"The reindeer, they chew up the shingles if I leave them too long."
"Of course."
"I'm not getting in there. I'm not finished yet, you know."
Patrick opens the rear door. "I'll take the chance, Pop. Go on. I'll take you down to a nice warm bunk to sleep this off."
Santa shakes his head. "My old lady'll kill me."
"Mrs. Claus will get over it."
His smile fades as he looks at Patrick. "C'mon, officer. Cut me a little slack. You know what it's like to go home to a woman you love, who just wishes you'd stay the hell away?"
Patrick ducks him into the car, with maybe a little too much force. No, he doesn't know what it's like.
He can't get past the first part of that sentence: You know what it's like to go home to a woman you love?
By the time he gets to the station, Santa is unconscious, and has to be hauled into the building by Patrick and the desk officer. Patrick punches out on the clock, gets into his own truck. But instead of driving home, he heads in the opposite direction, past Nina's house. Just to make sure everything's all right. It is something he has not done with regularity since the year he returned to Biddeford, when Nina and Caleb were already married. He would drive by on the graveyard shift and see all the lights out, save the one in their bedroom. An extra dose of security, or so he told himself back then.
Years later, he still doesn't believe it.
It is supposed to be a big deal, Nathaniel knows. Not only does he get to stay up extra late on Christmas Eve, but he can open as many presents as he wants, which is all of them. And they're staying in a real live old castle, in a whole new country called Canada.
Their room at this castle-hotel has a fireplace in it, and a bird that looks real but is dead. Stuffed, that's what his father called it, and maybe it did look like it had eaten too much, although Nathaniel doesn't think you can die from that. There are two huge beds and the kinds of pillows that squinch when you lie on them, instead of popping right back.
Everyone talks a different language, one Nathaniel doesn't understand, and that makes him think of his mother.
He has opened a remote-control truck, a stuffed kangaroo, a helicopter. Matchbox cars in so many colors it makes him dizzy. Two computer games and a tiny pinball machine he can hold in his hand.
The room is littered with wrapping paper, which his father is busy feeding into the mouth of the fire.
"That's some haul," he muses, smiling at Nathaniel.
His father has been letting Nathaniel call the shots. To that end, they got to play at a fort the whole day, and ride up and down a cable car, the funsomething, Nathaniel forgets. They went to a restaurant with a big moose head mounted outside and Nathaniel got to order five desserts. They went back to the room and opened their presents, saving their stockings for tomorrow. They have done everything Nathaniel has asked, which never happens when he is at home.
"So," his father says. "What's next?"
But all Nathaniel wants to do is make it the way it used to be.
The doorbell rings at eleven, and it's a Christmas tree. Then Patrick's face pokes through the branches, from behind the enormous balsam. "Hi," he says.
My face feels rubbery, this smile strange upon it. "Hi."
"I brought you a tree."
"I noticed." Stepping back, I let him into the house. He props the tree against the wall, needles raining down around our feet. "Caleb's truck isn't here."
"Neither's Caleb. Or Nathaniel."
Patrick's eyes darken. "Oh, Nina. Christ, I'm sorry."
"Don't be." I give him my best grin. "I have a tree now. And someone to help me eat Christmas Eve dinner."
"Why, Miz Maurier, I'd be delighted." At the same moment, we realize Patrick's mistake-calling me by my maiden name, the name by which he first knew me. But neither one of us bothers to make the correction.
"Come on in. I'll get the food out of the fridge."
"In a second." He runs out to his car, and returns with several Wal-Mart shopping bags. Some are tied with ribbons. "Merry Christmas." An afterthought, he leans forward and kisses me on the cheek.
