I’m briefly tempted to explain that some women simply prefer women—whether a “man like my father” is available or not—but decide it’s best to quit while I’m ahead. Mother’s actually open-minded for a woman of her age and upbringing, and any text thread that ends without her setting me up on another awkward date is a good one in my book.
I’ve just tucked my phone away and reached for my copy of Great Expectations—a favorite holiday reread—when the children launch into an especially ear-shredding version of Silent Night.
I love a holiday carol, but good God…someone should have told the tone-deaf shepherds in back to lip sync and tiny Mother Mary to keep her volume to a more respectable level.
Fighting a wince, I scan the assembled parents, but they don’t seem to care that their progeny won’t be winning any talent awards.
They actually look chuffed to be here. Tired, but chuffed, which seems to be the norm for modern parents. Most of my friends with children are perpetually exhausted, even with night nannies and maids who come in several times a week to take care of the washing and housework. I can’t imagine how an average family without the funds to hire help manages it all.
And due to the circumstances of my birth, I will never have to find out. Should I find my perfect match and start a family someday, the way Father assured me I would, I’ll be able to afford all the nannies and diaper services London can provide. Not only do I receive a healthy income from our family holdings, but I’m also the owner of a successful architecture firm, specializing in sustainable housing solutions.
It’s how I found The Crown and Thistle.
Those unreasonably expensive lofts that now fill the old textile factories? My design and the project that launched my firm to national acclaim eight years ago.
All in all, I am a very lucky man.
Very,verylucky.
But this holiday season still feels painfully dreary, no matter how many lights I string on my tree.
My thoughts are turning back to the morbid, back to my father’s hand cold in mine, and last January, the most miserable month of my life thus far, when it happens…
Suddenly, the door at the back of the stage flies open, and a woman catapults into the pub like she’s been shot out of a circus cannon.
In a blur of red curls and flying luggage, she barrels into the nativity scene. Her wheeled bag catches on a wiseman’s cane, sending the poor boy sprawling, and her oversized purse swingswide, taking down a shepherd on her way to center stage. There she trips over her own feet and takes a tumble…
Directly into the manger.
The baby Jesus, a Belinda Moore floral masterpiece, I was just thinking looked silly surrounded by children with leaking noses dressed in sheets, explodes on impact. Petals burst upward like glitter in a snow globe, wire springs leaping in every direction as the woman lands flat on her back in the hay.
Slowly, the floral rain settles atop her, making the poor thing look like she’s been attacked by a wedding bouquet. Her hair—that profusion of red—fans out around her like a Pre-Raphaelite painting. She seems to have broken a shoe, and her skirt has twisted up to reveal ripped tights and the start of an ugly bruise.
For a moment, everything freezes.
The audience stares.
The wise men and shepherds gape.
Even the stuffed cow looks vaguely offended.
Then the child playing Mary starts giggling maniacally while shouting “bloody hell,” Joseph makes a break for the loo, and Belinda—poor, perfectionist Belinda who did the flowers for Edward’s engagement party and still hasn’t forgiven me for being forty minutes late—looks ready to commit justifiable homicide.
Red scrambles to her feet, babbling apologies in an accent that I peg as Manhattan by way of New Jersey. I recently finished staffing my New York office, and that clipped, “no time for niceties” cadence is still fresh in my memory. A scan of her wrinkled clothing reveals an ink stain, brown patches on the pale gray wool, and stray tufts of cotton, possibly from a wise man’s beard.
All in all, she looks like she’s been through a war.
One she lost.
Still, her smile is warm and appropriately apologetic. She doesn’t seem to be completely mad, but you wouldn’t know it from the way Belinda snatches her daughter away, like Red’s carrying a virus she suspects is catching.
After announcing that she won’t be working with Red—ever—she sweeps out of the pub, little Mary in tow. Within moments, the other parents follow suit, fetching their semi-traumatized offspring, bundling them into coats and wellies, and guiding them out into the storm.
Soon, the pub has emptied of respectable society, leaving just me, Reggie, and his busboy, and the old fogeys by the fire who haven’t moved from their spots since 1987.
And, of course, the American disaster standing in the wreckage of baby Jesus, blushing such a bright, fetching pink, I can’t resist teasing, “Well, you certainly know how to clear a room, don’t you, Red?”
Her head snaps toward me, and I get my first proper look at her face. Green eyes flash with indignation, freckles dust her upturned nose, and the stubborn jut of her chin makes it clear that she’s prepared to do battle. She’s beautiful and fierce and still blushing in a way that makes her eyes seem to glow in the dark.
