Page 54 of Wish For Me

“He was one of my best agency contacts.”

Oops.

“Agency?” Leif’s brow furrows, and in this moment he looks exactly like his dad.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, sir.” I say. To Leif, I smile guiltily and say, “People get kind of freaked out when they find out your dad is in the FBI.”

They might decide not to stay over at a strange girl’s house.

Without warning, Griffin pulls Leif into what looks like a bone crushing hug. “Good to see you, son.” he says.

“Hey,” Leif says, his voice muffled as he pats his father’s back “Dad, I just saw you last month.”

“Uncle Griff’s gone soft since he retired,” Enzo says from across the crowd.

Griffin heads straight for him, curling his nephew into a headlock to everyone’ delight.

“You okay?” I ask Leif.

He blinks. Then he looks down at me. “He smiled at you.”

“Is that unusual?”

“Yeah,” Leif says, with a tilt of his mouth. “He must like you.”

A few minutes later, we’re up on the sleigh on a soft, fur-lined bench. It’s a feat I got up here considering I didn’t exactly think my outfit through: I’m wearing a sweater dress and sheer tights, with a puffy coat on top. My butt’s already cold. Luckily, Sarah hands a stack of blankets to Enzo to distribute before getting up into the driver’s seat next to her granddaughter.

Enzo hands me and Leif a single blanket, winking hard.

“Sorry about my idiot cousin,” Leif says loudly. Then to me, “Are you okay to share?”

I’ve been trying to keep composed and formal, the better to break the news to Leif later. But it’s a pain trying so hard, so I decide in that moment to relax and enjoy myself.

“It’s fine. I’m just here to leach all your body heat anyway.”

Leif seems to pick up on the shift in my attitude and I have to look away so he doesn’t see the way warmth flares in my stomach at his grin.

A moment later, Sarah tells everyone to hang on, and we’re off.

The ride takes us through a beautiful path through the woods, the boughs heavy with snow. For the first while Leif and I don’t talk, just sit together in silence listening to the conversations around us. Everyone talks with mock jealousy about how Leif’s uncle Jude and his family are in Mexico for another week, while Seamus and his wife Chelsea talk about going to the Bahamas in January.

“It’ll be our first vacation since everything,” Chelsea says, kissing Seamus’s gray-bearded cheek.

Eli talks about how his father’s going in for some heart tests, and everyone’s face grows somber.

But amongst the worry and sadness, there’s joy, too. The family teases each other, regaling each other with stories from the course of the year. And though they make jokes about how no one has done anything as important or interesting as Leif, they don’t grill him about his time in space either. Or demand to know what’s next. He’s lucky.

I relax into Leif, laughing at the stories they tell about him when he was a boy, like the time he built a telescope out of a mayonnaise jar.

“Or the time he wrote his will on a paper napkin that time he was sick with the flu,” Enzo says. “He left me all his LEGO.”

Everyone laughs, but I see his mom blanch. “God, I almost forgot about that,” she says. “He was really sick. His father flew home from Venezuela we were so worried.”

“I was fine,” Leif says.

“No you weren’t.” Griffin looks at his son. “We had to take you to the hospital to put you on one of those oxygen machines.”

Enzo grimaces. “I had no idea it was that intense.”

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