by B. E. Baker
“What do your parents think?” her dad asks.
“Uh.” I swallow. “They don’t know.”
“You haven’t told them about Paisley at all?” her dad leans forward.
“James isn’t close to his parents,” Paisley says. “They don’t talk very often.”
“Try never.” I squeeze Paisley’s hand. “I think the last time I spoke to my mother was more than three years ago.”
“Perfect in-laws for Holly.” Cole snickers.
Paisley bumps my leg aside to kick the back of his chair.
The entire thirty minute drive passes much the same, but luckily the Innsbruck airport is small and easy to navigate. We survive security and board their family’s jet.
“This is a much nicer jet than mine.” I’m impressed. Truly impressed. “I mean.” I spin around. “Wow.”
“We do alright,” Prince Hans-Michael holds tightly to his wife’s arm as she helps him find a seat.
I take a seat near Paisley, and Cole sits on my other side.
“Here’s what I don’t quite understand,” I say. “I mean, maybe it’s none of my business.” Although, technically, it’s exactly my business. “You’re concerned about the failure of Berg Telecom.”
“Right,” Paisley agrees.
“But your family is clearly not hurting for money.”
“I told you already,” she says. “We have money. Our family has quite a lot of art, several palaces, and we own more land in Austria than exists in the entire nation of Liechtenstein.”
“Then what’s the issue?” I ask. “Why not let me just sell off the factories and move on?”
Cole leans forward and pins Paisley with a stare. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”
She blushes.
“Not even why Berg Telecom exists?” Cole rolls both eyes toward the ceiling. “Far be it for me to give relationship advice, but you two need to talk more. At a base line, she should have explained why it’s owned by a trust. You’ve seen the paperwork, so you know that my dad’s the trustee. When he dies, Holly takes over, but we don’t take a dime of that money. Berg Telecom funds the Annual Distribution.”
Paisley groans next to me.
“What’s the Annual Distribution?” I ask. “Is that something I should understand?”
Paisley’s looking at her toes.
I turn toward Cole, and his smile is a little unnerving.
“He hasn’t signed anything,” Paisley hisses. “I can’t tell him about it, not without a confidentiality agreement at least.”
“Oh please,” Cole says. “Your boyfriend is hardly going to hand this over to the media.”
Now I really want to know what this Annual Distribution is.
“Fine.” Paisley turns toward me and opens her mouth. Then she shuts it. “You’re not going to understand. Because it’s weird, okay? But it’s like this thing that has been going on for more than two hundred years, and I didn’t even realize it was weird until I moved to America.”
“What’s the distribution?” I ask, now desperate to know.
Paisley exhales and her bangs fly up in her face again. “My dad is Santa Claus, okay?”
I’m terribly afraid she’s not kidding.
11
Paisley
Stupid Cole and his big mouth. He doesn’t know that James isn’t really my boyfriend. He’s not really hopelessly devoted, or even smitten. This whole thing is a big joke to him.
And now we’ve told him our biggest family secret.
So that tomorrow when he flies back home, he can tell the world. I have less than an hour on this flight to try and explain so that he gets it. Mary would love this. She’d keep the secret to her grave, but this guy? James has probably never gotten a single thing from Santa in his life.
Cole is laughing in his chair, hard enough that I can feel the vibration. He sticks his headphones in and tunes out entirely. I want to slap him.
“Define Santa Claus,” James says softly next to me.
“What do you know about the history of Santa?” I ask.
His shoulders slump. “He wears a red suit?”
Oh boy. “So the whole thing comes from the stories about St. Nicholas, a Saint from Patara, which is near Turkey. He was born in 300 A.D. or so.”
“Okay,” James says.
“Don’t worry. I’ll try to keep this to a highlights reel,” I say. “But the point is that this guy gave all his riches away and helped the poor, like for his entire life. After he died, he only grew in popularity. In fact, the people of Holland loved him. His Dutch nickname was Sinter Klaas, and Dutch immigrants in the early 1800s still loved him.”
“Okay,” James says. “But what—”
“I’m getting there,” I say. “Be patient. So around the same time, in the late 1700s, things were a little hard here in Liechtenstein.”
“The late 1700s?” James asks.
“Yes. Stay with me here. Things were hard, and the winter was a rough one. My family owned all the land but never lived there, and the few people who actually lived in Vaduz, well, they were struggling. They were freezing, in fact. So my great, great, great grandfather ordered that a bunch of trees on his land be cut down. It all happened to be ready to deliver on Christmas day. So they did. The first distribution took place on December 25, 1796.”
“Your great great whatever gave people firewood.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
“I don’t mean to argue with you, but I’ve heard that Santa gives gifts. Naughty children receive coal, I’ve heard, but I’ve never heard firewood.”
“Coal and firewood—translation issues,” I say. “But the point is this. The people were so grateful, and we’re a Catholic country, so they erected a monument to St. Nicholas to thank Aloys the first. They all left little offerings there for weeks. He was Prince, but he reported to the Holy Roman Emperor at the time.”
“Wait, he reported to whom?”
“Never mind,” I say. “Look, by all counts, Aloys was a silly man, frivolous even, but he loved trees and horticulture, and cutting those trees to save the people was a real sacrifice for him. It touched him that they cared about it enough to thank him. So when he made an absolute killing mining for iron ore or something, he started a little factory there. At the time it processed some of his ore, but he pledged the income to a secret fund. Every single year, he would take the proceeds and spend them on some kind of gift for the people of Liechtenstein. He didn’t distribute the gifts himself, but he took an active interest until his death in 1805 in what was provided, and how the people responded.”
“So Santa’s real name was Aloys?”
I shake my head. “The people always credited St. Nicholas, and they would tell any visitors who came that St. Nicholas brought them gifts on the eve of Christmas every year.”
“Wait, didn’t you say that’s around the same time as Santa caught on in America?”
“I’m getting there,” I say. “Okay, so after silly Prince Aloys, his third or fourth son ended up taking over. That son wasn’t silly at all. He loved trees and stuff too, but he was also a general in the Napoleonic wars. And when he found out about the mining proceeds going into this fund for Christmas gifts, he was wild for the idea. He loved his troops, his people, and the common man. But in addition to giving helpful things like firewood and blankets, he added a new element. He wanted to give people what they needed, and also reward the people who are working hard, the ones who were good.”
“You are kidding, right?” James asks. “All of this is some kind of family joke? Like snipes.”
“Like what?” I ask. “What’s a snipe?”
“You’re not making a big joke?” he asks.
“You can look most of this up,” I say. “I mean, you’ll see that my history is essentially right. I may be off on dates, or maybe names, although those were kind of drilled in pretty hard. But look, this isn’t a joke. Not to us.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “I could kick Cole for telling you, bu
t he doesn’t know this whole thing is just a joke to you. He thinks you really love me or something.”
I look down and fist my hands. I need to stop babbling.
“Okay, where was I?” I think. Military son. “Johann Joseph took over, and he started compiling lists about citizens. They all got firewood, that stuck, but he also gave the kids toys. He gave the hardest workers and the poorest people more. Coats. Candy, sometimes. It was expensive and hard to manufacture, which made it more exciting.”
“Alright,” James says.
I can’t tell whether he thinks I’m crazy or not. “Well, it continues. I won’t bore you with any more dates and times, but this guy came through Liechtenstein on a trip to Europe. His name was Clement Clark Moore. He was a professor or a minister or something, but he wrote the poem you’ve probably heard, calling Saint Nick a ‘right jolly old elf’ or something. He wrote about the bowl full of jelly and all that. The reason is that Johann hired someone to handle the whole thing, Ivan something or other, and Ivan ate half the candy himself. The man was fat. And he wore a red coat, which was stupid expensive at the time. But he did deliver on all the things Johann wanted, rewarding the good kids and hard workers.”
“You’re saying that the reason Americans celebrate Santa Claus is that your family actually has flying reindeer and gives presents to kids on December twenty-fourth every year?”
I roll my eyes. “Obviously the reindeer and the flying and the magic and chimneys, that all just sort of grew around the truth. None of that is real.”
“But your family really does deliver gifts to people on December 24th? Every year?”
“We have for more than two hundred years.”
“And Berg Telecom?”
“The leading export from Liechtenstein this decade, believe it or not, is false teeth. But just behind that was always phones. It has changed dozens of times over the years, but it all started with the mines my ancestor Aloys donated two hundred years ago.”
“And I thought the fact that you were a princess would be the shock of the year.” James stares out the window of the plane until we begin our descent.
“Our family could sell a few paintings and re-fund the entire thing,” I say. “But it would attract a lot of attention. We’ve avoided that for years and years, because it has been self-sustaining. And of course, we really do employ a lot of our people with Berg Telecom. That wasn’t a lie.”
“How many of the Liechtenstein citizens know about this?” he asks.
“All of them, I imagine,” I say. “I mean, we deliver everything on December 24th, but we don’t have flying reindeer. We deliver them to their wood box. Some traditions don’t die off.”
“Wait,” James says. “You deliver these?”
“It takes a team of fifty or so people, but yeah, traditionally the entire family is involved in delivery. Even great Uncle Aloys.”
“This is a lot to take in,” James says.
“I know you’re leaving tomorrow,” I say. “But I can send you photos of the workshop if you’d like, our name for the factory where we manufacture or store the goods we’re giving that year. We don’t work year round, of course, but we do make a lot of the toys and some of the textiles. We figure the more things we can make ourselves, the more jobs we’re providing for our own people.”
The plane touches down and I have no idea how much of this James believes. I whip out my phone. “Actually, I went with Cole yesterday.” I scroll through photos. “Look.” I spin my phone around and show him a few selfies Cole took of the two of us. In the first, I’m painting a block that will have to be completely redone. “I have no artistic talent, obviously.” I swipe to the next. “But in this one, you can see some of the amazing puzzle boxes they make.”
“You are not the person I thought you were at Luke’s wedding,” James says.
I have no idea whether he means that as a compliment. “But you won’t tell anyone, right?”
The belly laugh surprises me. “What would I say? Should I tell the New York Times that I’m dating Santa’s daughter?”
“Actually, my dad wants to retire.”
“Right,” he says. “Of course he does. So that makes you, who? Santa’s sister?”
“I’m dyslexic,” Cole says. “You’re dating Santa himself. Er, herself.”
“What does being dyslexic have to do with anything?” James asks.
“I keep saying that same thing.” I unbuckle. “I mean, he has assistants who can help him with the lists.”
“Elves,” Cole says. “They’re called Elves.”
“Whoa,” James says. “And your name is Holly.”
Oh no. Here it comes. “True.”
“And his name is Cole. As in Coal?”
I shake my head. “Coincidence. Happy coincidence for my crazy parents, probably. Remember, he was named before Mom even met Dad.”
“Right, but they named your other brother Noel.” He scrunches his nose. He’s too smart. “Was that for No-el? Like the First Noel?”
“It was,” my Dad says. “And we’re not the only ones who thought that was a funny theme. If you examine our family tree, you’ll find far more than a regular number of Christmas affiliated names.” I haven’t seen Dad’s eyes twinkle like this in the entire time I’ve been home.
I grab my garment bag, but before I can even pick up my overnight bag, James plucks my garment bag out of my hands and slings the strap to my overnight bag over his shoulder. “I can get those for you, Santa. Wouldn’t want you to strain a hamstring before the big night.”
I can’t help my smile. “I have plenty of time before Christmas. Don’t worry.”
“Will you help with the distribution this year?” he asks.
“I promised I’d come home to help, yes,” I say.
“Wow, I am so in,” James says.
I poke his belly to remind him not to overplay this. They need to believe that he dumped me next week when I tell them. I’m so distracted by the defined muscle there that my poke turns into more of a belly rub.
James cocks his head sideways. “What’cha doing there?”
I lean closer and whisper in his ear. “Don’t overplay this. I have to tell them you dumped me next week.”
His grin is evil. “Why do I have to dump you? I think you should dump me.”
“Oh my gosh,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” he says. “And besides. You said you always do the dumping.”
He has me there.
“You’re the one who said it needs to be believable.”
“Fine,” I whisper. “I’ll dump you.”
He makes puppy eyes at me. “What did I do?”
I roll my eyes and march off the plane, James trailing behind me. “How can I fix this if I don’t even know what I did?” he wails.
I spin around. “Knock it off.”
“You don’t even like chocolate. What can I send to make this right?” His eyes sparkle.
“I haven’t even dumped you yet,” I say.
“Why would you dump him?” Mom says from the top of the stairs.
“See?” I hiss. “Be quiet.” I raise my voice. “No reason Mom, just a bad joke.”
“She does make bad jokes a lot,” Mom says. “I can’t seem to get her to stop.”
“We better get to the palace quickly,” I say. “Not much time to get changed and make sure all the small details are right.”
Mom’s eyes fly wide. “You’re right. Oh, my. Let’s hurry.”
Cole winks at me. “Still got it.”
The suburban is waiting for us when we reach the exit. “Why are our cars always black?” I ask. “Why not red? Or blue?”
Dad shrugs. “Or bright yellow. I can see bright yellow much better.”
“Let’s start ordering yellow cars,” I say. “I think it would make a statement.”
“That’s exactly the point,” Mom says. “We want to blend in, not draw attention.”
“Oh fine,�
� I say. “But it’s boring.”
James loads my bags and his into the back of the suburban and climbs up into the seat. I settle in between him and Cole and he smiles. “There’s a driver this time, so I don’t have to feel bad about leaving Cole up there alone.”
“But watch your hands, sir,” Cole says. “Because I do not want to have to defend my sister’s honor, but I will do it.”
“Traffic is horrible, of course,” Mom laments.
“This is nothing to New York,” James says. “Or Los Angeles. I’m sure we’ll arrive with plenty of time.”
Mom still checks her watch fourteen times in the twenty minutes it takes us to reach the right part of town.
“It’s not even four in the afternoon, Mom,” I say. “We have loads of time.”
Finally, we turn the corner and the Garden Palace comes in to view. It has always been my favorite of our palaces. Six high columns in the central section, and four on either side. Three grand floors tall. It was our family home until grandpa moved us to Vaduz. I’m glad we don’t live here, but I used to love the annual balls.
I had forgotten how much fun we had. I danced with Cole, with Noel, and with most of their friends. The gardens are spectacular, which makes sense because it’s called the Garden Palace, but I hadn’t considered it much before.
“That’s—” James splutters. “It’s tremendous.”
“Thanks,” Mom says. “We’re excited to have an excuse to use it. And we’re lucky it wasn’t booked for any events tonight.”
James widens his eyes. “You rent it out?”
“Cole’s idea,” I say. “But it pays for almost all the expenses of upkeep. And those are pretty steep.”
“I can imagine,” James says. “Smart.”
“Okay, everyone knows which rooms they’ve been assigned, right?” Mom asks.
I sigh. “I have to check the ballroom, which is pretty unfair. It’s the biggest hassle.”
“I’ll help you,” James says.
And he does. In fact, he’s the perfect boyfriend. He helps me look over each floral arrangement, talk to staff about the food, and discuss where we should be standing when I receive guests. He even makes several suggestions, like bringing snacks out during the receiving line instead of waiting until it’s over. “To us too,” I say. “I’m always starving.”