The Christmas Wish

by Maggie Marr

  “Smells good.” Nonna set two plates on the table beside the catsup and the salt. “Will you grab the pitcher of margaritas?” Nonna called as Brinn put the take-out bag in the trash.

  “It’s seven degrees outside and you made margaritas?”

  “Doll, at my age, you never know if you’ll make it to margarita season, so if I want them, I make them. Don’t forget the limes—they’re sliced in a bowl on the counter.”

  Nonna lived life. She did what she wanted and didn’t give a damn about what anyone said or anyone thought. Even when Brinn was a kid, Nonna did whatever the hell she wanted. Ma had sour looks for Nonna. Nonna could make Ma mad by wearing white after Labor Day or parading around at the lake in a bikini well into her fifties, or the time Nonna showed up at Brinn’s middle school culmination with pink streaks in her hair. No, Ma never said anything to Nonna, but then Ma never needed to. Ma’s icy glare over things she didn’t like was enough for anyone to know when Ma wasn’t happy. Brinn sat at the dining room table.

  “Your mother called before you got here.” Nonna dipped a fry into her catsup and took a giant bite.

  Brinn took a bite of her burger. She didn’t want to discuss what she’d seen in Ma’s house. Nor did she want to talk about her feelings or how she was angry with Ma.

  “You angry about her sleeping with Dom?”

  Brinn looked up at Nonna. “You knew?”

  “Oh babe, the whole town knows.” Nonna wiped her lips with her napkin. “I’m surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”

  “For how long? I had no idea. Has it been going on for very long?”

  “Started about a year after your dad died.”

  Heat fired in Brinn’s chest. “Are you kidding me? How did I not know this?”

  “You were away, and nobody really talks about it.”

  “Deborah knows?”

  Nonna nodded. “I think so. I mean, who knows? Deborah is more like your mother. Doesn’t discuss much, keeps pretty tight-lipped, pretends things she doesn’t like aren’t really going on.”

  Brinn closed her eyes, “We seem to all have that ability.”

  “What? With Marco the ass?”

  “Looking back, I should have known. I ignored the signs. I just didn’t want to see them.”

  “The heart provides blinders for the eyes.” Nonna bit into her burger, then took a long drink of her margarita. “Here’s the thing, you can’t let the events that hurt you in your past prevent you from having a happy future. Unhappy people never learn that lesson.”

  Nonna was right. As hard as it was for her to trust that she wouldn’t make the same mistakes again, she had to believe that what happened with Marco wouldn’t happen again. Otherwise, how could she ever allow herself to love?

  “Your ma, she never quite learned that one. Or maybe she did but just can’t live it.”

  “I don’t understand. If everyone knows, then why does she pretend like nothing is going on?”

  “Perhaps you’ve noticed your ma has some control issues? She lives by creating the illusion of control. Everyone in town may know that she’s been sleeping with Dom, but since she doesn’t tell anyone, in her mind it’s simply speculation and she’s being private and discreet and careful. Controlling her world.” Nonna sighed. “I blame myself.”

  “How so?”

  Nonna jutted her chin out. “Just wait, doll, till you have your own children. You’ll find a way to blame yourself for everything that goes wrong in their lives whether that blame is justified or not. I mean, I’m a bit of an eccentric. My flavor of crazy didn’t come with my old age. Your ma found it to be humiliating and embarrassing from about the tender age of eight until, well, even now.”

  “You’re just living your life the way you want.”

  “And so is your mother. You understand me, because you are more like me. You’re open and out there and you’ve never pretended to be something you’re not. Never wanted to, but your ma? Well, appearances have always meant something to her. Even when she was little. She didn’t want the bright pink shoes with the big silver bows, she wanted the brown penny loafers because that’s what everyone else was wearing. She wants to fit in. To be part of the crowd.”

  Brinn tilted her head to the side.

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but she does. Hates drawing any unnecessary attention to herself. And today, when you walked in on her and Dom? Boy howdy, talk about unwanted attention! And with the daughter who actually talks about things? Today was your mother’s worst nightmare come true.” Nonna smiled a little bit. “Sorry. I love her, but sometimes I just think she’s wound a little tight. I get a tiny kick when her apple cart tilts a little to the left.”

  “I like the idea of her and Dom. I wanted her to share that with me because I’m her daughter and I want to be part of her life.”

  “And you are part of her life, forever.” Nonna pressed her palm into the back of Brinn’s hand. “This isn’t you, it’s her. Just like she doesn’t want to hear about your private life all over town, she doesn’t want you to hear about hers.”

  Brinn set her burger back on her plate. “She really hurt me with what she said about Tyler.”

  “About him being divorced?”

  “She said I wasn’t good enough for him, that I wasn’t…” Brinn paused. Her throat closed and she couldn’t take another bite of her food. “That I wasn’t pretty enough for him.”

  “Brinn?” Nonna pulled her eyebrows together. “Your mother would never say that; she would never think that.”

  “You know how she’s always been with Deborah. They shop, they go for manicures and pedicures and haircuts, and they never include me.”

  “Do you want to be included? You never wanted to do any of those things when you were growing up.”

  “It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be asked.” Brinn’s bottom lip quivered. Seriously, she sounded like a spurned fourteen-year-old girl even to her own ears. How did these hurts from long ago stay so ever present, even as an adult. “I always knew I wasn’t as pretty as Ma or Deborah, and I was okay with that. Or I made peace with it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to watch. My little sister getting asked out by all the cute boys in my class, or being invited to parties that I hadn’t been invited to, or being homecoming queen and prom queen.”

  Nonna squeezed Brinn’s hand. “I don’t think I ever knew how much this bothered you. Brinn, you were always so contained and so happy for Deborah, it never even crossed my mind that any of this upset you.”

  “It didn’t bother me in that I didn’t want those things for Deb, it was more about wishing I could have some of them too. I wanted the cute boy.” Brinn glanced down at her plate.

  “You wanted Tyler Emerson.”

  Brinn nodded. “Since I was ten years old, I’ve had a crush on him. Is that crazy?”

  “Only if you think he’s the same person now as he was then.” A smile split Nonna’s face. “I hear he’s yours now. Or at least that’s the current scrap the gossip hounds are chewing on.”

  “We’ve been seeing each other.” Brinn looked at Nonna’s eyes. “And I like him. I really really like him.”

  “I can see it in your eyes when you say his name.”

  “I… I just worry. What if Ma is right? What if I’m not enough for him? What if he wants someone more like…” Brinn didn’t even want to say the words. “Like his ex-wife.”

  “Does it seem that way to you? Does he treat you well? Does he want to be seen with you? Does it feel like he cares for you?”

  Brinn nodded. “He wants me to come over for family dinner this Thursday.”

  “With the entire crew?” Nonna smiled. “Wish I could be a fly on that wall. Every one of those Emerson men is fine to look at. And fun. Wow, talk about great sense of humor—that will be a fun dinner. You’ll come for dinner then on Saturday night.”

  “Why not Friday?” Brinn asked.

  “Because the unveiling of the Christmas castle is Friday, and if Ty
ler’s as smitten with you as you are with him, then I’m guessing he’ll have some sort of celebration planned.”

  Tyler had hinted at something Friday night, but he was being very tight-lipped about the details.

  “Invite him to the Grande for Christmas Eve.”

  “Ma would kill me.”

  “That night isn’t your mother’s night. That night is mine. I’ve invited Dom, now you invite Tyler. It’s about time this family gets rid of all our silly secrets. Especially the secrets everyone already knows.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tyler dashed through the kitchen. His meeting at the Grande was scheduled for ten, but he wanted to leave now in hopes that he could say hello to Brinn. The past two days he’d been working nonstop. He and Brinn had spoken on the phone and texted, but between the increasing schedule at the bakery and his upcoming meeting, they hadn’t seen each other much. The landline rang. His mom and Charlotte were upstairs still playing dolls.

  “Got it!” Tyler yelled and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”

  “Tyler?”

  His heart collided with his ribs. Her voice. A voice came over the phone line that he had once loved but that now created a thick, oily feeling in his gut.

  “Charlize?” He paused. His ex-wife. He hoped she was calling to speak to Charlotte. It had been nearly three weeks since the last time she’d called to talk to their daughter.

  “Hey.” Her voice was breathy and soft. “How are you?”

  “Good, I’m on my way out the door, I just—

  “I heard you’ll probably get the Grande expansion. Congratulations.”

  “It’s not mine yet, but thank you.” Tyler’s hands fisted. “Charlotte will be really excited you called.”

  “Just Charlotte?” Charlize asked in a teasing voice.

  Just Charlotte? What the hell did that mean? He was excited for his daughter to speak to her mother. Was Charlize flirting with him? Joking with him? Their relationship wasn’t such that he was ready to joke with his ex-wife. Hell, he doubted he would ever be ready for joking with Charlize. He could barely keep himself from not berating her about failing to call their daughter two times a week as she’d promised.

  “She’s excited about seeing you in January.”

  “Right.” Charlize’s voice contained a more distant tone. “January. I’m not sure about January.”

  “Wait? What? Are you telling me that you can’t see—”

  “Daddy?”

  Tyler caught his tongue and stopped speaking.

  Charlotte stood beside him, pulling on his pant leg. “Daddy, is that Mommy?”

  Tyler forced a smile to his face and nodded. “It is, sweetheart. She called because she misses you.”

  “We’ll talk about his later,” he said into the phone, then turned to Charlotte. “Here, doll, here’s mommy.” He passed the phone to Charlotte, who had a grin on her face.

  “Mommy!” She squealed.

  Tyler’s heart nearly broke with the joy in his daughter’s voice. Charlize didn’t deserve that happiness, that joy, from their daughter. Anger clutched his insides as he looked across the kitchen to where Mom stood in the doorway. He walked toward her.

  “She can’t see Charlotte in January?”

  “Something like that. Can you monitor this? I’ve got to get to the Grande, and”—he looked over his shoulder to where Charlotte stood next to the counter with the phone—“I want to believe this conversation will leave Charlotte feeling happy that her mother called, but I’m just not sure.”

  Mom nodded. “I’ll text you if it goes badly I’ll stay right here with her.”

  What would he do without Mom? Without family? Thank God for all the love that surrounded Charlotte here in Powder Springs. They couldn’t ever make up for the absence of her mother, but at least they could try to make the hole hurt less.

  *

  Brinn walked through the kitchen at the Grande toward the giant walk-in cooler where the flourless chocolate cake she’d made yesterday waited. Tomorrow was the official unveiling of the Christmas castle at the Grande. The castle had turned out just as she and Hans had planned. Few modifications had been necessary. She and Hans were both thrilled with the way the castle looked.

  “You are here.” Hans’s face was grim. “Thank goodness you are here.”

  Brinn’s heart dropped. Lines creased his face. Oh no, what had happened?

  “We have a problem. A very big problem.”

  Pieter stood beside Hans, his expression just as grim.

  Hans beckoned toward the lobby. “You must come with me now. We must discover a way to fix this problem, and we must do so quickly.”

  A few moments later, Brinn and Hans stood behind the Christmas castle. Brinn pressed her fingertips to her lips.

  This was bad.

  Very bad.

  A jagged crack ran through the center of one of the foundational gingerbread pieces. Brinn shook her head. The crack could continue to grow and spread, and if the piece shattered, the entire castle would collapse.

  “I think it must be moisture, but from where, I do not know.” Hans looked up at the ceiling as if to blame some unknown leak.

  “There isn’t a way to remove the piece.” Brinn’s eyes traveled upward to the top of the sixteen-foot structure. She could remove nearly any other piece in the castle and replace it, but a foundational piece? There was absolutely no way without taking apart the entire castle and rebuilding.

  “Have you confronted such a problem before?”

  Brinn shook her head. In all the Christmas castles she’d built, she’d never had a foundational piece crack. Her father’s gingerbread recipe was solid, like concrete. She’d done the math and knew that this piece should be able to bear its portion of the weight of the castle without a crack or a crumble.

  “I haven’t.” Brinn pressed her lips together. There was no time to rebuild the castle in time for the unveiling ceremony tomorrow. Brinn’s gaze slid around the lobby. With both Hans and her and Pieter staring fixedly at the castle, a small crowd was beginning to gather.

  “Hans?”

  Hans tore his myopic focus away from the crack and looked around “Pieter, get us the screens from the first day. This is a matter that will take some privacy to cure.”

  “Yes, Chef.” Pieter grabbed his walkie-talkie from his belt. Within ten minutes, they were behind the protective shield of the blackout curtains.

  Brinn knelt close to the crack. Thankfully the rest of the castle hadn’t shifted or tilted. But how long before that happened? Or worse yet, how long before this one flaw in the foundation increased the weight beyond the capacity of the other foundational pieces? She reached her fingers toward the mean-looking seam but dared not to touch it. “We’ve got to do something or the entire Christmas castle will come down.”

  “Yes.” Hans rubbed his palms together. “For every problem there is a solution. But we must find this solution quickly.” His eyes scanned the entire masterpiece, which was filled with towers and princesses, and icing and trees, and snow.

  Yes, quickly, before the entire Christmas castle crumbled and fell to the ground.

  *

  Tyler rushed into the lobby. Between Charlize’s call and the snow-packed roads, he was just getting to the Grande five minutes before the meeting. He glanced toward the Christmas castle. The black drapes were back? That couldn’t be good. What had happened to cause Hans and Brinn to put the blackout drapes back up? He veered toward the castle. Even though he was nearly late, he wanted to check in on Brinn.

  “Tyler!”

  He turned toward the voice. Annalise stood just next to the lobby elevator. “Ready for our meeting?”

  Tyler nodded and turned away from the blackout drapes and beelined toward the elevator doors. Annalise’s assistant held them open for him.

  “Perfect timing.” Tyler entered the elevator.

  Annalise smiled. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve come up with for the expansion.”

  Th
en the elevator doors closed.

  *

  Hans and Brinn bent over the Christmas castle plans. How to bolster and support a center-back foundational piece that had a giant fracture?

  “The first thing we do is add icing to the seam. When we do that, we introduce liquid, so I want to bring back a piece of wood to place under the lip here.” Brinn pointed to a slight overhang of the building just above the foundational piece. “We let the icing harden for twelve hours and then, when we remove the wood, we add another foundational piece, same size as the original, and cement it with icing to the cracked piece.”

  She looked up at Hans to gauge his reaction to her suggestion. “That way if the piece gives, if it crumbles, hopefully the new foundational piece that we cement to the damaged piece will hold the weight and keep the whole darn thing from falling down.”

  Hans shook his head and creased his eyebrows. “It may still collapse.” Hans disliked ambiguity. He wanted an absolute plan that would ensure success. This was the only plan Brinn had, aside from rebuilding the entire castle.

  “It’s the best idea I’ve got. Unless we take the whole thing apart and start again.”

  “Impossible.” Hans waved his hand as he might to shoo a fly loose in his kitchen. “We must go with the best solution we have, and yours is the only solution I see at this time.” Hans turned to his assistant, who waited silently just inside the office doorway. “Pieter, prepare the icing that shall be our cement. Brinn, you and I will begin the dough for the new piece. I want fresh; I do not want to use any from the batch that now has a crack.”

  Brinn nodded. Probably best.

  “First we must put a support next to this backing piece. We must buy time for the icing to harden once the seam is filled as well for the new foundational piece to be ready to be placed in the foundation.” Hans looked at Brinn. “We must buy at least another six hours.”

  Six hours was a long time with a piece of gingerbread that contained a crack the size of Alaska. Hans was right. It would take that much time for the new foundational piece to cool and harden enough for them to seal it to the foundation. They didn’t want to compound the problem by putting a piece that was too weak next to the cracked piece.