“What do you guys think?” she asked the kids. “I can send more supplies with you. I’m sure I have sprinkles, if you don’t.”
“I do.” He’d bought half a dozen colors.
“Yeah, that sounds fun,” Jack said. “We cut out Christmas cookies last year at the shelter. Remember, Soph? Mrs. Glass helped us? She was the lady there,” he explained to the adults. “You remember, don’t you, Soph?”
“Of course I remember!” she snapped. Then, with what Tom sensed was pretend reluctance, she said, “Sure, I guess we can help.”
The relief in Suzanne’s voice was obvious. “Oh, good. Come on with me, guys, and get some cookie cutters I have. Thanks, Tom.”
“You’re welcome.” He smiled, even if she couldn’t see, and waited while the kids went in with her.
They returned in minutes with a cannister filled with what must have been a dozen or more cookie cutters. Somehow he wasn’t surprised; a woman who loved knitting the way she did was just the kind to have a cookie cutter for every holiday.
As indeed she did, he saw when Sophia dumped them out on his kitchen counter. He picked up a fat turkey, and Jack studied a shamrock. But she also had a candy cane, an angel and what he was pretty sure was a reindeer.
Tom got out the dough and rolled it out on a sheet of waxed paper. Then he greased the cookie sheet while the kids pressed their chosen shapes into the dough.
Getting them intact onto the cookie sheet turned out to be a bigger challenge than he’d imagined, but they got better at it as they went along.
They agreed to bake the first couple of sheets undecorated and frost them later. Then they decorated the next ones with sprinkles and red hot cinnamon buttons and tiny silver balls. Jack started to get bored, but Sophia embellished her cookies as carefully as if she were being graded on them and really wanted an A.
“Are we almost done?” Jack asked.
“I’ll tell you what,” Tom said. “Why don’t you call Suzanne and see how dinner is coming along? Smelling those cookies baking is making me hungry.”
“Me, too!” the boy agreed.
Tom told him the number to dial and watched as he carefully held the receiver to his ear.
“Hi. It’s Jack.” He giggled at whatever Suzanne said. “We’re getting real hungry.” Pause. “Okay. We’ll bring some great cookies, too.”
He handed the phone to Tom, who pushed End and set it back in its cradle. “Suzanne says dinner will be ready in ten or fifteen minutes. She was gonna call us.”
“Ah. Well, we’d better make this our last sheet of cookies, then.”
He helped decorate the rest to speed them up, then put them in the oven and set the timer. “What say we wash our hands?”
After they’d done so, they put the cookies on plates, and he added a grocery bag with the ready-made frosting and food colorings he’d bought so they could finish later.
Once the last batch was out, Tom asked Sophia to carry the cookies and Jack the pumpkin pie because he had a few other things to bring. They waited patiently at the front door, neither apparently having guessed what he was talking about. When he appeared from a bedroom with his arms full of wrapped gifts, they both gasped.
“Who are those for?” Sophia asked, eyes greedy as any child’s would be.
He pretended to think. “The one on top is for Suzanne, and the others… Well, seems to me they might be for a couple of neighborhood kids.”
Sophia grinned in delight.
Jack had to work it out before his face cleared. “For us! You mean, for us!”
Tom smiled. “Could be.”
They were so excited, he had to remind them to carry the cookies and pie carefully. It would be a shame to have them splat facedown onto grass that crunched underfoot now from frost.
Everyone on the block had turned on their Christmas lights, brilliant, multicolored jewels wrapping trees and shrubs, shimmering white icicles hanging from eaves. This wouldn’t be a white Christmas, but frost sparkled on the grass. Every window glowed a welcome, and in most could be seen a lit Christmas tree.
As they walked between his house and Suzanne’s, where the welcome was for him as well, Tom was embarrassed to realize he was getting choked up. These last couple of years he’d tried not to get down about Christmas. It was a holiday for kids, he told himself. Too commercial, anyway. He put up outside lights because everyone else did, and was glad to take them down on New Year’s Day.
But this year…this year, he’d been like a kid himself, after Suzanne had invited him. Even though he’d already had something for both Sophia and Jack, he’d gone out to buy more gifts as well as the cookie cutters and baking supplies. He’d darn near counted the hours. Today had seemed interminable. He didn’t think he’d been this excited since the last Christmas when his sister had been healthy, and he’d been only eight that year.
They opened the front door to be greeted with the wonderful smell of ham baking. Wearing an apron, Suzanne appeared from the kitchen. She was radiant with her cheeks rosy and her dark hair slipping from the scrunchie meant to hold it atop her head.
“Oh, good, you’re here. My goodness, look at those cookies. They’re beautiful.” When she saw what was in his arms, she said, “You shouldn’t have,” then laughed. “But since you did, go ahead and add them to the heaps under the tree.”
He did, then followed her and the kids to the kitchen to find her table laid for the holiday with candles and a pinecone centerpiece.
“Cookies here.” She directed the operation. “You already washed your hands? Oh, good. Tom, could you slice the ham when I put it on the table? Thank you.”
She lit the candles and produced bowls of baked russet potatoes, applesauce and green beans. She offered him wine, but he chose the milk she’d already poured for herself and the kids.
Tom sliced the ham while they all watched, then held out their plates to be served. Sophia and Jack looked perplexed when Suzanne announced, “I’ll say grace.” She had to explain the tradition, then said a few words of gratitude for all their blessings and this food they were about to eat.
During dinner, they talked about Christmases past, with Suzanne encouraging the children to recall those they’d spent with their mother. Jack talked readily about the ones he remembered, but Tom noticed that Sophia stayed silent. Her expression was one of indifference, though he doubted that was the way she felt.
He saw Suzanne had noticed as well, but she gently responded to Jack’s comments and said nothing to make Sophia uncomfortable. She wasn’t the only one silent, anyway. Tom couldn’t think of an uplifting story to contribute.
It was the nicest dinner Tom could remember having in years. Good food, good company, and a sense of warmth that he knew radiated from the gentle, dark-haired woman who had invited him to be part of her family tonight. She included him as if he belonged here, and he was shocked by how naturally he’d stepped into the “dad at the head of the table” role.
He’d always wanted to try it out. He guessed tonight was his chance.
Too bad tonight and tomorrow would be over in the blink of an eye. For him, this holiday was make-believe. He wasn’t Dad anchoring his end of the table; he was a guest.
With the force of a blow, Tom realized how much he wished none of this was pretend. He wanted not just to be a husband and father, but to have this woman, these children.
Christmas made everyone sentimental, he told himself. Even his parents had tried at Christmas. This wasn’t reality.
He was glad to be pulled from his brooding by Suzanne smiling and saying, “Seconds, anyone? No? Shall we have dessert now, or open presents first?”
“Presents! Presents!” the kids chanted.
She looked at Tom as if he had a meaningful vote, and he smiled. “Presents.”
The kids raced to the living room and dropped to the floor beside the tree. Suzanne joined them, sinking gracefully to sit cross-legged where she could read the tags and distribute gifts.
Tom had b
rought a couple that were for him, one from his father and another from his Ranger buddy and his wife.
“Let’s take turns,” Suzanne said. “So we can all see what we each got. Jack first, since he’s youngest.”
Sophia was too agog to argue, for once. She watched as Jack ripped off paper to find a big box of LEGO.
For a minute he just stared. “Wow! Look at that castle!”
“That’s cool,” his sister agreed. She accepted a present from Suzanne and opened with only a little less haste. Her breath rushed out.
Tom leaned forward from his seat on an ottoman to see what she’d gotten. It was an exquisite porcelain doll, an Indian or Pakistani girl dressed in a vivid sari.
“It’s so beautiful,” she whispered. Her stunned gaze rose to Suzanne. “Thank you.”
Suzanne smiled with such tenderness, Tom’s chest burned. “You’re welcome.”
She handed him the envelope from his father and said, “You next.”
He shook his head. “I’m betting you’re younger.”
Her chin tilted up. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Oh. Okay. Fair’s fair.” She tore hers open almost as eagerly as the kids had, saying, “This one is from Rose, the lady who works for me when I have to take time off.” It was a tapestry tote bag that depicted kittens chasing balls of yarn. She laughed. “How appropriate!”
Tom opened next, the envelope from his father. He already knew what it contained: a check. That’s what he got every year, although he made a more substantial living already than he needed. But gifts by definition meant you had to know the recipient, and his father had never known him. “Money,” he said, and set the envelope beside him.
When he saw which of his gifts Suzanne was handing to Jack for the next round, Tom cleared his throat. “I probably should have discussed this one with you first.”
Jack was already ripping, though, and stared in puzzlement when he found only a photo inside.
“I’m going to build you a climber this spring, as soon as the weather clears up.” Tom looked at Suzanne. “With your permission.”
“Oh, Tom!” Her eyes filled with tears that she quickly blinked away. “That’s so generous of you. I’ve been wishing I could manage one….”
“Hey, now that I’ve gotten the dust off those tools…”
She laughed, but in a watery way. “Jack, thank Mr. Stefanec. This is a truly incredible present.”
“You’re going to build one like this?” the boy asked, his eyes wide with amazement. “With a slide, and a fort, and everything?”
“That’s the plan,” Tom agreed, feeling pretty good about his idea. “It’s for Sophia, too, if she’s interested, so it can’t be a boys-only fort.”
“Aw,” Jack pretended to complain.
His sister elbowed him, then snatched the picture to look. Sounding awed, she said, “That’s like…like at a playground or something.”
“My presents for you aren’t nearly as good,” Tom admitted.
He hadn’t done badly, though. She seemed pretty happy with the kit to paint finger and toenails that included tiny stickers of stars and peace signs and rainbows, and with the glass-fronted curio cabinet he’d bought for her to display cute collectibles.
“How convenient,” Suzanne said, handing her a package. “This ought to go in it nicely.”
This was a big-eyed ceramic puppy figurine, poised to pounce.
“To hold you until we decide to get a real dog,” Suzanne told her.
Tom held his breath when Suzanne picked up the gift from him, the buying of which he’d agonized over. He hadn’t wanted anything too impersonal, but it couldn’t be too intimate, either, or too expensive. He’d ended up choosing a necklace that he thought was pretty.
She tore off the paper, then opened the jeweler’s box and stared silently for a moment while he waited, tense. When she lifted her head, her eyes were misty and her mouth had a soft curve.
“It’s exquisite. Oh! I have to put it on.” She lifted out the necklace. Garnets clustered around a tiny diamond to form a cheerful flower pendant on a delicate gold chain. “Shoot,” she said, groping behind her neck. “Can you fasten it for me?”
She scooted over so she sat right in front of him. He looked down at her bare nape and slender shoulders. Transfixed by the realization that she wanted him to touch her, to brush his fingers against the silken weight of hair and the skin that he knew would be just as smooth, just as silky, he couldn’t move for a moment.
Then he swallowed and reached to take the ends of the fine gold chain from her. Feeling clumsy, he had to concentrate to get the catch fastened. It was with reluctance that he said, “There, got it.”
She twisted in place to say, “How does it look?”
As delicate and old-fashioned as she was, it nestled at her throat just as he’d imagined it. He had to tear his gaze away from the long line of her neck and the hint of cleavage above her T-shirt. “Beautiful,” he said hoarsely.
“Thank you,” she whispered, laid a hand for a moment on his knee, then turned back to face the kids. “Tom’s turn,” she said. “Sophia, can you bring him that big one?”
The girl scrambled to her feet to carry a plump package to him. It felt like a pillow when he took it from her.
Tom pulled the ribbon off, then carefully opened the paper to expose something he knew instinctively she’d knit. He spread out a blue-gray throw with eight-inch-long fringe, incredibly soft and fluffy.
“It’s a silk-angora mix, so it has to be dry cleaned when it’s dirty,” Suzanne said. “But I think that yarn is luscious.”
Damn it, he had a lump in his throat. He stroked the throw to regain his composure, finally lifting his gaze to hers. “You knit this for me?”
She nodded, and for the first time he realized that she was anxious, just as he’d been when she’d opened his gift. She didn’t know how much this meant to him.
“I was afraid to use a bright color, since all I’ve seen is your living room. I hope you don’t think this blue is boring.”
“Boring? This is…” He had trouble finding words. “It’s stunning. It’s really nice of you to do this.”
Nice. If that wasn’t the most inadequate word he knew.
“After everything you’ve done for us? Are you kidding?”
Of course that’s why she’d done it. She wanted to pay him back. Not feel in debt to him. Hiding his disappointment, he smiled. “Call it even.”
They’d made a fair dent in the heap of presents under the tree by the time Suzanne said, “I’m afraid that’s it, kids. Well,” she laughed, “until morning. But enough to make visions of sugarplums dance in your head tonight, right?”
“What are sugarplums?” Jack asked, predictably.
She went on all fours and kissed the top of his head before sitting back. “I have absolutely no idea, but they sound sweet, don’t they?”
He nodded. “Can I open my LEGO?”
“Of course you can. I bought a plastic container just for them.” She stood and went to her bedroom, returning with a bright green lidded box. “So we don’t sweep them up by accident.”
“O-kay!” He happily tore and dumped a cascade of small plastic blocks into the container. Then he got out a flat square that Tom realized was a base and went to work.
Sophia went to put her doll in her bedroom, so it wouldn’t get broken. Suzanne went with her, and they returned to say that it looked perfect on the dresser.
Eventually she dished up pie, which they ate in the living room.
Watching the kids and Suzanne, Tom was dizzy with an emotion so unfamiliar, he had trouble identifying it as undiluted happiness. The boy was building with his new LEGO, Sophia sorting her gifts, Suzanne touching the necklace at her throat as if to be sure it was there and also watching the kids.
Finally she turned her head. “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee? Wine?”
“I’m good,” he said.
Her
mouth curved. “Me, too.”
Sophia tried on the hat Suzanne had knit her and went to seek a mirror. She attempted to persuade her brother to play a new game, and when she couldn’t drag him away from his construction, she became immersed in one of her new books. Christmas carols played in the background and Jack chattered about what he was building.
Tom knew it was time for the guest to bow out, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. He wanted this life, this family. Tonight he wasn’t letting himself be scared. In refusing to leave, he was holding on with both hands like a kid who’d opened someone else’s package by accident and didn’t want to give back the toy he’d found inside.
Suzanne stretched languidly, pulling her shirt taut across her breasts. “Oh, dear. I’m afraid I have to clean the kitchen.”
“I’ll help,” Tom offered. It was a world-class excuse to stay.
“You don’t have to….”
“Sure I do. You cooked.”
“If you mean it, I won’t say no.”
He cleared the table while she emptied the dishwasher, then rinsed dishes and began to load it again. As she put away food and he scrubbed pans, shirtsleeves rolled up, Tom said, “How’s it going with the kids?”
“Mostly good.” She took a roll of clear plastic wrap from a drawer and covered the ham. “On the surface, Jack is adjusting easily. Well, you’ve seen him. But I know he can’t just unplug from one home and plug in here instead without a glitch. Of course, there’s the bed-wetting.”
“Every night?”
“I was excited because Jack made it through the first night dry, but he wet his bed every single night since. Sophia slept with him the first night, but she doesn’t like waking up wet. And who can blame her? You wouldn’t believe how much laundry I’m having to do.”
“Is she afraid to sleep in her own room?” He rinsed a pan.
“I don’t think so, although I’m not sure. Really it’s Jack. Getting him to bed is like…like trying to stuff an unhappy cat into a carrier to go to the vet’s. He keeps popping out with excuses. Then I’ll see him peeking around the corner. Then he has to use the bathroom. Then, then, then.” She sighed. “I know it’s hard for him when he’s never had his own bedroom. And I haven’t objected to the two sharing a bed. I’ve even thought of putting the double bed back in there temporarily, but Jack wants his bed.”
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