A December to Remember by Jenny Bayliss EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Jenny Bayliss
- Language: English
- Genre: Holiday Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
PRESENT DAY
MAGGIE, SIMONE, AND Star’s father had died as he’d always wanted to:
quietly and without ceremony, in his beaten-up van in the middle of a forest
in the Italian Alps. His age, like the rest of him, had always been an enigma,
though it surprised nobody to learn that he had died just shy of his ninetysixth birthday; Augustus was one of those curious beings who seemed always
to have been old and yet equally never to have aged.
In a handwritten note found tucked into his breast pocket, Augustus had
bid farewell to his three estranged daughters and assured them that he had
enjoyed a long and happy life, the memories of which he would carry with
him into the next world.
The very existence of the note had broken Star’s heart. Maggie, the eldest
of the three, had called her discordant sisters as soon as she’d received the
news of their father’s passing.
“But that means he knew he was going to die,” Star, the youngest, had
sobbed over the phone.
Maggie, who as firstborn was unwillingly cast in the role of
materfamilias, tried her hardest to push conviction into her voice. “Not
necessarily. He might have carried it around in his pocket for years, just in
case,” she soothed.
“Dad never planned a thing in his life.” Star sniffed loudly. “He was a
free spirit. No, he knew he was going to die, I know it. It’s too sad. I can’t
think about it.”
Simone, the middle of the North sisters, had been less demonstrative in
her grief upon receiving Maggie’s phone call, but Maggie could hear the
shake in her voice.
“Was he—was he alone? When it happened?” Simone had asked.
“I believe so, yes. But the doctor I spoke to assured me that he died
peacefully in his sleep. That’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it?” It was
hard to put a positive spin on the death of a parent, even one who had been
absent for most of their lives, but she was giving it her best shot.
“I suppose so,” Simone had said. “I mean, I know we weren’t close for
the last twenty-odd years, but even someone as careless with people as he
was ought not to die alone . . .”
“He wanted it that way. No fuss. Just him and the mountains.”
Though it was the truth, saying the words didn’t bring Maggie peace.
THE FUNERAL TOOK place on a bleak Tuesday in November; the fat rain and
black pregnant clouds felt fitting for the occasion. Despite the weather, the
whole of Rowan Thorp village had turned out to honor the man known
affectionately by the locals as “The Wizard of Rowan Tree Woods.”
Augustus had been roguish and charming and quite frankly a randy old
bugger who was adored as much for his sparkling manner as the trouble he
caused.
At the front of the church a large picture of the man in question rested on
an easel: long white hair pulled back into a plaited rope, a beard to match, a
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