The Red Gloves Collection by Karen Kingsbury Page A

Christmas.”
    The mission director placed his hand on Earl’s shoulder and said nothing. For a long while they stayed that way, while Earl quietly cried. “I’m sorry. It still hurts like it was yesterday.”
    “Take your time.”
    Earl closed his eyes and finished the story.
    The night after the funeral, despite his breaking heart, Earl had opened his presents. He did so in the quiet of the night, long after his parents were asleep. Among the practical store-bought things were two gifts wrapped in white tissue paper—the symbol he and the girls had used over the years to designate the gifts that were homemade. He opened the one from Molly first.
    It was a framed painting she’d worked on at school, a picture of the manger scene that was eerily similar to the one Gideon had drawn for him. Above it was scribbled this message: “Daddy … you make every Christmas beautiful.”
    Earl had stared at it, run his fingers over the glassed drawing, and wept as he hadn’t since the accident. All of his hopes and dreams for the future had been caught up in that one girl. How was he supposed to live without her?
    Finally, he opened the package from Anne.
    Inside were the red gloves—lovingly knit with heavy wool and tiny stitches. They were lined for warmth, and Earl held them like they were made of glass. How had she found time? Another wave of tears filled his eyes and he ached for her, ached for one last chance to tell her he loved her. One last day together.
    When he could summon the strength, Earl lifted the gloves and studied her handiwork and attention to detail. Sweet Anne. How careful she’d been to keep them a secret. Slowly, carefully, he buried his face in the red softness, and deep within the fibers of the wool he could smell her. Smell the woman he’d loved since he was a boy.
    The woman he had lost forever.
    Earl had hidden the gloves beneath his pillow. Every night after that he nestled his face against them as he fell asleep. Breathing in the smell of her, dreaming she was still there beside him.
    In the weeks after the accident details began to surface. The truck had experienced brake failure. The driver had done everything he could to keep from hitting Earl’s car, but the accident was inevitable. A week later an attorney contacted Earl about a class-action lawsuit.
    “The truck was owned by a multimillion-dollar company. This is the tenth accident where one of their fleet lost its brakes. Each time the brass has looked the other way and done nothing.” The man hesitated. “The company deserves to be punished.”
    Earl agreed, but he was hardly interested. Over the next four months the attorney built his case against the company, carefully contacting each of the other victims and their families. Earl paid no attention; he was hurting too badly, caught up in a pain he had never experienced before. Each morning he would shower, dress, and look for work. But every step, each breath, was an effort. The tragedy of what had happened to Anne and Molly was so agonizing that at times Earl came back to his parents’ house after lunch, unable to last another hour.
    Finally, in June, the suit against the truck company wrapped up. A verdict was handed down: The corporation was guilty as sin. It was ordered not to operate until a brake inspection and all necessary repairs had been performed on the entire fleet.
    “What this company allowed was an abhorrent act of negligence,” the judge said at the verdict.
    The judgment was more than the attorney hoped for. After everything had been divided between the plaintiffs, Earl received two million dollars for the unnecessary deaths of Anne and Molly.
    With the legal victory, Earl had expected to feel relief from the constant hurt of missing his girls. Their deaths were not in vain, after all—no one else’s mother or daughter or wife would die as a result of that company’s negligence.
    But there was no relief whatsoever.
    When the check for Earl’s money arrived in