by Susan Wiggs
In addition to the bacon, there was a big dish of berries and a tray of eggnog pancakes, which Dad only made at Christmastime. The maple syrup was warm and served in a pitcher, and there were big glasses of cold milk to drink. There was cereal, fruit, eggs and potatoes, a tray of pastries and bright red berry juice. Charlie was in heaven.
“He said your breakfast is epic,” said Darcy.
“He’s right,” said Dad. “Try this.” He fed her a bite of eggnog pancake, dipped in syrup.
She made a funny face, eyes crossed, hand over heart. “It’s like I’ve seen the face of God,” she said.
Darcy was funny. She seemed nice. If she was going to end up being Dad’s girlfriend, Charlie figured he was okay with that. Of course if they stayed together, she would become the stepmonster. His friends who had stepmoms called them stepmonsters. It was a risk.
At the moment, he wasn’t going to worry about it because the breakfast was delicious and the day was shaping up to be a total blast.
“First,” Dad said, “we are going to hit the slopes.”
“Hit them with what?” asked André.
“Ha-ha,” Charlie said. “He means skiing or snowboarding.”
“I only had a couple of lessons,” said André. “I’m not very good at it.”
“I’ve got you all set up for Powder Hounds. They’ll help you out,” said Dad.
Finally a sport André didn’t dominate. In all other sports, he was the best.
“Later, we’re going to town for a little shopping, to watch the tree lighting and the Christmas parade. You’re all going to see Santa, too,” said Aunt India.
“Do you guys believe in Santa?” Bernie demanded.
The song on the radio switched to “Jingle Bell Rock.”
And there it was. The horrible question Charlie did not want to think about. Yet it was the one that pressed like a big invisible weight on his mind.
Here was the thing. There were some kids in his grade who claimed there was no such thing as Santa Claus. And they were always the cool kids, so if you said you did believe, then you were toast because they totally made fun of you and made you feel like a complete idiot.
But Charlie couldn’t not believe. He knew, deep down in the most secret part of himself, that Santa Claus was real.
Now he and André looked at each other. It was a stare-down. Who would blink first? If Charlie said what he really believed, he risked looking like a fool in front of his friend.
But if he said he didn’t believe in Santa, and then it turned out André was a believer, then he would be messing with a kid’s true belief, and that just wasn’t cool.
They were waiting for an answer. “Well,” he said, “um...”
“Are you kidding me?” Darcy burst in. “Why do you even have to ask? Anyone with half a brain believes in Santa. These guys look like between them they have half a brain. Together they probably have a whole one. Hey—‘Good King Wenceslas,’ my favorite carol. Turn up the radio, would you?”
Whew, thought Charlie. He didn’t have to answer. He glanced at André, who looked equally relieved, though Charlie wasn’t sure why.
“Have you been really good all year?” asked Aunt India.
Charlie stared at the floor.
“What is it, buddy?” asked his dad.
“I got in trouble at school.” He’d been hoping he wouldn’t have to confess, but his dad had a way of finding stuff out.
Dad frowned. “You’ve never been a troublemaker at school.”
“I brought something for show-and-tell I wasn’t supposed to have. This kid Isaiah said they were called Ben Wa eggs. The teacher told me to put them away This Very Instant.”
Darcy and Aunt India had a fit. They tried to stay quiet, but he could tell they were dying. Charlie still wasn’t a hundred percent sure why the little boxed set of balls was such a problem. His mom had said she’d explain when he was bigger.
“Yeah, uh, it’s probably a good idea to check with an adult before you bring something to show-and-tell. When I was a kid I brought in a snake. We practically had to peel the teacher off the ceiling.” Dad was grating a chocolate bar into a pot of cream for hot chocolate, which made everyone stop talking about getting in trouble.
While they gorged themselves on breakfast, the other kids and grown-ups showed up, and the kitchen and dining room got very loud with clattering dishes and talking and making plans for the day. André’s sister, Angelica, was the last to arrive, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She looked really cute in her pink fuzzy slippers, clutching a patched-up stuffed dog she called Patchy Bowwow.
“I bet you’re hungry.” Dad hoisted her up onto her bar stool.
“Can I have a pancake?”
“You bet.” Her face lit up when she saw that the pancakes were shaped like stars and trees. That was Aunt India’s doing. She was a professional artist and she couldn’t help making things fancy. She had used a metal cookie cutter to pour the pancake batter in.
“We get to see Santa today. What are you going to ask Santa for?” Bernie asked her.
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Angelica. With all those missing teeth, she didn’t really say the letter S right, but she was getting better. “I’m going to tell him I need to see my mom, because I want her to be there when I sing my song at the church on Christmas. Logan’s friend Maureen is in charge of the Christmas pageant, and she gave me a song to sing.”
Charlie whipped a glance at André. But André was already carrying his dishes to the sink. “Let’s go get ready,” he said, and went down the hall and up the stairs without waiting to see if Charlie followed.
Alone in the bunk room, they pulled on long johns and snow pants, getting into a suspenders-snapping contest neither of them won, but it made them both giggle like hyenas. Under orders from Grandma Marion, they made their beds. The beds never looked the same as when a professional grown-up did it.
“At least we made the effort,” Charlie said, mimicking his grandmother, which made them both laugh again.
“Hey,” said André, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you believe in Santa Claus?”
And there it was. That question again. Did he say yes and be accused of being uncool? Or did he say no and risk losing his Christmas dream?
“Do you?” he asked André.
“The whole world is all about Santa Claus, everywhere you look. Decorations, stockings, songs, school plays, everything. How could the whole world be wrong?” He frowned, then snapped his fingers. “We should figure out a way to prove it, once and for all.”
“Yeah!” Charlie said. “Let’s do it.”
“How? Do we set a trap or something? Or a camera?”
“What’s this I hear?” Darcy stuck her head in the doorway. “We’re talking about trapping Santa?”
Charlie’s cheeks felt hot.
“You know the part of the song that goes, ‘You’d better watch out’?”
Charlie and André nodded in unison.
She pursed her lips. “Well, what it means is that you have to be careful. Because if you start questioning his existence, you’re already in trouble.”
Chapter Fourteen
Logan had a crush on Darcy. He admitted to himself that it felt good. It was a big crush, maybe the biggest he’d ever felt, one that bounced around inside him as he went through his day. One that made him keep glancing at the clock and wondering what she was doing and wishing he was doing it with her.
Was she snowboarding on the fresh powder that had fallen last night? Having lunch with his sisters at the Powder Room? Sitting in front of her laptop, telecommuting to her job?
At his office in town, he had a meeting with Mason Bellamy, Adam’s brother and the finance guy who had organized the investor group for the resort. Logan was supposed to be going over business matters with him, but he had trouble concentrating.
“It’s that girl,” said Mason, nudging him after about the third time he drifted off, staring out
the window at the snowy afternoon. “The one you were telling me about.”
He nodded, reluctantly pulling his attention back to the spreadsheets on the desk in front of him. “I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else.”
“Girls will do that to you.”
“You know what’s weird is that my family likes her.”
“How is that weird?”
“All my exes were girls my family disapproved of.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re exes.”
“I don’t want my family’s opinion to matter that much.”
“Hey, it does. Get used to it.” Mason loosened his shirt collar and spread his arms with a laugh. “I’m a Bellamy. I’m used to family matters.” He was only visiting Avalon, having come to town to help his ailing mother. So far, he was not adjusting well to small-town life. But his mother’s affairs needed sorting, and Mason, the moneyman, was the one to do it. “So,” he said, “you’re interested in a girl they all like. What’s the problem?”
“I keep thinking there’s something wrong with this picture. When I was a kid, I used to actively seek out the wrong kind of girl, just as a kind of f-you to my parents.” Logan drummed a pencil on the surface of the desk.
“Yeah, we all did that.”
“And then I pulled the ultimate f-you and knocked some girl up.”
“And let me guess. They got over it and ended up being awesome grandparents to your boy Charlie.”
Logan nodded. “Okay, yeah. They drive me nuts. They always have. But they’re the only folks I’ve got.” He settled back and opened a new window on his laptop. “So we’ve got the year-end board meeting coming up for Saddle Mountain. Tell me something good.”
Mason shifted in his chair. Cleared his throat. “The resorts and recreation business is tricky.”
“In other words,” said Logan, “the finances are in the shitter.”
“It’s more nuanced than that. There are variables to weigh....” Mason sighed. “Okay. In the shitter, yeah. That about sums it up.”
Logan’s heart sank. He knew he wouldn’t get rich overnight running the mountain resort, but he didn’t want to be irresponsible. He had a son to raise.
“The situation is temporary,” Mason said. “The cash flow is in good shape, but your reserves are running low.”
“What will fix this?” Logan asked. “Besides a Christmas miracle.”
“You could use another infusion of cash.”
“More investors, you mean.”
“Yes. You can do another investor offering, or resolicit your current investors. Or some combination of both.”
“How much time do I have?”
“There’s a January fifteenth filing date you’ll want to keep your eye on.”
“Got it.” Logan stood and gathered up his papers. “I’ll figure something out.” And he would, because it was mandatory. He had no alternative. He was not going to let himself fail at this. Still, he couldn’t help hearing his father’s voice, which was embedded deep inside his head. His father would say he’d made a huge mistake. He had walked away from a stable, thriving insurance business for the sake of a risky enterprise that had equal potential to either make or lose a fortune for him. He’d gambled not just his own future, but that of his son, too. What kind of father was he?
“Want to get a beer?” Mason suggested. “Adam’s just winding up his stint as Santa.” The firefighters of Avalon took turns donning the red suit each afternoon. “He could meet us at Hilltop Tavern.”
“That’s okay. I’m meeting my sisters and their husbands and kids. They’ve just been to see Santa. Adam is under orders to tell us what the kids asked for.” He shook hands with Mason and headed out into the wintry afternoon.
“You look superpensive,” said Darcy Fitzgerald, approaching him on the frosty sidewalk. “Am I interrupting something?”
He was ridiculously glad to see her. “Just an age-old argument with my father.”
They fell in step together. “I assume it’s the father in your head,” she said.
“He’s one of my permanent residents.” Logan tapped his temple.
“You, too?” She grinned. “I sometimes have that dad. My mom, too. It’s funny how much influence our parents have on us.”
“True. I think about that a lot because of Charlie. I want to be the kind of father he actually likes having in his head.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“I’m working on it. I’m trying my best to do a good job. For Charlie and for...” He stopped talking. He’d nearly said Charlie and his future siblings. What a boneheaded thing to say. “So,” he said, changing the subject, “how was skiing and riding today?”
“Awesome, as I’m sure you knew it would be.”
“After the snow last night—yeah.” Just the mention of last night made him think about walking with her in the winter woods, kissing her in front of the fire... He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing her right then and there. “Where is everyone?”
“India and China are taking everyone to see Santa now, and then there’s apparently some kind of parade. We’re supposed to rendezvous in the church parking lot.”
He nodded. “There’s a parade every Friday evening in December leading up to Christmas. Charlie has never missed a single one. The town kind of goes overboard for Christmas.”
She looked around the lavishly decorated and lit village square. “I noticed. I really like it. Can you actually skate on the lake?”
“Can I skate? No. Can the ice hold me? Yeah, probably through February.”
“I could teach you to skate.”
“I’ll hold you to it. So, what does a big-city girl think of Avalon?”
“It’s lovely here. You’re lucky to live in such a beautiful place.” She looked around at the shop windows, the people strolling from place to place, her eyes shining. “I love all the lights and decorations this time of year.”
“No regrets about missing out on your family’s holiday?”
“No,” she said instantly. “Definitely not. If I were back in the city, my sisters and I would be fighting our way along Fifth Avenue, dealing with the crush of holiday shoppers. Then we’d stagger with our parcels to Penn Station for the LIRR and pray we get a seat. It’s fun in its own way, but this is definitely more mellow.” She watched a kid and his mother crossing the street with a little dog on a leash.
“So, are you a city girl or a small-town girl?” he asked.
“Both. Oh, and a wilderness girl, too. Does that make me hopelessly inconsistent?” She ducked her head and then looked at him again. “I’m still figuring out who I am when I’m single.”
“Fair enough.” He couldn’t quite tell what she was trying to say. That she liked being single and wanted to stay that way? That she was flexible and open to change? That she wanted him to take her to bed and do all the stuff he thought about when he thought about her?
Which was pretty much all the freaking time.
“You must miss something,” he said.
“Shopping for the kids, I guess. That was always one of my favorite parts. I mean, it’s one thing to pick out the perfect cashmere bathrobe for your mother, or a BugZooka for your dad, but shopping for the kids is the best.”
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “This way.”
He took her to the local toy store. It was nice, the way her face lit up when she saw the window display—a model train circling its figure-eight route through the fake snow and trees, and a lit village in the background. There was a robot endlessly lifting hand weights, dolls and boxing gloves, bikes and musketeer swords.
“It’s fantastic,” Darcy said. “Every kid’s dream toy shop.”
“Yep.” He nodded at the manager, a woman named Guinevere who had been working here since she was a teenager. He drew Darcy over to a display of the latest and greatest. “I’d like to get your help,” he said. “We’ve got a bumper crop of kids this year, and my ever-efficient older sis
ter China sent me a text message with suggestions.”
They spent the next hour channeling the kids. What would light them up on Christmas morning? What would make them laugh, excite them, give them warm memories of their Christmas at Saddle Mountain?
“We have to try stuff out,” said Darcy.
“That’s right, you’re all about testing gear, aren’t you? Let’s steer clear of the things that need to be plugged in,” he suggested.
“Are you expecting a power outage?”
“No, but up on the mountain, it happens. Nonelectric toys are more fun, anyway.”
“Agreed. Remember Battleship?” She pulled out the classic board game.
“Good one. Everyone’s going to want that.”
“Then let’s get it for the pickle prize.”
He scratched his head. “The pickle prize?”
“You don’t do the pickle tradition?”
“Never heard of it. But if it involves a pickle, I’m game.”
“You need a pickle ornament and you have to hang it in some very arbitrary spot on the tree. And whoever finds the pickle first on Christmas morning gets a prize.”
“Gives new meaning to hide the pickle.”
She sniffed. “I can’t believe you never heard of it. The tradition goes way back. According to Wikipedia, anyway.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Look, they’ve even got pickles for sale.”
They were displayed with the stocking stuffers. They chose one that had eyes and a mouth, a sprinkling of glitter, and a movement activated switch that caused it to yodel.
“How have I managed to live my life without a yodeling pickle?” asked Logan.
“It’s a new world order,” she said.
Toy-shopping with Darcy, just like cooking with her, snowshoeing with her, surfing with her, did not suck. She was very serious in her deliberations, weighing the merits of the slingshot versus the potato catapult, a xylophone versus a recorder. He couldn’t remember laughing with a woman so much. He’d just come from a stressful work meeting and he needed this, needed a change or some shift in perspective.
In the middle of doing a yo-yo trick—an impressive one at that—she looked up at him and grinned.
