Myrtle called out directions, and no sooner had the last word left her lips did she detect the rapid shuffle of his feet as he rushed off.

The moment Val reached Myrtle’s chambers, he didn’t hesitate, making a path straight for the armoire and wrenching the doors open. He yanked out the first dress his fingers met . . . and then he stopped, his eyes locked on the undergarments, modest, white. There was nothing seductive or sexy about those articles.

There was no lace or frill.

Nor embellishment.

That was, with the exception of a pink bow at the center of the neckline—a bow better suited for a small child. Or an innocent.

Which was decidedly what Myrtle McQuoid was. He could now acknowledge that there was, in fact, everything innocent about her.

So why, even with all that, did he find himself pulling forth images of her naked in her bath, soaping her body, and—

Cursing, he crushed the garment in his fist, along with a pair of modest white stockings.

This time, fighting new imaginings of her, drawing the silk articles slowly up over trim ankles, higher, ever higher, over her calves and knees.

“You are pathetic,” he muttered to himself as he turned swiftly and headed back belowstairs to the kitchens. As he approached, the distant strains of a boisterously sung Christmas carol reached him.

“Joy to the world!

Joy to the world! Oh, woah

Joy to the world!”

Joy to the world . . . It was another song he’d once sung, lending his voice to the other members of his family, and then years later, to his wife as they’d belted out the joy-filled tune.

For the memories alone that accompanied that carol and those lyrics, he should have been filled with bitterness for how his life had turned out, at everything he’d lost and all he’d missed.

Only . . . as he reached the door, that thick oak slab that did little to conceal the sounds of Myrtle’s song, he could not.

“Joy to the world!

Joy to the world! Oh

Joy to the world! The Savior reigns

Let all their songs employ

While fields and floods

Rocks, hills, and plains

Repeat the sounding joy . . .”

He could not even attempt to muster the angry resentment that was always with him, because of her. Myrtle, who with her exuberance and uneven, pitchy rendition, made it impossible to feel those sentiments.

Instead, Val found himself in an unlikely way: he silently joined in, his lips moving in time to the words but still not giving that song sound. Closing his eyes, he turned himself over to feelings other than the ones of pain and sorrow and the loss that had so consumed him these past years.

“Joy to the world, the Lord is come

Let earth receive her King

Let every heart prepare Him room

And heaven and nature sing . . .”

He didn’t feel the misery of what had been, and what now was.