by Zoe Kane
“Aunt Annie, look!” said Isaac, his eyes wide, and the girls gasped out loud with delight.
“It looks like Candyland,” whispered Sophia reverently.
And then Helen, from behind them, gave a loud, shrill whistle, and the crowd gathered in front of their house turned to see them coming – and immediately broke out into song.
“Deck the halls with boughs of holly / Fa la la la la, la la la la . . .” they sang, making up in boisterous enthusiasm what they may have lacked in all starting in the same key at the same time.
“Carolers!” shrieked Lucy.
“What in the world –“ Annie began, and felt Helen move up beside her.
"There wasn’t a single person in this whole neighborhood," she said quietly, "who didn't drop everything they were doing when Marcus called to ask for their help."
“Marcus arranged all this?”
“And there’s more,” said Helen. “Just wait.” And as if on cue, there came the sleigh bells again.
“Aunt Annie, Aunt Annie, it’s Santa!” shrieked Lucy.
“No, honey, it’s not Santa,” she said absently as they came nearer and nearer, straining her eyes in the darkening streets to spot the source of the sound.
And then she heard it.
Hoofbeats.
Just as they reached the commotion in front of their house, the crowd in the street parted and around the corner came a huge, majestic white horse, pulling behind it a brightly painted red-and-green sleigh bearing two teenagers in elf costumes and a gorgeous Douglas fir.
“Special delivery from the North Pole for Isaac, Sophia and Lucy!” shouted one of the elves, ringing her sleigh bells, as the children grabbed each other’s hands in wild delight and bolted towards them, Abe and Alexa following in hot pursuit. Within seconds every child in the whole crowd had mobbed the sleigh to pet the horse and get a candy cane from the elf girls.
“I’m Vince Anderson,” said a voice at Annie’s elbow, and she turned to see one of the neighborhood dads standing beside her. “That’s my daughter Molly. We’ll carry the tree in and get it all set up for you.”
“That’s our Christmas tree?” said Annie, mouth agape.
“Yep.”
“Our Christmas tree is being delivered via one-horse open sleigh?”
“Well, it’s really a wagon,” Vince demurred, “there are wheels under it, the red and green sleigh part is just plywood.”
“It’s a one-horse open sleigh,” said Annie. “It’s the most Christmasy thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think the kids are going to pass out.”
“My brother owns the business,” said Vince. “We deliver trees all around town.”
“How much do I –“
He shook his head insistently. “For Grace and Danny’s family, no charge. I won’t hear of it.”
“Vince – “
"Jake Sinclair broke his back last summer," he said, "and Danny came over every week to mow his lawn. Grace organized the Fourth of July barbecue every year. They took Molly in for three weeks when her mom was sick so I could be at the hospital with her. There was nothing they wouldn't have done for this community," he told her. "So there's nothing we won't do for their kids."
Annie had no response to this.
They watched in silence for a moment as Isaac and Sophia stroked the horse’s soft coat while Lucy chomped on her candy cane. “There’s so little we can do to make their loss more bearable. And yours,” he added, squeezing her hand, an unexpected kindness that made her eyes well up with tears. “There’s so little any of us can do. But we can do this.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
He shook his head. “It’s the least we could do."
Molly hoisted Lucy up onto the front seat of the sleigh so she could hold the reins and pretend to drive it, making both Annie and Vince laugh. “It’s good to see them happy,” said Vince.
“Yes,” agreed Annie. “That it is.”
* * *
Marcus answered his cell phone on the first ring.
“Guess what I’m looking at,” she said, climbing the steps to the porch where it was quieter. She watched as Molly coaxed the horse to bend his head down so the twins could pet his nose, sending them into wild howls of delight.
“A stack of boring midterms?”
“A one-horse open sleigh. With sleigh bells. And elves. And a Christmas tree in the back.”
“Well, it’s technically a one-horse open wagon,” he corrected her, “there were pictures on the website. A sleigh doesn’t have wheels, it’s built for snow, so it has – “
"I can't believe you did this," she said, an unexpected throb of emotion in her voice.
"I just – " He paused. "I wanted to – "
“Aunt Annie, Aunt Annie, the horse ate a carrot from my hand!” yelled Sophia, so loudly that Marcus could hear it through the phone.
“That’s very exciting, Sophia!” she called back. “Let some of the other kids have a turn please!”
“How many other kids are there?” asked Marcus.
“Are you kidding? All of them. We’re the coolest family on the block. The sleigh bells got every kid in a fifty-mile radius. The whole neighborhood is here. Did you know they hung all the lights? Was that your doing, too?"
“Oh, we did a little more than just the lights."
“What are you talking about?”
“Have you gone inside?”
“No. Why?”
“Go look inside."
“Oh God, Marcus, what did you do?”
“If I tell you, it will ruin the surprise."
Reluctantly, she left the mob of children snuggling the horse in the street, opened the front door –
– and stepped into a winter wonderland.
It wasn't just the lights and the tree. The whole house had been decorated top-to-bottom.
And they’d done it right.
Annie felt her heart constrict in her chest, trying to swallow back tears, as she looked around. Everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. Everything was exactly where Grace and Danny would have placed it. Over here, on the dining room sideboard, was their grandmother’s collection of hand-painted Russian wooden Santas. Over here on the living room end table, low enough that the children could reach it, was the nativity. There was red satin ribbon wound around the banister and paper cutout snowflakes taped on every window. There was pine garland strung along the mantel, with three little stockings made years ago by Aunt Vera bearing the children’s names – and two brand-new ones.
Annie ran her fingers over the impossibly soft crimson velvet of the stocking that said “MARCUS” in flowing golden script, and beside it, a rich forest green one with her own name embroidered in silver.
“You got me a stocking,” she said in disbelief.
“Well, it only seemed fair,” he said. “Why let the kids have all the fun?"
“I can’t believe you did all this,” she said, her voice low with wonder.
The whole house felt alive. There were pine boughs everywhere, filling the rooms with their crisp scent. There was an Advent wreath in the center of the dining room table. The special Santa mugs were stacked neatly on the counter by the coffee canister. The colorful glow of the lights outside lit the living room in a merry riot of color.
Annie had not thought it would ever feel like Christmas in this house again. And yet, here it was.
Marcus had given it back to them.
“I only left one thing for you to do,” he told her, and that was the first moment that she noticed that the furniture had been moved around and the metal base set up and filled with water, old towels at the ready beneath it to catch spills, to set up the Christmas tree. And all around her, on every flat surface in the living room, were trays and box lids full of ornaments. Even the stepladder was neatly tucked into the corner, at the ready.
“I thought that decorating the tree was something they’d want to do themselves,” he explained, and she could hear hesitation
in his voice, almost as though he was apologizing.
“I don’t know what to say, Marcus,” she said softly, looking out the window to where Lucy was losing her mind with hysterical excitement as the horse bent down its soft nose to nuzzle her hand.
“You asked me before if I had any idea what kids this age like,” he said. “And I know they like Christmas. So I went with that."
She was prevented from replying by loud shrieking from outside. “Aunt Annie Aunt Annie Aunt Annie Aunt Annie!” hollered Isaac. “It’s snowing it’s snowing it’s snowing it’s snowing it’s snowing!”
“It’s snoooowing, it’s snoooowing!” sang Lucy, and soon all the children had taken it up as a celebratory chant.
Annie peered more closely out the window, and sure enough, soft white flakes were beginning to fall from the night sky, glowing under the light of the streetlamps.
“It’s snowing?” asked Marcus, delighted.
“Don’t act so surprised,” she laughed, “I’m sure somehow this was your doing too.”
“Well, I wished pretty hard. I’m not sure if that counts.”
“I still can’t believe you tracked down a sleigh.”
“Go get that tree inside before the snow soaks it. Those kids have some tree-trimming to do."
“I wish you were here,” she said before she could stop herself, the words tumbling out of her mouth clumsily and surprising them both.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Annie –“
“I’m not saying it again.”
“You know I heard it.”
“Shut up.”
“I heard it, and you can’t take it back.”
“I hate you.”
He laughed. After a moment, she laughed too.
“All I meant was,” she explained, fumbling a little, “that you did so much work to make everything magical for the kids, and it’s too bad that you’re in New York missing all the fun.”
“Yes,” said a voice behind her, “that would be too bad.”
Her heart stopped. And then she turned around, and there he was.
They just stood there for a moment, looking at each other. Annie was framed in the doorway of the living room, backlit by a wild rainbow of colored lights from the porch outside. Marcus was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, which was lit by a sleek glass lamp. He had unpacked, she could see; the boxes were gone, and it looked like a room where somebody lived.
Marcus lived here.
Marcus had sent a tree in a horse-drawn sleigh and rallied all the neighbors to decorate the house for Christmas and hung a stocking over the fireplace with her name on it and he was here.
Staring, with a raised eyebrow, at a spot somewhere above her head.
She looked up and realized for the first time that she was standing directly beneath a beribboned sprig of fresh mistletoe.
“I didn’t actually hang that there," he informed her. "Just so you know."
"You didn't."
"No," he said. "But it is there. And you are standing under it. And rules are rules."
And then he bent his head and kissed her.
It was nothing like the last time. It was not frantic and hungry and raw. This time it was sweet, and gentle, and he cradled her face in his hands as his mouth moved gently on hers, and she felt warm all over, warm and safe. And then he wrapped his arms around her and he pressed a kiss onto the top of her head.
“Hi,” he said, smiling down at her.
“Hi,” she said back. “Come with me.” And she took his hand and led him out onto the porch. “Isaac! Sophia! Lucy!” she called down to the street. “Time to come inside. We’ve got to get that tree set up and put all the decorations on it.”
“Coming!”
“And say thank you to your Uncle Marcus,” she said, turning and grinning at him as the kids scampered up the porch, Vince and two other dads hauling the massive tree up the stairs behind them. "This is all from him."
“Whoooooooa,” exclaimed Isaac as he entered the house. “It’s all Christmasy in here!”
“Did you send the horse?” Lucy asked Marcus.
“Yep.”
“And did you do all the decorations?” asked Sophia, looking around with wide eyes.
“Well, I coordinated,” he said. “All the neighbors helped.”
“And the snow too?”
“He claims no responsibility for the snow,” said Annie, “but I’m not convinced.”
“Is he magical?” Lucy asked in a whisper. Annie watched Marcus as he began untangling strings of lights to hang on the tree.
“Honestly, I’m not sure yet,” she said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Chapter Fifteen: White Christmas
Of all the things for which Annie found herself, years later, still venomously detesting Malcolm Burke, the worst of them – worse than the coldness, worse than the slap, worse than the bad sex, worse than the accusations that she had somehow deceived him by promising a very different Annie Walter than the one she actually delivered – was the way he had reached down into the darkest hidden depths of her heart and pulled out the thing that lived there and shone a brutal, blinding light on it. The precarious balance in the Walter family was only possible because of Annie’s careful and meticulous persistence in not acknowledging The Thing. And she had lived for nearly a decade without conceding what The Thing was before Malcolm had – cruelly, but correctly – looked her in the eye and given it a name.
Because of course that’s what it was.
Of course she loved Danny Walter. She always had. She always would. Of course that’s what it was. So crystal-clear in hindsight, so startling and awful when first spoken out loud.
The Walters were an introvert family, for the most part. So nobody had been more surprised than Grace Walter when a loud, cheeky, soccer-playing Sigma Chi environmental studies major named Daniel Rey saw her reading Zora Neale Hurston in the library and walked over to her, introduced himself, and told her that Their Eyes Were Watching God was his favorite book.
Danny had been good for Grace; good for all of them, really. He was funny and warm and he said what was on his mind, something the Walters rarely did. He hit it off instantly with Aunt Vera, who loved him like one of her own, and he slowly coaxed shy Michael out of his shell, and he made Grace so happy that she became nearly incandescent. Even Annie, slowly but surely, grew warm when bathed in his light.
The Walters opened their arms and welcomed Danny in, and he loved them so much that when he and Grace got married, he was eager to buck tradition (and leave his own estranged, abusive father’s name behind him) by becoming a Walter himself.
After Isaac and Sophia came along, the family began to coalesce around them, as families do when children are born, and Danny became a significant person in new, unquantifiable ways. He was suddenly everyone’s dad. He was the one who drove back and forth to the hospital when Aunt Vera had knee surgery, he was the one who found Michael his job, he was the one who bought the family house when it suddenly and unexpectedly came back on the market again.
Annie, as the oldest, had sometimes felt worn down by the weight of carrying the family’s burdens, but Danny changed everything. He was Grace’s husband, certainly, but in a way he was her partner too. No man ever came into her life who could possibly compete with him. They went on this way for years, as what had begun as a family of four became a family of eight, with three children at the center of it, and there was balance and contentment and everything worked.
And then Malcolm had seen, without ever having to be told, that two and a half hours later Danny Walter’s casual touch was still alive on Annie’s wrist as though his fingertips had branded her skin, and he had known in an instant the thing she had been so careful not to let herself know for the past decade of her life. And once she knew it, she could not un-know it, which meant she could not be in the same room with Grace and Danny without suffering. It had done something to her, she was different now, th
e level-headed Annie Walter was gone. Everything had changed – not because Danny had touched her hand, but because she had been forced to realize what it meant.
I am in love with him, she thought to herself over and over – as she lay in bed at night staring up at the ceiling, as she drove to the grocery store, as she made her coffee and went to work. He is married to my sister and I am in love with him and I have no idea what to do.
But as painful as that had been – carrying that burden all by herself – it was exponentially worse now.
Because Marcus was here.
He had swept in with snow and a sleigh and he had kissed her, and then he had planted himself in the guest bedroom which already looked like it had belonged to him forever, and he was never going to not be here again, and since Annie still was not sure how she felt about the kiss, his presence very quickly became troubling.
Marcus was here, he was so extremely unavoidably impossible-to-ignorably here – in the kitchen when she stumbled in to make coffee, in the living room when she wanted a quiet place to read, drifting off in front of the TV in the den halfway through the Blazer game and snoring. Suddenly someone else’s dirty coffee cups, someone else’s alarm clock, someone else’s nighttime footsteps to the kitchen for a glass of water, were interfering with her tidy and peaceable routines.
And now not only was she perpetually crashing into and stepping on and being disrupted by his constant unignorable presence – which was bad enough, just the fact that he was here, he was always here, he would be here forever – but there was the other, subtler, more sinister problem he posed. The thing that made him actually dangerous.
He knew.
She didn’t know what he knew, or how much. She didn’t know if he knew from watching her face when Danny’s name came up or from the way she had lashed out over the will or from something he had seen when they were in bed – or if he had known long ago, had known before he ever met her. And this raised a powerfully troubling question that Annie had, for the most part, successfully avoided ever really having to consider: which was, of course, the question of whether Danny had known.
