“How was your Christmas?” he finally said.
“Great. We made Dad’s stew and Grandma Dotty’s corn bread. Alice never could get the whole Santa-down-the-chimney concept. She wouldn’t unwrap her presents, either. She just carried the boxes around.”
“By next year she’ll be a champ. Gift holidays, they learn fast. I remember the first time I took Amanda trick-or-treating.”
“It was to my house.”
He wanted to smile; she could tell. “Yeah. She couldn’t figure out why she was dressed up like a pumpkin, but once you gave her the candy, she didn’t care.”
“She wore my mom’s green felt hat, remember?”
Cal looked at her. In his familiar eyes she saw a longing so deep and raw she wanted to reach out for him, tell him it would be okay. “I thought you’d forgotten all that.”
“How could I forget? We’ve been best friends for decades.”
He sighed, looked over at the tree. She got the feeling that she’d disappointed him again. That was starting to happen a lot, and she had no idea why. Then again, what she knew about a truly broken heart was only slightly more than she knew about kids. It was best, probably, to change the subject, get Cal thinking about something beside his cracked family on this special day. “Julia wants to adopt Alice. She thinks the kid needs permanence.”
“Good idea. How do you do it?”
“We start with a Motion to Terminate Parental Rights. If no one comes forward to claim her in the publication period, Julia’s in the clear.”
It was a moment before Cal said, “What if her folks finally do come forward? And they never knew she’d been found?”
Ellie and Julia had avoided that question like the plague. It was the one that could ruin it all. “That would be bad.”
“Washington bends over backward for biological parents. Even if they’re scum.”
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “I know.”
“So we go from hoping they show up to hoping they don’t.”
“Right.” Ellie paused, looked at him. They fell silent again. “It wasn’t quite Christmas without you.”
“Yeah,” he said with a faded smile. “Things change.”
Ellie didn’t want to walk down that road with him. Truthfully, she was afraid that if she did, she’d start thinking about her own loneliness. Being with Cal did that to her sometimes, reminded her of how much she’d missed out on in life. She got up and went into the kitchen. She poured two tequila straight shots and set them on a tray, alongside a shaker of salt. In the living room, she set the tray down on the coffee table, pushing his feet aside.
“What the—straight shots? On Christmas day?”
“Sometimes a mood changes on its own.” Ellie shrugged. “Sometimes it needs a shove.” She plopped down beside him. “Bottoms up.”
“What’s the salt for?”
“Decoration.” She clanked her glass against his and drank up. “Here’s to a better year coming up.”
“Amen to that.” Cal downed the drink and put his shot glass on the coffee table. When he turned to her again, he seemed to be studying her, looking for something hidden. “You’ve been in love a lot.”
She laughed. “And out of it a lot.”
“How do you … keep believing in it? How do you tell someone you love them?”
She felt her smile shake. “Saying it is easy, Cal. Meaning it is practically impossible. I pity the poor guy who falls for me.” She wanted to smile again but couldn’t. This whole conversation was depressing her. The way Cal was looking at her made it all worse. “Enough sadness. This is a holiday.”
She cleared the alcoholic evidence away and went over to the stereo. There, she put a CD in the player and turned the volume on high enough to bring the girls out of the family room, where they’d probably been watching another Hilary Duff movie.
“What’s going on?” Amanda asked, tugging on her askew, falling-out braid. The girls stood close together. All of them had sad eyes on this most magical of days.
“First off, you have presents to open.”
That made them smile a little, but not all the way.
“Then I’m taking you bowling.”
Amanda made a very grown-up face. “We don’t bowl. Mom says it’s for trailer trash.”
Ellie looked at Cal. “Are you telling me they don’t know about secret bowling?”
Sarah took a step forward. “What’th thee-cret bowling?”
Ellie bent down. “It’s bowling after hours, all by yourself, with the music blaring and all the junk food you can eat.”
“Mom would never agree to this,” Amanda said.
“I’ll have you know,” Ellie said, “that your dad and I used to work at the Big Bowl. And that’s why you’re the only kids in Rain Valley who get to know about secret bowling. Now, go get dressed.”
Sarah tugged on Ellie’s sleeve, said in a stage whisper, “C’n I be Princeth Fiona?”
“Absolutely,” Ellie said. “In secret bowling, you can wear whatever you want.”
Amanda looked up. “Can I wear makeup?”