Gertrude: A Christmas Tale

Gertrude sat, then folded her hands on the table. "My name is Gertrude-"

"Well, now, Gertrude, I don't like your sweater." Fiona marked her place with a tattered cloth bookmark. "All those reds and greens. You would not wear that at any other time."

"Actually, I would and I do." Gertrude opened her coat a little wider. "Where I'm from these are the national colors."

Fiona flapped her lips in disgust.

"Don't you like Christmas, Miss Fiona?"

"No, it's not for me."

"It's for everyone."

"I said no." Her trembling hands touched her face, her hair, before settling on the table again.

Sophia brought the teas on a plastic tray along with sugar packets and creamers. She set the tray between the two women and walked quickly to the sofa again, retrieving her phone from her scrubs pocket as she did.

"Thank you, Sophia," Gertrude called, but the aide was already deep in conversation on her cell.

"Brat," Miss Fiona said.

Gertrude added two sugars and a cream to her tea, then took a sip. It was surprisingly good, not as warming as comfort, but close. Fiona just stared at her, her tea left untouched. "Do I know you?"

"Perhaps."

"Don't play games with me, madam." Fiona's eyes went wide as her mouth went tight and pale. There was sadness there, a sadness of someone who had been used, abused and lied to too many times.

"My apologies again." Gertrude exhaled slowly. "And no, you don't know me, not personally anyway."

Fiona nodded once, holding her tiara in place as she did. "Then what do you want? I need to get back to Mr. Dickens before he misses me."

"A Christmas Carol?"

Fiona gave Gertrude a hard stare. "It is not your typical Christmas story, now is it?"

"No, I would say it was. . .quite unique."

They were silent for a few moments. The Little Drummer Boy was the song of the moment, Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum. . .

"I have something for you." Gertrude dipped into her coat pocket and retrieved the small square box wrapped in gold and silver paper.

"I don't know you." Fiona's hands were restless now, opening and closing her book, touching her hair, her cheeks. "I don't want anything from you."

"My husband is an incredibly generous soul, who, on one special day, gives away many things." Gertrude set the box in the center of the table. "I love him, but this task consumes him most of the year. He gets so caught up in it, it drives me crazy. I used to try to help but it was hard to keep up with him." She shook her head. "He's got it down to a science and I just got in the way."

"Did he tell you this?" Fiona asked, suddenly very interested.

"Oh, no. He would never. I just felt I needed to get involved in something of my own." She smiled and tapped the gift. "And I did with the help of the homefolk. I find lost things."

Fiona reached up to make sure her tiara was still on top of her head. "You do what?"

"I return lost things their owners. Things that you swear you had just a minute ago, they somehow end up up north with me. Now the single gloves and socks, I don't make much of an effort with. That's just carelessness, and the homefolk love them. They turn them into puppets and hand warmers and all sorts of things."