“Who was that?” Connor asked.
“I don’t know, buddy. I haven’t got a clue. Come on. How about we head inside and have some oatmeal? I think I’m starting to freeze.” I did know who the mystery figure was, though. It was all too obvious. Sully must have walked right past us playing around on the lawn when he dropped off the presents. He must have slipped by, less than fifty feet away, and none of us had seen him. I slid the small present into my jacket pocket, ushering the children inside, and I couldn’t help but ask myself why. Why would he bother sneaking onto the property to bring the children a present? To bring me a present. After all he’d said, it made no sense that he would go to such extreme lengths, walking so far in the cold, so early in the morning. Why hadn’t he just driven his truck?
I didn’t get to spend too long analyzing the man’s behavior. Breakfast had to be made, and then the children spent two solid hours ripping open their gifts and playing with their toys. Thankfully I’d had the foresight to order everything for them online weeks earlier, so Jerry’s vanishing act hadn’t affected me in any way.
Connor and Amie, without meaning to, ended up opening Sully’s presents last.
For Connor, a beautiful, small telescope, made of brass and maple wood. As soon as he opened the box and took out the complex looking article inside, I knew Sully had made it. You couldn’t buy that kind of craftsmanship anymore. Everything was machine made, but Connor’s telescope was unique, the wood hand-turned and sanded, the workings smooth and breathtaking. Connor held it reverently, eyes round and amazed. “It’s awesome,” he said breathlessly. “So much better than my binoculars. I’ll be able to see the stars with this.”
“You sure will, buddy.”
“Best present ever. I can’t wait for it to go dark so I can try it out.”
Amie’s gift was just as impressive. At first it looked like a box full of random, sanded and varnished pieces of wood. All three of us stood over the open packaging, eyeing the contents with frowns of confusion on our faces until Amie yelped.
“I know what it is! I know! I know!” She dropped down to the floor and began pulling out the pieces and laying them out in front of her, at which point it dawned on me, too: they were bones. Dinosaur bones. Sully had hand carved her a simplified, to-scale skeleton of what turned out to be (after many hours of playing where-the-heck-does-this-piece-go?) a Velociraptor.
Amie was uncontainable.
Rose showed up in the afternoon, and together we made Christmas dinner. We exchanged gifts—I’d bought her a new Coach purse online. She’d bought me a beautiful cashmere scarf all the way from Scotland—and once we were done with the food and the gifts, and the children were crashed out face first on the sofa, she turned to me and said, “Off you go, then.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Don’t play coy with me, girl. I may have pretended I didn’t know what was going on before, but I’ve witnessed my fair share of Fletcher-infatuated women to recognize one when I see one now. So go. And tell him Merry Christmas from me, okay? I nailed a sock full of coal to his front door this morning. I’m sure he saw the funny side.”
I sat there, debating whether I should stay and argue with her, denying any knowledge of this Fletcher-infatuation she was referring to, or whether I should just gracefully accept defeat and come clean. In the end, there was only one thing for it.
“I’m really sorry,” I told her, groaning. “It wasn’t meant to happen. He’s just…he’s so infuriating. He gets to you, and then he gets to you some more. Before you know it, he’s all you can think about, and you find yourself wishing you’d never laid eyes on him in the first place, but it’s too late, and—”
“And he’s the one.”
“The most inappropriate, unorthodox, unreliable one there ever was.”
Rose gave me a pitying look. “Don’t we all just know it? Funny how the knowing doesn’t change anything, isn’t it?”
I hung my head, feeling pretty sorry for myself. “It’s the worst.”
******