Making Spirits Bright by Fern Michaels, Rosalind Noonan, Nan Rossiter, Elizabeth Bass Page B

had made a thousand trips to the oven.
    Erica fingered the ring that hung on a chain around her neck—the ring that had been her mom’s last gift to her. Tears stung her eyes and she grabbed her denim jacket. “I’ll see y’all later.”
    Webb stood up. “I’ll run you back.”
    “Bye, Laura,” Erica said as she shrugged into her jacket. “I hope you feel better.”
    Her aunt grunted.
    Outside, Webb put Erica’s bicycle into the back of his truck. They climbed into the cab and, as he drove the blacktop roads at a more leisurely pace than usual, he glanced sidewise at her. “I hope you’re not upset with Laura.”
    She shrugged. “I get the feeling that Fred the Chicken rates higher than I do these days.” Fred, a one-legged rooster, probably was the apple of Laura’s eye. Erica didn’t resent Fred, but it would have seemed silly to say she was jealous of a little baby who wasn’t even born yet.
    “She’s been knocked for a loop by the pregnancy,” Webb explained. “She’d never been sick a day in her life before this.”
    “Yes, I remember,” Erica said.
    As if she didn’t know her aunt as well as he did! Webb might have been friends with Laura since junior high school, but Erica had known her forever and had lived with her for several years after her mother had gotten divorced and moved back to the farm. Laura had always seemed almost as much of a friend as an aunt. But of course now Laura had Webb ... and in a few months there would be Hortense.
    Everyone had someone. Except for her.
    Could it be that the older she grew, the more she shriveled in importance to everyone who mattered to her? It probably wouldn’t have been that way with her mother, but...
    Her lip started to tremble, so she broke off the thought.
    “Christmas can be the hardest time of year,” Webb said.
    She nodded.
    “Next year things will be more normal,” he added.
    Normal? Was he insane? Next year he was going to have a little baby. Erica knew what that meant: diapers, colic, teething, never sleeping, short tempers. Breastfeeding. All focus on the baby. Baby constantly monitored. Did it say a word or was that just gas? Babies meant you couldn’t go out, or, if you did, you had to carry along so much baby junk—diaper bags, strollers, bottles, sippy cups, binkies—that it almost wasn’t worth the effort.
    “Life takes a little patience sometimes,” Webb told her.
    Patience. Webb could have been the poster boy for that quality. He’d waited forever for Laura to agree to marry him.
    But it was unfair of him to preach to her. “It’s not like I’m impatient, ” Erica said in her own defense. “It’s just ...”
    “Just what?”
    I can’t wait to be grown up. So I’ll matter again.
    She tried to find the right words—ones that didn’t make her sound like she was impatient. Which she supposed she was ... although it was more complicated than that. “Is it selfish to want something good to happen?” she asked. “To happen to me?”
    He shook his head. “No. You’re overdue, I’d say.”
    She growled in frustration. “So, when ?”
    “I guess you need to keep your eyes open for an opportunity to happen along—something you want. And then grab it.”
    Great. How often did opportunities happen along for a thirteen-year-old girl in Sweetgum, Texas?
    When they reached Erica’s dad’s house, Webb got out and lifted her bike out of the back of the truck in one swipe and rolled it to her side. He gave her a quick, bracing squeeze on the shoulder. “Hang in there, E.”
    She bit her lip. “What else can I do?”
    “Remember, you’re coming out to the farm Christmas Day and staying till New Year’s. You and me’ll make that batch of cookies. Let the Grinch sit in her chair and squawk all she likes.”
    She smiled tightly. He meant well. But I need those cookies for the Christmas party today.
    She took her bike around to the back and then trudged toward the kitchen door, mentally bracing herself for several