The trunks arrived at the theater while Elsa was pouring her third cup of Wakeup Wallop tea.

“To Ms. Elsavere Maxine Lord,” she read on the delivery ticket. It was from an estate executor, the estate of “Albert and Rosalyn Tremont.”

Thrilled, dismayed, Elsa felt both, like push-pull on her brain cells. The Tremonts were the most famous couple in Chicory, Texas, actors who’d toured the world, leaving audiences enchanted in town after town, country after country. Far and wide the Tremonts were known, at least by older generations. Any acting group would be delighted to own their personal costumes and props.

Would the Chicory Lord Theater appreciate the publicity such a bequest was certain to create? Like Santa appreciated hot cocoa and cookies on his long, cold delivery route.

As a cofounder determined to make their tiny theater a shining star on the Texas arts-and-entertainment map, Elsa felt her heart champing wildly: O-pen, o-pen, open those treasure chests!

But storage was going to be a problem.

A bulky, unwieldy, elephant-sized problem. She read the delivery ticket again.

“Wait,” she told the young men wheeling in two more trunks. “Is this right? You have twenty-two trunks to deliver?”

The taller, white-haired man, with a bushy white moustache and the bearing of a “Mover in Charge,” glanced out the door, where a red-and-green commercial cargo van sat parked at the curb.

“Let’s see …” He looked toward the stairs, up which he and his helper had wrestled the four chests already unloaded. “Twenty-two in all, so that’d make sixteen, plus these two, still to come in.”

“Oh, my. We simply don’t have the room.” Again she studied the ticket. “Were your instructions to deliver them to the theater, specifically? Or to me?”

“Well …” A finger aside his nose, he frowned in concentration. “They clearly belong to you, ma’am. That’s what the attorney said who handled the estate. This was the address on the delivery bill, but you can take them anywhere you want.”

“I see.” Her garage would surely hold them all, if she left her car in the driveway. Sun, hail, bird droppings … she grimaced. Yet, there simply wasn’t room here. “I live two streets over. How much extra would you charge to take the remainder of the trunks to my house and unload them there?”

He nodded, clearly thinking hard about it.

“Any stairs to climb at your house?”

“Oh, no. You could back in close to the garage and unload everything.”

“No extra charge, then, ma’am.” His beaming, chubby-cheeked smile held a sparkle of relief.

Upstairs in the prop-and-wardrobe room, Elsa poured her cold tea into a small planter that held a Christmas cactus, to give it a morning wakeup, then lifted the cactus out of the Styrofoam cooler that kept it dark for twelve hours a day. She examined the bright pink buds that graced it.

“What do you think, will we have blossoms for the holiday this year? Yes, Orson, I hear you shifting around in your urn and watching over my shoulder.” She carried the cactus to the hall window, and set it in the filtered light of the sill, as near to its native rainforest conditions as she could provide. The plant was older than Elsa, passed down from Orson’s grandmother.

Her husband didn’t answer, of course, but she knew he was watching the plant’s progression from the shelf where she had set his urn on her arrival this morning. Christmas Eve would mark the second anniversary of Orson’s death, yet she could hear his cheerful, husky voice as clearly at times as if he, rather than merely a pot of ashes, were sitting above the makeup table. He never answered inane questions, however, reserving his remarks for juicier exchanges.

“Dress rehearsal tonight,” she reminded him. A local playwright had adapted a delightful play from the ever popular but boringly stale “A Christmas Carol.” Their new version, “Christmas with Dickens,” was set in small-town Texas, just after World War II ended, and the script was quite a treat. The acting, however, had yet to come together, and opening night was only two days hence.

Elsa loved acting, as did Orson, and in the first year after he passed on, thrusting herself into various characters’ skins seemed the only thing holding her own fragile self together. Tonight, though, she was directing. When this year’s fall season started, the Chicory Lord’s tenth anniversary, everyone with directing experience was otherwise occupied, so she stepped in. Her first time behind the curtain, rather than center stage, she’d watched the eager and talented woman who took her place shine in the role like never before, and realized there came a time to move back and give newcomers the limelight.

Fifty-six seemed awfully young, though, to be outdated like a can of soup.

“Eeny, meeny, miney, moe … ” She approached the first of the four trunks. “Orson, you know I’m hoping to find magic in one of these chests. The theater’s wardrobe allowance has gotten pitifully small since you left. Our leading man, in particular, could use a bit more panache to make his role come alive.”

She pried open the brass latches with surprising ease, considering how long the chest had probably been stored. Or had the aging performers sorted through the contents on occasion, reminiscing with the memories they evoked? As soon as Elsa swung the lid up, a strong odor of cedar emerged.

“Thank goodness the clothes were properly preserved. No moth holes or bug juice.”

“They’ll need airing,” Orson cautioned. “Nothing sours an audience faster than stink in the air.”

“Well, of course they will!” Hearing steps approach the doorway, Elsa glanced up. “Megan, come look at this fine suit for Fred.”

Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, was played by a young man who bagged Elsa’s groceries each week. Megan played Anne Priestly, a young reporter who interviews Fred, Bob Cratchit and, later, each of the Christmas ghosts, to find out why Ebenezer suddenly turned his business over to his nephew and vanished.

“Do you think it will fit?” Megan held the pants up in front of her, peering down to check the length. “Charlie’s awfully tall.”

Elsa wouldn’t mention it, but Charlie was the only young man in town tall enough to perform opposite Megan, who stood five-feet-twelve in her stockings. A grocery checker at the same store where Charlie worked, they were both taking a year between high school and college to save up tuition.

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