Mads sat back in his chair and thought about how busy they’d been this Christmas season. They had plans to go ice skating the following afternoon with Remy from Sofia’s class. He knew that he’d wanted this year to be different but he wondered if he was filling the time with too many activities. He tried talking to his daughter, but frankly the words sometimes escaped him. He had no idea how to find out if she was doing okay. If he was helping her through this first Christmas without Gill the right way or if he was doing it wrong.
He hoped that he was doing it right. He checked his schedule and saw that he didn’t have any meetings until the end of the day and decided he’d leave early and go meet Sofia after school. He texted Jessie that he’d pick her up and about the party at Iona’s.
He had his driver drop him off in front of the Lycée Francaise, where Sofia went to school and stood to one side as the kids exited the building. He saw Sofia wearing her uniform, carrying something in one hand.
“Sofia.”
“Papa, I didn’t know you were coming to pick me up today,” she said, coming over to him, hugging him.
“I hope you don’t mind.”
“I don’t. Look what I made today at school.”
“What is it?” he asked, holding a picture up that she’d drawn. It looked like a cylinder with three matches on it.
“It’s a yule log. Did you know that the period leading up to Christmas is a festival of light?”
“I’d heard something about that,” he said. “Is this meant to be a log?”
“Yes. I ran out of time to color it,” she said. “Miss Pembroke sent home instructions if we want to make one for ourselves.”
He took her hand and led the way to their car, which was parked at the end of the block. “Do we want to?”
She smiled up at him. He noticed one of her front teeth was a little bit loose. She was going to lose a tooth. It was one of the things that Gill had mentioned she’d never get to see and Mads’ heart hurt.
“I do, Papa.”
He nodded and Sofia kept on talking, but he was thinking of all the things that Gill had missed and how much he missed her. They got in the car and Hamlisch drove them back to their building on the Upper East Side. The doorman was waiting for them when they walked through the lobby.
“Hi Greg,” Sofia said. “Want to see a picture I drew at school today?”
The doorman nodded. “I do.”
She showed him the drawing and he complimented her on it. “I have something for you too.”
“You do?” Sofia asked. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s from St. Nick.”
“He’s not a real person,” Sofia said. “Who really dropped it off?”
The doorman looked over Sofia’s head at him. Mads reached around to take the gaily wrapped packages from him. “It’s from Iona.”
“Oh, that’s nice. We don’t have anything for her, do we?” Sofia asked.
“She’s invited us to an Ugly Sweater Party,” Mads said. “She even provided sweaters for us.”
“When is it?”
“Tonight. Do you want to go?”
“Yes, Papa. I do. Do you think it will be fun? I wonder how ugly our sweaters will be.”
Sofia chatted all the way up to their floor and when they entered their apartment Jessie was in the kitchen with Sofia’s after-school snack. Mads left her to go down to his bedroom. He sat down on the edge of his bed. Then fell back, staring at the ceiling. He missed Gill. He hated that her illness had stolen these moments from her. She would have loved seeing Sofia as she was growing up. Becoming her own little person and yet at times more like him and then even more like Gill.
***
Iona was in her bedroom, fixing her lipstick. She heard the voices and the laughter from the rest of her apartment. Theo and Nico had arrived wearing matching sweaters. They looked very cute. Her mom had brought her dog Fifi. Valentina had on a sweater with Fifi’s picture and Fifi was wearing one with Valentina’s. It had cracked Iona up when she saw it.
It had also made her a little sad that her father had never appreciated her mom. She made everything so much fun with things like the sweaters, which her dad would have seen as a waste of money.
But Mads and Sofia hadn’t shown up and everyone had someone special here for them but her.
There was a knock on her door and she glanced up to find her mom in the doorway.
“Just checking on you,” Valentina said as she entered the room.
“I’m fixing my lipstick.”
“Uh huh, seems like you’re hiding out.”
“Mads didn’t show up,” she said to her mom. “I don’t know if I’m really meant to do this relationship thing. I mean at work it’s … hard but easier than this. I know how to achieve the result I want.”
Her mom laughed and came over to stand next to her, adjusting Iona’s hair behind her ear. “Darling, that’s the way life is. It’s not meant to be easy. And you’ve achieved more than enough at work.”
“Dad wouldn’t have thought so,” she said.
“Your dad would never say it to you, but he was proud of you. He thought you’d one day take over his position as CEO. He said you were hungrier than Theo.”
Tears burned her eyes. Her father’s words touched her. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Also don’t worry about Mads not being here. Children aren’t the best helpers to being on time.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“Let’s get back to the party,” Valentina said, taking Iona’s arm and leading her out of the room.
She mingled and directed her guests to the kitchen buffet for food and she was watching everyone dish up their bowls of chili when she’d realized that this was her life. She was so blessed in her family and friends. Too bad her father hadn’t let anyone close to him in this way.
The doorbell rang and Iona assumed it was Hayley, Garrett, and Lucy. Hayley had texted her earlier to say they were running late because Garrett had been hung up by something at work.
She opened the door to find Mads and Sofia standing there.
“Hello you two, I thought you might have had a conflict,” she said.
He shook his head and was smiling. “We didn’t.”
“I love my sweater, Iona. I know it’s supposed to be ugly but I love it,” Sofia said as she came around from behind her dad. The sweater was ballerinas wearing Darth Vader helmets. She’d seen it online and she knew that Sofia would like it.
“I thought you would,” she said. She didn’t bother trying to convince the little girl that the gift had been from St. Nick. She knew better.
Sofia came further into the room. Mads wore the sweater she’d bought for him: a red and green nylon one that said BAH HUMBUG on it.
“Thanks for this. I might wear it to work tomorrow,” he said.
“Ha. I know you won’t. Where is Jessie?” Iona asked.
“Her boyfriend invited her to go ice skating so I gave her the evening off.”
“Sounds like fun,” Iona said. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” Mads said. “We are, aren’t we, Sof?”
“Yup. Papa wouldn’t let me eat anything before we came down here.”
“Were you hungry? I said no to the bag of candy the neighbors dropped off. You could have had an apple.”
“I wasn’t hungry for an apple,” Sofia said. “But for chocolate.”
“I don’t have any chocolate but I do have chili,” Iona said.
Iona led the way into the kitchen and got them bowls of chili and then led them into the living room. Hayley and Garrett arrived a few minutes later, they wore matching sweaters with a dachshund on them and for Lucy they had a dog sweater with stick figures of a man and woman holding hands. Lucy and Fifi both got along well and soon were sitting on the floor near the fireplace.
Iona laughed when she saw it. After everyone finished eating they went into the living room to start watching “Rudolph” with everyone laughing and si
nging along. Iona realized as Sofia climbed on her lap to watch the movie she’d been given a real gift when she met these two.
They were turning into the kind of friends that she could count on and she felt so blessed to have them in her life. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Theo standing there.
He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her shoulder and she reached up to clench his hand. “I’m glad you two are here tonight.”
“Me too. I’ve missed you.”
She had missed him too but she couldn’t say that because her throat felt heavy with tears. She wanted to say they were happy tears or to blame it on her period but she knew she was overcome with emotion because everything was changing and she still felt, despite her new friends, that she’d stayed the same. That she was still the same woman she’d been at the beginning of the year.
Like everyone else had figured out life and she’d been left behind. And that wasn’t true. Nico leaned down and kissed her forehead before moving back over to Theo. And Iona turned her attention back to the movie but she wasn’t really paying attention to it.
Sofia’s head fell to her shoulder and she looked up at Iona. “The reindeer aren’t very nice.”
“No, they aren’t. Definitely on the naughty list,” Iona said after clearing her throat.
“But I wouldn’t run away,” Sofia said. “That’s not the solution.”
“It’s not?” Iona asked, happy to have this distraction from her own problems.
“No. Papa always says if you leave a mess it will be there when you come back.”
“Your papa is very smart,” Iona said.
“He is. But he leaves a mess in the bathroom.”
“He does?” she asked, curious as to what kind of mess he left. It was interesting to think she’d slept with him but didn’t really know him as well as she thought she did.
“Yes. He leaves his towel in a pile on the floor.”
“Are you telling secrets on me, Sof?”
“I just wanted to make sure Iona knows you can be naughty sometimes too,” Sofia said.
Iona laughed and Mads just shook his head. “This is the thanks I get for letting her stay up late.”
“You’re welcome, Papa,” she said, scooting over to sit between her and Mads. Sofia took both of their hands in hers and Iona just held the little girl’s hand and watched the movie, pretending that nothing had changed. But she knew that everything had.
Chapter 18
The fire crackled. The smell of the wood burning and the mellow feel produced by the brandy made it seem like all of Iona’s problems were worlds away. It had been a few days since her party and she had decided to stop pretending she didn’t want to make their relationship more solid, but still he was hesitating. Realistically, she knew it was past time for her to go back to her own apartment. She had a big promotion kicking off tomorrow morning that she wanted to be in store to oversee. But she didn’t want to leave.
She’d been encouraging Sofia to make a list for Christmas by telling her she could give it to her father and not Santa. Tonight she’d shown Iona a few of the items on there and asked what she wanted for Christmas.
Iona had always been one of those girls who took the time to make a Christmas list. To write down all the things she wanted and then being spoiled by her parents when it came to material things. She’d usually get them all. The first time she realized that Santa wasn’t real she’d been almost thirteen. She’d heard the stories at school and had stopped talking about the jolly man in the red suit to her friends, but somehow Santa had always delivered for her. Until that one Christmas when she’d waited for something money couldn’t buy. She’d craved just a little praise from her father and had asked for it each night in December as she’d looked to the North Star, whispering her wish. And on Christmas morning she’d had her usual pile of presents and nothing had changed with her father.
It had been sobering.
“More brandy?” Mads asked, returning to the living room. He still wore the thick gray cable-knit mock turtleneck sweater that made his blue-grey eyes even icier.
She shook her head. “No thanks.”
He poured two fingers into his own snifter and then sat down next to her. “You look very serious staring into the fire.”
“I was thinking about Sofia and Santa and remembering when I stopped believing.”
He stretched his long legs out in front of him, propping them on a leather hassock under the coffee table as his hand fell to her shoulder.
“When was that?”
“Sixteen.”
“Surely you stopped before then.”
“I had heard the stories at school but Christmas at my house is huge. And Santa never disappointed. Never,” she said, taking another sip.
“So, what happened?”
“I wanted something money couldn’t buy,” she admitted. “Something that couldn’t be delivered by Macy’s.”
“What was it?”
“My dad to be proud of me,” she said.
“Ah, I see … actually how did you think that would work?” he asked gently.
“I had been given an opportunity at school to attend the mock UN in DC and they only select a small number of kids in the entire US. I waited until Christmas morning to tell him. I had it all planned out in my head, how he would react and everything. I knew that Santa and the general Christmas magic would influence him and for this one morning I’d catch a glimpse of pride or maybe he’d even actually say, “good job”.
“But that didn’t happen. I followed him around all day waiting for some sort of Christmas miracle and nothing. Finally, he just told me to go and take the new car he’d gotten me for a spin,” she admitted.
He put his hand on her thigh and squeezed it softly, comfortingly.
“I never tried to ask for anything from God or the universe until Gill got sick. I prayed every night that the new drug would work. Not because I’d ever been deeply faithful but because I needed to believe that miracles could happen. And I’m not going to lie, a little bit of me wanted to believe what I saw in advertising and in holiday movies. That this really was the season of miracles. That Gill was going to beat her cancer and everything would go back to the way it was.”
She had no words listening to him. Hearing the gut- wrenching pain in his voice, she turned to him and saw him staring into the flames, watching them leap and dance. But Iona knew that Mads saw something else. He was seeing Gill and reliving her illness. “Tomorrow will be the day that we started to know the end was near. One year since she started to get really bad and the hospice nurse upped her dosage. I just can’t let go of the anger I feel. I went to church and raged at the priest. My mom had been sending me the Footprints in the Sand, psalm 77 print for years. Telling me that God would carry me when I needed him and instead I realized there were only one set of footprints because I was alone … well I had Sofia, who I was carrying.”
He didn’t say anything else and she took a deep breath. He was broken. But she’d known that from the moment they’d met in the elevator. When they’d become reluctant friends because they were both down on their luck, but unlike her who was taking a temporary hit, it seemed that Mads was down for the count.
How could she help him?
His faith in God and his relationship there was one he’d have to come back to on his own. She knew if she said that God sometimes delivered what was needed instead of wanted, she would drive a wedge between them that would never be budged.
“Why do you think they call it the season of miracles?” she asked instead.
“I’m not sure what that means. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”
He turned to face her. She saw the glint of tears in his eyes and knew talking about miracles wasn’t going to help him tonight.
“Oh, Mads,” she said. “Sofia is your miracle. She’s finding new traditions for you and making this Christmas special.”
“She is. I’m so blessed to have her. I was afraid wh
en Gill was first diagnosed that I wouldn’t be able to raise Sofia on my own. I suggested we ask her grandparents to raise her, but Gill … she had a temper when she got mad and that really ticked her off.
“She told me to stop feeling sorry for myself. That Sofia was going to be the best daughter in the world because she was part of her and me,” Mads said, his voice going quiet at the end.
Gill was wise. How hard it must have been for her to watch her husband and daughter as she slipped away from them. It made Iona want to cry.
“Do we want a good cry or do we need a laugh?” she asked after a few moments.
“Men don’t cry,” he said.
“That’s so last century,” she quipped back.
“Agree, but if I start, Io, I might never stop,” he said with a seriousness that just made her want to cry for him.
But that wasn’t going to help. She knew that miracles weren’t real. That she wasn’t going to magically transform his Christmas, but their friendship was real. And she did know how to make people laugh.
“Dance off.”
“What?”
“Sofia told me you had some moves back in the day and showed me a video of you boogie-ing with your brother.”
“We were drunk,” Mads said.
“You have natural rhythm.”
“You took ballet until you were fifteen,” he said. “I don’t think I can beat you.”
“Good.”
“I thought you were going to let me win,” he said.
“Why ever did you think that? We both are competitive.”
He nodded. “Okay, then, I’m not going to make it easy on you.”
“Fair enough.”
***
Mads was on the cusp of losing it. Really losing it. He knew it and he could tell that Iona did too. But as she turned to Alexa and asked the machine to play dance music, the first song to come up was the “Macarena”. She looked at him, with one eyebrow raised.
“I was the champ at school to this song,” she said. She got to her feet, shaking her hips to the music. “I’ll go first.”
She did a slow circle and then instead of doing the common line-dance moves did her own combination of salsa moves, which were distracting him. Making him forget about the holidays, this wretched first that was hanging around his soul like a lead anchor. Iona filled the room as she always did with her sunny personality and her sensuality.
Christmas at the Candied Apple Café Page 16
