Charlie Wilt’s parents were the kind of people one would call cheap.
Liars. Thieves. And Charlie always made them proud.
As Charlie grew into young boy, he learned how to pickpocket, play
cards, and plead the fifth all by age seven and was thus a prodigy to
his derelict parents. Charlie was fast and light on his feet, a
talented thieving child who grew into a thieving, charismatic, and
handsome young man.
Early one Christmas Eve, when Charlie was had just turned eighteen, he
hung around the town center, bored with the regular swindling. As he
watched people mill about the shops picking out last minute gifts and
buying baked goods for their holiday parties, he decided that he was
an adult and needed a challenge.
That’s when he saw it: the beautiful emerald pendant draped around the
Widow Hawkins’ neck, the one he had never seen her without. It was
the perfect test of his ability, and a worthy treasure for a Christmas
Eve thief.
Charlie followed the widow as she made her rounds for the holiday. He
busied himself with a phone call to a casual acquaintance when the
widow stopped by the homeless shelter, to make sure he didn’t look
suspicious. Once he ran out of conversation, Charlie put away the
phone and stood on the opposite side of the road to see what was
taking the woman so long. He saw her inside, smiling, feeding as many
poor men and women as her aging body would allow.
Next, she walked down to by the orphanage where she played with the
children around the neatly decorated tree near the big bay window,
perfect for Charlie to spy on her. The Widow Hawkins picked up the
youngest of the children to hug them. Charlie watched the widow wince
subtly for each child she brought into her arms, but the obvious pain
disappeared as he saw her smile when the kids held her close.
Even from his spot leaning against a car and smoking a cigarette,
Charlie could see the emerald dangling on its golden chain, a
tantalizing spark of color against the black sweater the old woman
wore.
Charlie smirked as he thought about how easily his prize would have
been his, if only he were an adorable orphan on Christmas Eve.
As he watched the widow with the children, Charlie thought about his
own mother. Despite her coarse nature, she had often held him in a
similar fashion and he felt twinge of something just a bit warmer than
melancholy at the thought. He shook his head, snubbed out the
cigarette and the memory.
It was almost five o’clock on Christmas Eve. The stores would be
closing up shop soon. It was already dark. Still, the widow moved on
to the hospital. It was infuriating to Charlie, who wondered if
perhaps she suspected she was being followed. Maybe, he thought, she
was hoping he would lose interest if she kept going to such public
places and staying for so long?
Along the way to the nearby hospital just past the library and a few
restaurants, the Widow leaned against a tall black lamppost to catch
her breath. She looked around and Charlie pretended to be curious
about an Italian restaurant’s sign for holiday specials. It didn’t
stop him, though, from catching sight of her face enough to see that
some color had leeched from the Widow Hawkins’ round blushed face.
She straightened her jacket, hiked up her bag, and continued on her
mission. Charlie fell back into step a few hundred paces behind her,
using the thinning crowds to the best of his ability.
As he followed, his eyes bounced after the bauble like a cat trained
on a bird hopping around a lawn. Before the day was out, it would
most certainly be his.
The widow walked past the front desk at the hospital and gave a
friendly albeit frail smile to the receptionist as she signed the
visitor’s log.
Charlie almost didn’t follow, but when the pretty middle-aged woman
behind the desk made eye contact with him, he saw familiar signs. A
few sweet words, a light touch of his fingers to her hand, and she
would look the other way.
He walked by the room once to make certain it was correct. There he
saw his quarry, sitting at the bedside of a young woman whose pallor
made even the paling face of the widow look as reddened as a cherry.
The sick woman had bone straight hair that was dark and probably quite
lovely when she was healthy. Charlie stood beside the door, his back
flat against the wall as he pulled up an imitation of a concerned,
sorrowful friend waiting outside.
He listened to the woman cough and wheeze through the conversation
with the widow. For a few minutes, they spoke too softly for him to
hear even a murmur, and so Charlie poked his head around the corner.
He saw their shadows cast on the curtain, with the widow leaned in
close to speak directly to her friend. The widow gave a slight nod
and placed one hand on the woman’s head, brushing her hair back with a
few fingers. Charlie watched them and though they sat there only for a
few minutes, it seemed the world had paused for these two to say a
goodbye.
A small cry from the patient–a gasp maybe—startled Charlie back out
of the doorway. He decided to wait in the lobby, pretending to watch
the local news.
When he saw the widow as she left the hospital, she paused at the
entrance for a moment clutching her chest.
Charlie edged past her in the doorway, hoping that being in front of
her would throw off any suspicions that he was following her.
The widow made one final stop: to the grocery store. She picked up a
small chicken, fresh baby carrots, a bottle of red wine, and a frosted
chocolate cake.
From the store, she went directly home to her big empty manor that sat
just west of Charlie’s own crowded little family home. Charlie peeked
through the windows to watch for his moment to snatch his pendant.
The Widow Hawkins drifted around the house, prepping her dinner with
hands that seemed to grow clumsier as Charlie’s observation went on.
He followed her along the windows of her home as she moved from the
kitchen to the bedroom and then to bathroom, where she disrobed. She
had left the emerald on the bedroom dresser.
Charlie easily popped the unlocked window open and slid himself into
the bedroom. He could hear the widow humming to herself as she
bathed.
It was just as he went for the gem, though, that the young thief
smelled the smoke.
In an instant, Charlie had to make a choice: save the home and life of
the widow or take his precious prize and run.
He cursed under his breath as he realized his decision.
Charlie rushed to the smoke-filled kitchen, where he grabbed a cloth
to open the oven. In one quick motion, he tossed the bird into the
sink and turned the faucet on full blast.
Through the veil of smoke and steam, Charlie saw the small portly
frame of the widow. As the room cleared, the look on her face was one
of confusion to say the least.
Charlie stood in the middle of her kitchen, feeling caught red handed,
though he hadn’t actually stolen anything. Yet.
Widow Hawkins walked over to Charlie in a daze, modestly holding her
worn terrycloth robe closed against her damp skin.
He expected her to scream or faint. He expected her to pummel him
with all the strength her tiny old fists could muster. At the very
least, he expected she would recognize him as “that Wilt boy” and draw
the conclusions he knew any other sane person would on finding a
strange young man standing in the kitchen of their locked home.
Instead, the Widow Hawkins brought her arms up around the thief and
pulled him in close, the words “Thank you” spilling from her lips
again and again.
Charlie couldn’t help, in that moment, but to return the affectionate
embrace. He remembered the orphans and thinking about how his mother
had held him like that… but he was wrong. This was far warmer and
earnest.
The widow asked if he was hungry, and would he join her for what was
left of dinner once she was dressed?
Still a bit concerned that she would report to the police, Charlie
accepted the invitation.
With the main course burned, the widow offered cake and a bit of wine
even though she could tell he was young.
Charlie relaxed as he sat with the old woman. He told her he had been
out for a walk when he saw the smoke in her kitchen and the light on
in her bathroom, putting two and two together.
“You must have been my guardian angel tonight,” the old woman said
wistfully, a smile lingering on her pale lips.
“I’m happy I was here to help,” said Charlie and, strangely enough, he
found he meant it.
Soon, the widow was regaling him with stories of previous Christmas
Eves. In particular, she spoke of when her late husband had been
courting her with all manner of lavish gifts, though he was not a rich
man. One of those gifts was an emerald necklace.
“He knew it was my birthstone,” she explained.
She told Charlie of the time that she had dropped the necklace on a
winter vacation in Orlando. When they retraced their steps to find
the missing trinket, her husband had to climb down a riverbank to
fetch it.
The widow laughed from the memory, coughing slightly, as she said, “My
poor old man! When he made it to the necklace, there were about ten
flamingoes ready to give him a piece of their minds! I’d never seen
him run so fast from something so pink!”
Charlie found himself laughing as well, and enjoying the company of
the widow. But, despite his gaiety, he couldn’t help thinking there
was some sadness behind the widow’s clear eyes.
As it neared midnight, Widow Hawkins asked young Charlie Wilt if he
could help her to her bed. He did as he was asked, never thinking of
the emerald as anything more than part of her story.
From under her thick wool covers, the widow smiled tightly. An
unspoken understanding passed between them. Charlie realized he had
known most of the night why the widow had really been making her
rounds this Christmas Eve.
Charlie stared into the widow’s eyes, clasping her hand in his own. He
and the widow sat there together sharing each other’s presence.
As the widow stopped breathing, snow began to fall outside.
Charlie wept silent tears over the widow. He held her hand until the
warmth left her, then wiped his tears on his sleeve and retrieved the
emerald from her dresser. He placed it around her neck before cleaning
up the dishes still out in her dining room.
As he sat on hold with the hospital to notify someone of the Widow
Hawkin’s passing, Charlie thought of the people whose lives she had
touched and that she now left behind.
He thought of the orphans with no one to pick them up and embrace them
as she did. He remembered the homeless men and women she gave her
time to feed and provide with good company for an evening. He
wondered who the woman in the hospital had been.
Charlie wondered what people would feel if he were gone.
“Richer probably,” he chuckled, as he considered his sticky fingered past time.
Charlie smiled ever so slightly as he walked down the snow-dusted path
of Widow Hawkins’s home and turned not towards his home, but towards
the orphanage. He would greet the children with warm embraces that
would make the Widow proud.