Page 63 of Minted

“Actually, I do want to go to Bentley’s,” Ricki says. “I think that sounds fun. Can we have hot chocolate and make a snowman?”

“I can’t promise the snowman,” I say. “That’s kind of up to Mother Nature, but I can offer lots of kinds of hot chocolate.”

“Our mom always made it from real chocolate, in a pot,” Nikki says, her voice super quiet.

“I can show Bentley how to do that,” Seren says.

“That would be—are you sure?” Barbara asks.

In that moment, I’m entirely sure. And I’ve also made up my mind. I’m going to tell Barbara how I feel on Christmas Eve. Between the holiday spirit and the adorable little girls, and my dog showing her what a good guy I am, how could it go wrong?

13

Barbara

My mom loved Christmas. She usually had the tree up before Halloween, and she didn’t even bother putting orange lights on it or anything. She bought more ornaments for that poor tree every year, until it was almost bowed down to the ground with them.

Mom made us go caroling every year, even though it’s freezing in New York and it was clear that people didn’t want to stand there with their door open for ten minutes. She made a dozen different kinds of holiday cookies. She strung lights on her porch, on her bushes, and on the trunks of her trees. Basically, she put them anywhere she could without Dad risking falling off a ladder and breaking his neck.

She always picked a family to surprise with little gifts every day for the twelve days leading up to Christmas Day. When I was a kid, I loved racing to the front door to leave them something and then rushing back to the car, hoping not to be caught.

Mom brought holiday cheer with her everywhere she went.

You’d think I’d be aching to do the same, especially now that she’s gone. I kind of am, actually, but the girls haven’t really revisited the issue since slamming the door in my face, so the lights are still in a pile by the tree, and it’s still in a bucket. No other decorations have even been hauled up from my apartment-assigned storage area.

Nikki looks like she may nod off in the car, and I’d rather not have them fall asleep just before we get back home.

“I’m surprised you wanted to visit Bentley for Christmas,” I say on the way home.

Nikki’s eyes shoot open. “Why?”

“Well, my mom loved Christmas,” I say. “After she died.” I shrug. “I’m not sure. My love for the decorations and stuff, it all just made me think of her. And thinking of her hurts.”

“Our mom loved Christmas too,” Ricki says. “But that’s not why we wanted to skip it this year.”

“You wanted to skip it?” I ask. “As in, now you don’t?”

“I’m excited to go to Bentley’s,” Ricki says. “I like him. Don’t you?”

“But why did you want to skip it before?” I refocus on a question for which I’m comfortable searching for the answer. “You said you wanted, implying that now you don’t.”

“Well.” Nikki shrugs. “Our dad and mom were together until a few years ago.”

A few years ago?

“Yeah,” Ricki says. “Back when he was still around sometimes, Dad actually bought us all this stuff one year. He was super duper excited. We helped him wrap some stuff for Mom, too.”

“Okay.”

“But then,” Nikki says, “on Christmas morning, he was just gone.”

“Gone?” I can’t help my frown. I hope they can’t really see it in the rearview mirror, which is the only way they can see me right now.

“He smiled his way through us opening the presents and then he said he had to go to the bathroom. We waited like half an hour, and then we went to check on him,” Ricki says. “We found a note on the bathroom counter. He’d gone out the window, I guess. It said, ‘I wanted to give you the best Christmas ever, but I can’t.’” She shakes her head. “And then he was just gone.”

“Everything is like that,” Nikki says. “Sometimes something really good will happen, but when it does.” She sighs.

“Something really, really bad always happens right after,” Ricki says.

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