"Was that your son who answered the door?" I asked.
She took another sip of her tea. "No. I have no children. Steve is an old friend of mine from across the street. I hire him to help maintain the home." She paused thoughtfully for another sip of her tea and changed the subject.
This is an important conversation, as on the face of it it seems like the innocuous small talk and getting-to-know you exchange that could be considered standard. However, it shows that when Mary first meets people she does not share with them the fact of the existence and loss of her daughter, and that her losing her daughter is not itself a fact, out in the open, but a secret, and something private and dear that Mary keeps to herself because she does not want to share her daughter with anyone else. The thoughtful way in which she uses sipping her tea to enable her to consider how to answer his question shows that it is a deliberate intention on her part not to share her daughter's existence and it also shows that she has a tendency to use sipping tea as an elongated form of punctuation.
My beloved one,
How cold the Christmas snow seems this year without you. Even the warmth of the fire does little but remind me of how I wish you were by my side. I love you. How I love you.
The letter that Mary has written lays her soul bare and illustrates the depth of her loss and her pain. The fact that the letter sounds like a love letter also illustrates that they are not just mother and daughter but also soulmates and this goes to substantiate Mary's statement later in the novel that there is no love so strong as a mother's love. Where Christmas previously brought her joy and wonder, it now emphasizes how cold her heart has become and even the fire does not warm her but reminds her that she can only be warmed from the outside because the fire does not burn from within her anymore.
The quote from the letter is also pivotal in the novel as it begins Richard's quest to find out who it was written to and how it ties in with the angel dream he has been having. Although he does not yet understand its significance he wants to and this drives him to look more deeply into the circumstances of its being penned in the first place.
That night the mansion seemed a vacuum without Mary's presence and for the first time we felt like strangers in somebody else's home.
Without Mary in the home it feels like a big old house but not like a home. This quote shows that Mary's lesson to them is true and that it is really the people in one's life that are important. Mary made them part of her family and so they felt that they fit comfortably into the family home and belonged there but without her presence they do not feel like they belong anymore and feel like they are strangers rather than smoky again. It also speaks highly of the way in which Mary has shared the joy of Christmas and made it more meaningful to people she had no reason to treat with such grace and generosity but nonetheless did.
