by Dani Collins
She didn’t want Atlas to feel the way she had—as though she’d been left abandoned in a big, awful world.
When he calmed, she said, “I’ll lie here until you fall asleep. Then I’ll be back in the morning. I promise. And we’ll make cookies. I want you to think about how much fun we’re going to have.”
She was anxious to get back to him after all those vows, but she had to wait for the grocery store to open. A cursory look in the Ryan cupboards had found them wanting of a lot, especially the essentials like flour and baking powder.
While she waited, Nicki finished settling into her small bachelor apartment above the garage of friends of a friend.
When the interview for a job in Marietta had come up, Nicki had put out a call on social media, asking if anyone could hook her up with accommodation on short notice. Her schoolmate in Glacier Creek, Jacqui Edwards, had known people here in Marietta. Jacqui’s deceased husband had stayed with the Tierneys years ago. The families had stayed in touch and now the Teirney’s daughter, Piper Bloom, and Jacqui were friends.
Piper had lived in this small, furnished suite above her parents’ garage until her marriage last year. The Tierneys weren’t actively looking for a renter, which was why the space was available, but they explained that they used to put up young travelers all the time. They were happy to let her use it.
They were very hospitable, calling up this morning to offer breakfast and coffee since she didn’t have her own groceries yet. She had joined them in their comfortable kitchen, meeting their ridiculously cheerful dog, Charlie. Then they had helped her to finish unpacking her car.
As Nicki told them about her new job, Mr. Tierney said he had probably played against Maury back when they were both on their respective high school basketball teams. The Tierneys had grown up in Livingston. The rivalry between the towns was fierce.
“I’ll invite him for coffee,” Mrs. Tierney said. “To bury the hatchet.”
“Maury would love that,” Nicki assured them, privately thinking, Quincy will decline.
Maury had unpacked his own room last night, calling across to Nicki at different times to ask for her help with holding open a garment bag and stacking a shoe box on a closet shelf. He was plainly excited by this fresh start in his old hometown, and even more eager to see his son and grandson settled here. Unfortunately, he was not physically capable of keeping up with his own ambitions. She had promised to finish his unpacking today, so he could take a bath last night and settle in for a well-deserved rest.
She was getting into her car, cringing from another biting wind under dull, flat clouds, when Mrs. Tierney came out of the front door and waved her down.
“Do they have a mixer and bowls? What about baking sheets?”
“Oh, you’re a lifesaver! I didn’t even think of that.”
“Come. Borrow mine.”
Minutes later, Nicki had a box of baking implements in the back of her car and slammed the hatch. She was ridiculously excited. She hadn’t celebrated Christmas properly in years. Years and years, if she was honest. After her mother passed and her father remarried, her father and Gloria had put up a tree and hosted family dinners, but Gloria had her own way of doing things. She didn’t have kids, but she was fond of her sister’s children. They had been about Nicki’s age and joined them for most holidays. It hadn’t been awful, but it hadn’t been the same as before.
Then, alone in California, Nicki had often wound up at misfit dinners where a handful of broke actors came together over potluck. It usually started out enjoyable enough, but it invariably turned into such hard partying she had been put off and left early. Worse, it occasionally became a passive-aggressive competition over who got what audition or part. Nicki had always left feeling battered and glum after those.
Now, for the first time in nearly fifteen years, she was anticipating the magic of Christmas. She was thinking about cookies, decorating, and music. “Jingle Bells” played in the empty grocery store as it opened. She hummed along as she picked up the handful of ingredients she needed for the shortbread recipe she’d looked up last night. As she headed to the cash register, she saw an Advent calendar and impulsively picked it up.
She hesitated, growing misty as she recalled the homemade one her mother had filled for her. She’d been so young when it started, she couldn’t remember not having it. Each carefully sewn fabric pocket had been numbered and matched to a space on a big, felt tree. The gifts inside hadn’t been extravagant, just a beaded bracelet or a pencil eraser shaped like an animal, maybe a wrapped candy or a rolled note that said, “I’m so proud of you!”
That first Christmas after her mother died, Nicki hung the calendar in her room like always, but Santa’s elves hadn’t filled it. When the second year rolled around, she left it in the box of her mother’s keepsake ornaments and let Gloria hang the decorations she preferred.
Nicki swallowed and returned the mass-produced calendar onto its shelf. She had a better idea.
Actually, she was going to have to come up with twenty-five better ideas.
At least she had today’s. Make a homemade Advent calendar.
*
Quincy’s first order of business once he had his desk and computer properly set up was to figure out which side of the house he would extend to add an office.
It was far too distracting to be this close to the kitchen, especially with Nicki Darren in the house.
Was the music really necessary?
With a short-tempered sigh, he opened his browser and ordered a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He’d been meaning to buy some anyway, since he would be traveling more.
He hated talking to strangers on a plane and didn’t particularly like flying, but he was now working remotely, on contract, for his previous employer. Some people would appreciate the freedom in that arrangement. Others would take it as a good sign that the president had been willing to make accommodations to keep Quincy working for their firm in any way he could get him.
Quincy wasn’t comforted. He liked predictability. Change irritated the hell out of him. Of course, changing up the Christmas carol would be nice. “Rudolf” again? Really?
Throwing himself to his feet, he pushed into the kitchen.
Today, Nicki wore a neon green T-shirt over a bright yellow long-sleeved body hugger. Her black pants were the clingy yoga kind. She had her head bent over her phone, loose hair falling in mahogany waves against her cheeks.
His father was nowhere to be found. Atlas stood on a chair at the kitchen counter, squishing cookie dough through his fingers.
“Are you paying attention to what’s happening over here?” Quincy moved behind Atlas to where the paper towels rolled off a holder beneath the cupboard. He pulled off a few sheets.
“Hmm?” Nicki stepped closer and peered into the bowl. “Oh, yes. Atlas is doing a great job. Are you tired of mixing?”
Atlas shook his head and dug into the dough with more intensity.
“We have a wooden spoon,” Quincy pointed out. “He shouldn’t be mixing with his hands.”
“Purist, are you?” Her tone held a light tease. She snapped off her phone, conceding, “You’re right. Most would say you shouldn’t handle the butter when making shortbread, but this is a special recipe for kids, so it’s okay. They also say you should make it in October, so it has time to cure. We’re breaking all the rules with this batch. We’re sugarplum rebels, aren’t we, Atlas? Do you have a bill?”
Her quick switch of topic threw Quincy off the food-safety lecture he was about to deliver. “A bill? For what?”
“Anything. Any sort of mail that proves you live here.”
“Why?”
“You need to show proof of residence to get a library card.” She wiggled her phone. “That’s what I was looking up.”
“I don’t need a library card. I have the Internet.” Which she knew, because she’d asked for his Wi-Fi code yesterday and had just looked something up.
“Atlas doesn’t.”
&
nbsp; Quincy’s first thought was that he could solve any lack of children’s books with a one-click transaction, but he’d heard enough news reports cautioning against kids having too much screen time to figure out just as quickly that books on a tablet might not be the best move.
“Can’t we order some to be delivered? How many does he need?”
“Kids are voracious. Frankly, I think you’ll appreciate the variety even more than he will.”
Quincy almost protested that he wasn’t planning to read them, but the penny dropped. He should be reading with Atlas. That’s what parents did. His parents had read to him.
He couldn’t remember when he’d last read a book aloud. Back in grade school, he supposed. He’d blocked those memories because speaking in front of the class had paralyzed him. The recollection made him balk at the idea of reading aloud to Atlas.
His father came in from the garage.
“What about this one, Nicki?” Pops had a big sheet of cardboard from the packaging on Quincy’s desk.
“Perfect! That’ll make a nice big tree and we’ll paint it green. Oh. Paint.” She picked up the pad of multicolored sticky notes and wrote on it.
Quincy noticed several squares had been stuck to the wall behind the kitchen table. Most held only a few words in her impulsive scrawl. One said, Get a tree. Another read, Bake cookies.
“The library has a special story time for kids tomorrow. We can bring Atlas to listen to that while we get him a card,” Nicki told Pops. “Then he can pick out some books and we’ll call that, ‘Visit library for Christmas Books’.” She scribbled a few words and stuck a fresh square to the wall. “We’re making an Advent calendar,” she told Quincy.
She might as well have spoken Swahili since he didn’t see how notes about libraries stuck to the wall translated to—“One of those chocolate things with the little flaps that you get this time of year?”
“Kind of. Except ours is going to be fun activities to get ready for Christmas. We have, ‘Get a tree,’ of course.” She used the clicker on the pen to point at the notes. “‘Write a letter to Santa’. We should do that soon. ‘Make sock puppets’? I’m still deciding if that’s a good one. And ‘Drive to see lights’. We’ll give people a little more time to set up their displays before we do that one. Maury said there used to be something called a Christmas Stroll in Marietta. I’m wondering if there’s a Santa Claus Parade or somewhere we can visit him. We’ll ask at the library. They’re sure to know all the community events. We’ll have this filled in no time.”
She kept saying, ‘we’ and ‘us’.
“You’re taking Pops and Atlas into town?” He glanced through the window where it was another bleak, icy day.
“I admit I felt rusty yesterday, driving the mountain passes, but I have really good tires. It’s all coming back to me. Also, it’s supposed to be sunny tomorrow. It will be okay.”
Quincy should have been relieved. He really needed to get some work done. The promise of a quiet house was a blessing, but he was oddly uncomfortable with his father and Atlas being out of his sight.
“I made a list of a few things.” He glanced around until he found the piece of paper with slippers and a robe on it. It had already occurred to him that he couldn’t pick out clothing for Atlas without taking him. He wouldn’t know the right size or color.
Strangely, he didn’t want to entrust the task to his father or Nicki. He wanted to see what the stores had to offer and ensure Atlas was given the best they had. Maybe he didn’t know how to be a parent, but after feeling judged so harshly by Karen’s parents, he was determined to be a good provider, even if he was the only one to know it.
“I could come with you. To get these for him,” he said.
“Oh. Ha! I thought that was your Christmas shopping list. I always got new pajamas when I was a kid. It was the gift we were allowed to open on Christmas Eve. Was that not a thing in your house?”
Quincy was insulted. He wouldn’t give his kid clothes for Christmas. He’d already started looking up train sets and Lego kits.
But he was suddenly accosted by a memory of his mother searching out a particular present, year after year, always taking her time selecting that special Christmas Eve gift. And yes, it had always turned out to be pajamas.
He scratched his hair, thinking back to the slight letdown of the gift being practical, not flashy or fun, but there had been something special about sleeping in those new pajamas. It meant the rest of the presents were only one more sleep away.
Now Quincy wondered if he should wait a couple of weeks to give Atlas his new pajamas and carry on that tradition. No, Atlas definitely needed new pajamas, but at least once Quincy knew the sizes, he could get another pair for Christmas Eve.
“He needs a robe and slippers regardless. It can’t wait when it’s this cold. I’ll come with you,” he decided.
“Okay.” She looked wary.
He hadn’t spoken too gruffly, had he? Some people found him dry and humorless, especially when he’d decided on a course of action and was ready to pursue it. He tried to find his most temperate tone.
“I have to get back to work. Is there a reason ‘Rudolf’ is on repeat?”
“Atlas is learning the words.”
He glanced at the boy, who only blinked at him. The kid barely spoke. He wasn’t going to sing.
Quincy sighed and turned away.
“A bill for the Internet would probably do it,” Nicki said behind him. “For the library card.”
December 2nd
The next morning, Nicki was putting away the dishes from the dishwasher while Atlas ate his cereal when Maury came in, hair akimbo and face unshaven.
Since he had to check his glucose level before he ate, she took the opportunity to sit down with her notebook and learn more about his health, taking his blood pressure and reviewing his records herself.
He seemed very diligent, keeping a logbook of what he ate and when he took his meds, along with his readings. Until a few weeks ago, he’d been fairly stable.
“Your blood pressure has been spiking,” she observed. “It’s a little high today.” She recorded it for him.
“My sugar levels are off, too.” Maury looked tired. “It’s been a busy few weeks with the move and everything.”
He glanced at Atlas, who was watching intently as she gathered the blood pressure cuff to put it away.
“Do you want to feel it?” she asked the boy. “It’s like a big hug. I can do it on your leg.”
He shook his head and went back to chasing the last bran flakes in his bowl.
“If you change your mind, just tell me. Your Pops and I are going to do this pretty often for the next little while.” Glancing over Maury’s logbook again, she asked, “I don’t suppose you’ve had time to find a doctor here yet?”
“It’s not that bad, is it?” He brought the book back under his own nose and put on his glasses.
“No, but I’m thinking sooner than later is better. And maybe you should have a down day.” She patted his shoulder, feeling him sigh.
Maury nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. Until you showed up yesterday, I haven’t felt like I could.” He frowned, sidling a glance at Atlas, who was holding his bowl like a cup, draining the milk.
“All done?” Nicki asked the boy. “Did you have enough? Do you want more?”
Atlas shook his head.
“How about you get dressed, then? Call me if you need me. I’m going to make Pops some breakfast.”
Atlas climbed off his chair. He carried his bowl and spoon to the counter, then came back to push in his chair before leaving the kitchen.
“He’s a really sweet boy,” Nicki said, watching him go.
“Too quiet, though. I haven’t heard him laugh. Doesn’t even smile.”
“He’s sad. It’s understandable. Your blood pressure is up from this move, and it was your choice. He’s adjusting to a lot. Scrambled eggs okay?”
“I can make my own eggs.”
&nb
sp; “But you don’t have to. This is what I’m getting paid for. Take it easy and let me do it. Tell me why you were so determined to move back to your old home.” She set out the non-stick pan, then went to the refrigerator for eggs. “You said you were planning to move back here alone. That’s a big decision if your son was in Philadelphia.”
“I asked him to come with me. More than once. He’s stubborn. And he had a very good job.” Maury rubbed his thumb and fingers together, indicating that Quincy’s job paid well. “I didn’t blame him for wanting to stick with it, but…” He shook his head. “The city was never the right place for him. My wife had family there, and she wasn’t one for change either. I tried so many times to talk her into moving here, but she wouldn’t. I always wanted to come back though. When this house came up and it was only me, I thought, well, I’ll move and my son will have to visit me. Maybe that will convince him.”
“Sneaky.” She wrinkled her nose and smiled as she whipped the eggs. “Then Atlas came to live with him full time, so he decided they would join you?”
Maury closed his logbook and slid it aside. “Quincy didn’t know about Atlas until a few weeks ago.”
“Oh.” Her gaze flicked to the door into the dining room. She suddenly felt like they were gossiping. She had speculated, of course, but now she took in what a shock that must have been for all of them. “No wonder he seems…” She searched for a nice way to say it. “Out of his depth.”
Yesterday, after the cookies were done, she had set two on a plate and held Atlas’s hand as they delivered them to his father.
Quincy had stared at the plate for several ticks of the nearby clock before taking in her expression, then Atlas’s. She had seen his reluctance. The boy’s hands had been in the dough, but he wasn’t obtuse. He wasn’t mean. After a moment, he’d said, “Thank you,” then picked up a cookie to take a bite.
Say, ‘Mmm good,’ she wanted to chide. Pick up the boy, hug him. Tell him you can taste the love. Say it’s the best cookie you’ve ever had in your life.