he’d called it. Still, Abigail couldn’t get rid of the nagging apprehension that was scratching at her brain. After breakfast, she pulled on a pair of boots and ventured out to do some Christmas shopping. Abigail walked the full seventeen blocks to Market Street, all the while thinking how she’d buy some wonderful presents this year, now that she had the feel of money in her pocket. Other years she’d had to scrimp, looking hard at the price tag before considering a gift, settling for a scarf when she’d hoped to buy something much finer. For three hours she meandered in and out of stores, finally selecting a mohair sweater, ignoring the cost and thinking only of how handsome it would look on her brother. At five o’clock she started home, carting an armload of presents and a bright red poinsettia plant. For the first time in five years, she’d bought her father a present – a meerschaum pipe with a massive figurehead bowl. She planned to enclose a letter along with the gift, a letter asking for his forgiveness – although she knew that forgiveness did not come easy to William Lannigan – he was a man who just might refuse to read what she’d written and set the gift aside unopened. Still, she reasoned, it had been five years, long enough perhaps for even his anger to fade. She tried to focus her thoughts on the upcoming holiday – pictured eggnog with a floating sprinkle of nutmeg, an angel atop a pine tree, presents tied with ribbon the color of cherries – but the sky was still there, ominous as a tombstone. She arranged the poinsettia in the center of the kitchen table then sat and ate a bowl of chicken soup – which Ida Jean Meredith had once said was the cure for anything – but it burned going down and ultimately gave her indigestion. It’s going to snow, she thought, maybe even sleet.
