"I think a strike is an awesome idea," Laura said. "So, give us details. How'd you pull it off?"

Joy hadn't meant to go public with this but, somehow, telling her friends felt good. It was obvious from the approving nods and the occasional snicker that the majority of the women present agreed with her in principle.

"A Christmas strike." Laura smiled. "I love it. I'm in. I'll go on strike with you, sister."

"You've got little kids," Joy protested. She could see it now. No Santa at Laura's house, no Christmas cookies, no stockings stuffed with goodies. And it would all be her fault.

"My kids have a father, and he's perfectly capable of doing something," Laura said with a snap of her gum. "In fact, since he's the one who loves all this so much, he can do it for a change."

"That's the Christmas spirit, honey," cracked Sharon. "And the more I think on it, the more I think I need to get Pete to stop sitting around like an old bull in a pasture while I do everything. Maybe I should join you."

"Jack's always complaining that I spend too much money. Maybe this would be a good year to stop," Kay mused. "You know, he doesn't even shop for his own kids. He leaves that for me to do. And, of course, I'm the one who does all the wrapping. I even sign the gift tags. If it weren't for me there wouldn't be anything under the tree when the kids come to visit. I think maybe Jack needs a wake-up call."

"You can't not get presents for your stepkids," Jerri protested, shocked. "They shouldn't have to pay because you're mad at their father."

"Yes, the poor kids," Carol agreed.

Laura gave a snort of disgust. "How sick is that? She says she's going to not shop for the presents and we're shocked. Jack should get his own kids' presents. Why should Kay have to?"

"Because she's the mom," Jerri argued, "the heart of the family, the designated love giver and holidaymaker. And what if he blows it and doesn't get them anything? Or gets them something really dumb? They'll have to pay and that's not fair."

"I can always get something for them and hide it, or take them on an after-Christmas shopping binge," Kay said.

"That's sick," Jerri said flatly.

"No, that's brilliant," Laura corrected her. "I love it. Women of the world, unite."

Sharon snapped her fingers. "That's it!"

Laura looked at her, puzzled. "What's it?"

"We really do need to unite, organize," Sharon said. "That way we can help each other stay strong. And there's strength in numbers, so we should let other gals know. There might be a whole bunch who want to join us."

"She's right," said Kay. "Someone should call the paper."

"Ha! I'd love to see a picture of Glen trying to bake cookies plastered across the front page of the Herald," Laura crowed.

"I'd love to see all the men in this town trying to cope with Christmas shopping," said Kay. "They all wait till the last minute to buy for us. Imagine what it would be like for these guys if they had more than one person on their list."

"They couldn't do it," said Sharon.

"They'd go crazy trying," added Laura. Her grin was positively evil. "This is going to be great."

Little kids possibly missing out while women stopped the holiday machine all over town. Joy began to feel like Dr. Frankenstein. She looked around the table. Sharon, Laura, and Kay were on a holiday high-jinks high and Debbie was nodding her support. Jerri was shaking her head while Carol was looking downright depressed.

Joy left the store later feeling a little depressed herself. Here it was, the season of giving, of happy holidays and peace on earth, and look what she'd started. And where. The good citizens of Holly tended to take the holiday season seriously. The whole downtown was already festooned with swags and giant candy canes, and every shop window boasted some kind of holiday display. The big sign outside the Town and Country grocery store had the dates posted for performances of A Christmas Carol by the Holly Players, and the paper had just announced its annual Christmas treedecorating contest.

Joy had only wanted to help Bob see the light. She had never intended to bring other women on board. She should call this off before it got really ugly. Anyway, she'd made her point and Bob had gotten the message.

By the time she let herself into her house she had repented of her wicked ways and was ready to go to Bob and promise to do it all. Christmas was too important to be held hostage by a disgruntled wife.

Then she saw the mess in the living room and her remorse hardened into resolve.

There, in the middle of the room with its warm and inviting overstuffed sofa and chairs and lovely Sheridan end tables, sat their Christmas tree, a testimony to the power of pa.s.sive-aggressive behavior. Christmas tree, what was she saying? This wasn't a Christmas tree, only a terrible parody of one. Bob hadn't even bothered to spread the branches out to make it look more natural when he set it up, so they all shot straight toward the ceiling in one big, fresh-out-of-the-box, ugly tower. He'd slapped on the lights unevenly, hadn't even bothered with the gold bead chains that had been her mother's, and had hung only a few ornaments. The poor angel dangled from the top at a drunken angle, ready to topple any minute. The whole thing looked like the work of a madman.

Rage welled up in Joy. She threw down her purse and knitting bag and marched across the room. She was going to pick up this tree and hit Bob over the head with it. Oh, how could he? How childish, how immature, how very Bob of him! She reached out to adjust the branches.

"Hi, hon. How was your meeting?"

She yanked her hands back. Of course, that was exactly what he wanted. He was goading her, trying to get her to cave.

She buried the anger, then turned and forced a smile for her husband, who was walking into the room looking very pleased with himself. "Great. I see you got the tree up," she added sarcastically.

He gave a faux-modest shrug. "I had a few minutes."

It looked more like a few seconds. "I suppose you think this is funny," she said.

He played dumb. "What?"

"Is this mess supposed to make me change my mind and rush to the rescue?"

He opened his eyes wide, the picture of middle-aged innocence. How had she managed to stay married to this man all these years without poisoning him?

"You know, you're really being immature about this," she said.

"Me? Who's the one who decided out of the blue that she wasn't going to do anything?"

"Not out of the blue. It's been building for a long time. This weekend was just the last straw."

He looked at her like she was a bratty little kid throwing a tantrum. Maybe she was, and maybe she shouldn't have snapped. Menopause was doing strange things to her. But his behavior...it was simply inexcusable.

He came up to her, wearing a reconciliation smile on that John Grisham look-alike face of his and put his arms around her. "Come on, hon. Let's forgive and forget and have a nice holiday. Okay? If you want, I'll even hang the outside lights tomorrow."

It was tempting. "Well."

He kissed her. "This was all ridiculous, and beneath you, anyway."

Her frustration over his abysmal, uncaring, antisocial att.i.tude was ridiculous? No. Ridiculous was what he had done to a perfectly good tree.

She pulled away. "You just don't get it, do you? Your whole att.i.tude about the things that are most important to me stinks and I'm sick of it. You really don't care, and this..." She waved her hands wildly. "...mess proves it." Her voice was rising with each word. She was out of control. It felt good.

He studied her. "Hon, are you about to have a hot flash?"

"Have all your brains fallen out?" she roared. "What kind of thing is that to say?" This man worked with words. He wrote about complex characters. He was supposed to understand people.

"Joy, this isn't you speaking. It's your hormones. Here. Why don't you sit down and I'll get you some eggnog."

"I'll get my own eggnog, thank you."

She left him in the living room with the disaster tree. Let it stay that way, she decided as she yanked the eggnog carton from the fridge. It could stand there all month, a testimony to her husband's disregard for both the season and his wife. She opened the carton with a savage pull. Let the strike continue.

Three.

Carol tried to cheer herself up by humming holiday songs on her way home. It didn't work. She had only a five-minute walk from the St.i.tch In Time, and it just wasn't enough time for her to lift her sagging spirits.

Her condo was part of The Green, a charming shopping area at the heart of town that sported housing above boutiques, bakeries, and small businesses. During holidays like the Fourth of July, the annual Halloween Trick or Treat Walk, and the Hollydays Fair, those condos were the place to be. Residents got a bird's-eye view of the revelers and the concert bands that played in the bandstand down below on the actual green. It was handy to be close to shopping, and there was always something to do, someplace nearby where Carol could go and find people to hang out with.

Sometimes, the hanging out made her lonelier, though. Her only son, John, had been killed in a car accident when he was sixteen, and two years ago she'd lost Ray, her soul mate of thirty-six years. Both her parents were gone now, and her sister was getting ready to take a monthlong cruise with husband number two. Carol's nephews and nieces were all busy with their own lives, and she didn't want to impose herself on anyone, so this Christmas she had only...

She looked down at her cat, George, who had met her at the door and was now rubbing against her ankle. "You're happy to see me, aren't you?" she crooned, and picked him up.

He squirmed loose and jumped from her arms, trotting toward the kitchen, his signal that she was to follow him and give him his evening snack, which followed his after-dinner snack. George had been svelte and gorgeous like his namesake, George Clooney, when Carol first got him, but he was fast losing his trim physique thanks to her overfeeding She followed him to the kitchen. It was much too big for one woman, with more cupboards than she could fill, counters too long to work at alone, and a breakfast bar it depressed her to sit at. When she and Ray had moved in, though, they'd planned to do a lot of entertaining. These days she only entertained George.

"What would the people at PAWS say if they saw you now?" she asked him. "They'd probably have me arrested for cat abuse."

George rubbed against her again, unconcerned with what PAWS thought about her cat-parenting skills. She knew from experience that he'd give her one more polite leg rub; then, if she didn't cough up the food, he'd nip her.

She sighed. "Either I've trained you badly or you've trained me well."

She dumped half a can of cat food in his bowl and crouched on the kitchen floor, watching him eat. "You and I are going to have to think up something to do with ourselves or this is going to be a very unmerry season," she informed him.

She replayed the conversation at the St.i.tch In Time in her head and sighed. Joy and Laura and the others-who would have pegged them for Grinchettes? All that complaining about their lives when they had their health and their families-it was like whining about inferior caviar while just outside your door people were starving.

Jerri, like her, had remained silent, and as they followed the other St.i.tch 'N b.i.t.c.hers out of the shop, she'd asked Jerri what she thought of the strike.

Jerri had shaken her head and said, "I wish I had the energy to do all those things they're complaining about. They don't know how lucky they are."

Carol's sentiment exactly. Maybe they'd come to their senses once they got home.

Sharon arrived home to find Pete raiding the cookies. "Peter Timothy Benedict! I told you to stay out of those."

He stuffed one in his mouth before she could grab the Tupperware container. "Well, I don't see the point of you making them if we can't eat them," he said around a mouthful of cookie.

She put the lid on the container and stashed it in the top cupboard. "You know they're for special occasions."

"Since when is your knitting group a special occasion?"

There he stood in those stained, ripped jeans she kept trying to throw away and that grubby old, gray sweatshirt, his chin covered in so much five o'clock shadow he looked like a Chia plant. Even after almost thirteen years of husband training he still could be such a barbarian.

"Going someplace where people are dressed up and act civilized counts as a special occasion," she informed him. "And besides, it takes a long time to make those cookies, so I don't want you devouring them in one day like a big, old locust when I may need them for a church or school function." And since she was on strike, she couldn't be baking any more. What she had would have to last. Maybe she should hide them.

Pete made a face. "Oh, no. Yulezilla is back to take over the world."

That made her blood bubble. She put her hands on her hips and scowled at him. "You know I hate it when you call me that. It's rude and insulting."

"And true. And I can always tell when it's starting."

Sharon narrowed her eyes. "You have no idea what's about to start, mister."

"And just what is that supposed to mean?" he said with a smirk.

"It means I'm fixin' to give you a lesson on Christmas that you won't soon forget."

"You've been giving me lessons for years," Pete retorted. "How about just giving me a break?"

She shrugged and turned her back on him. "If that's what you'd like to call it. You're going to find out firsthand just how much I do for you every year because this year you'll be doing it. I'm on strike."

"On strike, huh?" he said.

She waited for him to come put his arms around her, plead with her to come to her senses and be his holiday slave. But instead he began to laugh.

She looked over her shoulder and frowned at him, but it didn't stop him from shouting, "Hallelujah," and raising both hands. "We'll finally get to enjoy the holidays," he crowed, and started doing the happy dance.

It made her want to pull a leftover turkey leg out of the refrigerator and smack him with it. But her mama raised her to be a lady, so instead she marched out of the kitchen, her heels tapping an angry staccato as she went.

He thought this was all one big joke, did he? Well, he wouldn't be laughing so hard when the cookie dough hit the fan. And first thing in the morning she was going to make a little ol' call to make sure that was exactly what happened.

The kids were in bed when Laura got home and Glen was camped in front of the TV, lounging on the sofa and laughing right along to the sitcom laugh track. He looked up at her and smiled. "Did they get your yarn unstuck?" She held up several neat rows of knitting and he nodded approvingly. "Lookin' good. So, who's getting that for Christmas?"

"Me," she said.

"You go for it, babe. You deserve it."

"Brown noser. You're just trying to b.u.t.ter me up for the next invasion."

He grinned and patted the sofa cushion, inviting her to join him.

She did, saying, "And speaking of the holidays, there's something you need to know."

Glen's attention was already drifting back to his program. "Hmmm," he said absently.

"I'm going on strike."

"Okay."

Obviously someone was not listening. Laura picked up the remote from the coffee table and muted the TV. "I said I'm going on strike."

"Isn't that a little extreme? I mean, things are always crazy at the Chamber this time of year."

"I'm not going on strike at the office. I'm going on strike here at home."