Karen Templeton - Dear Santa

Mia turned to her, smiling. “Chowder’s fine.” Then she frowned. “Is Haley eating?”

Etta shrugged. “Not really. But then, she never really ate before, as far as I could tell. How the kid is still alive, I have no idea.” She started toward the door, then twisted back, as if weighing whether or not to say whatever she was thinking. When she finally said, “Lunch is at twelve-thirty,” Mia doubted that was it.

Well. Her clothes put away, her laptop set up on a small desk near the window, she might as well make herself useful and go look for Haley. Who she found—along with her father—out in the park that passed for a backyard. Haley and Henry shared a low-slung swing on a shiny new set, under the watchful eye of her father, seated on the flagstone patio in a white, cast-iron chair, his ankle crossed at the knee. At Mia’s “Hey, there,” he looked up, his frown—permanent, from what she could tell—easing somewhat.

“All settled in?” he asked, his attention drifting back to his daughter.

“Yeah.” Her hands in the pockets of her down vest, Mia lowered herself into a matching chair a few feet away. “Your mother left?”

“Yes, thank God.” He spared her a glance. “I don’t think she quite knows what to make of you.”

“I seem to have that effect on people.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “You know, since I’m here now, if you need to get back to work…?”

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes never leaving his daughter. “But I’m fine.”

Mia followed his gaze. “How’s she been?”

Grant’s shoulders hitched in a semblance of a shrug. “Quiet. Keeping to herself. Except for asking us where Justine is every five seconds. Which the doctor said to expect.” He leaned forward, his hands between his knees. “I went online, did some reading up.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Late last night, after I got back. From the anniversary party?” He nodded, a slight breeze ruffling his hair. Either he hadn’t shaved this morning or he had a seriously overachieving five-o’clock shadow.

“I suppose it’s at least somewhat reassuring,” he said, “to know her reaction is normal.”

“Yeah,” Mia breathed out. “Kinda hard to react to something you don’t understand.” She sank back into the chair, her hands still in her pockets. The breeze picked up, rustling the leaves, sending a few hang gliding onto the grass. “Um…not that I’m trying to horn in or anything, but if you need help with the arrangements…?” When the frown deepened, she said, “It’s what I do, remember?”

“Help?”

“No. Well, that, too. But I meant pulling food and whatnot together for two hundred out of a hat. It’s why God created delis that make up platters of artfully arranged cold cuts.”

“I take it you don’t generally do funeral receptions, though.”

“I have. They can be parties, too, depending on the deceased.”

“Not in this case.”

“No. Not in this case.”

His eyes drifted back to Haley. “I’ll pay you for your time.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, earning her a puzzled glare. Interesting combination. “Just sign a check for the food and we’ll call it square.”

Another nod. Then he said, “I know it’s probably nuts, asking people to trek all the way out here after the service. But I thought it might help Haley. If she could say goodbye here.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mia said, and his shoulders seemed to relax, just a fraction, and it hit her how hard this was on him, navigating these completely uncharted waters with nothing to guide him except, she supposed, a basic desire to do the right thing by his daughter. Well, that, and the best therapy money could buy.

“I also shouldn’t have strong-armed you into this,” he said suddenly.

“This?”

“Coming back,” he said, not looking at her as he slowly ground his knuckles into the palm of his other hand. “You’ve got that pained look people get when they’re forced to be someplace they don’t want to be. It’s just I was so desperate the other day, I reacted without thinking…. I apologize.”

Mia blinked, then laughed softly. “Believe me, Grant—if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. No apology necessary.”

Under hooded lids, his eyes slid back to hers…and her stomach flipped. Nothing had prepared her for the full force of that probing gaze, riddled with concern. It was almost as if…

Never mind , she told herself as, knocked flat on her mental butt, she looked away until she could right herself again. When she didn’t reply fast enough to suit him, he probed further.

“Then what’s wrong?” he probed further. “Is it work?”

“No!” she said, a knee-jerk reaction to the presumption implicit in the question. “Business is great, O ye of little faith.”

“Then what?”

She messed with a thread dangling from the hem of her sweater, then crossed her arms. “Not that you’d care, but…my building’s going co-op.” Her mouth pulled down at the corners. “I have to either move or buy when my lease is up. In two weeks.”

“They can’t give you only two weeks’ notice, for God’s sake!”

“They didn’t. It’s been in the plans for more than a year. But I’ve been so busy with work…and I kept holding out this tiny hope that we’d win the battle and the landlord would back down.”

“Never mind that that almost never happens.”

“I know,” she said on a stream of air.

“I take it you can’t afford to buy?”

She let out a dry little laugh. “Everything I have—had—is tied up in the business.”

“You used personal capital as seed money?”

“It’s not unheard of, Grant. Especially since I couldn’t get a loan to save myself. So you can stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m some dumb cluck who had no idea what she was getting into.”

“Did you even have a contingency plan?”

Tamping down the urge to slug the man, she said, “I left Hinkley-Cohen on very good terms. I could have gone back anytime.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Okay, Grant? Hard as this might be for you to believe, I did know the risks going in. I also knew, given time and a long enough lever, I could make it. And I did. Am . But I was already in up to my eyeballs when the whole co-op ball started to roll. Moving then wasn’t an option. So I took another risk, that the landlord’s plan would fall through. Since it didn’t,” she said, turning back, “I suppose I’ll figure something out.”

“In two weeks.”

“Twelve days, actually…. Hey, cookie,” she said softly as Haley approached. “What’s up?”

As much as it warmed Mia’s heart when the little girl wriggled up into her lap, she didn’t miss Grant’s scowl at having not been chosen. Well, bud , she thought, wrapping her arms around Haley’s waist, you’re the only one who can fix that .

“How’s Henry doing today?” she asked, her lips close to the little girl’s ear.

A shrug. “His mommy still hasn’t come back.” A pause. “He’s getting scared,” she said, ruffling the thing’s increasingly matted mane. “He says everybody keeps telling him she’s gone to heaven and she can’t come back, ever. That makes his heart hurt.”

As it did Mia’s. She hugged Haley more tightly. “I know,” she whispered, laying her cheek against the soft curls. “I know it does. So you have to hug Henry lots and lots to make him feel better.”

“I am. But he said it doesn’t help.”

“It will, lamb chop,” Mia said, her eyes burning, not caring if Grant’s were boring holes in the side of her face. “Eventually, it will.”

“Promise?”