Promises to Keep (35 page)

“It’s always possible,” Mark said. “The odds are not good, but there are always those who beat the odds. Callie is young, she’s strong, and that puts her in a far better position than many.”

“So she could have years?”

Mark paused. “Where there is life, there is hope.”

“I’m going to make it,” Callie said, with surprising strength in her voice. “I’m going to beat the odds.”

Mark nodded. “A positive attitude is a wonderful thing. You’d be astonished at what a difference it can make, and Callie? Reece? We’re doing everything we can.”

L
ila stamps her feet in the cold and pretends that she’s having a great time, waiting in line for half an hour to get into Ye Olde Christmas Fayre at the Washington Homestead.

Reece was originally taking the children, but when he discovered Callie was coming home Lila and Ed offered to take them instead. Callie could settle in and rest in peace and quiet, they said, ready for the children later that day.

“Are you
sure
Santa’s in there?” Jack asks dubiously. “I thought he was in the North Pole getting ready for Christmas.”

“He is. Except when he visits places to come and see kids,” Ed jumps in, seeing Lila’s panicked face. He laughs, knowing that Lila isn’t quite sure what the Christmas story is.

“But
why
does he have to come and see us?” Eliza asks. “Phebe tells him everything every night.”

“What?” Now even Ed is completely lost.

“Phebe. Our Elf on the Shelf.”

Ed stares at Eliza in silence.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. “I have been celebrating Christmas for approximately forty-six years, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Phebe is our house elf, and he flies back to the North Pole every night and reports on our behavior, so if we’re bad he tells Santa and we don’t get good Christmas gifts.”

“And also,” Jack adds seriously, “we tell Phebe what we want for Christmas, and he tells Santa.”

“You tell him?”

“We write to him and he takes our letters to Santa.”

Wow! Ed flashes a grin at Lila. It’s all got so . . . sophisticated.

“Santa doesn’t need to come and see us because he already knows,” Eliza explains.

“I think he probably just wants to come and see for himself,” Lila says. “Oh look! The line’s moving, and they’re giving out candy canes!” She breathes a sigh of relief, and squeezes Ed’s hand.

While Lila has never actually celebrated Christmas herself, she is secretly a sucker for this time of year. She diligently lights the candles on the menorah every night, but spotting a lit menorah through a darkened window has never quite given her the thrill of spotting a beautifully lit Christmas tree.

Perhaps because Christmas was forbidden to her when she was a child, it has held a romantic thrill for her throughout her entire life. Driving down Main Street is always so much more exciting when the trees are wrapped with sparkling white lights.

Her own family would go out for Chinese every Christmas Eve, then sit down for bagels and nova on Christmas Day. At college, she would go home with Callie for the holiday, loving their Christmas meal, a hybrid of lunch and dinner, sitting down at the table at around four, and not getting up until long after nine.

George always made a big deal of carving the turkey, and Lila will always remember how welcome they made her feel. She was never, as she thought she would feel, the token Jew, never made to feel she didn’t belong. She was welcomed as part of the family. Callie had her pile of gifts, Steffi had hers, and Lila had hers.

Christmas was always a big deal in the Tollemache household, but what should happen this year? It is fast approaching, and there is no way that Callie will be able to do it. She and Steffi will just have to take over.

Callie takes Christmas seriously. She doesn’t do just one tree; she has three. She has color themes in every room, giant wooden nutcrackers that are positioned outside the front door, delicate glittering snowflake ornaments that she hangs from the magnolia tree in the front yard.

Her ornaments have been collected over the years, and she has a Christmas Eve party every year, when the eggnog and spiced rum flow, and the children string popcorn and dried cranberries to loop around the tree.

Not this year. This year it will not be done, unless Lila does it with Steffi and Honor.

Lila closes her eyes, just for a second, and puts out a hand to steady herself.

Most of the time, Lila is fine. She carries the weight of sadness with her every minute of every day, but she manages.

Most of the time she has to be fine, because in between thinking about Callie, and worrying about Callie, and caring for Callie, there is life. There is Ed, and Clay, and her work, and running her house, and speaking to clients, and grocery shopping, and doing all the things that have to be done every day.

And then it will hit her. Like now. A wave of dizziness. And she will bury her face in her hands, or break into wrenching sobs out of nowhere, or suddenly find that she has been pushing her cart around the grocery store and the reason everyone has been looking at her with worried expressions is because she has a trail of tears trickling quietly down her cheeks that just won’t stop.

She swallows away the lump for she is with the children and she does not want them to see her cry. Instead she puts her arms around them and squeezes them tightly, and is surprised, and delighted, that Jack, who is so often unwilling to accept embraces of any kind from anyone other than his parents, leans in to her and squeezes her back.

 

Ed sits with the children at the kiddie craft table in a room at the fair and makes Christmas tree ornaments with them, and eventually persuades Lila to join in. She professes she’d prefer to be sitting downstairs drinking peppermint-flavored hot chocolate, but as soon as she picks up the glue she is, much to the children’s delight, absorbed.

She brushes garlands of white glue onto the felt, sprinkles glitter on top and then sticks little sequins all over her Christmas tree.

“That looks awesome!” Eliza breathes, leaning on Lila. She immediately copies exactly what Lila has done.

From the outside, you would think that the children were absolutely fine. That the fact that their mother has been in the hospital for the past few weeks has not made any impact on their lives.

Yet they are both more affectionate, and more receptive to affection, than Lila has ever known. Eliza has always been affectionate with her, but today she is positively clingy. And Jack was always Mr. Touch Me Not, but today he is holding her hand, letting her hug him, sitting on her lap.

They walk around the fair, stopping to do various crafts or play games—a Christmas beanbag toss, pin the sack on the Santa—and then they join the line to go in to see Santa.

Both children are breathless with excitement, and Lila is gratified to see they have a real Santa. No cotton-wool beard on a young boy at this fair; this Santa is in his sixties, with round, ruddy cheeks and his own long white beard. He has twinkly eyes and a big soft belly. Even Lila gasps a little. She may not celebrate Christmas, but she knows Santa when she sees him.

Eliza turns very shy when she reaches the front, and Santa gently coaxes her in front of him. “What’s your name, pretty girl?” he asks.

“Eliza,” she whispers.

“And have you been good this Christmas?”

Eliza nods.

“What would you like for Christmas?”

She shrugs.

“Come now. There must be one wonderful thing you’d like from me this Christmas.”

“Can you make my mommy better?” She looks at him hopefully.

Santa smiles. “I can certainly try,” he says. “I can’t promise that it always works, but I’ll get my elves working on that right away. Is there anything else for you?”

“Yes,” Eliza says, suddenly confident. “I’d like a canopy bed for my American Girl doll, please.”

“Done,” Santa says, and they both pose for the obligatory photograph. “Tell your mom I’m working on it and I wish her well,” he says.

Next it is Jack’s turn. He marches up to Santa and looks him square in the eye.

“I’m Jack,” he says. “And I have a list.”

Lila watches as Santa laughs and Jack fishes a folded and rather crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to him.

“Do you want to tell me as well? Can you read it to me?”

“Yes,” Jack says and he starts to read.

Santa looks surprised, and Lila cracks up with laughter.

“Jack?” she says. “What
is
all that stuff ?”

“It’s in the book at home.” Jack looks up at her seriously.

“What book?”

“The catalogues,” Eliza chimes in. “He goes through all the mail and steals the catalogues, then draws circles around everything he wants.”

Santa chuckles heartily. “Well, if there is just one thing on that list that you really couldn’t live without, what would it be?”

Jack thinks for a minute. “
Star Wars
LEGO,” he says eventually.

“Excellent choice.” Santa nods, then leans forward to whisper in Jack’s ear, “LEGOS are my favorites too,” and Jack grins delightedly from ear to ear.

 

 

R
eece is cooking dinner when Ed and Lila arrive home with the kids.

“Did you have fun?”

“I had the best time!” Lila says truthfully. “The kids were amazing, and it was just . . . fun. I think they loved it. I also know what they want for Christmas, just in case you are stuck.”

“Oh God,” Reece groans as he slices mushrooms and measures polenta into a jug. “I haven’t even thought.”

“So don’t,” Lila says. “I’ll organize everything, and I’ll enlist others to help. I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Neither did I.” Reece grins. “But I’m learning. So far the children are big fans of my chicken teriyaki.”

“You make chicken teriyaki?”

“I smother chicken breasts in soy sauce and stick them on the George Foreman. Does that count?”

“I suppose so. I’m impressed. Anything else in your repertoire?”

“I make a mean macaroni cheese.” He gestures to the boxes of organic mac ’n’ cheese on the counter, which are waiting to be put away in the pantry. “And I’m now, slightly ambitiously, I will admit, attempting a wild mushroom polenta for the rest of us tonight.”

“That’s amazing.”

“My wife has taught me well.”

“Can I go up?”

“I think she’s sleeping, but of course. Go up.”

“Is she thrilled to be home?”

“She really is. She said she feels better just being in her own bed.”

“I can imagine. Where are Honor and Walter?”

“Honor needed some things in town so Walter’s giving her a ride.”

“Really? They’re in a car together? Walter actually agreed to share air space with Honor?”

“I know,” Reece says with a laugh. “It must be a Christmas miracle.”

“Some things will never cease to amaze me.” Lila shakes her head. “I’ll go upstairs and see if there’s anything she wants.”

 

The bedroom door is open. Lila tiptoes in to see that Callie is sleeping. It is a restless sleep, her mouth is open and she turns her head frequently. Lila isn’t entirely sure she even is asleep, and as she steps on a creaking floorboard Callie opens her eyes and moves them slowly to focus on Lila.

“Hi, sweetie,” Lila says, coming to sit on the bed next to her, leaning over and kissing her cheek. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just came up to see if you needed anything.”

“I’m thirsty,” Callie says, gesturing to the table where there is a plastic cup of water with a lid and a straw. Lila reaches for the cup and holds the straw to Callie’s lips; she sips gratefully, her head falling back on the pillow when she is done.

“How are the kids?” Callie asks.

“They’re amazing. We took them to Ye Olde Christmas Fayre today.” Lila tells Callie about their escapades, ending with Jack’s long list of gifts pulled from the catalogues. Callie’s face lights up and she starts to laugh.

“Thank you,” she says. “You are the best.”

“Do you want me to do the Christmas decorations?” Lila asks gently.

“No.” Callie covers Lila’s hand with her own. “I want to do them myself with the kids. If I need you, I’ll let you know. This radiation stuff sounds like it’s going to be pretty brutal so I don’t know how I’ll feel, but I still want to at least try to do Christmas with the kids.”

“Are you worried about the side effects of the radiation?”