Copyright

HarperTrueLife

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First published by HarperTrueLife 2014

FIRST EDITION

Text © Joanne Smith 2014

Cover photo © Ttatty/Shutterstock, pkline/iStock,

Tsekhmister/iStock, claudio.arnese/iStock

Cover layout © Nupoor Gordon and HarperCollinsPublishers

A catalog record of this book is available from the British Library

Joanne Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008118112

Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008118143

Version: 2014-11-24

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 7: The Seventh Day of Christmas

Chapter 8: The Eighth Day of Christmas

Chapter 9: The Ninth Day of Christmas

Chapter 10: The Tenth Day of Christmas

Chapter 11: The Eleventh Day of Christmas

Chapter 12: The Twelfth Day of Christmas

Chapter 13: The 13th Gift

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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About the Publisher

Chapter Seven
The Seventh Day of Christmas

The clock on the mantel chimes twice: two a.m. I stand at the window watching the darkened street, praying every time I see headlights creeping toward the house that they will be Ben’s. I have been worried ever since I saw the red car speeding through the intersection on the way home from Tom’s house.

There have been too many nights like this, with me waiting at the window, enforcing no consequences when Ben comes home way later than his midnight curfew. I’m so afraid of driving him further away from me that I stay mute, not giving my son what I know he needs—parenting and love.

Shame on me.

Since Rick’s death, I have been emotionally absent from our children, blind to Nick’s nightmares, unable to fill Megan’s need for Christmas. Ben is drifting, walking alone with his grief.

If someone had asked me how we were getting along a week ago, I would have said fine, under the circumstances. I work. Pay bills. The kids attend school. Most days, someone remembers to feed the dog and cat.

But we weren’t fine, and our true friends knew it.

Now I do, too.

I have been sleepwalking for more than two months, hardly conscious of a family falling apart. It wasn’t until I nearly stumbled over that poinsettia that I began to see how much my kids needed me.

My eyes are open now.

Thanks to our true friends, Momma Bear is back. My gusto for Christmas may not be the same as in years past, but my kids will know they are not on their own. We’ll order a pizza. I’ll buy a few presents, and we will decorate our tree, provided it thaws out.

I flip the porch light on and off to make sure it is working, then patrol the house, careful not to wake Megan and Nick, who went to bed hours ago. When I reach my own closed bedroom door, I hesitate. I haven’t been in there for weeks. My clothes hang on a rack in the laundry room. I sleep on the couch. I shower in the guest bathroom. Though I tell myself there is nothing to be afraid of, the room frightens me. I have not dusted in there or vacuumed since before October 8.

Placing my hand on the doorknob, I find myself wishing one of those true friends were here beside me now. The thought surprises me, and I don’t feel so alone. I was angry when we received that first gift, now I am curious about who they are and grateful for their attention.

This room is another demon they will help me conquer.

The hinges of the door squeak as I push it open. I peek inside from the safety of the hallway, where the chill of the room is already starting to creep.

I force myself to see what my children see every time I send one of them in here to fetch a blouse from the closet, or a necklace from my jewelry box. I always have an excuse not to go myself; tonight, as I wait for my son to come home, there are no more excuses.

A thick layer of dust covers the pine frame of our king-sized waterbed. The fitted sheet Rick died on is still tucked around the mattress. His too-small slippers, with the smashed-down heels, sit next to the bathroom door. The gym bag my husband planned to pack for his hospital stay stands empty in the corner.

It is as if the room is waiting.

I tug the sheet off the bed, the pillowcases, the blankets, and stuff them into the gym bag. They will go, unwashed, to Goodwill. I fetch one of the boxes Megan emptied of Christmas decorations from the family room and carry it upstairs. The old slippers go in first, then I thin out Rick’s closet of everything except his favorite sweaters. Those I leave hidden among my own clothes. Rick’s watch, Swiss Army knife, key chain, and wedding ring go into the bottom of my jewelry box, keepsakes I will give to our kids someday. I find something else that needs to go; flushing the contents of four bottles of Rick’s heart medication down the toilet seems an appropriate end. I toss the containers in the trash.

In less than half an hour, I have erased Rick’s presence from the room. I have no idea what to do with the waterbed. I will never sleep on it again. I draw a heart in the dust with my finger on the top of its wooden frame and print Rick’s initials inside it along with mine, then I wipe away the past with lemon furniture polish.

Tomorrow, I will ask Nick to help me drain the mattress. It’s just a piece of plastic, but even it holds Christmas memories.

I can still see Ben, Nick, and Meg rushing in here on Christmas mornings to join their dad and me on this bed. After a late night of assembling trains or bikes or remote-control cars, Rick and I were usually still dozing when our Smith herd charged into the room. Pumping our water-filled mattress with their hands and knees, our kids would create a tsunami that forced us from slumber.

Small gifts stuffed into their Christmas stockings—candy, comic books, hair ribbons, maybe a wristwatch or baseball cards—got opened on our bed, while Rick waited for his coffee to brew and I for the tea kettle to boil.

Everyone would be wearing new pajamas, a tradition I started when the kids were small and began begging to open one gift on Christmas Eve. Rick always demanded the kids put on warm socks and brush their teeth, before visiting Santa land downstairs in the family room, building their anticipation.

When I hear the front door open, I go downstairs to talk with my Ben. I leave the bedroom door open, hoping life will spill back into the room.

Ben stands in the entryway, leaning his back against the door. A car drives by, and its headlights cast a ray of light around the room. I see tears glistening on my child’s face. Mama Bear wants to step aside and let Mother Hen do the talking, but I think we each could use a dose of both.

“I’m glad you’re home.”

Ben jumps, startled. He wipes at his face with the sleeve of his coat.

“What are you doing up?”

“Waiting for you.”

“I’m tired. I need to go to bed.”

Ben walks toward the steps. His intent, I’m sure, is to escape to the basement.

I block his path and give him a hug.

“Neither one of us can go on like this, Ben.”

He tries to shake free, but I don’t let him.

“Not tonight, Mom. Please, not tonight.”

I pull back enough to look at his face, though he turns to avoid my gaze.

“I went to your uncle Tom’s this evening. I was stopped at Little Sugarcreek when a red car flew through the intersection.”

Ben doesn’t admit he was the driver, but guilt flashes like a neon sign from the muscles in his jaw.

“Hand over your car keys.”

“Mom …”

“Give them to me.”

Ben holds the keys in his fist, debating, and then drops them into my open palm. He will never know my fear at that moment, while I waited to see whether he would comply or defy me. His acquiescence gives me grit to keep going.

“Now sit,” I say. “You’re going to tell me what you’ve been up to tonight.”

We sit down on the couch. He says nothing.

“We can sit here all night,” I say, nudging his shoulder with mine.

The words spill out, slow at first and then building speed as if he were still driving the car.

“I had to get out of here,” he says. “I needed to drive. Robert came with me.”

“Where’d you go?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“You’re probably right.”

Ben tells me he kept a close eye on the speedometer as he cruised residential streets toward the hills on Little Sugarcreek Road. Out in the country, the hum of the car engine turned into a roar.

“I could drive that road with my eyes closed,” he says. “I must have driven it one hundred times with Dad.”

Ben tells me that he and Robert rolled down their windows and let blasts of wet December wind smack their faces.

“When the car jumped over the first hill, I felt like I was flying,” he says. “We were screaming this song.”

“Pantera. Great Southern Trendkill,” I say.

“Yeah, from that album. How’d you know?”

“I heard it.”

Ben makes a face, but he continues with the confession.

A mile or two passes before he turns onto an open stretch of country road: no hills, no stop signs, and not much traffic. If homeowners glanced out their windows as the car passed, all they would have seen is the red glow of his taillights.

“When the speedometer hit ninety, I wasn’t afraid or sad. I felt free.”

I clasp my hands together, willing them to stop shaking, and then ask, “What made you slow down?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“It was Dad.”

Ben tells me that he and Robert, in unison, spotted a deer leap across a fence and stop in the road just ahead of them.

“I could hear Dad’s voice telling me to downshift and hit the brakes. Then as fast as that deer appeared … it was gone. There was no crash, just twenty feet of tire burn. Dad was there in the car with me, Mom, just like before.”

I wrap an arm around Ben and pull him close. This time, I know what to say.

“Your Dad is always going to be with us. He’s probably listening right now and wondering if I’m ever going to give you back these car keys.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes, but Ben wants an answer.

“So, are you?”

I toss the keys up in the air just out of his reach, and I catch them.

“Red Baron’s grounded until the first of the year, then we’re going to have a talk with the guidance counselor at the high school.”

Ben starts to argue, but changes his mind.

We talk a while longer, but our conversation turns into a duel of yawns.

“Bed?” I ask.

While I lock the front door, Ben notices the empty tree stand in the corner.

“So the tree shopping was a bust?”

“Not with your aunt Char in change. It’s in the garage thawing.”

“Out there with our busted tree stand?”

No use lying. I am caught.

“You saw that?”

“One of the legs wasn’t completely smashed. Ran over it a couple of times myself.”

For the first time, maybe ever, my teenage son and I understand each other.

We head off to bed laughing.

***

I wake to the aromas of a picnic in the woods: fresh pine and frying bacon. It’s only been a few hours since Ben and I retired for the night, but a whispered conversation up in the kitchen clues me in to the fact that my eldest son and his little sister are awake. The two of them are cooking up something that Ben doesn’t want me to know about.

“Keep it down. You’ll wake her,” he says with a voice so deep it bellows down the stairwell. Megan giggles.

“I can’t wait for her to see it. I just can’t wait,” she says.

Figuring I’m about to be served breakfast in bed—or, on couch, such as it is—I close my eyes and relax, until they decide it’s time to eat. I figure Ben is trying to earn back his car keys. I won’t tell him it’s not going to work until after the meal. I close my eyes and drift back to sleep.

A half hour later, Megan holds a slice of cooked bacon under my nose.

When I open my eyes, she eats the meat and then runs back upstairs hollering, “Breakfast.”

Upstairs, it’s not the eggs, or the bacon, or even the toast that surprises me. It’s the tree. Our somewhat lopsided evergreen stands in front of the living room window, covered in strands of tiny white lights.

“Who did this?”

Megan beams. “It was Ben.”

Beside the tree, a box labeled “Dad’s stuff” stands empty, except for Rick’s measuring tape.

Rick had been the tree-lighting aficionado of the family, with arms long enough to reach to the very top of any tree, a feat he ensured before the purchase of a pine. He painstakingly untangled the mess of twisted strands that I had hastily packed the previous year. Once assured every bulb lighted, Rick measured the distance between light strings as he wrapped them around the tree. He would have measured the distance between ornaments if I had let him.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Ben was disavowing all things holiday related. Today he’s lighting the tree. I should be shocked, but I’m not. Unexpected events are becoming the norm in our house, especially when it comes to Christmas.

“You did this?” I ask Ben. I want to hear it from him.

Ben leaves the room for a moment and comes back holding one of the six cups from the gift givers, filled with orange juice.

“They’ve been trying to help us through Christmas. My attitude has been … sort of … undermining their efforts,” he says. “Next year, we can all put the lights on the tree together. This time, I needed it to be just me and Dad.”

I nod an affirmative to Ben and take deep breaths so I don’t cry.

“Don’t you go getting another cold,” Megan says. “It’s way too close to Christmas.”

“Do you like the tree by the picture window, instead of downstairs in the family room like always?” Ben asks. “I think it makes the house merrier from the outside.”

“When did my kids get so smart?” I ask myself, then to Ben, “Good job.”

“How about we eat,” he says, and then he shouts a warning to his sleeping brother. “Bacon will be gone in sixty seconds.”

Nick is the first one seated at the table.

Use of the plastic Christmas cups with our morning meal turns all our thoughts to the identity of our true friends and the gift we expect to receive sometime today.

“What’s the seventh gift in the song?” Megan asks, but none of us is sure.

Nick volunteers to look up the lyrics to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” after the last piece of bacon disappears off the plate. He prints out a copy of the song and returns to the table, where Ben, Megan, and I are still debating whether one of their art teachers could be a suspect. Refusing to sing the words of the song as his sister requests, Nick reads off the list of gifts.

“Seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming. Geez, definitely not what I would be sending to a true love.”

We all stare at Nick. My mouth is hanging open.

“So, what would you be sending, and to whom?” Ben asks, but we all want to know.

“Not saying I plan to send anything to anybody, but if I did, I’d send cool stuff: candy, video games, DVDs.”

“That would be awfully expensive,” I say. “I like the gifts we’ve been receiving. They’re big enough to show someone cares without being too much.”

Nick mulls over the idea.

“Just in case we get Swedish fish or Goldfish crackers tonight, instead of seven swimming swans, I got dibs,” he says.

I volunteer to wash the dishes and send the kids to their rooms with plastic bags to fill with any outgrown clothes or toys. I plan to make a trip to the Goodwill donation trailer today to deposit the items we boxed up from the basement and Rick’s things. I don’t want to give myself a chance to change my mind and keep them.

I’m clearing away the remains of our breakfast, when I get a telephone call from an old friend of Rick’s. Terry Molnar had worked at Gem City Engineering with my husband for years.

“The guys at the shop bought some Christmas presents for the kids. I’d like to drop them off.”

We arrange to meet later in the week. I don’t mention the anonymous gifts or the cards. I decide to wait until Terry’s here at the house to tell him about them, so I can see his reaction.

It’s all beginning to make sense.

I can’t believe I never considered the guys from Gem City as our gift givers. Rick had worked there for more than twenty years. Many of his coworkers had also been close friends.

I decide to keep my suspicions to myself. If I’m right, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for the kids. Before Terry’s arrival, I will grant one of Megan’s Christmas wishes. I will bring our collection of Santa figures out of hiding tomorrow.

***

It’s nearly four o’clock by the time I load the trunk of my car with our giveaways and drive to Goodwill. The donation trailer is locked, but people have stacked an assortment of bags and boxes filled with clothes, toys, and household bric-a-brac underneath the trailer to give them protection from the weather.

A man is digging through the stockpile.

Holding a doll with wild white hair, he spits on his finger and tries to wipe a smudge off its face. I assume it didn’t work. He tosses the doll back into a box and continues his search.

I’m unsure whether to get out of the car or wait until he leaves. Then I get an idea. I walk over and talk to him.

“How old is your daughter?” I ask.

He stands up and turns to face me.

“She’s eight,” he says, looking down. “Did something stupid at work. Lost my job. I was hoping to find something to put under the tree.”

“Any luck?”

He shakes his head.

“Most of what people give, no one would want.”

I had felt that way a few days ago, and suddenly I am overwhelmed by a desire to make sure this man knows he is not the only one feeling desperate during these holidays.

I tell him about the gifts we’ve been receiving, the cards, the mystery, my anger when we found the poinsettia, and how I packed up the sheets my husband died on last night. He listens even though an icy wind blows and large, wet snowflakes are falling. I speak with no pauses, just words strung together like rosary beads.

When I finally take a breath, he looks at me and smiles.

“I guess some gifts are worth giving,” he says.

He extends a hand for me to shake. “My name is Charles.”

“I’m Jo. How about you help me unload some things from my trunk?”

Charles follows me over to the car. We unload bags from the basement first, then my bedroom. I save a Hello Kitty beach bag stuffed with a cornucopia of Megan’s outgrown girly apparel: fuzzy pink pajamas, skirts, a few sweaters, blue jeans, and basketball shorts. A bracelet-making kit that my daughter never opened, several stuffed animals, and a book on hair braiding stick out of the top.

The man looks at me and says, “Wow.”

“I’ve done some stupid things in my life, too,” I tell him.

“You don’t mind if I take these home?”

“I would mind if you didn’t.”

He stands rummaging through the bag, then stops and says, “Merry Christmas.”

For the first time this holiday season, I say the same.

“Merry Christmas, Charles.”

The words feel right.

***

When I return home, the house is empty. I go down to the basement, look in the bedrooms. Not a creature is stirring.

I check the garage. The engine on Ben’s car is cold, so I go back into the house and punch his cell number into my phone. I hear it ringing faintly, then the clatter of footsteps on the roof.

Raccoons had raided bags of stale bread from a neighbor’s garbage last summer, choosing our roof as their banquet hall and their commode. It was disgusting. Rick and I had walked the block asking neighbors to place heavy rocks on their trash cans to prevent the little rascals from getting inside. With their food supply cut off, the raccoons got the message and moved on.

My first thought when I hear the noise on the roof: they’re back.

I run to the back door via the dining room but find a ladder is blocking my exit. I can’t open the door without knocking it down, and I panic thinking my children may be on the roof trying to shoo away an animal that could carry rabies.

Outside, I find reindeer and raccoons aren’t the only animals taken with rooftops.

Nick is climbing over the roof near the ridge. Ben stands at the top of the extension ladder, evidently giving his brother directions. My sweet little Megan is holding the ladder steady.

Nick has been a roof climber since before he turned five. He never needed a ladder; he had death-gripping toes and strong arms. It had scared me breathless the first time I caught him up there, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years; when he was little he called the roof his “office.” He’s always climbing something, but I draw the line at the rooftop in winter.

“Everybody freeze.”

Nick loses his footing and slides. My heart jumps out of my chest, but he just laughs.

“Whoaaaa,” he says, stopping his fall just above the gutters. He chooses to shimmy down a deck post instead of using the ladder, which is still occupied by Ben.

“I told you it wouldn’t be bad,” Ben says, addressing his brother as if I wasn’t there. “It’s not that slippery, and it’s snowing.”

Megan looks at me and wilts.

“I told them not to do it. I told them you would be angry.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Ben says. “How was it, Nick?”

“Perfect. Had a great view in both directions. I’d have seen Mom pull up, if I had gotten to the ridge before she got home.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. They continue chatting about the vantage point from the roof as if it’s perfectly natural.

“Time out,” I shout.

The kids stop strategizing and look at me.

“You,” I say pointing at Ben and Nick, “put the ladder back in the garage, then all of you into the house, now.”

By the time the trio is seated on the couch, my heart is back where it belongs, but I’m angry at their recklessness.

“What were you thinking?”

They confess together.

Ben had summoned Nick and Megan down to his room for a strategy session to figure out how to catch our true friends in the act.

“We need a way to watch for them, without them knowing,” Nick had said. “We don’t want them to stop leaving the gifts.”

Ben comes up with two ideas: lie low on the floor of the garage with the big door open just enough to watch for cars, or go up on the roof.

Nick volunteers to take the high road.

“I told him it could be slippery,” Ben says, as if to make me feel better. “We were testing it out.”

Rick and I had taught our kids to be adventurous—hiking in the mountains, camping in the wilderness—and I feel somewhat responsible for their actions today. I have a feeling Rick would have been up there on the roof with them, if he had been here.

It’s Megan who realizes I’m not paying attention to the conversation.

“Earth to Mom?”

“We need to figure out when to go up. I don’t want to be lying on the roof any longer than I have to,” Nick says.

He still thinks this is going to happen. My children are crazy if they think I’m going to let them go up on a snowy roof at night, but maybe a stakeout by the garage door isn’t such a bad idea. I want to know who is leaving the gifts just as much as they do. I could layer the concrete floor with sleeping bags and blankets, make hot chocolate. It could be fun and we’d be together.

“Hellooo, don’t you think the gift givers will notice someone lying on the roof?” I ask.

“They’ll probably just think I’m a Christmas decoration,” Nick says.

“If you want to catch our friends, figure out a safe way to do it. Maybe tomorrow we can try Ben’s alternate plan.”

The boys head to the basement, and I fear another conspiracy may be afoot. Megan hangs out with me.

“Maybe we’ll have a snow day tomorrow,” she says hopefully. “Snow days all the way to Christmas break would be lovely.”

“Is it still snowing?” I ask.

Megan opens the front door and flips on the porch light. A small package sits in the snow outside the door.

“It’s here! The seventh gift!”

Ben and Nick hear Megan’s announcement and race back upstairs to confiscate the card. A debonair little snowman with a colorful string scarf and big red shoes smiles at us from the front cover. Inside, there are pictures of pine trees, and our family’s special version of the Christmas carol.

On the Seventh Day

of Christmas

Your true friends give to you …

Seven golden apples

Six holiday cups

Five angeled note cards

Four gift boxes

Three rolls of gift wrap

Two bags of bows

and

One poinsettia

For all of you

I let the boys fuss over the card. I’m pretty sure Terry’s visit later in the week will end the mystery, at least for me.

My daughter is admiring the seven gold apple ornaments, when Nick tries to grab them from her.

“Let’s put them on the tree,” he says.

She refuses to give them up.

“These are special,” she says. “I know where they belong, and it’s not on the tree.”

Chapter Eight
The Eighth Day of Christmas

With Megan overseeing our progress, the transformation of our home from everyday to holiday is nearly complete. It has taken an all-out Smith family effort to accomplish. By late afternoon the day after the golden apples arrive, I am surveying the house room by room, making sure it’s ready for our first holiday guest. Rick’s friend and coworker Terry Molnar is on his way.

Megan and I have exhumed my collection of Santa figurines, who now stand at attention on the sideboard in the living room. The ones that don’t fit are spreading the spirit of the season in some unexpected spaces. Made of glass, carved from chestnut, molded in porcelain and plastic, or hand sewn, each figure is a vessel of Christmas memories. A foot-tall Santa dressed in a green coat flashes the peace sign from behind a shower curtain in the guest bathroom, and I park a rotund Père Noël beside our bathroom scale, a reminder not to overindulge.

***

Rick and I had few contentious moments in our marriage, but the extent of my Santa collection definitely created several.

Once, as we were packing the figurines away for the season, Rick asked me which of the jolly old elves was my favorite. We were running out of storage space in the basement, and he thought it time to thin down the collection. I looked around: my sister Carol—Aunt Sugar to my kids because she always carried candy for them in her purse—had made weekly payments on the hand-carved, pipe-toting Santa dressed in red long johns. She believed paying for presents on the installment plan kept loved ones close to her heart all through the year, or at least until their gifts were paid off.

Her motto: “I don’t just give gifts, I make memories.”

Not all of my Santas are store-bought; several of my favorites are made of construction paper and cotton balls, presents from my children in the early stages of their artistic careers. Rick gave me only one, a weary little fellow with sad eyes. The blue-robed Saint Nick always seemed out of step with the rest of the happy crowd, and I asked my husband why he had selected that particular one for me.

“He carries the burdens of the world, so the rest of us don’t have to,” Rick had said. “Give him troubles. Give me your troubles.”

Then he had kissed me and whispered, “I love you.”

***

As the origin of each Santa pinballed around in my brain, I realized Rick’s question wasn’t that difficult to answer.

“All of them,” I said.

Rick had thrown up his hands then at the thought of finding room to store my seven boxes of chubby little dudes. He was the closet organizer, the cupboard cleaner, the guy who drew a diagram to pack a suitcase or rearrange furniture. I’m more of a “shove, stuff, and close the door quickly” kind of girl.

“You want me reorganizing the storage closet?” I had asked.

“My place in the family, right?” he had said.

I gave him a polite “yes dear,” and handed him the largest box.

This year I will repack the decorations myself, but I have the feeling his spirit will be standing there with me, especially if I fall back on my stuff-and-slam method. And while it’s painful to think about, I realize that I will cherish the moments that remind me of him.

I rearrange several of the Santas, then do a 360-degree scan around the room. The evergreen illuminating the front window still needs trimming, but the lights make the room festive. Nick has fashioned the pine sprigs that broke off its frozen trunk into a centerpiece for the table. I dig out a peppermint-scented candle and place it amid the greenery. When I light it, the minty aroma fills the house.

“Smells like candy canes,” Megan says, surveying the room approvingly. “We should buy some.”

I had driven to Bellbrook Chocolates earlier in the day and had walked right past a display of candy canes on my way to purchase six boxes of candy for Terry to bring back to the folks at Gem City. I don’t want to seem ungrateful if they are the source of our mysterious gifts.

“Next time I go to the grocery,” I promise my daughter.

Megan insists on greeting our guest in a too-small red sweater adorned with a polar bear dressed in Santa attire. The sleeves miss her wrists by two inches. I try to coax her into a lovely purple sweatshirt I bought last fall.

“This is the only Christmas sweater I have,” she says, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m wearing it.”

The boys are less concerned about their appearance. They wear dress shirts scented with Easy-On Speed Starch. I add extra under-eye concealer to my makeup regime.

Earlier in the day, I had scrubbed the family room floor, the kitchen, the bathrooms. I want Terry to see a mother in charge, a family recovering, kids under control. We are not perfect, but we are better. Christmas is hard work; I’m tired but also energized. If we learn Rick’s coworkers are orchestrating this game of Secret Santa for our family, I want them to know they have made a difference. I half expect the lot of them to show up on our doorstep, just like the gifts.

Even Ben agrees to be part of the welcoming committee, and I wonder if he shares my suspicions that his father’s coworkers are not just being friendly, but are true friends.

“I want to hear what Terry has to say” is all he acknowledges.

In the kitchen, my eldest and I fill green and red bowls with chips and pretzels for our guest. The offerings look paltry on the dining room table.

“We should have baked cookies,” Ben says.

I look at him and raise my eyebrow to say that none of us could have fit another chore into this day.

“Next year,” I tell him. “We’ll make cookies.”

He is fiddling with a twisty tie on the potato chip bag, but the darn thing keeps falling off. When it lands on the floor a third time, I pick it up.

“What’s on your mind, Kiddo?”

I rethink the old nickname when Ben lifts his face and looks at me. The maturity I see chiseled there is a new work of art.

“It won’t be long before he leaves me, too,” I say to myself. “But he will come back … with a wife, maybe grandchildren.”

“Is Christmas always going to be this hard?” he asks quietly. “We won’t have the gift givers to help us through the holidays next year. How do we make it without them, without Dad?”

“We’re learning,” I tell him.

We lean into each other.

“We will hold each other up.”

The doorbell rings, and we step away from each other.

“Let’s go meet our gift givers,” I say.

“You really think it’s the guys from Gem City?”

“Yep. We’ll know for sure in a minute.”

But Terry arrives alone, carrying Christmas stockings filled with candy, small toys, and gadgets for the kids. Though he has been my friend for more than twenty years, Rick was our connection. My husband’s absence makes the conversation between us awkward.

“I remember when I first met him,” Terry says, still standing by the door. “I went over to his house on a Friday night with his brother Tom. Rick was sitting cross-legged on the floor in between two huge stereo speakers. He was bouncing up and down to the beat of the music. I’ve never laughed so hard. I just loved him.”

Megan sits on the couch beaming, her large smile encouraging Terry to share more tales of her dad.

“Please, let me take your coat. Sit down,” I say.

Terry shakes his head.

“I can’t stay long.”

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