Santa (Maybe): A Rom Com Novella (9 page)

“
It’s lovely, Joe. I’m so glad you’re here with us this year. These last few Christmas’s just hasn’t been the same without you.”

It was time for pulling the rest of the gifts out from under the tree, but Emily stopped them.

“Where’s Santa’s present?” She asked.

“Uh—Santa doesn’t get presents. He just
gives them,” Madeleine said.

“That’s not fair,” Emily said.

“It certainly isn’t,” agreed Ami. “One of the great injustices of our time.”

“Wait here! Nobody move!” Emily said and darted up the stairs. Halfway up
, she remembered her manners and shouted back down. “
Please
wait there and
please
don’t move!”

Everyone was laughing but Madeleine. She
was too quiet. Mark hoped he hadn’t overstepped a line somewhere. Joe had reassured him beforehand that even if Madeleine was annoyed at first, she never stayed mad for long.

He’d go as soon as Emily came back. They could open the rest of the presents without him. He fingered the one tiny box remain
ing in his pocket.  He had been sure he wanted to give it to her, but now he wasn’t. Maybe giving Madeleine a present was a bad idea. Maybe he’d better just put that gift back in his sock drawer and let it sit there for another 4 years.

Emily was gone
for a long time. When she finally came back, she was carrying a box almost as big as she was. It was badly wrapped in paper festooned with pink and purple snowmen.

“Here’s your present, Santa!” Emily’s eyes glowed.

Mark took the box and set it down on the floor.

“Open it! Open it!” Emily jumped up and down.

Mark looked over at Madeleine. She shrugged her shoulders and gave him a half-smile. Mark started to unwrap the box, but he was going too slowly for Emily. She helped him tear the paper off.

“
I used a lot of tape, didn’t I?” She struggled to get the last of the paper off.

Emily’s eyes were shining
. Mark smiled at her through his beard and she beamed back at him. Mark opened up the flaps of the box and looked inside. A broad grin spread across his face as he reached inside the box.
 

Madeleine
wanted to hug Mark. He held up the mangy stuffed elephant as if it were the best present he’d ever received.

“His name is Riggs!” Emily informed
Santa.

Riggs was
barely recognizable as an elephant anymore. He had survived several trips through the wash after being dropped in the toilet. He had endured being baptized in cherry-flavored fruit-punch. He had lost a leg which had been expertly sewn on by Ami, only to eventually lose it again. His trunk had become twisted and—in an attempt to bring him back to his former glory—Emily had covered him with uneven strokes using a gray magic marker.

“
Riggs is great!” Mark said as he made the elephant raise his trunk and trumpet. “I bet you’ve done lots of fun things with Riggs.”

“Yes. Riggs is my favorite stuffed animal in the whole world.”

Madeleine wondered when Emily was going to start having second thoughts about letting Riggs go. Up until recently, Emily had insisted on sleeping with Riggs tucked under her arm. Now Riggs slept at the end of the bed. He was a guard elephant, Emily claimed. Just like a guard dog. Only he ate less.

“I love Riggs!” Mark said. “There’s one thing though, that worries me.”

Emily’s eyes got big.

“My reindeer are awfully big and they can be terrible bullies. Rudolph in particular.”

“That’s not nice!”

“No. I talk to
Rudolph about it all the time, but he just won’t listen.”

“Like Samuel F. He never waits his turn. Miss Hill keeps telling him to wait, but he never listens.”

“It sounds like Rudolph and Samuel F have a lot in common.”

Emily nodded. Mark handed Riggs reverently back to Emily.

“I think you’d better take care of him for me until I get Rudolph back in line. I wouldn’t want Riggs to get hurt.”

“OK,” Emily said. She looked relieved.
She threw her arms around Mark and gave him an enthusiastic hug.

Madeleine looked at Mark and mouthed
, “Thank You” over the top of Emily’s head.

A
nd that was the moment. The moment when every doubt she had about him melted away. Madeleine still questioned Joe’s claim that the man had spent the last decade madly in love with her, but, if true, she was one lucky woman.

Mark
looked over Emily’s head at Madeleine. She was smiling at him. He wanted so badly to walk over and kiss her, but now was not the moment. Instead he took the tiny box out of his pocket.

“Look what I found
, Emily. Another present!”

“Who is it for?” Emily tried to find a name tag but there wasn’t one.

“This one is for your mother,” Mark said. “My friend Mark asked me to deliver it to her personally.”

Emily grabbed the
tiny box and took it to her mother.

Madeleine opened the box
and took out an antique cameo pin. She didn’t speak. She just looked at him. It was a full minute before she found her voice.

“This is exactly like—“

Exactly like the cameo pin belonging to her great-grandmother. The one Madeleine had lost the weekend she’d graduated from law school. She’d pinned it to her graduation gown as a tribute to her great-grandmother—the first female lawyer in the state of Minnesota—but the clasp had come loose somehow and after the ceremony the cameo was missing.

Mark and Joe and
Ami had spent hours helping Madeleine search the lawn where the graduation had been held. They searched until it got dark, but they never found the brooch.

“Let me see!”
Ami interrupted.

“
How in the world did you find this?” Madeleine asked.

He’d spent years searching internet auction sites, but he could hardly admit to
it.

“Oh, I—I mean my friend Mark
—happened to come across it and I thought of you.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Madeleine said.
She walked over to Mark and kissed him on the cheek, or what would have been his cheek if it had not been covered with a white wooly beard. “Thank you for delivering it, Santa. It’s the nicest present anyone has ever given me.”

It was worth it
. She might not love him back—the way he wished she would—but at least he’d made her smile. She didn’t have nearly enough reasons to smile.

“Time for bed, Emily,” Madeleine announced.

Emily begged to stay up a little longer, but Madeleine pointed out it was already 2 hours past her regular bed-time.

“Maybe Aunt
Ami will tuck you in.”

Emily
was satisfied. She trotted upstairs to brush her teeth on the condition that Aunt Ami would be up to read her a bedtime story. She came racing back down a minute later.

“I forgot to tell Santa goodbye!” She said. “I won’t see you again until next year.”

Maybe not even then, Mark thought. By next year he might no longer be a part of their lives, even dressed up as Santa.

Madeleine hurried Emily through her good-byes
and sent her upstairs for a second try at brushing her teeth. That was his cue to go.

“
I’d better take off,” Mark said.

“Already?” Joe protested.

Mark looked at Madeleine. She was smiling at him, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Actually,
Mark—“ Ami said, “—after I’m done reading Emily her bed-time story I was thinking you and Joe might help me finish up a little project I’m working on.”

“Sure,” Mark answered.

“What kind of project?” Joe asked. Joe had seen the sorts of projects Ami sometimes came up with, and he wasn’t willing to commit until he had a better idea of what he was getting into.

“
I’m doing a social experiment.”

“Social experiment?”

“Yes, and all to benefit a very good cause.”

“And what good cause would that be?”

“You know our friend Mark here has been having some trouble with a certain female lately?”

Mark hoped whatever
Ami had done hadn’t just made a bad situation worse, but he saw no point in voicing his doubts.

“Yes, I was aware of that
,” Joe was saying.

“Well, I might have succeeded in putting a spoke in her wheels.”

“Ami! What did you do?” Madeleine sounded extremely skeptical and concerned.

“It remains to be seen,”
Ami said. “Now, much as I’d love to include you in this little outing, Madeleine, somebody has to stay here with Emily.”

“Fine with me,” Madeleine answered. “Your brilliant ideas usually end up scaring me to death.”

“How often do Ami’s projects succeed?” Mark asked.

“It’s about 50/50,” Joe answered.

“Incidentally, I’ve already set this plan in motion,” Ami said. “There’s no going back, so you two might as well come along with me to see how things worked out.”

“And why do you need us?” Joe was s
uspicious.

“Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

“You’ll see
,” Ami said.

“Why won’t you tell us now?” Joe asked.

“Are you coming or not?”

“Let’s go, Joe,” Mark said. Then he thought of something. “
Ami, can I get away with going in this Santa suit?”

“
I don’t see why not.” Ami said.

Madeleine
fell asleep on the couch. She woke up to the sound of Ami’s car in the driveway. It was two o’clock in the morning.

They c
ame back with an extra person. Ami introduced him as Jagger, her next door neighbor. The carpenter. The loud one. The one she hated. Or so she had claimed on many previous occasions, but Ami wasn’t looking at him like she hated him. She made no explanation for Jagger’s presence.

Ami
was barely in the door before she demanded Madeleine’s laptop. She inserted a flash drive and pulled up a video file.

“You have to see this,”
Ami said, thrusting the laptop under Madeleine’s nose. “Hit ‘play’ when you’re ready.”

Madeleine looked over at Mark. He was looking shell
-shocked under his Santa beard, but slightly relieved. Good. Whatever Ami had done must not have backfired. At least not too badly.

Madeleine hit play.
It was a split screen. The first camera was aimed at the outside of Mark’s front door. The second showed the inside of Mark’s living room.

“How did
you do this?” Madeleine asked.

“Oh, Jagger has
this friend who’s got a van fitted out with surveillance equipment,” Ami said, like it was the most natural thing in the world to have a next-door neighbor with access to professional-quality spy-gear. “Earlier today Jagger and I broke into Mark’s houseboat and put up the cameras. They’re tiny. Top of the line. Almost impossible to spot.”

“I thought you were a carpenter.” Madeleine looked
over at Jagger.

“I am
. My friend owed me a favor.” Jagger shrugged.

Madeleine let it go and returned her attention to the video. Two people could be seen approaching the front door.

“That’s Kristen!” Madeleine exclaimed.

“
You’re surprised?” Ami asked.

“And that looks like—“

“Chad?” Amy enquired. “Why, yes it is. You can thank me for that.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to start thanking you for anything yet. I don’t understand.”

“Would telling you Chad is sitting in jail right waiting to be charged with attempted arson help you feel any gratitude at all?”

“Arson
?”

“Yes, arson.
” Mark still looked a little traumatized. “They didn’t succeed, for which I’m very grateful. Not to sound like a total punster, but don’t you think that was playing with fire, Ami?”

“But why would they try to burn down Mark’s houseboat?”
Madeleine asked.

“Maybe Kristen has watched a few too many
crime thrillers? I don’t know. I had a feeling that was her plan all along. After what you said she told you about
not
planning to burn down Mark’s houseboat, I was almost certain that was what she would do if Mark didn’t give in to her demands,” Ami said.

“Huh?”

“Seriously. People always preemptively deny whatever it is they actually intend to do.”

“OK. But what’s Chad doing there?”

While they’ve been talking the video had continued playing. Kristen and Chad had now managed to break in the front door. It wasn’t much of a front door. Chad had jammed a crowbar between the door frame and the lock and it had popped right open.