Bluegrass Christmas. Allie Pleiter

      Mary waved back at yet another person as she made her way up Ballad Road toward her apartment, half spooked and half amazed by how quickly she’d come to feel at home. So many people believed in God here. And not just the Sunday kind of belief. These were day-in, day-out believers. It was the perfect place for her to grow her shaky new faith.

      Almost from the time she had committed her life to Christ, Chicago had begun to vex her. Her earlier jobs—however enviable—felt hollow and unsatisfying. Her own parents had trouble understanding how anyone could leave an orchestral position and freelance ad agency work to lead a Christmas drama, but it was just too hard to be a new Christian in her other world. That verse about “rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God” kept running through her head. A fresh, humble start felt so much easier.

      She stopped at the window of an adorable shop called West of Paris. A charming blue glass vase caught her eye. A housewarming gift for myself, she thought, picturing it with a few sprigs of holly on her tiny dining room table. She couldn’t pull off a decorated tree this Christmas, even if her mom and dad came as planned, but the vase seemed just enough of a luxury to suit her mood. As she entered, a wave of wonderful scents and music-box Christmas carols washed over her.

      “Merry Christmas,” greeted the woman behind the counter. “I’m Emily Sorrent, we met at church. You’re Mary, right?”

      Mary was still adjusting to strangers calling her by name. “That’s me.”

      “Must be hard to be in such a new place for the holidays. Away from home and family and all. Are you settling in okay?”

      Mary imagined such a new start might be a challenge around Christmas—for other people. For her, it was the best present of all. “Just fine. It’s so peaceful here.”

      Emily smiled. “Peaceful? Are you sure you’re in Middleburg? I haven’t seen our little town so worked up in years. No, Ma’am, ‘peaceful’ is not a word I’d use to describe Middleburg these days.”

      “That’s okay. People used to think the big city orchestra where I worked was glamorous, but I wouldn’t ever describe it that way, either.”

      Emily got a funny look on her face and turned away for a moment under the guise of arranging some holiday ornaments. Mary couldn’t figure out what she’d said wrong. Maybe being new in town wasn’t all fresh starts and clean slates. “I saw that blue vase in the window,” she offered, changing the subject. “I think it would be perfect for my dining-room table.”

      “It’s made by an artisan in Berea,” Emily described, brightening. “That color is his trademark. Look, here’s an ornament he made in the same style.” She held out a brilliant blue sphere with a sparkling gold center. “For your tree.”

      “Oh,” Mary interjected, brushing her off. “I don’t think I’ll get a tree up this year.”

      Emily looked surprised. “No Christmas tree? You can’t be serious?”

      Mary took in the store, and realized there must be six fully decorated trees in Emily’s shop alone. The woman took her holiday decorating very seriously. Even for a retailer.

      “There’s just me. I’d never be able to lug a tree up all the stairs to my apartment, and I own about three ornaments, besides. Christmas was my busy season in past years, and I never really had time to do all the trimmings. I’ll just take the vase, thanks.”

      Emily crossed her arms over her chest. “No, you won’t.”

      “What?”

      “I don’t know where you came from, but if you’ve never had a real Christmas, Mary Thorpe, it’s high time you got one. And I am going to start you off. You can buy the vase, but it just so happens I’m running a special today. Every vase purchase comes with a free Christmas ornament. And I happen to know a whole bunch of big burly guys who will gladly lug your tree anywhere you want it. MCC’s new drama director will not be too busy to have her own Christmas if I have anything to say about it. And I’m on the church board and the town council, so you can bet I have something to say about it.”

      Mary could only smile. “Okay, I’ll think about it.” She’d just effectively been commanded to have a happy holiday, and she couldn’t be more pleased. She took the ornament and spun it in the sunlight, enjoying the blue and gold beams it cast around the room. “Dinah warned me about you.”

      Emily winked. “Oh, honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

      Chapter Three

      Curly was singing.

      This was a bit hard to take, especially because the bird insisted on singing the same piece of music he’d learned from Mary Thorpe’s stereo earlier. Even an extra dose of sunflower seeds had failed to quiet the cockatoo. Mac looked up from the drafting table a third time, then let his forehead fall into his hand. “Enough, bird. You were funny once—and not really funny at that—but you’re singing on my last nerve.”

      “Yep!” Curly squawked, and Mac regretted—for the umpteenth time today—teaching the bird to agree with everything he said.

      There was only one thing for it. Maybe the sheer repetition of the aria had stomped out his neurons, but Mac was relatively certain the only way to stop this bird from singing the same thing over and over was to give him something new to sing. And while the Kentucky Fight Song might have been a masculine choice, Mac also knew that would wear even worse than the opera.

      He felt like a complete idiot walking up the stairs to Mary Thorpe’s apartment with Curly doing the bird equivalent of humming—a sort of half whistling noise accompanied by a comical head bob—on his shoulder. He didn’t, however, have Mary’s phone number, and he was sure in another hour he’d be incapable of putting a sentence together. “Behave yourself for both our sakes,” he told Curly as he knocked on the door.

      She opened the door cautiously, trying not to broadcast her alarm at seeing Curly. “Hi there,” she said too kindly, forcing her smile.

      “Do you think,” Mac spoke, finding the words more idiotic by the second, “we could teach Curly something else? I’m living with a broken record here and it’s driving me nuts.” On a whim he looked at the bird and stated, “You need a bigger repertoire, don’t you, boy?”

      “Yep!” Curly squawked, nodding.

      “No offense to your opera,” Mac confessed, “but I don’t think I could take even my favorite song nonstop like he’s been doing.”

      She opened the door a bit more. He could see she’d gotten much farther in her unpacking, and the small apartment was starting to look like a home. “Haven’t you taught…” she inclined her head toward the feathered occupant of Mac’s right shoulder.

      “Curly.”

      “Curly any other songs?”

      Curly bobbed a bit at the mention of his name. “No, actually. I didn’t know he could sing until you moved in. Seems bluegrass doesn’t interest him, but whatever it was…”

      “Mozart,” she reminded, a hint of a smile finally making its way across her features.

      “…catches his fancy. So,” Mac continued, daring to bring Curly off his shoulder to sit on his forearm, “you got any more Mozart for Curly