Melody straightened the hem of her pink sweater and brushed her hair back over her shoulders. Upon opening the door, she could tell immediately that he was a bit frazzled, and she couldn’t blame him. Despite the fact that he had been trying to sound calm on the phone, she knew he must have been moments away from a panic attack the second he found out Michael hadn’t made it to Ms. Karen’s house. “Hi, Reid,” she said, smiling and attempting to keep her own voice cheerful. If she didn’t think it was a big deal that his son had sought her out because Michael thought she was “nice and pretty,” maybe Reid wouldn’t either.“Melody, hi,” he said, stepping through the doorway. “It’s nice to see you again, though I didn’t expect it to be under these circumstances.”He was smiling politely, and she giggled at his comment, hoping she didn’t sound like a

Melody pushed open the door to Delaney’s Delights and braced herself for the barrage of Christmas music. There was no avoiding it now; it was everywhere she went, and though she did her best to tune it out, there were times when particular songs came on that memories of her father flooded her senses, and she needed to step away or turn it off. Luckily, this afternoon, her entrance was greeted by a particularly poppy rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and there was nothing specifically remarkable about that song.Delaney was sliding a muffin across the counter on a bright red plate to a customer as Melody walked in. She looked up and smiled. “Hey, two days in a row! How did I get so lucky?”Laughing, Melody crossed the crowded room to the counter. “I was just dropping some boxes off at Mom’s shop and thought I’d come by and ask you a quick question.”&ldquo

Bible study started at 5:30 and was over by 6:30 so that the choir—or this time of year, those who would be participating in the Christmas Festival—could get an hour’s worth of practice in before little ones needed to head off to bed. Melody had made several friends in her study group and knew others from high school, but she was so busy these days trying to keep the shop open, she rarely saw any of them outside of their Wednesday night meetings and Sunday service. This time of year, it was hard for her to focus because the lessons were always about how to be thankful and appreciate the ones you loved, the sort of themes that went along with the Christmas spirit, and since she spent most of the hour thinking about her father, she was seriously considering skipping from now until after the new year.A few of the girls in her group called her over to chat once the leader, Dan, dismissed them, but she made an excuse and headed out the clas

Melody saw her mother standing in the back of the sanctuary, a questioning expression on her face, and when she reached her, she asked, “Why are you here? I thought you’d headed home an hour ago.”“I was going to,” Melody assured her, “but I ran into Michael on the way out, and he asked me to stay and listen to him sing. So I did.”Sarah said nothing more, but Melody could tell by the smile she was trying to hide that her mother wanted to read more into this situation than she should. She’d simply been humoring a child that she cared about. Nothing else. This night certainly had done nothing to change the way she felt about music—Christmas or otherwise.“I’ll see you at home in a little while,” Sarah said, waving at a friend across the room, and Melody nodded before taking off for the door again, hopeful that she could finally escape before anyone

“Mel, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Reid said rather quickly. "I can't ask you to pick Michael up from school."She paused at the shortening of her name. No one had called her that since her father passed, but she actually sort of liked the way it sounded when she heard it in his voice. Ignoring it for now, she said, “You didn’t ask. I volunteered. It’s really no trouble at all. I definitely won’t let him come home with me because then he might feel like he got his way, but picking him up and taking him to the sitter’s can’t be too time consuming, and it will give me a chance to see him for a few minutes.”“It’s actually more time consuming than you might think,” he explained. “School gets out at 3:00, but parents start getting in that parent pick up line at 2:00. I’m not even kidding.”“Seriously?” Melody aske