Christmas On Snowbird Mountain

“I could only print then, but I can write my name in cursive now.” She looked up with expectation, her sweet face showing exactly what she longed to do. “I can write it real good.”

“You can already write in cursive? Goodness. How old are you?”

“Sudali.” She held up six fingers.

“Well, this must be my lucky day because I’ve been looking all over for a six-year-old to write her name on my cast and couldn’t find one. Do you think you could do it for me?”

Her eyes lit up. “Uh-huh. I even got a marker.” Hastily she took off her school backpack and rummaged around until she came out with two. Susannah held her arm steady in her lap while the girl slowly and carefully wrote the name Nia in black. Instead of dotting the I she drew a red heart.

“How beautiful. Thank you.”

“You won’t wash it off?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.” The cast would be removed and thrown away in four to six weeks, but the child probably hadn’t thought about that.

Nia looked quickly over her shoulder, as if realizing she’d strayed too far from the person who’d brought her. “I got to go.” She returned her things to her pack.

“Are you here with your mother?”

“My daddy. My mama’s dead. She got the cancer in her stomach.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You got a mama?”

“No, not anymore.”

“Did she get the cancer?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Very much.”

“You got a daddy?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“Who tucks you in at night?”

“I…” The question sent a sharp pain through Susannah’s heart. “I tuck myself in.”

“My daddy tucks me in. I got a Gran and a Nana Sipsey to help.”

“Then I’d say you’re a very lucky little girl to have so many people who love you.”

The child said goodbye and left. Susannah ordered another cup of coffee. “Anything else?” the waitress asked when she’d finished.

“No, thanks. Everything was delicious.”

“Glad you enjoyed it. Want that phone book now?”

“Yes, please.” Susannah paid for her meal, then Bitsy helped her look up numbers for places where she might stay the night. She wrote them down.

While she had the book, she flipped over to the W section and skimmed the listings.

“Do you know Ryan Whitepath, the artist? This lists only a post office address and I’d like to drop by and speak to him.”

“Sure. Everybody knows the Whitepaths. They’ve lived here all their lives. That was Ryan’s little girl you were talking to.”

“You’re kidding!”

“He usually picks her up out front when she gets off the school bus. Hurry and you might catch him.”

Susannah raced through the store and outside. She scanned the parking lot for Nia, but didn’t see her anywhere. Damn! So close to Whitepath and she’d missed him.

The one item on her Life List that had caused her the most concern was “Create something beautiful and lasting.” For months she’d pondered what that should be and the training she needed to accomplish it. A painting maybe? An exquisite photograph? A sculpture? None of those things seemed exactly right, but she couldn’t explain why. She wanted the whatever she made to be admired long after she died, but it also had to “speak” to her heart, to be part of her somehow.

While waiting in the emergency room in Fayetteville to have her wrist set, she’d wandered off in search of a rest room and wound up in the lobby for the recently completed heart center. The floor had been the most stunning mosaic she’d ever seen, hundreds of thousands of tiny pieces of tile expertly placed so that they gave the illusion of walking on a leafy forest floor in autumn. Looking at it had literally taken her breath away.

A pamphlet about the heart center credited the work to Cherokee artist Ryan Whitepath of Sitting Dog, North Carolina.

A mosaic. Perfect! They were beautiful and durable. She’d found out on the Internet that one dating back thirty-five hundred years had recently been uncovered by archaeologists and was still intact.

She believed she had the talent to learn the craft. She’d started college as an art major, planning to be a portrait painter. Her mother’s illness had killed that dream the following year, but in the last few months she’d taken up drawing again.

She possessed a sense of color and understood perspective. And it wasn’t as if she wanted to be an expert, only make a little piece of something Ryan Whitepath could insert in a larger work. If she could talk him into giving her lessons and letting her help in his studio.

That request, she felt, was best made in person rather than by telephone. So she’d rearranged her schedule and backtracked into North Carolina.

The timing was perfect. She planned to be in New York City to watch the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. That gave her eight weeks before she had to move on.

She reentered the store and went back to the lunch counter. “I wasn’t quick enough. Can you tell me how to get to Mr. Whitepath’s studio or home?”

“Be glad to.” The waitress picked up a napkin and started drawing a map. “I hope you have four-wheel drive.”

RYAN ENJOYED the walk back, but Nia struggled to keep up. He put her on his shoulders and carried her.

“Am I heavy, Daddy?” she asked in Tsalagi.

“Yes, you’re heavy. And you squirm like a trout. I can hardly hold on to you.”

She wriggled her behind, teasing him. “There was a lady with pretty hair in the store. She tried to fly and fell down and hurt herself.”