The boy stiffened, but didn’t answer. She called again.
Chris jerked his head in the direction of the voice. “Your mom is calling.”
“She’s not my mom.” The boy finally released Kimmik, who ran to greet Chris. With a mighty sigh, Ryan trudged away.
Chris located the voice as coming from a woman standing on the second-story deck two houses down, and waved. “Merry Christmas, Sandy.”
“Merry Christmas,” she called back. “Ryan, hurry. We have to go now, or we’ll be late.”
With no discernible change in speed, the boy made his way toward her. Once, he looked back, the expression on his face like that of a starving man being dragged from a Thanksgiving meal.
Chris shrugged. Not his problem. He whistled, and Kimmik danced up to him, carrying the stick. He threw it ahead, playing fetch with Kimmik all the way home. He was shutting the gate when Dana’s jeep turned into the driveway. She waved before pulling into the garage. Chris slipped in the back door. When he arrived in the kitchen, Dana was there, unpacking a bag of groceries.
“Hey, how was the Santa gig?”
“Not bad.” He swiped another cookie from the rack and bit into it.
“If you’ll wait a little while, I plan to frost those cookies.”
“No need.” He took another bite. “They’re good like this.”
“So what are you doing running around in the cold with wet hair? Trying to catch pneumonia?”
“You sound like a mom.” He thought about that while he finished the cookie. “Well, maybe not our mom, but somebody’s mom. Actually, I realized Kimmik had gotten out and went to find him.”
Dana frowned. “How did he get out?”
“The gate was open and I didn’t notice.”
“That’s odd. It was closed when I let him out a couple of hours ago.” She rubbed Kimmik’s ears and looked into his eyes. “You haven’t learned to open the gate, have you?”
Kimmik declined to answer, rubbing his body against her legs. Chris went to pour himself a glass of milk to go with his cookies. “I doubt it. Must have not latched well, and blown open or something.”
Dana emptied a bag of tiny oranges into a wire basket. “Still no snow in the forecast. Good thing you found this Santa Claus job.”
Chris nodded. It would be, except today when Becky tried to pay him, he’d turned the check down. If Oliver had something wrong with his heart, they probably had prescriptions and doctor bills to worry about, and Chris didn’t feel right taking their money. Becky had tried to insist, but he’d said he wouldn’t cash the check even if he took it, and she’d finally backed down.
Dana grinned. “A friend of mine was at the Grizzlyco party the other night with her daughter and told me all about the Santa Claus there. You must feel like a rock star, having all those kids waiting in line to talk with you, and a pretty elf fawning over you.”
Chris shook his head. “Believe me, the elf is doing very little fawning. I’m not her favorite person.”
“You know her outside work?”
“I did, a long time ago.”
Dana’s ears perked up and Chris braced himself for the upcoming interrogation. When Dana was a teenager, Chris had left his family after a disagreement with their father. Nineteen years later, Dana came searching for him, and along the way had fallen in love with his roommate and best friend, Sam. Now that she’d married Sam and moved into the house with them, Dana was determined to catch up on everything she’d missed in Chris’s life. “What’s her name?” she asked.
“Marissa Gray.” He picked up a couple cans and set them in the pantry. “You don’t have anything planned for dinner, do you? Because I’m hungry for Thai. Do you want pineapple curry?”
“That sounds good.” She seemed to be accepting his change of topic, but the glint of curiosity in her eyes warned him she wasn’t giving up. Before she could frame another question, Chris pulled out his phone and started walking toward the stairs that led down to is bedroom. “I’ll call in the order.” He really wasn’t up to a conversation about his history with Marissa right now. No doubt Dana would get the whole story from Sam tonight.
“Chris?”
Too slow. He stopped without turning around. “Yes?”
There was a short pause before she spoke. “Get extra rice.”
BECKY STOPPED THE truck and trailer in the pullout beside the main road. A motley collection of mailboxes lined the edge of the pavement. Marissa hopped out to collect their letters. As she returned to the truck, she happened to glance up at Becky, catching her unaware. Worry lines formed deep furrows across her forehead, and the slump of her shoulders hinted at her exhaustion. Oliver’s illness was taking a toll on both of them. But when Marissa opened the door, Becky turned to smile at her, banishing any trace of sadness or fatigue. Marissa smiled back. “Good party today.”
Becky put the truck in gear and turned down the secondary road that led to the farm. “Yes. Chris is good with the kids.”
He was. And it was driving Marissa crazy. When they were engaged, Chris had as much as told her he wanted nothing to do with children, and yet he seemed to have a natural way with them. Marissa wondered, not for the first time, if his no-kids stance was only an excuse to get out of marrying her. But she didn’t need to lay all that on Becky. Her aunt had enough to worry about.
Instead, Marissa opted for loyalty. “He’s not as good as Oliver.”
“Well, that’s a given. Oliver is the master of all things Santa.”
“Yes, he is.” Marissa smiled again, thinking about her uncle’s constant research on Christmas traditions past and present. They drove along for another fifteen minutes, past the entrance to their solitary neighbor’s seasonal cabin, and turned in beside the faded Reindeer Farm sign with a stylized portrait of a reindeer pulling a sleigh. The truck rattled over the drive, which was in desperate need of gravel and grading, and came to a stop near the barn.
Marissa pulled down the ramp on the trailer. “Why don’t you go check on Oliver and let the aid go home? I’ll take care of the reindeer and everything.”
Becky looked relieved. “Thank you. I’ll do that. Leave the truck, and I’ll unload later.”
Marissa nodded, although she had no intention of leaving work for Becky. She unloaded the reindeer, brushed each one, and led them into their pen. “You girls did well today. Great party.” She gave each of them a pat on the rump before she left the pen.
It had been a good party. The homeschool kids were really into the magic of the reindeer and Santa Claus, and Chris was selling the whole child-loving, jolly old elf persona quite well. But, of course, it was an illusion.
And she should recognize an illusion when she saw it, having been fooled so many times. She’d been so in love with Chris. The day he put a ring on her finger, she was happier than she’d ever been. But then he’d started to withdraw, to push her away. When she tried to make plans, he’d change the subject. It all came to a head that weekend they’d skied at Alyeska. The day she’d brought up children.
Just outside the resort, they’d spied a family gathering at one of the Nordic ski trails—two boys, maybe nine and seven, a preschool girl riding on her dad’s back, and the mom with a baby in a front pack. The mother transferred the little girl and the baby into a pulk, one of those small nylon tents on a sled, while the dad got the two boys outfitted with skis and poles, all involving an incredible amount of noise and confusion. But eventually, the family started off down the trail, with the dad pulling the pulk behind him and the mom chasing after the two boys, who’d surged