December 3
Everywhere Rosalind looked, she saw signs of Christmas. In the lobby of her office building, there was a twenty-foot-tall Douglas fir festooned with twinkling miniature white lights and iridescent plastic snowflakes, and a large similarly decorated evergreen wreath hung on the wall above the elevator doors. On the fiftieth floor, where the Hobson and Rowe Publishing Company had its offices, someone had strung gold garland around all the windows and doorways.
Rosalind's office was the only one in the company that did not look festive. There were no cardboard cutouts on the walls, no Santa or snowman figurines on her credenza, not even a potted poinsettia on her desk. It wasn't that she disliked the holidays. Every year she went to the company Christmas party, participated in the Secret Santa and gave a gift to her secretary. She just didn't believe in overdoing it like so many other people did.
Of course, if she were married with a family, things would no doubt be different. Rosalind would have enjoyed baking gingerbread men, taking her children to have their picture taken with Santa at the mall, playing Christmas carols on the stereo, watching holiday movies and specials on television and hanging stockings on the fireplace mantel. But she didn't have any kids, and if she continued on her present course, she probably never would. She was already thirty-eight years old, and her biological clock was winding down.
Still, Rosalind's life was not without its rewards. She was a well-paid, highly respected editor for one of New York's most prestigious publishers and worked with literary luminaries like Susan Wilson, H. R. Barrett, Brett McCord ....
Why do my thoughts always stray to Brett? she asked herself. Why can't I close the book once and for all on that chapter of my life?
The answer was obvious: she couldn't forget him because she still loved him. It was one of life's cruel jokes. The only man she ever wanted to marry was already married to someone else.
Marilyn! she thought with distaste. What did Brett ever see in her? She has neither looks nor intelligence. He probably only stays with her out of pity.
As Rosalind drank the cup of coffee Sara, her secretary, had brought her, she stared out her office window at the busy streets of Manhattan below. The city was ready for Christmas. The Salvation Army Santas manned their posts at the corners, and the department store windows had been transformed into places of enchantment.
I wonder where Brett is right now, what his plans are for Christmas, Rosalind mused. I wonder if the holiday season reminds him of me.
The sharp stab of pain she felt forced the heartbroken editor to turn away from the window and get back to work.
More than ten hours later, Rosalind let herself into her dark apartment. She kicked off her heels in the foyer, walked into the kitchen and put a container of leftover spaghetti in the microwave. As she waited for her dinner to heat, she went into the living room and turned on the television, her only source of company. She searched through the channels, finally settling on a sentimental holiday film on Lifetime Movie Network. The bing of the microwave told her that the spaghetti was done.
As she walked past the gas fireplace, she stopped in front of the advent calendar.
"I wonder what my secret admirer has for me today," she said, opening the drawer marked with the number three.
Inside was a single miniature silk rose, a red one meant to signify love.
"Flowers and candy," she laughed. "Whoever my secret admirer is, he sure knows the way to a girl's heart."
