The Twelve Days of Christmas By Tiffany B. Quinn I am very tired when I get back to my lonely home late that evening. After trying unsuccessfully to work the clasp on the necklace in my exhausted state, I decide to just leave it on for the night as I fall into bed.

Monday Dec 26, Day 1

The alarm seems a bit harsh this morning, but I need to get moving because of an early morning meeting at work.

I still sleep in my childhood room, having not yet moved into the master bedroom with its en suite bathroom. It is probably irrational, but to me the master bedroom still seems like my parent's space and I am not ready, emotionally, to make that move yet. Consequently, when I roll out of bed I have to stumble across the hall to find a bathroom. While relieving myself, I wake up enough to notice a couple of large plastic bottles on the counter with a note lying beside them.

Good morning, Karl,

We know that you have started to let your hair grow out a little. In today’s world that is just fine. Remember that appearances matter so you must take care of your hair. Make sure to get a trim when it starts to get unruly. Go see Caroline at the salon. She will know what to do. We are not there anymore to remind you to look presentable so please pay attention to yourself. I suggest that you use this shampoo and conditioner to help your hair have a more professional look.

Your father says not to let the Mayor push you around in your meeting this morning. If he gets too pushy, ask him why Miss Weaver (his former secretary) had to leave town in such a hurry. That should give him pause.

Love, Mom & Dad.

P.S. you can leave the necklace on under your shirt. Your shirt and tie will hide it. And don’t forget to take a selfie.

This is getting seriously weird! I run downstairs and check the doors again. They are all securely locked. I wonder if I should get the locks changed?

Looking at the clock, I see that I am in a serious time crunch and need to get moving.

Returning to the bathroom, I prepare for my daily shave but find that there is no need. For the first time since I was sixteen I don't need to shave this morning because my cheeks are as smooth as a baby's bottom.

There is nothing to shave.

My shaving supplies are also gone. No razor, no shaving cream, no aftershave.

I don’t have time to dwell on the theft of my supplies or wonder why I don’t need to shave today. Instead, I hop in the shower to get ready for the day. I do use the strawberry scented shampoo and conditioner that arrived this morning. I don’t have any other choice!

Dressing in slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie, I take a quick selfie before heading off for the office. Breakfast is taken care of with a quick stop by our local drive-up coffee stand where I snag a sweet roll along with my morning coffee.

----<0>----

I am usually one of the first people in the office in the morning, but today I am about half an hour late and find our senior administrative assistant/business manager at the receptionist’s desk. Much of the staff is on vacation this week, so those of us still around are filling in where needed.

“Good morning Mr. Bronson, I am glad to see that you made it here this morning.” Celeste cheerfully greets me. “Mr. Sanderson would like to see you before the meeting with the Mayor and the Director of Public Works.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Jenkins,” I reply. “I hope that you had a nice Christmas.” We’re a moderately sized general civil engineering firm of around 40 employees. We are small enough that most of the staff are friendly and less formal in their interactions. I have tried to get Celeste to call me by my first name, but to no avail as she believes in propriety. Having been with the firm since its beginnings almost 20 years ago, Celeste is the grease that keeps things moving smoothly. She knows everything and everyone. Next to Jim, the minority and current managing partner, Celeste is the most irreplaceable person in the organization.

It is quiet in the office today with most of the staff gone to visit extended family or to hit the after Christmas sales. Not a lot of progress will be accomplished this week. Unfortunately, I need to be here as we wrap up a project for the city, hence the meeting with the Mayor and the Director of Public works.

As my morning note predicted, the Mayor is difficult during our meeting. I manage to slip in the suggested question, and he becomes a lot more reasonable, obviously uncomfortable that I might know one of his little dark secrets. In addition to closing out our current project with the City, we discuss upcoming work and they tentatively agree to two more rather lucrative projects for the coming year.

My partner, Jim, and I had a working lunch with a couple of our department heads to map out a strategy for fulfilling the new contracts and to refine our final proposals for several others. Business is looking good for the coming year.

Even though I am the majority owner of the firm, I am also one of the junior engineers. For all intents and purposes, Jim runs the firm as the managing partner. We agreed that I need a few more years in the trenches before I will be ready to take an active leadership role. Even then, Jim will always be senior in my view as his many years of experience almost demand it. It is an odd arrangement but, as majority owner, I also need to be in on major business decisions and when contracts are signed even though I am still legally only an engineer-in-training.

I spend the rest of the afternoon working with a team on the design of a new water treatment plant for a nearby city. At the end of the day, I leave for home feeling somewhat accomplished. As is commonly my practice, I also take home a couple of hours’ worth of work to keep me busy for the evening.

As I am checking in with Jim before going home, he gives me a strange look.

“Hey Karl,” he asked, “when was the last time you had a haircut? I didn’t notice it this morning, but it seems as if your hair has gotten more than little shaggy. You might want to get another haircut before our next meeting with a client.”

I reach up and feel my hair. It does seem longer than it should. I swear that there is at least an inch of length that wasn't there this morning. It also feels a little fuller.

“I think that it’s been a couple of weeks,” I respond. “Normally I can go about six weeks between haircuts.”

“Longer hair is okay,” he admits, “but please keep it trimmed and presentable.”

“Will do,” I agree, “See you tomorrow.”

----<0>----

When I get home, I look in the mirror. My hair is definitely much longer than it was this morning and looks rather unkempt. I also notice that my face is still baby smooth. Normally, I would expect a little stubble by this time of day.

There is no doubt that something very strange is happening. Both the lack of facial hair and the phenomenal hair growth are just not possible but, looking in the mirror, the evidence that it is possible is literally staring me in the face. That's not even mentioning the magically appearing Christmas tree, notes, and 'gifts', nor the disappearance of my shaving supplies and shampoo. Are these the changes that mom referred to in her first note? If so, how is this going to help me find true love?

I take another selfie and compare it with this morning's image. My hair has definitely grown today. This morning, I was sporting my normal rather short professional haircut. This evening I have an unruly mop of hair that is at least three inches in length. This just can't happen!

Examining the shampoo and conditioner bottles does not reveal any clues. They are commercially available hair products of the type that my mother used to use. Taking a whiff of the shampoo brings back memories of the clean strawberry scent of her hair. The memories of my beautifully feminine mother brings tears to my eyes. How I miss her!

Unfortunately, I don’t really get to any of the work I brought home. Instead, I spend the evening making sure the house is secure against my crafty intruder. I make sure that every door and window is securely locked. I change the code on the keypad of the door to the garage. Drawing from spy movies, I put a small piece of tape across door jams so that I can tell if someone has opened the door in the night. If someone comes in tonight, I’ll at least know the point of entry.

I hope.

Once I feel secure, I re-examine the two notes. The handwriting definitely looks like Mom’s. The words sound like Mom’s. If it is not actually from mom, then whoever is doing this certainly is doing an excellent forgery. As I reread the words, a chill runs up my spine. What if she is communicating from the grave?

She says, in the first note, changes will be made over the twelve days of Christmas with the goal of preparing me for a new relationship. I only have two data points so far, but that is enough to make me suspect that agents of change will appear each of the twelve days.

The gifts of shampoo and conditioner I can understand. It will help me look nicer. But the necklace? What is its purpose? I reach up and notice that I still have it on. Finding the clasp, I remove the piece of jewelry and examine it more closely.

Dad had bought the necklace for mom one Christmas when I was a teenager and she would wear it frequently. There was something about the gem that tweaked the interest of the jeweler who bought mom’s jewelry as one lot. He had commented on the size and quality of the stone. Tonight, it seems to have some slight inner glow. I wonder if that is usual? It is a beautiful piece of jewelry, but other than that I don't see anything overly mystic about it.

Finding the small box that it came in, I tuck the necklace into the box and decide to store it in the master bedroom.

Since I cleaned out my parents’ personal effects, I rarely visited the master bedroom. I usually enter the room only once or twice a month to dust and vacuum. For me, the room still seems to have a sort of sacred feel to it. After cleaning out my parents personal effects, I left the furniture in place almost as if I expect them to return someday. The queen size bed is made up just as it was the night my parents died. I made sort of a shrine on top of a dresser with a framed picture of the three of us at Christmas just a week before the accident as well as a framed picture from their wedding. Their wedding rings have a place of honor in front of my parents wedding picture.

Tonight, the first thing that I notice on entering the room is that mom’s jewelry box is back on her vanity. The reappearance of the jewelry box is unsettling because the jewelry box was sold along with the jewelry. Opening the box, I find what appears to be the complete inventory of mom’s jewelry. Rifling through the box’s drawers, I am pretty sure that literally everything that I sold is in there.

Damn! How did this get here? I better let the jeweler who bought the lot know that it’s here or someone will think that I stole it. All sorts of bad scenarios run through my head as I contemplate what would happen if I was accused of theft.

Looking through the drawers of the vanity I find them to still be empty. Just for good measure, I open every drawer in the bedroom to see if anything else returned. I breathe a sigh of relief to know that my only real problem is the jewelry.

Walking into the master bathroom, I see that there is more to my problem. The rack that mom used to hang her hair accessories and less expensive necklaces on is back on the wall and it is fully loaded. Opening the drawers in the bathroom cabinet, I find one filled with various hair clips, bands, brushes, combs, etc. right where they had been before I cleaned out the bathroom last spring. A chill runs down my spine.

As I ponder the significance of what I am finding, I find that I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around all this. The jewelry was sold. The hair accessories either went at the garage/estate sale, or were donated to charity shops, or ended up in the landfill. There is no way that someone could have rounded all this stuff up and returned it. Even if someone could have found everything, how did they sneak in and put it all back where it had been when mom died? Someone would have had to know where everything was, gather it up somehow, break into the house, and put it right where it belonged. I can’t think of anyone with that kind of knowledge and ability. Sure, someone could have entered the house while I was at work and staged all this stuff, but how would they know where it all went?

I wonder again if my parents aren’t truly communicating with me from the grave.

Sleep tonight is slow in coming as I go to bed with more questions than answers.