Shotgun

by Marie Sexton

  All in all, I didn’t have to get out of bed to know this would be the best Christmas I’d had in years.

  Lamar stirred, rolling over and nestling closer to me. I held him and breathed in his now-familiar scent. I debated waking him, caressing him into alertness so I could hear the way he sighed when I touched him. I considered telling him for the thousandth time how much joy it brought me, simply waking up next to him. Nothing in the world could have made my Christmas more complete.

  But I had other things to do first.

  I dressed quietly and crept down the hallway to the living room. I opened the curtains on our big front window and stopped short, staring out at the lawn. Snow had fallen during the night, leaving the world buried under a pristine glittering blanket. I’d lived through more than thirty Christmases in Colorado, and yet very few of them had been white. None of them had been as perfectly picturesque as this—one more bit of splendor in an already magical day.

  We’d left the tree lights on all night, because that was tradition, just like it was tradition for Naomi to leave out cookies, even though she was old enough to know I was the one who ate them as I filled her stocking. This year I’d stuffed it with makeup, nail polish, and iTunes cards while arguing good-naturedly with Lamar about whether or not gifts from Santa should be wrapped. He said yes, they should be wrapped and left under the tree like all the regular presents, but in my family, Santa’s gifts were special. They were always left unwrapped and prominently displayed. Lamar thought I was crazy. I didn’t mind. I looked forward to arguing over Santa’s aversion to giftwrap for years to come.

  I put the kettle on for tea—I’d let Lamar decide which kind we drank today—then I snuck into the garage. I had one final present for Lamar. I’d hidden it in my tool chest, knowing he’d never look there for anything. I tagged it from Santa and put it in front of the tree.

  Unwrapped, of course.

  Finally, I put the ham in the oven and turned on some Christmas music, then went to check on my late-sleeping family.

  A glance into the bedroom showed Lamar already awake, standing naked at the window, peeking through the curtains. “Finally,” he said, smiling at me. “Real snow.”

  Funny how he’d originally dreaded it, and yet now that it had materialized, he looked positively gleeful. “Maybe we can talk Naomi into building a snowman with us after breakfast,” I said.

  His smile grew. “I’d love that.”

  I knocked on Naomi’s door. I knocked and knocked while Lamar dressed in pajama bottoms and my Grinch T-shirt.

  I finally heard Naomi groan.

  “Wake up!” I called through the door.

  “Dad! Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean we have to get up at the butt crack of dawn.”

  “Don’t you want to see what Santa brought you?”

  “I’m too old for Santa.”

  I’d expected that. “Okay,” I said. “I guess this new laptop under the tree is for me then.”

  Lamar laughed as the sounds of Naomi frantically scrambling around her bedroom reached our ears. A moment later, her bedroom door flew open. “Are you serious?” she asked, her eyes bright with excitement. She’d tried to dye her blue hair red for Christmas, and as a result, it was now eggplant purple.

  I shrugged. “I’d tell you to go see for yourself, but Santa doesn’t leave gifts for skeptics.”

  She squealed and tore past me down the hallway.

  “I think he left something for you, too,” I said to Lamar as I followed him to the living room.

  “Is it the Imperial Star Destroyer?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  It wasn’t the Star Destroyer. It was the Battle of Helm’s Deep, with just over thirteen hundred pieces.

  He laughed when he saw it. “I guess I know what we’re doing after dinner.”

  We didn’t open any of the regular gifts yet. We’d decided along with Elena, Greg, and Dimitri to do that together, all six of us as one big family. Once they arrived and added their stack of presents to the pile, we’d dig in. But that wouldn’t be for another hour or two. That meant the morning belonged to us.

  We ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then put on all our winter gear and headed outside. The snow was too dry to make a decent snowman, but that didn’t stop Lamar and Naomi from trying. By the time they were finished, Lamar’s cheeks and nose were bright, rosy red from the cold, making his blue eyes more striking than ever. Naomi’s purple hair stood in a wild mess around her head, because she’d refused to wear a hat. Their snowman looked more like one of Naomi’s lumpy pumpkins than Frosty, but Lamar happily put his earmuffs on its head and an old scarf around its middle, having decided the poor thing didn’t actually have a neck. Finally, the two people I loved most in the world stepped back to examine their creation, standing arm in arm in the snow-reflected glory of the sun.

  “He’s fantastic!” Naomi exclaimed.

  “He really is,” Lamar said, sounding absolutely sincere.

  They both turned to me for confirmation.

  “Perfect,” I agreed.

  My answer had nothing to do with the snowman.

  About the Author

  MARIE SEXTON lives in Colorado. She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Her imaginary friends often tag along. Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MarieSexton.author

  Twitter: @MarieSexton