Page 109 of Hero for the Holidays

“What’s that?” Fia asked.

“We had stars on the tree. With our names on them. They were made out of paper. I want... I want paper stars.”

He and Fia looked at each other, and the lump in his throat was so intense he was afraid to move. He didn’t want to go crying. In front of anybody. Not even himself. But this whole experience with Lila had been an exercise in getting in touch with emotions he liked to pretend he didn’t have. Turned out he had them.

Fia got down her kit filled with craft items. He really wasn’t surprised to find out she had that. She was handy, and made all kinds of decorations for the farm store. She knitted, she crocheted, she baked. Basically, if you could make it yourself, Fia did it. So she got down beautiful paper, scissors and glue. They sat at the kitchen table, which was brightly painted.

He touched its top. “You did this, didn’t you?”

He looked around the kitchen at the cheerful yellow cabinets. Red accents, bright everywhere.

“Yeah,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it being so dark anymore. I needed it to be different. I needed it to be ours.”

Yes. If Fia could make it, she would. She did.

They assembled 3D stars using ribbon and paper, putting patterned paper in certain sections of the stars, while leaving the other sections bright red. And on each one they wrote their names. Fia. Lila. Landry.

They hung them on the tree, just like that. With Lila between them.

Lila wrinkled her nose, and he could see that she was holding back tears.

“It feels like Christmas,” she said.

Landry put one hand on her shoulder. Fia put her hand on Lila’s other shoulder. “Yes,” said Landry. “Yes, it does.”

When Lila went up to bed, Landry and Fia sat in the kitchen for a while, saying nothing.

“Landry,” Fia said, looking up at him. “We need to get her a dog.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

FIACOULDN’TBELIEVEwhen her phone rang and it was the animal shelter with news. Both she and Landry had contacted them and left information, and they were calling to tell them that they’d found Sunday.

Fia was still raw from the Christmas tree experience a couple days ago, but it was a good raw, and this just about made her burst into tears.

Sunday had been adopted, but she’d been brought back when the family had to move. “I need to put a hold on her,” said Fia.

“We can do that. Until the end of the day.”

“Please. It’s my daughter’s dog. My... I just adopted her. But she’s my daughter. She had to give up the dog when her parents died...the parents who had adopted her before. And she got put into foster care so she couldn’t take the dog with her. They took so much from her and I just... I really need the dog.”

The person on the other end of the phone was clearly a little bit confused.

“What?”

“Can you look at the dog’s file?”

She did. “It says here that she was surrendered because her owners died, yes.”

“They had a daughter. My daughter. And she couldn’t have the dog. But now she can. It would mean the world to her to have the dog back. Please. I don’t think we can make it by closing time, but we can drive up there and come first thing tomorrow.”

“Okay. We can definitely hold her for you.”

“Thank you.”

She went to Landry’s house without delay. He was still packing. “Landry, I found Sunday.”

“What?”

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