Free The Christmas Note by Donna VanLiere Page B

up.”
    I’m not good at pep talks or encouraging people to buck up, but I give it my best shot. “So there’s a chance your aunt knows something?” She nods. “Then that’s a simple call. If the trail stops with your aunt, then what?”
    Melissa looks at me with a look that says I know the answer as well as she does. “I look at Ramona’s Social Security number every day,” she says. “And I know she wrote that number down at each hospital she gave birth in. Those numbers are the key.”
    “So if it’s that easy then … you know what? I’ll do it.” She looks at me. “Get the papers, fill them out, and I’ll turn them in for you.”
    She looks shocked and confused. “No, no. I’ll do it.”
    “When?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll…”
    “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
    Her eyes begin to twinkle and her mouth turns up. “I will do it myself.”
    “No, you won’t. Let me have the papers.”
    “I am not going to give you the papers. I will do it.”
    I cross my arms over my chest. “When?” She starts to open her mouth. “If I call the law office tomorrow and ask Robert Lawton if you turned the papers in, what will he say?”
    “First of all, he won’t take your call because you will have called him Robert Lawton and not Layton.”
    “He’ll take my call. I can sound very convincing on the phone.”
    “Second of all, you don’t even know Ramona’s full name. Thirdly—”
    “Three strikes. You’re out! I’m calling and getting the papers tomorrow.”
    She stands and walks to the door. “No, you’re not. I am getting the papers.”
    “So when I call and ask—”
    She opens the door and walks to the stoop. “You are not calling.”
    “You just watch me, sister! I will call so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
    I can tell she’s laughing as she walks on the sidewalk to her condo. “You are a nosy neighbor,” she says, her back to me.
    “You’re still baking a difference tomorrow, right?” I yell into the blackness.
    “I don’t bake!”
    “Okay! Be at my mom’s right after work. I left her address in an envelope in your mailbox.”
    Maybe it’s because she’s a good distraction or that my life doesn’t seem so sad compared to hers or maybe it’s because she’s so different from me, but for whatever reason, I think I’m really starting to like that woman.

 
     
    Nine
     
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.
    — J OSEPH A DDISON
     
    MELISSA
     
    I sink into the sofa and stare at the phone. Before I talk with Jodi at the office I really want to clear up this Kay thing. If I don’t get this over with, I really believe that Gretchen will show up at the law office and ask for the papers. I dig through my backpack for the number and dial Kay’s number again. The phone clicks on the other end. “Hello.”
    I’m nervous and my breath is short. “Kay?”
    “Yes.”
    “This is Melissa.” She’s quiet. “Ramona’s daughter.”
    “Sure. Oh!” She’s surprised and doesn’t know what to say. That makes two of us.
    “I saw on the Internet that your husband died two years ago. Sorry. I never knew you were married, but that’s … sorry.”
    “We were married twenty-three years. I have two children. How are you, Melissa? Where do you live and—”
    I don’t let her finish. “I thought you should know that Ramona died a few days ago.”
    There’s no noise on her end. “It’s been a lot of years since I’ve seen her. I sent her Christmas cards, but a few years ago they started to come back to me and I knew she had moved again and didn’t tell me. She always was such an odd—” She stops. “How’d she die?”
    “Heart.” She makes a sound in her throat. “Kay? Years ago … years ago you said I looked like a girl named Louanne. Do you remember that?”
    “Louanne Delgado. Sure. You looked like sisters.”
    My heart speeds up when she says that. “Is she my sister?”
    There’s no sound.