All They Want for Christmas

by M. K. Stelmack

  His arrival was totally unexpected, and from the way Bridget was sitting, tight and rigid, unwelcome. Mara and Krista, lined up on either side of Bridget, weren’t much better. Penny must not have told her about the adoption of the girls. She had said that she would in her own good time. Which she’d run out of.

  Bridget nudged a platter of cupcakes toward the girls. “Do you want one?”

  He translated. Isabella told Sofia to say no, and Sofia gave way to her older sister with a reluctant shake of her head. Isabella gave Bridget a silent, stone-faced refusal. Isabella must be so exhausted she was no longer thinking straight. He’d never seen her refuse food before.

  Bridget chewed on the inside of her cheek hard enough to pull on the side of her face. Her tell signal for when she was troubled. Was she worried about his girls? With the same coloring as Isabella and Sofia, she looked the part of a concerned mother. Far more than him, with his light brown hair and blue eyes.

  Hurriedly, he said, “I think they’re just tired. I know I am. Do you mind if we head straight for bed?”

  “Where?” Bridget said.

  “Uh, wherever will work.”

  “There’s no room here.”

  “There’s Auntie’s room,” Mara said quietly.

  “But that’s—I mean, all of her things—” Bridget looked at the girls. “All of you in the one room?”

  If she had any idea of what the girls had endured, she wouldn’t have bothered with that question. Still. It was good to know that he had brought the girls someplace where the concept of three people in one room seemed like overcrowding amounting to a human-rights violation.

  “That’ll do us just fine for now.”

  “For now?”

  If he hadn’t been so tired, Jack might’ve chosen his words more carefully. “Until we figure out who is sleeping where in the house moving forward.”

  Bridget’s eyebrows rose, along with her voice. “Moving forward?”

  Yes, Bridget had just lost her aunt but she had to face facts, and not pretend that she didn’t understand why he was there. “Bridge. Your aunt wrote me. She said she gave you a letter, too. It’s in the will. I’m entitled to half the house.”

  He might as well have announced someone else’s sudden death. She looked wildly at Mara and then Krista, who appeared every bit as confused.

  Then Bridget’s expression cut to one of fierce certainty. She bunched her napkin and threw it on her plate. She bumped against her chair and the island to get to the mail sorter by the fridge. She tore open a manila envelope and set to reading the sheet inside. Jack recognized the writing on the back of the letter. It was Penny’s.

  It probably contained much the same message as his letter. I’m sure you think my gift is unusual and overly generous. No, I haven’t lost my marbles yet... I have a simple, logical reason. Come home for Christmas, and I’ll explain to you and Bridget when we’re all together in the same room, maybe around the kitchen table, drinking my famous cider, your girls tucked warm and safe in bed.

  “The restaurant,” Bridget said faintly. “You get Auntie Penny’s share of it, too.”

  “I’m not interested in it. We can negotiate that.” He’d sign it all over to her right now if it would wipe that horrible sadness from her face.

  She slowly refolded the letter and tucked it back into the envelope, then fingered the shredded top of the envelope.

  “I get it.”

  Bridget had whispered the exact same words into the phone all those years ago, when he’d called to say that he’d changed his mind about their future together. He had never hated three words more.

  * * *

  BRIDGET LEFT MARA and Krista to sort out sleeping arrangements for the so-called guests. She could hear them in Auntie Penny’s room, kitty-corner to hers—drawers opening, the flick of a bedsheet and plumping of a pillow, calls for fresh toothbrushes and towels.

  She sat on the edge of her bed, her aunt’s letter open on her lap under the glow of her bedside light. Bridget could only glance at bits at a time, as if the words emitted their own brightness. Joint ownership with Jack. I’m as fond of him as I am of you. You two were close...work out something. We’ll talk at Christmas when we’re all together.

  Except there’d be no Christmas together. Though Auntie Penny might’ve had a premonition when she wrote that letter, how could she have known she’d crash her rental on an Arizona highway not five miles away from her sister’s place?

  Deidre had called Bridget with the news three weeks ago—the first time her mother had talked to her since Bridget’s thirty-first birthday in April. She arranged the cremation and the ashes to be sent north, but she hadn’t come for the funeral. “I already said my goodbye.”

  As executor of the will, Deidre would have to say more than goodbye. “I’ll sort that out soon,” she’d said.

  “Suit yourself,” Bridget had replied. How would Deidre sort it out from Arizona? Bridget realized she hadn’t specifically invited her mother north. She would call tomorrow and do her duty, though she’d no idea where Deidre would sleep. Wait. Had Auntie Penny told Deidre she was giving half the house to Jack? Was that why she hadn’t come, because she knew that with Jack there’d be no room? Everyone had known except her. Because she hadn’t bothered to read the letter.

  Noises from across the hall died away, and there was a discreet knock on her door. Mara appeared. “They’re settled in.”

  Yeah, for good.

  Mara sat down beside Bridget and nodded at the letter. “Did she explain why?”

  “Jack needs a good home to raise his daughters. She didn’t say why it has to be this one.” Bridget crushed the edges of the paper in her hand. “She planned to talk to me when she got back. The real reason required a face-to-face, I guess.”

  Mara made a sympathetic noise. She was good with those. “The will must confirm its legality, I suppose.”

  “Will-shmill. Auntie Penny told us both, so I have to respect her intentions.” But what were her intentions? To give Jack a house of debt? As mercenary as it sounded, Bridget hoped Auntie Penny had stocks or savings that could get them through the next bit. She had already cashed in savings to stave off the bank in the summer. “My rainy-day fund,” she’d said. The situation now was more like Noah’s forty days and nights.

  Mara nudged her shoulder against Bridget’s. “Having integrity is such a drag.”

  It was more than integrity. It was the girls. Jack had never acted as if he wanted a family and now here he was with two girls straight out of nowhere. She couldn’t blame him. The younger seemed so sad, the older looked cornered and both of them so...hunched. They pulled on a deep, inert part of her being, the part where she’d buried the first six years of her life before her parents had rescued her from foster care. No way would she be the one to throw these girls out of the home they’d come halfway around the world for. Even if it was a home built on rocky financial ground.

  “Do you know where the girls are from?” Mara asked.

  “Venezuela, I guess. That’s where he was.”

  “I’m sure we’ll learn more tomorrow.” Mara sighed. “The little one is cute. She showed me her missing front tooth.”

  “The other one is loose. She was wiggling it with her tongue at the table.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Probably because you were polite enough not to stare. I had a harder time.”

  Mara did the shoulder nudge again. “And at Jack?” She spoke softly so there was no danger he’d hear. Krista rooting in the kitchen freezer for ice cream was louder than their conversation.

  “No,” Bridget said quickly. She winced. Too quickly. Mara had always been able to read people, her sisters especially, and now that she was armed with her papers, she was all kinds of deadly.

  “I admit that it’s weird to have the guy I once dated living under the sa
me roof. But it’s not like I haven’t seen him since he left.” Seven times in the past twelve years to be precise, when he’d come back to visit his parents or raise money for whatever humanitarian project he was involved in. And every time, she’d swear her heart was mended, and then he’d take off to some forsaken place and rip a hole in it she’d have to stitch back up. He’d last come home three years ago for his father’s funeral. Also victim of a car accident, west of town.

  “It’s just that it’ll take a bit to get used to, and you know how I am with change.”

  Mara made another patient, sympathetic noise. Bridget, as the oldest, should’ve been the sibling to lead the charge into unknown territory. Instead she’d waved goodbye to her sisters and parked herself in Spirit Lake, picking up courses online or at the local college on an as-needed basis. Visits with her sisters or vacations had never extended beyond a week. Somewhere along the way, her sisters gave up on Bridget traveling and came out to Spirit Lake instead.

  “The house will be extra crowded now,” Mara said. “Do you still want Krista and me to stay?”

  Bridget clamped her arm around Mara’s shoulders. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Mara wrapped her arm around Bridget’s waist and squeezed back. Sister squeezes were the best, like putting on an old, favorite Christmas sweater. “Krista and me, we didn’t tell Jack that we’d planned to stay until after Christmas. I don’t know how he’ll feel about that.”

  “Too late,” Bridget said. “He should’ve told me he was coming. Besides, if he’s happy enough to stuff himself and the kids into a room for one night, another few nights won’t matter.”

  “Almost two months is not a few nights.”

  “The girls can take this bed. It’s a double, right? I’ll take the sofa bed downstairs.”

  “You really are determined that we stay for Christmas.”

  “We’re all we’ve got,” Bridget said.

  “There is Mom,” Mara said.

  “And where is she?”

  Mara gave a one-shouldered shrug, exactly as she’d always done when Bridget had pointed out Deidre’s shortcomings. “We are adults now,” she said quietly. “We’re allowed to make choices.”

  Adults who carried hurts from childhood, deaths and a stupid heartbreak from a dozen years ago. Okay, maybe one adult who carried all that.

  “You’re staying for Christmas,” Bridget reaffirmed. Then she remembered the odd little family—as odd as hers—across the hallway, and added, “Whether we like it or not, we’re all staying for Christmas.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GARBAGE HADN’T been taken out. Bridget noticed as soon as she opened the back door of the restaurant. She was pretty sure she’d asked someone to do it, but in the flurry of packing and storing food, she’d forgotten to double-check.

  She might as well empty out the front trash, too. She shrugged out of her jacket and kicked off her boots. She could hear Mano clattering around in the kitchen.

  “Morning, Mano,” she said and kept moving for self-preservation. Despite twenty years cooking breakfast, Mano was not a morning person.

  He was chopping peppers. “The garbage wasn’t taken out.”

  “Dealing,” she said, clearing the swinging door to the front. Great. Three tables weren’t set, one of them where Mel and Daphne always ate. She’d asked Mara to set up the front just to get her out of the chaos of the kitchen yesterday, but she’d forgotten these. Or not seen them.

  Bridget beelined for the bathrooms. Sink needed a scrub and...she flushed the toilet. Yeah, that, too. She changed out the garbage bin and the paper-bag liners in the two stalls and headed for the garbage can under the till, then back down the hallway.

  As she passed the kitchen entrance, Mano called, “There’s no room in the fridge.”

  Bridget stopped. “What’s the solution?”

  “I’m not the boss.”

  “Neither am I.”

  Mano stopped chopping. “Yeah,” he said softly. “You are.”

  Bridget scrunched her fists on the plastic garbage bags. She was and she wasn’t. Jack, who hadn’t worked at Penny’s a single day of his life, was now as much the boss as she was. She’d poured her heart and soul into this restaurant for all her working life, yet he’d had the audacity to tell her he’d negotiate his half over to her. The entitled, self-centred—

  “You all right?” Mano held up his knife. “You look as if you shouldn’t be in possession of one of these.”

  She should tell him about the change in ownership. Then again, if she and Jack negotiated a transfer, there’d be no point. “Garbage first,” she said. “And then I have to prep the front. I’ll deal with the fridge after the crowd.”

  “No one will come,” Mano cheerfully predicted.

  “You better hope you’re wrong.” Hands full, she opened the back door with her butt. The sharp November air chilled her skin, like reality itself.

  Three steady-Eddie customers told her at the funeral that they didn’t know if they’d keep coming because it was just too sad to see the place without Auntie Penny there. “Maybe after Christmas, when I’m feeling better,” said one.

  Maybe after Christmas, there’ll be no Penny’s to come to, Bridget had felt like telling her.

  She heaved out the garbage and was cutting past the kitchen when Mano called to her again “There are no melons for the fruit cup.”

  “There’s an unopened fruit tray from the reception in the fridge. Use that,” she answered, not stopping.

  “And no whipping cream.”

  That was more serious. Marlene only took whipping cream in her morning coffee. Whipping, not whipped. She said it every morning, as if Bridget or Penny forgot every single time in the past half-dozen years of serving her breakfast.

  “Did you check the front fridge?” she said, already halfway through the door.

  “Not my territory,” Mano called through the serving hatch.

  Bridget opened the fridge. “Please, please, please,” she whispered. Nope. Only eighteen-percent cream. No store was open, and the gas stations didn’t carry it.

  She’d offer Marlene coffee on the house and her firstborn.

  She rattled coffee beans into the grinder and pressed the button. The racket would hopefully drown out Mano’s notifications of additional deficiencies.

  She poured water into the coffee maker, scraped in the freshly ground beans and flipped the switch. She headed into the kitchen, drew on a fresh chef coat, scrubbed hands and took a knife to the mushrooms.

  “Why are you doing this? Isn’t Cathy coming in?”

  “Not today.” Bridget couldn’t bring herself to add that she’d let her go. She wouldn’t have had the money to pay Mano next week otherwise. Still, it was a cruddy thing to do this close to Christmas. Speaking of which, it was time to decorate the restaurant. Smooth Sailing already had their Christmas lights pulsing through the night. Penny’s had always been the first with lights up.

  Mano waggled his knife at her mushrooms. “Too big. Half the size.”

  Bridget launched a fresh assault on the mushrooms “By the way, Mara and Krista are staying until after Christmas.”

  “That long? Don’t they have men?”

  “We’re all spinsters.”

  Mano sucked in his breath. “Have them chop vegetables.”

  No way was she letting Mara near a knife, and Krista did mornings even worse than Mano. “Sorry, I’m all you’ve got.”

  “I have lots of someones.” Mano was a born family man with a wife and a house full of kids, and couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live alone.

  As if aloneness was always a choice. She better fess up to her other bit of news, since it would come out sooner or later. “Jack Holdstrom is also staying at the house.”

  “Jack? Penny’s Jack? He’s here?”

&n
bsp; Bridget scraped the mushrooms into a bowl. “He came for the funeral, but he got in late.”

  “He should’ve been there. It was a good funeral.”

  Mano had cried like a baby. Great, hiccuping sobs. “He’s here now. He plans to stay.”

  “To stay? With you? In the house? You two, together?” Mano twirled his knife, a sure sign of excitement. Bridget hated when he did that. He was going to take out an eye or a finger. If not his, then one of hers.

  Mano liked Jack, but then, everyone liked Jack. Bridget didn’t know how much Mano knew of her history with him.

  “And my sisters, don’t forget. And his two girls. He adopted them. They’re from Venezuela.” Bridget stopped. “You could speak Spanish to them. It would cheer them up to hear their native language.”

  “They don’t need Spanish, they need English. When I came to Canada, I had the clothes on my back, the boots on my feet, two hands and a brain. I didn’t know a word—”

  “Of English. Yes, Mano, I know. Life was tough. Then Auntie Penny gave you this job, and now you have a wife and five kids. But you weren’t eight or five. Like these kids.”

  Mano lit the grill. “They’re young. They’ll learn English. I did.”

  The girls were none of her business. And Mano was right. They should learn English. And given they were in Canada, French, too. It couldn’t hurt to become trilingual. “Okay. Don’t help them.” She unbuttoned her chef coat. “I’m opening up.”

  She was reaching for the lock on the front door when Mano called through the hatch, “I’ll make you a deal. I talk Spanish to the girls, and you be nice to Jack.”

  “I’m always nice.”

  “Nicer.”

  “I don’t know what Auntie Penny said about Jack but I’m not going to date him,” she said over her shoulder as she pushed open the front door. There stood her first customers of the day and clear listeners to her shout to Mano: Jack with his two girls.