“I’m coming,” he said to Violet. “I’ll call you when I’m on the way.”
He reached the hall as Noelle turned at the banister. He could have defended himself if she were angry, but her eyes were hollow, and her face was white with pain.
“Try to understand.” He picked up his coat. “Violet is Milo’s mother like the Wrights were your parents. She’s as worried as your parents would have been about you, as I would be about Evelyn and Margaret.”
“I don’t want a child to be hurt—or his mother. I don't want you to feel as if you're doing something wrong when you're helping the way any good man would, but I can't change, and neither can you. Go." She put her foot on the first stair. "We shouldn't make each other any more promises.”
Chapter 7
David drove through the night, calling Milo and getting no answer. He found Violet at a shelter. She’d been going through them all night long, looking for her son.
“You can’t do this by yourself. We should call the police.”
“If he’s not hurt, he will be in jail, because Judge Shepard will put him there.”
He wanted to tell her he wouldn’t let that happen, but he couldn’t lie. “Where do we go next? Have you called the hospitals?”
“First thing. Maybe I should try again, since it’s been over six hours.”
“I’ll try people I can trust at the local precincts.”
Violet grabbed his phone. “No.”
“People I trust.” He shared a little of her panic. “If he’s stuck in a cell, he knows what’s at stake. He won’t call us.”
“Where are Margaret and Evelyn?”
“With a friend.” His heart shattered inside his chest. Noelle, a friend. She’d never be even that to him again. “Let’s go. He’s not here.”
By morning, he was more than desperate. In his car, he and Violet drank coffee to stay awake while they consulted a list of every shelter or church in Boston that might have taken Milo in. They’d dropped into MBTA stations and even gone to AMTRAK.
“Let’s try the bus station.” David handed the map back to Violet. “After that we have to call the police. In fact—“
He picked up his phone and called Milo, who didn’t answer on the cell Violet had given him. “This is David Parker. Milo, I’ve had it. Your mother has changed everything about her life to give you a home. In return, she’s only asked you to stay safe and make a few good decisions. We’ve looked for you all over Boston tonight, and we don’t have a choice. We’re going to the police. If they pick you up, I won’t be able to help you.”
He hung up, dumped his phone into the console space between the car’s front seats, and bumped into Violet’s appalled expression. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Milo’s running your life and mine. If he wants a crisis, he’ll keep making them, but we have to stop living our lives in reaction to whatever he does next. If he wants help, he has to do his part.”
“I don’t know how to give up on him.”
His phone rang. They both looked down.
“Milo,” Violet said.
David picked up his phone and answered. “Where are you?”
“At your place. I was trying to get up the courage to call. I got scared.”
“You should be.”
“It was what you said. If the judge changes her mind after Christmas, what will she do to me? I thought I should get out of here because she’s told me before I don’t get any more chances.”
David felt sick. “Why didn’t you just tell me or your mom you were worried?”
“You don’t think she’ll change her mind? Will she let me stay with Mom?”
“If you stay put and do what she tells you to do, I think there’s a good chance.”
“Can I talk to my Mom?”
David handed her the phone. Noelle had been right. This wasn’t an emergency. The kid had ended up on David’s own doorstep. He had to find a way to judge what was an emergency and a panicky moment with Violet and everyone else but his family.
By the time Violet hung up his phone, he was in a sweat.
“I know it seems like we were on a wild goose chase, but I was terrified without you,” she said. “Thank you for coming. Maybe we finally got through to him.”
And his choice to help had lost him the woman he loved. “I have to fix my life, Violet.”
“Fix it?”
“I have a feeling that up until now, I’ve been using everyone else’s crises to keep from facing my own decisions. Why do you keep trying with Milo?”
“Because I love him. Everything was easier before I knew him, but even with the constant worry, he adds to my days. He’s given me a love I thought I’d never have because I thought I didn’t need children until it was too late for me. Now I have Milo.”
“I’ll take you to him.” And then he’d drive back to Christmas Town and hope Noelle and the girls would have enough love in their hearts not to give up on him.
~*~
Noelle took the girls to her shop after breakfast. They colored for a while, and then they dozed in the window seats while she made donuts. After she opened the store, they helped her serve customers, carefully lifting out the pastry in sheets of wax paper. At lunchtime, they all crossed the green to the market and sampled the wares in the Christmas booths.
Ducking between carolers and sticky children and harried moms and dads, Noelle fought one thought. David. Gone again.
Maybe that kid needed him.
His own children needed him. She wasn’t a good substitute.
“There’s Santa again.” Margaret pointed as they reached the green.
“He comes this way every day at this time.”
“I have to talk to him,” Margaret said.
“I don’t want to visit Santa.” Evelyn reached her bright red mitten through the air for Noelle’s hand, as she eyed the alleged jolly elf with the suspicion Noelle used to reserve for him.
“Come on.” Margaret grabbed Evelyn’s other sleeve and tugged her sister in her wake.
Noelle could either go along or play tug of rope with Evelyn’s body. “Hold on, Margaret. If your sister doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t have to.”
She had no use for that gazebo either. It wasn’t only Santa she didn’t trust. That mistletoe had already done her wrong.
Kiss under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve, and a wedding will follow in the new year. She’d kissed. She’d kissed David with all her heart, with the gratitude she’d felt for his love since the first day they’d formed a phalanx of two against the Children’s Home bullies. She’d kissed him, intoxicated with the hope of a future, confident in their devotion to each other. It was a lot of pressure for one kiss, but she’d believed.
And by the next Christmas Eve, David had been in Boston, and she’d fled his bright lights, big city and powerful opportunities for the safety and certainty of the only home she’d ever known. And her family.
She’d come home, worked her way into owning Frosty’s, and created her own future. She believed in making your own future.
“You have to understand,” Noelle said to Margaret.
“You don’t understand why Daddy left,” Margaret said. “You’re mad at him. I can tell, but he said it was important. He said a boy needed him, like we needed him.”
Like she’d needed him when she was young. Like she’d needed her parents.
She stared at David’s daughters, one distracted by a fearsome Santa, the other looking at Noelle for reassurance, the promise that her father had needed to leave her behind. She wanted to wrap her arms around both girls and promise that she loved them and David loved them, and they’d always be safe, and neither had to be afraid again.
But she held back because she was afraid they’d be taken from her. Like she was afraid David would walk away no matter what he promised.
What if David hadn’t gone? What if that boy got picked up by the police and ended up in jail, rather than with an adoptive mother who’d loved him? How many times had Da
vid stopped more than one boy from beating Noelle up at the orphanage when she’d come back from a prospective family with a toy or some candy—something that some bigger kid wanted.
If David hadn’t been there, what would have happened to her?
How many families had he put back together before he’d gone through with handling their divorce? While she was still in Boston, she’d listened as he’d schooled couple after couple through counseling, to see if they could salvage anything.
If he hadn’t taken those meetings or phone calls, those families might have broken. There might be more Milos or angry Noelles, with nowhere to be loved this Christmas.
What if she was the one who needed reassurance so badly that she couldn’t bear for David to help anyone else?
What if she really was the one who didn’t understand because she was still afraid to share?
“Evelyn?” Noelle turned and knelt in an icy pillow of snow in front of the little girl, glancing back for Margaret.
“What?” Evelyn folded her arms in front of her pink parka-covered chest. Her lower lip trembled.
“You know what?” Without letting herself worry—much—about getting too attached, or offering unwanted advice when she was nobody’s mom, she dropped an arm around Margaret’s shoulders and pulled her closer, too. “We’re going to see Santa. I’m going with you, and I hate that gazebo. I have bad memories of being there.”
Evelyn stared. “Why?”
“Something happened to me there.” She’d been barely old enough to remember the dark-haired woman who’d left her on the gazebo, wrapped in a sleeping bag with nothing but a card that gave her name and birthdate and a plea to take care of her. “But I don’t care any more.”
Evelyn straightened with posture so straight her spine was like a yardstick. “Do you believe in Santa?”
Not the one who inhabited that throne near the unlucky configuration of wood and paint and mistletoe. “I believe you hope for what you want.”
Margaret moved to her sister’s side. “We want our daddy to come home.”
“And stay with us,” Evelyn said. “We just want Daddy.”
“Maybe what you want is not to be afraid you’ll lose Daddy. And you never will.” She hugged Evelyn as tight as she’d wished a mom would hug her when she was alone. “You never will because he loves you, and he’ll always come back.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind a puppy.” Margaret shot Santa a furtive glance. “A small puppy that loves me best, but it can play with Evelyn, too.”
Evelyn looked down. She didn’t say anything else. Still just wanted Daddy.
“Let’s go.” Noelle took both girls by the hand and started across the green. Normally, she helped loop fragrant, evergreen garland around the town square rails as her contribution to decorating, but she wouldn’t go near that gazebo.
“I think talking to Santa about it is silly,” Evelyn said, her voice trembling.
“You’re probably right.” Yay, Evelyn for speaking up. The girl was gaining confidence. “But, just in case…”
“Just in case,” Margaret said, her confidence waning. She let go of Noelle’s hand and slipped around behind her to grab her sister’s palm. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
Her worry was troubling. “After we visit Santa, we’ll go see my sister, Chloe, at Santa’s Orchard. She has magic apples, and she’ll juggle them. You take a bite and make a wish.”
“Magic apples.” Evelyn sounded far older than her six years. “I don’t believe in magic apples either.”
“You never tried these.” Noelle said it with certainty, and she then shut her mouth while she was still somewhere near breaking even at being the adult in their little group.
They kept walking, their boots breaking the crust on the snow.
“Why is it so cold here?” Evelyn asked. “It’s colder than at home.”
“I like the snow,” Margaret said.
“We don’t always have it from Thanksgiving on,” Noelle said as they reached the back of the line of waiting, excited children. “But I kind of like it like this. Everything looks pretty and clean.”
“Except where those horses have been.” Margaret giggled at her own joke.
Evelyn didn’t even break a smile. She was too busy staring at Santa as if he were actually the boogeyman.
Noelle considered telling her Santa was really Mr. Caldwell, who ran the town’s recycling center. But maybe at the last minute, Evelyn wanted to believe.
“I’m hungry,” Evvy said. “I want to eat.”
“There are already people behind us.” Margaret started counting. “Eight of them.”
“It’s moving fast.” Noelle concentrated on the elves policing their hopping, skipping customers, rather than on the big, white structure that housed Santa’s plush throne.
One of the elves came forward and handed each twin a clear, cellophane bag filled with goodies.
“Merry Christmas,” she said. “Won’t be long. Hey, Noelle.”
“Hi.”
Noelle felt funny, as if she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t, like loving David’s children. But her friend was too busy to stick around.
“What did you get?” she asked the girls.
“A paper pad,” Margaret tilted the bag up.
Snowmen and stars bordered the edges of the paper. They also had a Santa-emblazoned pen and a Rudolph pencil. Christmas tree and candy cane stickers.
The line had moved up while they all three inspected the goodies.
“Almost there.” Noelle hoped she didn’t sound breathless to the girls as the gazebo loomed beside them. Everything she’d ever done near that thing turned to dust and loss.
“I hope he doesn’t smell funny.” Margaret ducked between Evelyn and Noelle to hold on to both their hands.
Mr. Caldwell would never show up on his Christmas throne all smelly, but Noelle couldn’t say that out loud.
They reached the stairs. Another elf stepped forward, cute and welcoming in a little red skirt, matching tights, and top.
“Come on up.” She held out her hand to Evelyn, who hung back.
Margaret glanced at her sister and made a decision that showed on her sternly set face. “I’ll do it.”
She marched up the stairs. When Santa would have hoisted her onto his lap, she just shook his hand.
“Hi.” Clearly, she’d had experience with this Santa business because she grinned for the man wielding a camera in front of them and then got to the point of her visit. “I’d like a puppy, please,” she said. “And a doll for my sister. She says she doesn’t like them, but she does. And we both really like those chocolates with blueberries in them.”
“Sounds too easy. Don’t you want anything else?” Santa was used to children having an agenda. Behind his luxuriant, but obviously faux beard, he was clearly grinning.
Margaret shook her head and turned to move on, but something stopped her. A frown knotted her small forehead. She opened her mouth, but then stopped with another shake of her head. Then she turned like a soldier on parade and headed down the small ramp to exit Santa’s throne room.
Exit… That meant they were under the domed wooden roof. They’d be in the gazebo. Noelle’s heart ricocheted inside her chest in search of an escape route.
“She didn’t tell him about Daddy.” Evelyn’s whisper ended on a squeak of desperation. “I have to ask for him to come home. What if asking works?”
With that she marched forward, and Noelle realized she was a coward compared to these small, brave girls.
Evelyn also preferred to shake Santa’s hand rather than climb in his lap, but she only glanced at the camera, blinking as it flashed. She turned back toward Santa, who bent toward her, anxious at the taut look on her face.
“I want Daddy.”
Her thin voice carried. Santa reached for her, and so did Noelle, but they were both too late. She bolted after her sister, and Noelle paused only long enough to fling, “Hello, Mr. Caldw—Santa” ov
er her shoulder as she clattered down the wooden ramp behind her charges.
At the bottom, Margaret was waiting for Evelyn, but Evelyn stopped, thunderstruck. Noelle looked in the same direction as the little girl, to see what had frozen her.
“Wow.” Santa Caldwell just might be the real thing.
David, in jeans and a white, open-collared shirt, but no overcoat, went to his knees in the snow. “Evvy?”
She ran at him like a Daddy-seeking missile, and Margaret reached them at the same time. He scooped both girls into his arms.
“Are you two okay? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you in line to see Santa.”
“Are you going away again, Daddy?” Evvy looked as if she were holding her breath.
He shot Noelle a guilty glance as Margaret leaned back, interrogating with her silent doubt.
“I’d never say anything.” Noelle couldn’t believe he didn’t know her better. Even if this were seven years ago, she’d never malign him to his daughters.
“I’ll have to go away sometimes,” he said, “but I’ll always come back.”
“That’s what Miss Noelle said, and you did.” Evelyn patted his face with her hands. “I’m not scared any more, Daddy. You can put me down.” He set them both on the ground and came to Noelle.
Both girls watched them as David tucked his palm beneath her pony tail, and she restrained a shiver. “How did you give them Santa back?” he asked.
She stared into his eyes. The years and the anger and the fear of getting hurt again floated away on cheerful voices and crisp, snowy air, and she wanted to be happy.
“Maybe they gave him to me, too.” She bent to disentangle herself from David and hugged both girls. “These are two powerful little women.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “Margaret said I didn’t understand you, and I love her so she made me willing to try. You protect the people you love. That’s who you are. I’m afraid to share you because just like Evelyn, I thought somewhere, sometime, you’d go to help, and I’d be abandoned again. But abandoning isn’t what you do.”
“I take myself too seriously,” he said. “I do sometimes think I’m the only one who can help, but I could have asked a friend to find Milo today.”
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