Angel Unaware by Elizabeth Sinclair

outlet.” She laughed and patted her ample middle. “Besides, I refuse to get fat alone.”
    The words your little family hit Dora in the heart.
    Tony and Penny were never going to be her little family no matter how much she wished it otherwise. Though it would break her heart, she was resigned to the fact that when Christmas Eve came, she’d be gone, never to return to the Falcone household—or Tony.
    Millie took her customary seat at the table while Dora poured coffee for them and tried not to think about leaving Tony and Penny.
    “Did I hear a dog barking over here?” Millie asked with undisguised curiosity.
    Dora smiled. In the short time she’d been living at the Falcones’, she’d learned there was little that went on in their household of which Millie was not aware. “Yes. Penny found a stray, and Tony’s letting her keep it until the owners claim it.”
    Millie frowned. “Is that wise? I mean the child will get attached, then the owners will come, and she’ll have to give it up. It’ll break her heart.” She made a tsk-tsk sound.
    “She’s had so much heartache already, poor little thing.” After setting two steaming cups of coffee on the table and adding a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of cream, Dora took her seat. “I worried about that, too, but there was just no separating her from that dog. She was head over heels in love with the mutt, and before we made it from the porch to the kitchen, she’d even named him Jack.”
    “ Jack ?” Millie sucked in a breath. Her blue eyes filled with alarm. “Oh, dear.”
    Dora looked at their neighbor’s suddenly pale face. “What is it, Millie?”
    Millie took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’m probably just being foolish.”
    Something about the dog’s name had really upset Millie, and Dora couldn’t let it drop. “Nonsense. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
    The woman took another deep breath, then asked, “What color is the dog?”
    “Considering how dirty he was, it took a long, hot, fragrant bath to discover he’s white,” Dora said, taking a bite of a delicious sugar cookie bell decorated with red and green sprinkles and trying to act unconcerned so as not to add to Millie’s upset. “Why?”
    Millie sighed and leaned her elbows on the table. She glanced at the door through which Tony had vanished earlier. In a subdued voice, she leaned closer to Dora and said, “When Penny was born, her dad gave her a toy dog. She never went anywhere without it.” Tears gathered in Millie’s eyes. “The day of the accident, the dog was destroyed. We told Penny that it was lost. She was heartbroken.” Millie laid her warm hand on Dora’s arm. “The dog was white, and she’d named him—”
    “Jack,” Dora finished for her with a sinking heart. Millie nodded.
    This complicated everything. However, it totally explained Penny’s change in personality and her instant attachment to the stray, but it made having to give the dog back to its owners, should they come to claim him, severely problematic. In her child’s mind, Penny no doubt thought that not only had Jack come home to her, but that he’d done so as a real dog.
     
     
    After Millie left, Dora went in search of Tony to talk to him about the dog and its significance to his niece. He had to know that if the owners ever showed up, he should be ready for what giving it up would do to Penny.
    However, when Dora found him in the living room, sitting on the couch and looking downcast, she hesitated. Cradled in his big hands was the angel that had never been added to the tree. He looked tortured, as if his soul was bleeding, and her insides twisted in pain for him. Silently, she sat beside him, all thought of the dog and Penny pushed from her mind.
    Tony turned the angel over and over, staring blankly at it. He probably wasn’t even seeing the white silk dress, richly embroidered with gold threads; the snow-white, gold-trimmed marabou-feathered wings; or the sparkling halo resting on