frank loved those freckles, just as he’d loved Maggie’s, though she’d hated them, and so did Lissie.
    â€œSo you think I have a shot at the part, right?”
    The kid had her heart set on playing an angel in the annual Christmas pageant at St. Mary’s Episcopal School.
    Privately, Frank didn’t hold out much hope, since he’d just given the school’s drama teacher, Miss Pidgett, a speeding ticket two weeks before, and she was still steamed about it. She’d gone so far as to complain to the city council, claiming police harassment, but Frank had stood up and said she’d been doing fifty-five in a thirty, and the citation had stuck. The old biddy had barely spoken to him before that; now she was crossing the street to avoid saying hello.
    He would have liked to think Almira Pidgett wasn’t the type to take a grown-up grudge out on a seven-year-old, but unfortunately, he knew from experience that she was. She’d been his teacher, when he first arrived in Pine Crossing, and she’d disliked him from day one.
    â€œWhat’s so bad about playing a shepherd?” he hedged, and took a sip from his favorite coffee mug. Maggie had made it for him, in the ceramics class she’d taken to keep her mind off the chemo, and he carried it most everywhere he went. Folks probably thought he had one hell of an addiction to caffeine; in truth, he kept the cup within reach because it was the last gift Maggie ever gave him. It was a talisman; he felt closer to her when he could touch it.
    Lissie folded her arms and set her jaw, Maggie-style. “It’s dumb for a girl to be a shepherd. Girls are supposed to be angels.”
    He hid a grin behind the rim of the mug. “Your mother would have said girls could herd sheep as well as boys,” he replied. “And I’ve known more than one female who wouldn’t qualify as an angel, no matter what kind of getup she was wearing.”
    A wistful expression crossed Lissie’s face. “I miss Mommy so much,” she said, very softly.
    Maggie had been gone two years, come June, and Frank kept expecting to get used to it, but it hadn’t happened, for him or for Lissie.
    I want you to mourn me for a while, Maggie had told him, toward the end, but when it’s time to let go, I’ll find a way to tell you.
    â€œI know,” he said gruffly. “Me too.”
    â€œMommy’s an angel now, isn’t she?”
    Frank couldn’t speak. He managed a nod.
    â€œMiss Pidgett says people don’t turn into angels when they die. She says they’re still just people.”
    â€œMiss Pidgett,” Frank said, “is a—stickler for detail.”
    â€œA what?”
    Frank looked pointedly at his watch. “You’re going to be late for school if we don’t get a move on,” he said.
    â€œAngels,” Lissie said importantly, straightening her halo, “are always on time.”
    Frank grinned. “Did you feed Floyd?”
    Floyd was the overweight beagle he and Lissie had rescued from the pound a month after Maggie died. In retrospect, it seemed to Frank that Floyd had been the one doing the rescuing—he’d made a man and a little girl laugh, when they’d both thought nothing would ever be funny again.
    â€œOf course I did,” Lissie said. “Angels always feed their dogs.”
    Frank chuckled, but that hollow place was still there, huddled in a corner of his ticker. “Get your coat,” he said.
    â€œIt’s in the car,” Lissie replied, and her gaze strayed to the Advent calendar taped across the bottom of the cupboards. Fashioned of matchboxes, artfully painted and glued to a length of red velvet ribbon, now as scruffy as the snow outside, the thing was an institution in the Raynor family. Had