Coming Home to You

by M. K. Stelmack

  “It might not be normal,” Daphne said, “but it’s understandable.”

  “How can it even be understandable? Daphne, he must be worth, and I’m not kidding when I say this, a million dollars. Easy. And yet he keeps this junk.” She held up a pickle jar of pennies.

  “I don’t think,” Daphne said slowly, “this is about the money.”

  “What, then?”

  “His baby brother.”

  Within seconds, Connie stripped the ponytail holder from her hair and refashioned it into a messy tail atop her head. “I overheard bits and pieces of what was said last night. I was trying to keep the kids busy. Seth just said, after you guys left, that Mel had said something about his baby brother dying. But Mel’s got to know that collecting junk isn’t going to bring him back.”

  Daphne rubbed her thumb along the cuts of the five keys. “It isn’t about bringing him back, either.”

  “Tell me,” Connie said, popping open the lid on a nest of canisters. “You clearly know him better in a month than we have in thirty-odd years.”

  After giving up on writing and reading last night, she’d raged against his accusation that her thinking was small. She didn’t have a fear of flying, as he did; she’d traveled to other countries. She was far better educated than him. But, seeing all these...things, she was really no better than Mel. He hoarded stuff; she hoarded her hurts, her feelings, her love...herself.

  And what had he said when she’d asked him what he was prepared to give her? He hadn’t even blinked an eye. Me. Everything I have.

  And she’d stayed silent. She’d chosen not to believe him because then she wouldn’t have to change. She wouldn’t have to recognize the bits of herself that she’d suppressed for so long starting to reemerge in the last few weeks. Like the young girl who was eager to drive so she could take herself wherever the road led.

  “It’s about not losing anymore.”

  Connie clattered the lid shut. “How stupid of me. Who am I to criticize him when he had to deal with this all alone? You’re right. He’s right. He’s always forgiven me, always been generous with me, and I’ve taken whatever I wanted from him.”

  She did her trick with the ponytail holder again. “Okay. So. What do we do now?”

  We? Connie treated Daphne as one of the family. They all did, and she doubted she’d be in Spirit Lake a week from now. It really wasn’t her place to interfere in Mel’s private life. To betray his secrets and then skip town would be shameful. Then again, leaving him behind with no one to help him through his pain was unconscionable, too. Now was not the time to hoard knowledge or act small.

  “The box you brought over to Mel? His baby brother’s urn was in there.”

  Connie leaned heavily against a shelf, her head coming against a box of laundry detergent. “I’m so stupid, so stupid. And so, so screwed. What do I do now? Take the stuff, or not?”

  “If you do take it, there’s one more thing you should be aware of. I noticed the urn box wedged between a bag of towels and a popcorn maker in the first shed.”

  “What? Are you sure? Why would he put it there?”

  Why indeed? Why move something so precious to a shed filled with junk? Surely Mel grasped the difference. How about her? Or was she just like a pile of unpurchased items at a sale, something he felt bad about leaving behind?

  “I can’t say. I only know about his baby brother because he told me. It’s not as if I have some great insight into his mind.”

  “But that’s my point. He told you about Isaac when he’s never breathed a word of him to anyone else. You realize what that means, right?”

  Again Daphne drew a blank.

  “You are his soul mate.”

  Daphne bit her lip.

  “Don’t laugh,” Connie said. “That’s the way it is for Ben and me. I cannot not tell him everything, and it’s the same with him. And, yes, yes, I do most of the telling. But sometimes a thought will barely enter my mind and he answers it. Ah, see, you do know what I mean.”

  The idea was laughable, except... “He did correctly identify the secret ingredient in my lemonade.”

  “Huh?”

  “It was an old joke between my best friend and me in high school. Whichever man could deduce the secret to my lemonade was the man I’d marry. And no one has ever guessed. The other night, Mel took one sip and named it right off.”

  Connie sucked in her breath and fanned herself. “That has got to be the coolest thing ever. What did Mel say when you told him he was right?”

  “Oh. Well. I didn’t.”

  “What?” Connie did the ponytail holder trick. “You need to tell him. If you don’t, I will.”

  “Don’t you dare!” Honestly, Connie was another Fran. “Besides, this is hardly the time. If you haven’t noticed, he’s a little put out with us right now.”

  “Fine. I won’t. Promise me that you will, though, before you leave town.”

  “I doubt we’ll ever have another private conversation.”

  “Promise,” Connie ground out.

  “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Because I love Mel, and he has spent his entire adult life looking for a good woman. I want him to know that for you, at least, he was The One. Even if you won’t admit it.”

  “I don’t—” Daphne stopped. Any denials would only prove Connie’s point. “I promise. Now, back to solving our present dilemma.”

  Connie pulled out her phone. “I’m calling Ben.”

  “Don’t.” Daphne took a step toward Connie and accidently kicked a box of six-inch nails. “Please, don’t. This is—” Daphne arced her hand about “—Mel’s world. A private one he didn’t exactly invite us into. Not even me.”

  Connie moaned. “Do you know how hard this is for me? I have no self-control with secrets.”

  “Pretend you will cause untold trouble if you spill this one. You’ll upset the family. You wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”

  Connie pulled a world-weary face. “Mel clearly hasn’t given you my life story, has he?”

  “No.”

  “Let me just say, been there, done that.”

  “Then you might not want to do it again, right?”

  Connie shoved her phone into her back pocket. “Fine. What now?”

  “Mel said he was planning to refurbish this stuff. Fix and flip. I suggest we take him at his word, and do just that.”

  “You mean entertain his insanity?”

  “His insanity? Whose idea was it to have Christmas in the blazing heat?”

  Connie smiled slowly and her eyes glittered, like Fran’s did when she was defied.

  Goodness, what had happened to her? Urging Mel to forgive his dad, telling Cal not to be selfish and now standing up to Connie. Daphne had never felt more scared—or bigger.

  “Fine,” Connie said, reaching once more for her ponytail holder, “let’s get started.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE EQUIVALENT OF one entire storage unit was in Santa’s workshop, Mel calculated. Connie had insisted he come inside the wood camp shelter before the sale started to take whatever he really, really didn’t want to lose. All he’d taken was a sweeping look at the tidy rows of his stuff, cleaned, sorted and artfully arranged amid Christmas decorations—and fled.

  She’d backed him into a corner, and she knew it. What kind of Santa strips bare his workshop in front of children? She and Daphne had done a good job setting it up. Everything looked as if it belonged there, and people were actually buying the stuff. Some people genuinely seemed to thrive on Christmas.

  The kids did, that was for sure. Ever since he’d sat on an oversize lawn chair under a giant beach umbrella, a long line of kids waited to sit on his lap. They each plunked their sandy bottoms down and told him what they wanted six months from now, which apparently was still going to be in
flatable beach flamingos, paddleboards, a swimming pool in the backyard and ice-cream makers. Beside him, Mrs. Claus dutifully drew up a list. What else could she do? In the eyes of the public—and especially in the eyes of those under forty inches—they were married.

  During a break, Mel scratched his chin underneath his fake beard. “You’d think that if Connie could come up with a beach Santa, she could have found a way to get me out of wearing a beard.”

  Daphne peered at him over her half-glasses. She was exactly how he’d pictured her as Mrs. Claus—sweet and jolly, flirty and fun. “Probably because everyone would recognize you without the beard.”

  “Nah, I’m wearing sunglasses, a sun hat and a wig.”

  Daphne sent him another granny look. “You’ve no idea, do you, what a wildly popular man you are?”

  All he wanted was to be wildly popular with her. She was pleasant to him, but that saddened him. Anger or even curiosity would’ve meant she cared.

  A girl in pigtails approached Mel. Lydia. It was going to take all his bluffing skills to outsmart this one. Linda’s granddaughter, like most kids, had always seen right through him. “Ho, ho, ho. Who do we have here?”

  Lydia sighed. “Mel, I know it’s you.” She poked him in his fake stomach, camouflaged by a Hawaiian shirt.

  “Mel who?”

  “Mel Greene.” She pulled on his beard and the elastic stretched his ears forward.

  “Ouch, ouch, ouch,” Mel carried on. “You want gifts, then you don’t go yanking my hair.”

  “I’m sure it’s you, Mel.”

  Mrs. Claus tapped his arm with her red-and-white beaded stocking pen. “Perhaps she has confused you, Mr. Claus, with your twin brother, Mel Greene.”

  Clever. “Ho, ho. Of course.” Mel gave Lydia a bounce on his knee. “Have you met my twin?”

  That made her pause and Mel pressed his advantage. “I look exactly like him. I have to dress up like Santa so people can tell the difference.”

  Lydia glanced at Mrs. Claus, then over at Brittany, who was busy texting. She returned her piercing gaze to him. “Are you telling me that Santa Claus and Mel Greene are identical twins?”

  “Yep. Yes.”

  The pint-size interrogator turned to Santa’s wife. “Is this true?”

  “My husband is the spitting image of Mel Greene,” Daphne said, without batting an eye. She’d neatly dodged the question of brothers.

  “So how do you tell them apart?” Lydia asked Daphne.

  “Santa knows if you’ve been naughty or nice, but Mel Greene is much easier to fool. He generally just takes your word for it.”

  Was that what she thought of him? A fool? He’d acted like one often enough.

  Lydia brightened. “That’s so true. I once ate Mel’s doughnut but I said to him that grandmom ate it and he believed me.”

  The little monkey. He had believed her. “Well,” Santa said, “you may want to apologize to poor Mel Greene.”

  “But I can’t see him anywhere.”

  “He’ll show up later,” Santa said. “Now, what do you want for Christmas?”

  After she had rattled off her list of inflatable water toys, Lydia skipped over to Brittany. Her mom handed her something, which Lydia ran back with.

  “Here, it’s mistletoe,” she said. “You have to kiss Mrs. Claus.”

  Brittany, a baby hitched to her hip, smiled and waved.

  “It’s a test,” Daphne muttered. “To prove I’m not with Tom.”

  “Which you shouldn’t have any trouble passing,” Mel said through a fake smile, though it felt as if he were the one being tested. Would Daphne want to kiss him or not?

  She did. A quick, closed-mouth puckering of her lips on his. He’d barely registered the contact before she was waving to the smattering of applause and wolf whistles her display had sparked.

  Ho. Ho. Ho hum.

  He wished that just once in their brief time together she’d kissed him without it being engineered for the benefit of others.

  She angled her body to his, her pink bare shoulder grazing his arm. “Isn’t that your father over there?”

  Cal, overdressed in his short-sleeved dress shirt and slacks, was scoping out Santa’s workshop, casually checking out the interior through the open sides of the camp shelter, like a coyote around a chicken coop. He stepped back to read the Greene-on-Top banner on the roof. Then he strolled inside.

  “What’s he doing?” Mel said.

  “Probably shopping like everyone else,” Daphne said.

  It fitted Cal. Fitted the both of them. Except Mel had the sense to go for what was right there. Cal was always looking for the next best thing. “He’s not in there just to shop. He wants something else.”

  “You’re reading too much into this.”

  Mel tried to believe Daphne through two more kids. But he couldn’t shake his suspicions that Cal was up to something. There wasn’t all that much stuff. Why hadn’t Cal come out?

  “I think it’s time Santa visited his workshop.”

  Daphne touched his arm, as Mrs. Claus would. “Is that wise?”

  Mel shook her off and stood. “You already established I’m a fool. I might as well live up to your estimation of me.”

  * * *

  MEL STRODE INTO the workshop, and spotted his father examining his Pyrex collection.

  “Look at this,” Cal whispered to Mel. “The original stuff. Does Connie know its real value?”

  Connie was practically giving away his things. He regretted leaving her to pick through the lockers. Or hadn’t Daphne recognized the value of his items?

  Cal picked up a stuffie. “I was just searching for something for Seth and Alexi’s kids. This is in perfect condition. A collectible, if I’m not mistaken.”

  How had Connie and Daphne found that? It was the puppy he’d bought after his mom had told him she was expecting Isaac, though then the baby’s gender was unknown. He remembered the agony of trying to decide on something that either a boy or a girl would enjoy. He had visited the store again and again, debated the price in his head and finally counted out the money. He still remembered the price: $5.99. His mom had said it was almost as big as the baby would be, and Mel had liked the idea that the baby would have a friend his size. After Isaac’s death, as he and his mom packed to leave Cal, Mel had hidden the stuffie in his backpack. Just as, it turned out, she’d kept the urn hidden from him.

  Only his mother had not forgotten about the urn, even as he had blocked the toy memento from his mind.

  “That’s mine,” Mel said.

  Cal frowned. “Yours?”

  “Mine,” Mel repeated. He swept his arm to indicate the entire workshop. “All of this is mine. I lent it to Connie so she could run this workshop for today.”

  “Really? All of this is yours?” Cal looked around in surprise and then clicked his tongue. “Everything’s underpriced, you know.”

  Mel did know, and he hated he and Cal were thinking the same thing. “It doesn’t matter. The proceeds go to help needy kids.”

  “You could’ve made good money off this stuff.” Cal dropped his voice, pretending an interest in the puppy. “Check out those folks at the counter. I overheard them. They’re antiques dealers from Edmonton.”

  They were buying the lanterns. The ones Mel had picked up from an estate sale a couple of years ago. “I was thinking of buying those lamps myself,” Cal whispered. “I’m sure I could sell them for triple the price Connie’s set.”

  The dealers were looking pretty smug about their purchase. The woman touched the man’s arm and pointed to the set of crockery. Those were genuine antiques. Straight from the nineteenth century.

  Mel surged forward. He arrived at the crockery at the same time as the dealers. “Those are not for sale,” he said.

  “There’s a price sticker right on them,”
the man said, pointing.

  Mel peeled it off. “They’re not for sale.”

  “Who are you?”

  “The owner,” Mel said and, in a rush of inspiration, gestured at his outfit. “Can’t you tell?”

  Daphne slid in beside him. She was always appearing when his life got heated. “Meet my wife,” Mel said.

  “Well, Mr. Claus,” the dealer said, “perhaps we could negotiate a price.”

  Cal stepped in. “Five hundred, three hundred and two fifty for each of the different sizes. Or a thousand for all three.”

  The dealer pursed his lips. “You’ll have to come up with a better offer.”

  Cal shrugged.

  “Nine hundred for the set,” Santa countered. “No breaking it up.”

  “I can give you six hundred.”

  “Sure,” Santa said. “Along with another three hundred.”

  “Seven.”

  “Eight.”

  “Seven fifty.”

  “Eight.”

  “I’ll need to think about that.”

  “Please do.” Mel handed Cal the midsize crock, the little one to Daphne and hefted the largest for himself. “The lady at the counter knows how to get in touch with me once you’ve considered.”

  Mel and Cal walked as far as the entrance before the dealer called over to them. Daphne had not taken a step and looked ready to chuck the pot at him. She clearly had no idea how to close a deal.

  “All right, then. Eight hundred.”

  “Thank you,” Mel said and moved to the counter. He indicated Daphne should follow. She did and thunked the pot down on the folding table. Mel decided to ignore her for now. “A pleasure doing business with you,” he said to the dealers. “Connie here will handle the transaction.”

  Mel turned to Daphne but Cal interrupted. “Could we talk for a moment?”

  Over by the Pyrex again, Cal said, “Why don’t I help Connie with the sales today? I’ve got an eye for it.”

  Was Cal angling for a cut? “I’m donating all the proceeds.”

  “I understand. I hate to see you not getting your money’s worth, is all.”