All They Want for Christmas

by M. K. Stelmack

  Deidre’s admission pained Bridget. No way would she tell Deidre about the financial state of the house, especially when there was a solid chance they could sail through it this weekend.

  Deidre frowned. “What is it? Is there something else the matter?”

  “No,” Bridget said, and on a sudden impulse to hide her face from Deidre, she pulled her into a hug. “Just the usual stress.”

  Deidre’s arms came around her and she whispered into Bridget’s ear, “Those girls have chosen you to be their mother. You chose them. They’re not perfect. Isabella is always hungry and Sofia is always hungry for love. But there’s no one on earth who understands their needs better than you.”

  Bridget hoped Deidre could feel her nod because she wasn’t ready to let go of this woman who had in her own way mothered her as best as Bridget would allow. “Deidre. You know your mother’s dining set. The one Auntie Penny kept safe and is now yours?”

  “Yes?”

  “Last night, Jack brought two plates over to the restaurant and—and I accidently broke both of them.”

  If possible, Deidre squeezed harder. “Good. About time.”

  * * *

  JACK DIDN’T KNOW how much more he could take. He had dropped off Bridget at the pajama shop, run five errands that took him to all corners of Red Deer, and yet he returned to find her still making her selection.

  She had narrowed it down to four styles. One flannel with teacups, one with snowmen, another grey with red trim and reversible bottoms and a thin cotton pair in white and blue. She stroked the lapels, turned them this way and that on the display hangers. He suffered through her trying them on for size and then turning around in front of the mirror as she conferred with the salesclerk. She was twisting his brain around, too, because as hurt as he was, he also wanted to buy her every single one.

  Wearing teacups, she turned from the mirror to him. “What do you think?”

  “If I pick one, will you take them, no questions asked?”

  She shoved her hands in her hair and gave an impatient scratch. “You can’t pick only one because none of them have all the right sizes.” She walked over to the selected styles, teacups tipping and sliding. “These two have only sizes for the girls, and only this one has for the sisters and girls but not Deidre, and with this one, I know Deidre feels better in the lighter weight—”

  “We’ll get the same ones for the girls, we’ll get another matching set for Krista and Mara and a third different one for Deidre. Deal?”

  She set to gnawing her cheek. “They are my presents.”

  He’d said “we.” How long would it take him to undo his dream of them as a couple? “Fine. You choose, then.”

  He had a thousand things to line up for the dinner service this weekend, the most critical weekend for the immediate future.

  He’d text Mano about dark chocolate and steak.

  “Jack?”

  Bridget held up the two patterns. “You decide. It’s for the girls.”

  Now she wanted his input? Right, so long as both their names weren’t on the present. He pointed to one with snow people on skis. His choice was handed to the salesclerk to retrieve sizes.

  She replaced the snow people one with another pattern. “For Krista and Mara.”

  The light blue ones with snowflakes and matching camisoles, hands down.

  His aunt got the ones with teacups because as a promotion, she also got a teacup and saucer as part of a rewards program for belonging to Cozy Comforts. The restaurant should have a loyalty program. Did he have the time to roll that out for Friday’s dinner service? If he had time to sit in a pajama shop, then yes. Keep your eye on the bottom line, Jack Holdstrom.

  At the counter, he noted the number of pairs. “What about you?” he said. “You always get a pair, too.” Penny—his mother—had always sent him a card with a picture of them in theirs. It was the only card he ever got anymore in this age of Christmas memes and gifs. He threw out the old photo when he received the new one.

  “That was always with Auntie Penny,” Bridget said quickly. “No need now, especially with money so tight.”

  “Did you know that Penny sent me a photo of you two in Christmas pajamas every year?”

  From the surprised look on her face, he knew the answer. “Last year, it was red plaid, the year before, pink with stars, before that—” he shrugged “—you get the idea.”

  She’d probably refuse, but he plunged on. “Point is, you could start a new tradition. You have even more family for the photo this year.”

  “But I really—” She stopped, began to chew her cheek, stopped again. She fingered the snowflake pattern on her sister’s pajamas. Was she seriously considering his change of plans?

  “My present to you.” He pointed to the snowflake pajamas. “Another one of these.”

  Dismay lengthened the clerk’s face. “I’m so sorry. But these were my last two in this size. I have one in extra large.”

  He was not paying good money to see Bridget on Christmas morning in droopy pajamas.

  The clerk clapped her hands. “I have the perfect solution!” She ushered them to a corner where two mannequins, man and woman, wore a matching pair. Hers pink with soft gray lines and his gray with soft pink. “What do you think?”

  The pink one was cute. “That’ll work,” he said.

  The clerk smiled. “And because you are buying so many, I can give you the men’s one for half off.”

  “That’s not necessary,” he said.

  Bridget reached to touch his arm, froze and let her hand hover there. “You might, as well,” she said softly. “It’ll look weird if you don’t have a new pair and everyone else does.”

  “I’ve never worn a pair before,” he said. “Why start now? Besides, it’ll look as if we’re—” A couple. Parents.

  “We are still partners of sorts,” she said softly.

  Of a restaurant, a house...and pajamas. “Are you establishing a new tradition for us, Bridge?”

  She drew out her debit card. “The tradition has always been to buy pajamas for my family. That hasn’t changed.”

  It had; it had worsened. Demoted to a kind of cousin, the girls cast even further out. He regretted suggesting the new tradition. He didn’t want to carry around a photo where he and Bridge were both in it, but not together.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Jack was discussing with Mano what to do if their supplier couldn’t deliver their order of green beans when there was a heavy crash from Mara’s unit.

  “Bridget up there?” Mano asked.

  “No, she’s picking up the girls and dropping off the final order of buns to the school. It’s probably Mara.” They stared up. “I suppose I should go see if everything is okay.”

  A second thud and Jack swore he saw a ceiling tile quiver. “Good idea, before she breaks through.”

  Jack saw the problem as soon as he entered Mara’s unit. Krista stood with a weight ball in her hands. Mara sat in the red recliner he’d found her and Bridget curled up in like kittens.

  “There you are,” Krista said and set down the ball. “See, Mara? I told you it would work.”

  “You dropped the ball deliberately?”

  “You wouldn’t have come up otherwise.”

  “Why not text or call?”

  “Because we would’ve still had to come up with some bogus excuse about why we needed you up here, and that’s just a big waste of time. We figured concern for the structural integrity of the restaurant would get you moving.”

  “What do you want?” He glanced around for something to be lifted, drilled, smashed.

  Krista perched on the wide arm of the recliner. “Things between you and Bridget are still electric, but not in a good way.”

  “You could say that. What has Bridge said?”

  “We tr
ied last night but she won’t talk. She’s also the one that didn’t tell us she was engaged all those years ago, either.”

  Which meant they probably didn’t know that he’d proposed again. “If she’s not talking, then neither am I.”

  “Except,” Krista said, “we live with you two.”

  “Not for long, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Even when we move out,” Mara said, “you and Bridge are family. You and the girls. It will always matter.”

  Jack shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. Family. He’d already lost out on Bridget; he didn’t want to lose his cousins or aunt, too. For his sake and the girls’. Especially for the girls. A thought occurred to him. “Do you think Auntie Penny finally decided to reveal that she was my mother because of Sofia and Isabella?”

  “Certainly wasn’t for our sake,” Krista huffed. “I mean, what was she doing holding out on us for our entire lives?”

  “She had promised my dad not to say anything,” Jack countered. Was he actually coming to the defense of his mother?

  “He died three years ago, and there’s nothing to indicate she made some kind of deathbed promise to him not to tell all of us her secret,” Krista said. “She robbed us of you and might have continued her deception if your circumstances hadn’t changed.”

  Mara placed a warning hand on Krista’s knee. “This is Jack’s mother you’re bashing.”

  “She doesn’t feel like my mother. I’m going to need years of your therapy, Mara, before I figure out how to deal with her.” He was only half-joking.

  “All of us will,” Krista amended. “You have group rates, Mara?”

  “I don’t think it counts if the therapist is part of the group.”

  “You’re angry with her, too?”

  Mara looked at her sister dryly. Jack felt a sudden kinship with these two women, bound together in their sense of betrayal by a dead woman. In his anger with Penny, he’d forgotten that his cousins had their own, too. “I guess the hardest part for me is that as angry as I am with her, I’m also thinking that she was scared.”

  Mara tilted her head. “Oh?”

  “Scared of her entire family finding out the truth and freezing her out. Or who knows, maybe even the town turning on her. Maybe in her mind it was better to have something fake, than nothing at all.”

  “Wow,” Krista said. “That’s something Mara might say.” She looked to her sister. “What do you think?”

  Mara was studying Jack. “I’m wondering if you made this conclusion before or after your current falling-out with Bridget.”

  “After.”

  “Ah. You came up against our sister’s tendency to hold on to whatever she has, instead of reaching for more.”

  Krista looked from one to the other of them. “What am I missing?” She settled on Jack. “Were you thinking about marriage again?”

  He shuffled his feet. “More than thinking.”

  Krista gasped. “You asked!” She turned to Mara. “I win.”

  “But that’s finished,” Jack said. “She refused.”

  “There’s no chance of reconciliation?” Mara asked.

  He’d spent every second since coming back to Spirit Lake trying to win her over. And in the end... He shook his head. “She doesn’t believe that I want her for anything other than as a mother or a business partner, and since I come with the girls and the restaurant, we’re kind of at an impasse.”

  He released a breath. “All I care about, all I’m allowed to care about, is that we make the last of the house payments on Monday.”

  His cousins drooped. “I’m so sorry we can’t help you,” Mara said. “If it was any other month, then I could throw something in the bucket.”

  “Me, too,” Krista mumbled.

  “Believe me, I understand,” he said. “I’m optimistic it’ll happen. If nothing goes wrong.”

  Mara gnawed the inside of her cheek. Krista bit hers. It wasn’t a Bridget thing; it was a Montgomery-sister thing. “You do know,” Mara said slowly, “that a blizzard is forecasted for this weekend, right?”

  No. Let Mara be wrong for once. He pulled out his phone, tapped on an app. Snow starting Friday noon. Continuing through the night. Accumulations of forty centimeters. Dropping to minus twenty-five Celsius. Blowing snow Saturday. All unnecessary travel not advised.

  Skidding along streets in a blinding snowstorm to come to a restaurant definitely fell under the category of unnecessary. They’d be lucky to get anyone.

  “Forecasts change all the time,” Mara said. Krista nodded unconvincingly.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, unable to muster anything more profound.

  Mara stood and hugged him. “Don’t give up, Jack. Not on the house or Penny’s. Or Bridge.”

  “Especially Bridge,” Krista said softly. “Everything else can come and go, but she’ll still be here.”

  She said it as if it was a compliment and not his greatest single frustration with Bridge. There was a higher probability that an Arctic high-pressure system would change direction before she would.

  * * *

  BRIDGET DEKED AROUND Jack with her two full plates and Jack ducked a shoulder to pass her with the coffeepot. He’d announced that morning he would enact his new policy to reduce the customers’ refills in order to hustle them out the door sooner. She couldn’t persuade him that the cents saved weren’t worth the loss of the customers’ goodwill. “I’ll take my chances,” he said.

  She set the plates in front of the people at her table, ones who hadn’t come in for a long time. “Eggs Benedict and the house special with eggs scrambled, a double order of bacon and potatoes.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Marlene signal to Jack for coffee. He strode over to her, like out of a Western, his coffeepot cocked and ready to fire.

  “Anything else I can get you?” Bridget asked. They smiled and told her everything looked great. Two happy customers and—

  “I asked for a top-up. This is more like a top-down,” Marlene said to Jack’s retreating back.

  Nothing wrong with the food at this establishment. Bridget eyed Jack. It was the service that was wanting. She edged closer in case she could mount an intervention.

  “Sorry, new management policy,” Jack said. More specifically, his. “Second refill is half the size of the first. Third is half the size of second, and so on.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the start of the week, but because you are a long-time customer, you got a three-day grace period.”

  Three days in which she and Jack had worked the front as if neither existed to the other. At least, that was the way Jack handled it. She’d taken his lead, and kept to herself. Gone was his banter, the intimate smile as he slipped past her, the let’s-talk look. He talked to the customers. She talked to the customers. Jack talked to Mano; she talked to Mano. They didn’t talk to each other.

  Marlene looked over at Mel and Daphne. “Did you know about this?”

  Mel shrugged. “First I heard of it.”

  “I order tea,” Daphne said. She suddenly looked alarmed, and sprang open the lid of her teapot to check the water level.

  Bridget swept over to another table of almost regulars. They had started coming in every Wednesday. Business partners who used breakfast as a time to regroup and recharge. Their attention had drifted over to the exchange between Jack and Marlene. “Everything all right here?” she asked.

  “We were thinking of asking for another coffee,” the guy said.

  “Oh, sure, not a problem.”

  On Bridget’s way past Marlene, her long-time customer said, “Why would you ever come up with such a stupid policy?”

  Bridget could flatly deny it. Tell her that the tight-lipped coffee slinger over there had decided to deprive Marlene, who dealt with abused children and a bungled system every day, all day, to save the restaurant four-p
oint-two cents of coffee on a thirteen-dollar meal.

  But, a united front and all.

  “Nothing’s in stone, Marlene. All feedback is noted.”

  Marlene held up her cup, her piddle of coffee now weaponized. “Note this. While my coffee remains this empty, I will pay half of my bill and the third day I will pay half of that half, and so on.”

  “I hear you, Marlene,” she said quietly. Jack had returned the coffeepot to its place and was watching her exchange with Marlene.

  She came behind the counter and both she and Jack reached for the coffeepot at the same time, their hands colliding on the dark handle. “I will take care of it,” he said, his lips barely moving, Clint Eastwood–style.

  “I think I’d better,” she murmured. Two customers at the bar huddled over their brew, watching every movement.

  “I made a customer dissatisfied, and I will fix it,” Jack insisted.

  They yanked on the handle at the same time. Their combined force sloshed hot coffee over the top and onto Jack.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  In answer, he set the coffeepot back on the burner very slowly and removed his apron, with its brown, spreading stain, very slowly. The coffee had formed a wet patch on the front of his jeans and down his right leg.

  He exited to the back.

  Bridget glanced around. Absolutely everyone, even Marlene, had found something else to look at. Bridget very slowly took the pot, wiped the outside dry and poured coffee to the brim for everyone, and everyone said their meal was good and no, they didn’t want anything, just the bill, please and thank you.

  When Mel and Daphne came to the cash register to pay, Daphne whispered, “Is everything okay?”

  “We’re just stressed.”

  “Things do seem a...little tense between you two this week.”

  “I’ll say,” Mel said. “Warmer outside.”

  There was no way they were leaving without some kind of explanation, so she whispered, “We’re experiencing some temporary cash-flow problems.”