Was he wise to have this growing investment in an anonymous relationship? Because, if he did decide to meet her, he was not going to let her know his identity. If that was what she wanted, it wasn’t going to happen. He had to stand firm on that. He could be the Secret Saint for the next twenty or thirty or more years, if he was careful and didn’t get himself into a situation where he had to reveal his identity.
He wasn’t looking at this as a short-term thing—unless he got married and had a family and was no longer able to do it, he could do this for the rest of his life pretty much.
But again, it was up to him to be careful.
He had almost had himself talked out of accepting the invitation. It wasn’t like he had to write her back or anything—he could wait until the very last minute to decide to go.
Maybe that’s what he would do. He would go, but he would hang back until he saw whether or not she showed up at the gazebo. If it looked legit, if he felt okay about it, if he didn’t see any reason whyhe shouldn’t step into the open with his ski cap on and his jacket and boots that he wore only for Secret Saint activities, then he would step out too.
With that decision made, he rolled over, although it was still a long time before he fell asleep.
Chapter Nine
“Hi, Grandma,” Nelly said as she walked in the door, setting her school bag down. She had papers to correct, but it was a fairly short quiz and shouldn’t take her too long. She had been able to use her planning period to get caught up on everything else and get ready for tomorrow.
She had found herself having a little bit of trouble concentrating in class today. After all, she was nervous and excited, and a little bit scared. Would the Secret Saint accept her invitation?
And was that a wise invitation to issue?
She thought about how well they had worked together and how his skills seemed to complement hers. He had the big hands of a working man, and there were so many things that a Secret Saint could do, like fixing a porch, changing the oil in cars, and even putting on a new roof. Plus, he was much better at carrying firewood than she was, and he was probably better at getting it too.
She was better at groceries, gifts for kids, and organizing everything.
She really hoped that they could combine their skills, andperhaps instead of one plus one equaling two, they could multiply what they could do.
She had thought long and hard about issuing the invitation and had finally decided that even though there were a lot of cons, the benefits would be astronomical if they turned out to be even a little bit of what she hoped they could be.
But there was the danger that he would try to unmask her. Even if he didn’t physically try, he might ask her to pull her hood down so he could see, and she was determined that she would not do it. It was important that she keep her identity a secret. She didn’t want anyone in her classroom thinking that she was playing favorites with any of her students if she did Secret Saint activities for some of her students and not for all of them. Some of them didn’t need it. But that might not stop them from becoming offended or from accusing her of not being a fair teacher.
She didn’t want it to affect her classroom at all. Those students were the most important thing in the world to her, after her grandmother.
“I had a wonderful day, Gram. How are you?” she asked, holding her breath a little because her grandma had had a lot of really good days, and Nelly was afraid that a bad day was coming.
“I’m fantastic. I heard you whistling this morning when you first got up. You always seem to be really happy after you’ve been out running around doing that stuff you’ve talked about.”
She had often wished that she hadn’t shared with her grandmother what she was doing, but because her gram kept such odd hours and was up often in the middle of the night, she had felt like it was something that she probably had to do.
But with her grandma’s failing faculties, she was afraid that her grandma might accidentally let it slip. She knew, with an absolute certainty, that it was something her gram in her normal life would never have allowed to come out.
“Remember that you’re not allowed to talk to anyone aboutthat,” she said gently, putting an arm around her gram and giving her a hug.
“I know. It’s called the Secret Saint because you want to keep it a secret.” Her gram lifted a brow and spoke with humor. “But what you don’t realize is back when I was growing up, there was a Secret Saint.”
“There was?” Her gram was right—she hadn’t realized.
“I wasn’t very little. But maybe about the time I had my own children, we had one year where my husband was off work because he had the flu. Back then, we didn’t get paid at all while he was off, after he used up all of his vacation. And I knew Christmas was going to be tight. But the Secret Saint came along and gave us an entire box of gifts that I could wrap up for my children. Somehow, they knew exactly what each kid wanted and had gotten everything on their list. I have no idea how they found out that information. I had only confided in a few people, and none of them were the Secret Saint, I was sure of it. They included a sweet note, and Christmas was really nice that year, because of someone’s generosity.”
“Was the note signed ‘the Secret Saint’?”
“It was. But either we didn’t talk about those things back then, or the Secret Saint didn’t do much work, because I never heard of anyone else getting anything like that that year. Maybe they just did one thing every year, because after that, I did keep an eye out to see if anything happened to anyone else. The words ‘Secret Saint’ had glued themselves into my brain, and my ears would perk up if I even heard something that sounded similar.”
“And did you?” Nelly asked, amazed that there was a history of the Secret Saint. She had never heard about this before.
“I did. About once a year—it wasn’t even always at Christmas—I would hear something that happened to someone. And then, oh goodness, it must have been about twenty years after that—twenty years ago—when it stopped completely. I don’t know if the person died or moved away, or if they just weren’t in a position to be able to do that anymore.”
“I would really love to know. But I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to start going about trying to figure it out. I mean, who would you even ask? It happened to you, and you have no idea.”
“No. The handwriting was printed, very carefully, like someone didn’t want us to be able to recognize the writing. And everyone’s note looked different. From what I remember, a few of them were typed. And they didn’t always leave a note.”
