“But, Mom, I’m never gonna get to climb a tree!”
“Never’s a long time.”
“But if nobody climbs it, how do they get all those decorations on there?” Abby turned her wind-rosy face in a perfect three-point rotation to look from Katherine to Gabe to the tree. “That’s what I want to know.”
“We could ask one of the policemen.” Katherine indicated one of the many officers assigned to the area at this time of year. She liked to give the twins every opportunity to interact with policemen so that they’d learn respect and a degree of trust for the men and women who enforced the laws. “Maybe they could tell you how it’s done, Abby.”
“Don’t ask a policeman,” Gabe said. “They’re just going to tell you a bunch of city employees decorated the tree using a bucket truck and long poles with hooks on the end of them.”
Katherine tried to look pleasant as she frowned at him. “Is there something wrong with that explanation?”
“Not if you just want the facts, ma’am.”
Sooner or later, Katherine was going to wipe that smile off his face. She just hadn’t decided when or how, yet. “I think children need facts. I think they need to know they’re getting truthful answers to their questions.”
The corners of his mouth quirked upward as he looked at the huge Christmas tree. “An explanation doesn’t have to be stripped bare of magic to be truthful, you know.”
He must believe she had no imagination whatsoever, Katherine thought. Her glance fell to the careless drift of his topcoat and the roguish drape of the black plaid scarf around his neck and the set of his shoulders and the angle of his jaw, and the fine lines around his eyes, his mouth.... Boy, was he wrong. “All right, Gabe, let’s hear your explanation as to how the decorations got on this tree.”
He glanced down at the eager expressions on the twins’ faces and cleared his throat. “It’s only a theory.”
“Something like your the-real-Santa-can-be-found-at-Macy’s theory?”
When his gaze moved to her, Katherine felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the crisp December weather and everything to do with the warm censure in his brown eyes. “You, Kate, are a skeptic.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed.”
“What’s that?” Abby asked.
“Yeah, what’s a sh-sheptick?” Andy floundered over the unfamiliar syllables. “What’d ya call her?”
“A skeptic,” Gabe supplied readily. “That’s a person who doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.”
“Ohhhhhh...” The twins favored Katherine with identical nods of superior understanding. “She doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as elves, either,” Abby said on a sad sigh.
“Yeah,” Andy agreed, although he didn’t sigh. “She wouldn’t believe you, no matter if you told her everything about Santa and the elves. She wouldn’t believe you even if you told her what makes the reindeer fly. She wouldn’t believe you if you told her—”
She interrupted the litany of her disbeliefs with a soft tap on the purple parka’s hood. “He got the point, Andy.”
“I got the point,” Gabe said, meeting her eyes. “I just don’t want to believe it.”
Katherine swallowed hard, knowing he probably thought she had stamped out every spark of fantasy in her own life and wouldn’t be satisfied until she’d stamped them out of Abby’s and Andy’s lives, as well. But that wasn’t it, at all. She simply didn’t want them to be hurt, as she had been, by believing in something that could never be true. With a lift of her chin, she silently challenged him to prove her wrong. “I suppose you have a theory on flying reindeer, too.”
“They eat special hay,” Andy informed her. “It grows and the apes pick it and carry it to the North Pole, but Rudolph eats more than anybody else and that’s why his nose is red!”
Gabe took a moment to digest that before he looked at Katherine with a noncommittal frown. “Except for the part about the red nose and the apes, that’s pretty much the gist of the theory.”
Abby pulled on his coat, again, with more than a little impatience. “Are you ever gonna tell me how that all those balls got on the tree?”
“Yes.” Gabe patted her mittened hand and squinted at the Christmas tree. “I’m going to tell you right now...just as soon as I remember.”
“How could you forget, when you have such an excellent memory?” The words were out of Katherine’s mouth before she stopped to think...and there was no mistaking her sanctimonious tone, either.
He smiled, the forgetful son-of-a-gun. “I only want to be sure I remember all the details.”
Abby’s sigh was long-suffering. “Would you please start ’membering, now?”
“Okay,” he said. “My dad told me this story when I was just about your age, and it starts like this... A long time ago, at least a hundred years, a little boy...and his sister...found a pinecone they believed was magic. They planted it at the edge of a—”
“How come?” Andy asked.
Gabe frowned. “Because they wanted it to grow.”
“No, how come they knew it was magic?”
“Well...I don’t know,” Gabe admitted. “What would make you think something was magic?”
“I had a magic wand once,” Abby said. “It sparkled.”
“That’s because it had glitter inside it,” Andy told her with a brotherly degree of intolerance. “But it wasn’t magic. It was just a dumb stick.”
“It was not.”
“Was too. Only a girl would think it was magic.”
Abby gave her head a toss. “Well, I think the pinecone sparkled like a star and that’s how come they knew it was magic.”
“That’s dumb,” Andy stated flatly. “I think a big, scary monster jumped out from behind a tree and told them it was magic. Did a monster tell ’em it was magic, Gabe? Was it a green or purple monster?”
Gabe looked momentarily at a loss, but he recovered at least some of his equilibrium. “It might have been a monster with red and green fish scales on it. Or the pinecone could have been a sparkling star that fell out of the sky. Or it could have been that the children were very smart and just knew. But however they found out it was magic, they planted it and watered it and waited for it to grow.”
“Like Jack and the beanstalk?” Abby pressed her hands tightly together, as she stared, enthralled, at the storyteller. “Was it magic like that?”
“Something like that, yes. The tree grew up full of the dreams the children had whispered into it as a seedling, and it dreamed of being in a special place where lots and lots of children could see how beautifully it was decorated. So one night, while the whole world was asleep, the tree wished a big wish, and the next morning it was here, in Rockefeller Center, and it was covered in sparkling lights and shiny monster-sized ornaments and everyone who saw it thought it was magic.”
He smiled broadly at Katherine, obviously pleased, obviously believing he’d pulled off a coup the size of Manhattan, obviously unaware that he’d left out a few details.
“But how did it get here?” Abby asked on a practical note. “Trees can’t walk.”
“The monster carried it, didn’t he, Gabe?”
Abby stamped her foot. “There wasn’t a stupid monster, Andy. Only a boy would think there was.”
Andy made a face at her. She wrinkled her nose at him. Katherine gave a tug to each brightly-colored hood, and Andy returned to the attack on Gabe’s imaginative theory. “Did it fly through space? On a rocket ship?” Jet Jupiter’s ship was brought out of the pocket to illustrate how this could have been accomplished. “See? It could’ve fit right in there and been here in a nanosecond.”
“But the decorations would have gotten broken that way.” Abby, clearly, wasn’t impressed with space travel. “And the lights have to be plugged in somewhere. How did the lights get al
l the way up at the top, Gabe? Did they grow on the tree, too?”
“Lights can’t grow on trees.” Andy whizzed the rocket ship past her ear. “And the decorations wouldn’t get broken. They’d burn up, instead, ’cause it’s really hot in outer space.”
“Is not,” Abby said.
“Is too,” Andy argued.
Katherine smiled, enjoying one of the rare moments when she was completely thrilled by her children’s insatiable and stubborn curiosity and their random leaps of logic. “You could still ask the policeman,” she suggested in an offhand manner, as if she didn’t care one way or the other. “There’s one standing right over there.”
Andy made a split-second decision. “Yeah, let’s ask him if he saw the rocket ship.” He turned on a dime and, with Abby only a few steps behind, he raced the ten feet or so to where the policeman stood.
Leaving Gabe at Katherine’s mercy.
“I’m afraid they didn’t believe your theory.” She tried not to sound smug. She really did. But a tiny conceit crept into her voice...totally without her permission. Well, maybe not totally. “Magic is a difficult concept at their age.”
He shifted his weight and looked, again, at the wonderful tree. “Believing in magic is normal at seven, Kate. It’s only after that it becomes a difficult concept.”
She followed his gaze to the biggest, best tree in the whole world and remembered a time when she had been seven and believed.
For the space of a heartbeat, or possibly two, she wished she could tell Gabe about that magic moment in her life, but “Don’t call me Kate” was all she was able to say.
CHAPTER SIX
“THIS WAS A good idea, wasn’t it, Mom?” Abby held Katherine’s hand happily as they waited in a line that stretched from the sidewalk in front of Saks’s windows on Fifth Avenue all the way around the corner onto Forty-ninth Street. “I’m sooooo glad that policeman thought of it. Aren’t you, Mom? Me and Andy might have never thought about seeing the windows if that policeman hadn’t asked us if we’d already seen it. We coulda missed this!”
“We could have,” Katherine dutifully replied, turning her collar up against the chill and wishing she could get her hands on that policeman, right now. “And it would be terrible to miss seeing the Saks Christmas display tonight, even though we could always come back another day when there isn’t such a long line.”
“But we like waitin’ in line, don’t we, Mom?” Abby smiled, her teeth flashing white against the bright color the cold had lent her cheeks. “Do ya think it’ll be much longer, Mom? How long have we been standin’ here? Ten minutes? What time is it? This line’s movin’ faster than Macy’s line did, isn’t it? A lot faster. Don’t you think this is fun, Mom? I think this is really fun. Hey, Andy, look! It’s Isabelle!”
Andy stopped battering Gabe with a similar barrage of chatter to wave frantically at a little girl with blond curls just peeking out from the hood of her navy blue coat. “Hey! Issy! Over here!”
The girl looked, smiled, and pulled on the hands she was holding...obviously the hands of her parents, as she looked remarkably like both of them. As the traffic light changed and the threesome approached, Katherine hoped that this was another Isabelle, and not the Isabelle of the Gately playground disaster. But she had a feeling her children wouldn’t have been quite so glad to see any other Isabelle. Abby and Andy would fight the world to protect each other, but they shared an eager admiration for anyone who dared stand against them.
Katherine looked closely at the man and woman and hoped they wouldn’t make the connection between these redheaded, freckle-faced twins and the redheaded, freckle-faced twins who’d dogpiled their daughter. On the plus side, Issy appeared perfectly happy to meet up with the dynamic duo. On the minus side, Andy was asking to see the scrape on Issy’s elbow, the one she’d received when she fell...after he pushed her.
Of all times for her son to be articulate, Katherine thought, and smiled awkwardly at the adults. “You must be Isabelle’s parents,” she said. “I’m Katherine Harmon.”
“Ron and Reba Kinser.” Isabelle’s father didn’t smile, but he did extend his hand to Gabe. “Mr. Harmon.”
“Housley,” Gabe corrected along with the handshake. “Gaberson Housley.”
The Kinsers traded a knowing glance that, for some reason, set Katherine’s teeth on edge. “Nice to meet you,” one or both of the Kinsers murmured. “We’re on our way to see the Christmas tree,” Reba Kinser offered by way of being polite.
“We just came from there,” Katherine answered, thinking they just might slide through this without unpleasantness.
“Isabelle brought her ice skates.” Reba indicated the bag she carried. “She was practically skating before she walked, you know, and performs regularly with the Junior Olympians. But at Christmas, she loves to take a couple of turns on the ice at Rockefeller Center. It’s one of our special Christmas traditions.” She smiled adoringly at the top of Issy’s hooded head. “You should bring your children over to watch. Her instructor says Isabelle is the most talented student he’s ever had the pleasure of working with, and everyone agrees she’s simply incredible when she skates.”
And when she doesn’t, Katherine thought, feeling the tug of one-upmanship, knowing it would be petty—and impertinent—to point out that her twins had bested the incredible Isabelle in a playground battle of wits. “Oh, I wish we could,” she said instead. “But I don’t think Abby and Andy would be able to sit still long enough to really appreciate Isabelle’s talent.”
Reba looked down at the children...at the exact moment Andy demonstrated the incredible talent of crossing his eyes while sticking his thumbs in his ears and a finger up each nostril. When Reba raised her head, there was a hint of compassion in her smile. “No, I suppose not.”
“Maybe there’ll be another opportunity to watch Isabelle skate,” she said, because it would have been childish and rude to kick Reba in the shins. Katherine was beginning to understand how the playground incident had come about.
“Skate?” Abby, who could pick out a topic of interest to her from amid a dozen conversations, looked hopefully at Katherine. “We didn’t get to ice-skate.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“We still could,” Abby suggested.
“No, we couldn’t.”
“Yes, we could, Mom.”
“Not tonight.” Katherine gave Abby the stern don’t-argue-with-me frown before turning to the Kinsers with the standard maternal Mona Lisa smile...a curve of the lips, a soft look in the eyes, pride in every nuance of expression, as if she couldn’t imagine ever losing patience with these fruits of her loins. “Such energy,” she said. “They want to do everything at once, all in the same day. Frankly, I’m exhausted and feel like we’ve been downtown for days, instead of only hours.”
“We spent all afternoon at Macy’s.” Gabe left his stilted conversation with Ron to lend Katherine some support. “Waiting to see Santa.”
Ron Kinser managed to look even more disapproving than he had before. “You took them out of school to go to Macy’s?”
“They’re out of school for the holidays,” Gabe said, a defensive note threading its way into his tone.
“They were suspended, Daddy.” Isabelle already had her permanent front teeth, and she pronounced every word distinctly. “Remember, Daddy, these are the first-graders I told you about.”
“We did not get ssssustended!” Andy, who had proudly told everyone from the doorman to the waitress that he and his sister had gotten kicked out of school, took umbrage when Issy stated it. “We got extra vacation ’cause Principal Cornelia wanted us to.”
Isabelle nodded. So did Reba. So did Ron. Katherine had never seen three such condescending nods. “Oops, the line’s moving,” she said. “We’d better not hold things up.” But when she and Gabe propelled the twins forward int
o the next roped-off queue, Isabelle’s chiding singsong syllables came with them. “You got suspended.”
“We did not!” Abby whirled, ducking under Katherine’s protective hand to face off with her tormentor. “Principal Cornelia wanted us to have extra time to have fun with our mom and our dad.”
Katherine gulped, but Andy plowed into that idea before she could stop him. “Yeah! And that’s what we been doin’! Havin’ fun with our mom and dad.”
“You don’t have a dad.” Isabelle wasn’t backing down, either, and her silly parents obviously thought she knew what she was talking about. Which, unfortunately, she did. “You told the whole school that your mother had to go to the sperm bank to get you, remember?”
There was not exactly a collective gasp from the crowd, but heads turned, and in a sort of unanimous gaze, all eyes were on Katherine, who couldn’t help but think there had to be easier ways to die of embarrassment.
“Well...yeah, so what?” Abby raised her pointy little chin. “She had to meet Gabe there so he could give her the sperm and be our dad!”
Wanting nothing more than to fall through a crack in the sidewalk, Katherine gathered two handfuls of brightly-colored parkas and spun the twins around and in front of her in the line. But Abby wasn’t through setting Isabelle straight, and she wiggled around Katherine and exercised her vocal cords. “And our dad knows everything there is to know about Santa Claus. He knows where he lives and the names of all the elves, too!”
Andy, too, ignored Katherine’s furious and hissing Ssssshhhhh! “Yeah, and he knows how come Rudolph has a red nose instead of a black one like all the other reindeer and he knows where the apes get the hay and he bought me this cool rocket ship!” The toy was thrust into the air with all the attitude a seven-year-old boy could muster...and promptly commandeered by his red-faced mother.
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