A Love of Her Own by Bettye Griffin

she’d taken her walk. She put out the fire and dressed in jeans and a jacket.
    It was especially crisp outside, which many people said made it seem more Christmas-like . Ava had seen pictures of Christmas in cool, snowy climates like Vermont, all picturesque and postcard perfect. She’d even seen it firsthand, the time she spent a long weekend in January with her boyfriend of the moment in the mountains of Tennessee. It was different, but as a native of Florida she was accustomed to warmer holiday seasons. The temperature occasionally dipped into the forties in Northeast Florida and below freezing at night for a few days at a time, but this was the coldest December she remembered. Whatever happened to that global warming environmental experts were warning about? The mercury had stayed below average for a week, and even the streets were deserted. Apparently others also felt it was uncomfortably cold.
    But then again, she thought as she drove up row after row of the mall parking lot in search of a parking space, maybe no one was on the streets because they were all here, doing their last minute Christmas shopping.
    The scene never changed from year to year, she thought as she surveyed the crowd. Purses and parcels tightly clutched, a dozen people waiting on line to use the ATM, awful piped-in Muzak Christmas carols, a Salvation Army bell-ringer, just general pandemonium.
    Ava traditionally did not do her Christmas shopping until Christmas Eve, when she felt the most festive. She disliked the merchants who tried to force the gaiety on consumers in early November, immediately after they took down their Halloween decorations. She viewed Christmas as a spiritual celebration, far removed from the self-centered holidays of her childhood, when she was more concerned with what was inside the gaily wrapped packages under the tree that had her name on them. The meaning of the holiday was practically lost in her eagerness, but Ava knew it was all part of being a child. Those were the perfect years, when she had no idea about the disappointment and pain that lay ahead…
    Her mood threatened to turn melancholy, but she chuckled at the sight of a middle-aged man emerging from Victoria ’s Secret, carrying two small bags with the store’s logo, one in each hand. She thought it odd that his purchases were in two different bags. When a glance at his left hand revealed a glint of gold on the ring finger, she suspected one bag contained something pretty, if not overtly sexy, for his wife—like a bathrobe—and the other a wispy, barely-there gift for the other woman in his life. Shame on him.
    The traditional Santa’s workshop was set up in the center of the aisle near one of the exits. Ava paused to look at the long line of youngsters who waited for their turn at spending a few minutes on Santa’s lap. Her heart began to thump in her chest at the sight of them.
    Facing her infertility was the most difficult thing she had ever had to do, and although she knew in her heart that both physicians she had consulted spoke the truth about her slim chance of ever becoming pregnant. The inability to conceive a child had changed the direction of her life. She had ended her marriage, unable to forget the look of raw, unadulterated disappointment in her former husband’s eyes when they were informed of her dismal diagnosis. Since then she had put her energies into entrepreneurship. For years she didn’t date at all. She felt it wouldn’t be fair to present herself as potential marriage material to unsuspecting men when she knew her flaw, as she referred to it, made that impossible.
    It had been nearly a decade since she learned the devastating news, and the passage of time, as time tended to do, had made acceptance easier. After the divorce she opened a small bridal shop and threw herself into her work, eventually expanding it to include wedding planning. She cautiously began to date again when she reached her thirties, but allowed each