by Selena Kitt
Erica shook her head. “Can’t tell or it won’t come true.”
Leah squeezed her friend’s hand, smiling. “But we tell each other everything.”
We used to.
Their eyes met and Leah felt the weight of that statement, knowing there were things she wouldn’t—couldn’t—share with Erica now. And Erica… she had changed too, while Leah was gone. She was different, distant, and wary. They’d both been through so much separately, Leah wondered if there was anything that could bring them together they way they’d been before.
“I wished for Grace,” Erica whispered to the stars, not looking at her friend.
Leah felt tears sting her eyes. “Me too.”
And as miraculously as the morning star had appeared, so long ago, to lead three wise men to a baby in a manger cradle, the gap that had grown between the girls during Leah’s absence had been bridged, just like that. Magically, like the snow falling on Christmas or the bubble lights bursting to life in their little girl memories, they came together again, could breathe and talk and laugh together again.
They didn’t talk as the sun began to rise in the east, casting the snow in a dusky blue morning light. They just rested together in their angelic snow patterns, melting the snow with the warmth of their bodies as it fell and trying to catch the big flakes drifting lazily down toward their open mouths.
“I think I’m frozen to the ground,” Leah finally announced. Her calves ached with cold from the snow inside her boots.
“What time is it?” Erica wondered out loud. “Is it present time yet?”
“Erica! Leah!”
They looked at each other, wide-eyed, hearing Erica’s father calling them. He sounded angry. Maybe even a little scared.
“We’re here!” Erica sat up, struggling in the snow, helping Leah, and both girls couldn’t help stopping to look at their snow angels, the imprint of their bodies surrounded by heavenly wings.
“Rob! We’re here!” Leah called. She could hear him but not see him, and then he was there, appearing around the corner, clutching his coat around him, still wearing pajama bottoms—and no shoes at all.
“Daddy, get inside before you freeze to death!” Erica protested, waving him on as the girls approached.
“I could say the same thing.” Rob frowned, looking between them, back and forth. “What in the world are you two doing out here at five in the morning?”
“Making snow angels.” Erica shrugged, smiling, looking sheepish.
“You two.” He shook his head, that angry look in his eyes melting when he glanced at Leah, shivering and wet. “Don’t ever leave like that without telling me! I thought—”
He didn’t say anything else, but he pulled Leah into his arms. She felt his breath, hot on her neck, felt the warmth of the quivering kiss he pressed there. Then Rob snaked an arm around Erica’s neck, pulling her into their embrace, kissing her forehead.
“Come on, it’s freezing!” He steered them both back toward the warehouse, where they shook off their coats and pulled off boots and left everything dripping to dry in the hallway. Rob went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, and Leah settled on the couch under a blanket, still shivering in her nightgown.
Erica snuck away to her room to change out of her dungarees and sweatshirt, and appeared in the living room again clad in a nightgown before her father came back.
“So where were you?” Leah whispered as Erica snuggled under the blanket with her.
“I wanted to see the snow.” Erica didn’t look at her. Instead, she stared at the Christmas tree. “Remember how we used to wait for the bubble lights to start?”
“Yes.” Leah smiled, letting her change the subject. “You used to swear they were magic.”
“I wish I still believed in magic.”
“Me too.” Leah sighed, glancing up as Rob came into the living room carrying three mugs, one in each hand and another squeezed between. He put them on the coffee table, yawning and rubbing his eyes, blinking at the two of them on the couch. He had put his pajamas on for Erica’s benefit, Leah knew, because he’d only been wearing boxers when they fell asleep in his loft bed after making love last night.
She smiled at the memory, picking up her mug and taking a sip of coffee. The doctor in the hospital, Dr. Peters, the same one who had burst into the room minutes after Leah had given birth to Grace all on her own, had told her to wait “at least six weeks” before resuming any “sexual activity.” He’d added, “If I were you, I’d just keep your damned legs closed altogether and stay out of trouble.”
But once she was home with Rob, there was no way she could resist him. Besides, physically she was healed. It was just her heart that was broken.
“Mmm caffeine!” Erica cupped her coffee mug in both hands. “Are we ready to open gifts?”
“I thought we might get to sleep in on Christmas morning.” Rob looked pointedly at his daughter. “I didn’t expect to be up at five a.m.”
“It’s six,” Erica countered. “It’s present time, Santa!”
“Ho ho ho.” Rob lifted his mug and took a gulp of hot coffee. “I suppose you want to be helper-elf and hand out gifts?”
Erica popped up, rushing the Christmas tree like a linebacker and skidding across the hardwood floor in her socks, nearly overshooting it before grabbing their stockings and bringing them back to the sofa. The boxes under the tree were all beautifully wrapped—they’d been arriving that way for weeks from Hudson’s. They not only gift-wrapped purchases, they also delivered them.
Rob settled between the girls on the sofa as they each investigated the contents of their Christmas stockings. Rob had played Santa and filled the girls’ stockings, and Leah and Erica had pooled their albeit limited resources to fill his with things like film for his medium format camera and a new tie and pulled taffy, because it was his favorite. All of them had a big, fat orange at the bottom, and Erica started peeling hers so she could eat it right away.
Leah left hers at the bottom, looking at the array of things Rob had put into her stocking. New winter gloves. A slim, studded pocketbook for dress-up occasions. A bag of black licorice—one of her favorites. A little plastic globe of Boblo Island that rained silver glitter instead of snow. She smiled at him when she pulled that out, remembering how he had stood on the Boblo Boat deck and asked her to marry him.
That was before…
Leah shook the little globe, watching the silver cloud envelope the model amusement park inside.
“Did you get an orange?” Rob asked, nudging Leah with his slippered foot. He had run outside without them, but they were on now, old blue raggedy ones. Leah and Erica had bought him a brand new pair. They were in the pile of gifts somewhere.
“Of course.” Leah reached into her stocking, pulling it out and putting on the coffee table with the rest of her things.
“I think there’s something else in there.” Rob looked at Leah’s stocking—he had purchased it for her just a week ago, because her stocking, the one she’d had since she was little, was at her mother’s. It was the house she’d grown up in, but she didn’t think of it as home anymore, Leah realized. This was home, the warehouse with its wide open spaces and drafts, where she slept high up in the loft with Rob every night. In the weeks since she’d been back, this had become home.
“Daddy, the orange is always the last thing,” Erica reminded him, popping a wedge of hers into her mouth. “That’s tradition.”
“You might want to look again,” Rob insisted.
Erica frowned turning her red and green stocking upside down and shaking it. “Nope. Nothing in there.”
“Not you, Erica.” He laughed, watching as Leah reached into her red stocking—it had her name embroidered at the top, just like Erica’s did—feeling around in the toe.
“What…?” She looked at him sitting beside her on the couch, feeling the shape of the velvet box under her fingers, eyes growing wide.
“What is it?” Erica inquired from her perch on the arm of th
e wing-backed chair on the other side of the coffee table. She’d moved so she could spread out her loot.
“Leah...” Rob moved from the sofa, onto one knee on the hardwood floor, and she looked at him in his raggedy slippers and mis-buttoned pajama top, his hair still damp from his trek through the snow to find his missing charges, and thought she had never loved him more than in that moment.
“Oh, Rob...” She felt tears stinging her eyes and couldn’t stop them as she brought the blue velvet box out of her Christmas stocking with shaking hands.
“Listen, I know...” He took a deep breath, and then took her hands in his, closing them around the velvet box. “Things have been hard. And I know it’s soon, too soon after...”
She shook her head, thinking of Grace, knowing he was thinking of her too. At least she’d gotten to see her, hold her. Rob had never even seen his daughter’s face.
“But I don’t want to lose you, Leah. I don’t want to be without you, ever again. I woke up this morning and found you gone, and I thought… it was like my heart had just walked out the door by itself.”
Leah held back a sob, knowing the feeling so well she lived it every minute. She had lived it for months at the maternity home, missing him with every breath she took like having razor blades in her lungs, and now she had him back, but her baby was gone. She closed her eyes, remembering her wish, feeling tears fall.
“I know you wanted a miracle,” he whispered. “On this day of all days, I wanted to give you one. I wanted to bring her home for you today.”
Leah nodded, opening her eyes, seeing him through prisms, and tried to speak, but nothing came out.
“I promise you, Leah. I promise I’ll stop at nothing to find Grace and bring her home.”
Rob fumbled with the box, opening it, and Leah saw the Tiffany’s logo on the white satin top, and the platinum band with the diamond solitaire framed in velvet sitting in the bottom.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, meeting her eyes, his so serious, like he thought she might say no. Leah shook her head, unable to speak, tears choking her throat. “So when our little girl comes home, she’ll have her family waiting for her?”
Leah sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck, whispering her assent. “Yes, yes!”
Rob held her close, kissing her deeply before presenting the ring to her, this time out of its box, sliding it onto her trembling ring finger. She looked at it in the dawning early morning light now streaming in through the skylight. It fit perfectly.
“I told him your ring size,” Erica said through a mouth full of Bit O’Honey she’d gotten in her stocking.
“You knew?” Leah blinked at her.
“He bought the ring months ago.” Erica revealed this secret with glee, seeing her father’s face flush.
“I knew you’d come back to me.” He met Leah’s eyes and she saw how his glistened in the light. “Just like I know we’ll get Grace back.”
Leah let him sweep her into his arms, standing and twirling her around in front of the Christmas tree, pulling her close so he could kiss her properly, if a little reticently, in front of Erica.
“I hope so,” she murmured against his chest as he held her, stroking her hair, and she met Erica’s eyes, remembering their crazy, spontaneous walk through the snow, their impromptu snow-angels, their wish on the morning star. They weren’t little girls anymore. They didn’t believe in magic. There was no Santa Claus. There were no Christmas miracles.
“Congratulations.” Erica came over, still chewing her candy, and put an arm around Leah’s neck, giving her a long hug. Rob watched them, smiling. “Now we get to plan a wedding!”
Rob groaned. “Can’t we elope?”
“Are you kidding?” Both girls looked at him, aghast, and then they looked at each other and burst out laughing. Maybe there were no fairy godmothers or magic wands, but they had each other, and for the first time in weeks, Leah felt almost like her old self again.
Chapter Two
Erica would never have met Clay if Father Michael hadn’t volunteered her for the part of Virgin Mary in the Christmas Eve Nativity Scene. It was all Father Michael’s idea, a live-action nativity to replace the wooden carved figures that usually adorned the sanctuary. She only agreed because there were no lines, like a play. She just had to stand there holding a baby, put it in the manger and look serene. Considering the roles she’d played for the church in the past few months—although those had been much darker, and far more secret—she knew she could do this one with her eyes closed.
Besides, it was Father Michael who was asking, with those big blue eyes and his sweetly appearing smile, and how was she supposed to resist that? Father Michael said he wanted a young couple to play Mary and Joseph, and so one of the boys from St. Casimir had been brought in. Erica didn’t know Clayton Marshall Webber III from Adam, but they’d spent three weeks wearing scratchy wool costumes, chewing gum and having bubble-blowing contests—Clay carried Beech Nut Spearmint wherever he went—while Father Michael directed the wise men and argued with Father Patrick, who was completely against all the shenanigans.
Father Patrick won the argument about the livestock—two lambs, a donkey, and a goat were sent back to the Eastern Market where they’d come from—but Father Michael had gotten his way with the concept of a “live” nativity, including Mary, Joseph, three wise men, and an angel. The angel was just Alice Kernighan dressed up in white robes, wearing a halo and standing on a pedestal behind them.
And of course, a baby Jesus.
“Whose baby is it?” Erica had asked, looking down at the sleeping newborn as Father Michael handed it over.
“Foster child,” he’d explained, tucking the swaddling blankets in around the baby’s face. “She’s just on loan.”
“She?” Erica had smirked, raising her eyebrows at him. “Jesus is a girl?”
“Don’t tell anyone.” Father Michael winked. “I picked this one because she’s so quiet. She has to sleep through the service.”
“Hmm.” Erica had looked at the sleeping infant. It was a cute baby with lots of dark hair, and Clay glanced over her shoulder at it.
“Hey, maybe Jesus was a girl,” Clay had speculated as Father Michael left them to go talk to Father Patrick about the last minute details of the Christmas Eve service. “Don’t they always show him with long hair? And those robes… could have been hiding anything under there.”
Erica had laughed in spite of herself and the baby in her arms had stirred but didn’t wake. In fact, she stayed quiet through the whole thing—quieter than Clay, who kept whispering all sorts of horribly sacrilegious things into Erica’s ear to make her laugh. She tried to just smile serenely and not meet his eyes, or she was bound to crack up. His last joke almost did her in—What’s the difference between Jesus and Picasso? Only takes one nail to hang a Picasso—but thankfully it was time for her to put the baby in the manger, and she could hide her stifled giggles as she bent over and tucked the baby in.
Really, it was Father Michael’s fault she ended up sneaking out of the warehouse after her father and Leah had gone to bed, on Christmas Eve no less. She never would have taken Clay up on his offer if it hadn’t been for the way Father Michael frowned whenever she laughed at one of Clay’s jokes, and found a reason to separate them whenever Clay got too close. Once, Clay had been teaching her to Lindy Hop, and although Erica was about as graceful as a turtle in a tutu, he’d managed to get her to do the basics before Father Michael discovered they were tripping the light fantastic while he was chasing a goat down the hallway and called rehearsal off for the day.
She blamed Father Michael—and, as always, her incessant curiosity. Yes, she’d been trying to make him jealous, flirting with Clay. But she was also intrigued when Clay asked her to meet him, saying he had something interesting to show her.
It was Father Michael’s fault she agreed to meet Clay around the block from her house at two in the morning, slipping into his 1955 Chevy Sedan and messing with the radio while he drov
e them through the streets of Detroit, getting on the freeway and then off again, taking them for a long, uneventful drive into the country. And it was Father Michael she was still thinking about when Clay parked on a back road and turned to kiss her.
He smelled like Beech Nut spearmint and Aqua Velva, a heady combination, but he took his gum out before he kissed her, pressing it with his thumb against the dashboard when he leaned in to touch his lips to hers. It was a pleasant sensation and Erica let him gather her up, enjoying all his hard angles against her soft curves.
His tongue found its way into her mouth and she let that happen too, letting things take their natural course, the heat of their bodies, the fast pant of their breath steaming up the windows of his Chevy. Erica even dared to put her hand on his leg, sliding it up his jean-clad thigh until she found his erection, smiling when she heard his sharp intake of breath.