Page 49 of Santa's Girl
Me: Everything okay?
Bear: Took care of it.
Short. Solid. Very Bear.
Then another bubble appeared.
BearIs tonight too soon?
I grinned and leaned back against the wall, still holding the card.
Me: Yeah… I’ve got plans with Margie.
We’re doing everything you hate.
Christmas decorating. Tinsel. Possibly caroling. Sappy movies.
Bear: Okay. Tomorrow. 6 p.m. sharp.
My thumbs hovered for a second. Then I typed:
Me: It’s a date.
And for the first time in weeks — maybe longer — I felt like I had something real to look forward to.
By the time we got everything down from the attic, there was fake snow everywhere — mostly on me. Margie’s ancient Christmas boxes had disintegrated at the corners, leaking glitter and tinsel like they'd been holding in holiday spirit for a decade.
We sang carols in the kitchen while baking two dozen sugar cookies — half of which turned into snowman blobs and broken candy cane shapes. Margie pretended not to notice that I waschecking my phone every ten minutes like a girl in a high school rom-com.
And in the middle of rolling out a fresh batch of dough, she paused.
Just… stopped.
I looked up. “What’s wrong?”
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and leaned against the counter, her smile softer than I’d seen it in a long time. “I needed this,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do,” she said. Her eyes shone just a little. “I packed Christmas away when Steve died. Packed everything away, really. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look at his chair, the one he sat in every morning for thirty years. Couldn’t wake up in that house and not see him in every room. So I sold it. Moved here. Townhouse, HOA, no memories.”
I reached out, took her hand.
She squeezed it. “He was it for me. And when you losethe one, you don’t just lose the person — you lose the life. The rhythm. The mornings. The everything. And I guess I just stopped trying. But tonight…”
Her voice broke just slightly, but she held it together.
“Tonight, it felt a little lighter.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
Later, after the tree was glowing and Margie had gone to bed, I lay in the guest room under a thick knit blanket, wide awake. The scent of cinnamon still lingered from the cookies. My body was tired, but my mind was buzzing.
That’s when my phone buzzed.
2:03 a.m.
Bear:
