December 12
When Rosalind woke on Saturday morning, she lay in bed, watching the flurries outside her window. The snow was a tease; there would be no accumulation. She knew she should edit the David Knight manuscript to make up for her day off, but she couldn't keep her mind on her work.
As she drank her coffee, she gazed at the Advent calendar above the fireplace.
I won't open it, she vowed, like a dieter valiantly refusing to eat a slice of cake that is tempting her.
And like many a dieter, she felt her willpower slowly erode until finally, she got up from the kitchen table, went into the living room and opened drawer Number 12. Inside was a piece of cardboard, folded into four to fit inside the drawer.
Her heart fluttered when she unfolded thr postcard. Was her secret admirer about to reveal his identity? She was disappointed when she turned the card over and saw that nothing was written on it.
"It doesn't make any sense. Why give me a blank postcard?"
She turned the card back to the front and looked at the picture; it was of a street scene in Paris.
"Brett and I always used to talk about taking a trip to Paris someday."
Rosalind put thoughts of both Paris and her former lover out of her mind as she opened her Toshiba laptop to check her email. While browsing through the usual junk mail, it occurred to her to see if she could find the Advent calendar online. When she googled wooden Advent calendar, she got 145,000 results, ranging in price from under $10 to a $1,125 handmade red Tudor house from FAO Schwarz. However, there was not one time-activated calendar in the first fifty pages of results.
Obviously, the calendar was a custom-made one.
