THE GENERAL STORE WAS located just off Mosby’s Highway at the junction of Atoka Road and Rectors Lane, or as Thelma Johnson liked to think of it, at the pulsing nexus of the villages of Middleburg and Atoka, combined population 896 souls. A plain white clapboard building with a green tin roof, the store had a large picture window in which a pink neon OPEN sign had read OPE for years. With two gas pumps out front, four parking spots, three pots of different coffees, a showcase filled with fresh-baked breads and pastries, and an eclectic inventory that included everything from bait to hoof-polishing wax for horses, Thelma liked to brag that she had more to offer than the Safeway in Middleburg although not quite as much as the Leesburg outlet mall. Plus, as she always said, there was her legendary hospitality.

Like us, Thelma had also gotten an early start on her Christmas decorating. A wreath made with fresh woven greens, pinecones sprayed with fake snow, bright red berries, and a red bow edged in gold hung on her front door. The sleigh bells on the inside doorknob were there year round and jingled as I walked in. I knew from past years there would be mistletoe hanging from the ceiling just inside the front door.

I looked up. There was.

Thelma was big on romance, especially at Christmas.

The place smelled—as it always did at this time of year—of fresh-brewed coffee and the tang of wood smoke from a potbellied stove that was surrounded by rocking chairs in a corner of the room. Thelma had never been one for updating the place so it looked like a cookie-cutter 7-Eleven. She said her customers liked her little store the way it had always been, a throwback to a slower, gentler time when folks stopped in for a chat to go along with that quart of milk or loaf of bread they needed. And no one asked if she had free WiFi. My parents had come here for groceries; so had my grandparents. And her parents and grandparents had taken care of them.

If there were no customers, Thelma was invariably in the back room, the muffled sound of voices coming from a television she never turned off so she could follow her beloved soap operas. Today the store was empty, but I heard her reedy voice call out from the back, “I’m coming. Give me a minute. I’ll be right there.”

I picked up a basket and began my shopping as the swelling music at the end of one of the shows she adored sounded from the back room. A moment later I heard the clackety-clack of her heels across the floor as she emerged from soap opera heaven.