The Christmas Tree

By Linda Jordan

The anniversary of her husband’s death is coming up and Lorna’s desperate for some Christmas cheer. Then she meets Bibi, who has a plan. Will it be enough to turn her life around?
A Bibi’s Bargain Boutique Story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metamorphosis Press
• Release date: Dec 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311379443

Linda Jordan

Linda Jordan writes fascinating characters, visionary worlds, and imaginative fiction. She creates both long and short fiction, serious and silly. She believes in the power of healing and transformation, and many of her stories follow those themes.In a previous lifetime, Linda coordinated the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop as well as the Reading Series. She spent four years as Chair of the Board of Directors during Clarion West’s formative period. She’s also worked as a travel agent, a baker, and a pond plant/fish sales person, you know, the sort of things one does as a writer.Currently, she’s the Programming Director for the Writers Cooperative of the Pacific Northwest.Linda now lives in the rainy wilds of Washington state with her husband, daughter, four cats, a cluster of Koi and an infinite number of slugs and snails.

Book preview

The Christmas Tree

by

Linda Jordan

Contents

~The Christmas Tree

~About the Author

~Copyright Information

The Christmas Tree

Lorna sat at her new chic glass desk in the waiting room of Lakeside Design & Graphics. She rocked in the new white desk chair then tried to lean back, but the slant felt dangerously like tipping over, so she put it upright again. Then smoothed down her dark blue, wool dress.

Andreas’ social climbing girlfriend had designed it and made everything in the room white. The walls, the carpet, leather club chairs, even the coffee tables.

Everything.

Except for two very modern, very ugly paintings that were white with a couple of slashes of color in each. One was an orangey-red and black, but mostly white. The other royal blue and black, but mostly white.

She hated the whole room. It made her eyes hurt. She put her hands over her eyes and gave a deep sigh.

It reminded her of the foster home she lived in as a teenager. Lorna thought she’d escaped all that agony, grown out of the rage and grief of adolescence. Being in this white room just brought back back that sterile, cold home. The pain of being unloved mingled with her still fresh grief from Jonathon’s death in January.

She’d always known that this Christmas would be hard, but the office was intensifying her struggle to at least be sociable at work.

There were no plants to clean the air. No scent could overpower the fumes from freshly painted walls. Worse, it had no appeal to their normal client base. The firm was known for their environmental work who tended to like their design more earthy.

Lorna sipped her mint tea, closed her eyes and wished the old office was still here. She’d worked for the guys at least twenty years, all of it in that lovely, warm feeling office.

The phone rang, echoing through the mostly bare room and sounding louder than normal.

Lakeside Design & Graphics, she said.

Hi Lorna, It’s Arthur Marcus. I have an appointment at one with Greg. Just checking to see if he’s running on time.

She checked