“Isn’t it a little early?” Wills asked. He’d had to go in to work for a few hours earlier in the day, but when he arrived home, he’d showered, changed into more casual clothes, and we had dinner—open-faced sandwiches of leftover turkey, stuffing, and gravy, and baked potatoes and a spinach salad with a raspberry vinaigrette dressing.
“Not really.” I hated waiting until the last minute, something Tim had encouraged. He had insisted I had the nicest handwriting of all the boys, and the job of signing the cards for our clients, Happy Holidays from your friends at 3F Corporation! had fallen to me. Tim felt 3F, which stood for Fun, Fun, Fun was innocuous enough that it wouldn’t upset any of their families if they should find the cards. “3F? Oh, a company I do business with on occasion, dear. Surely I mentioned them?” The cards themselves had been white with gold trim, graced by a simple winter scene, suitable no matter what the religious persuasion of our clients. “Besides, I’ll be swamped with getting the place ready for Christmas.”
“Aren’t I going to help you?”
“If you like, babe, but I would have thought you’d want to spend your evenings doing…” I waggled my eyebrows. He was wearing white sweat socks but no shoes, and I kept stealing glances at his nearly naked feet. “…other things.”
“Always. But I was looking forward to picking out a tree with you and…We are gonna have a live tree, aren’t we?”
“Of course.” Even if that hadn’t been my original intention, I’d have indulged his request.
“Great. And we’ll decorate it together too. I haven’t been able to have a tree since I moved out.”
“How come?” Even at our lowest time, that first Christmas I’d been with the boys, Tim had made sure we had a tree, even though it was only a few branches we’d scrounged from a lot after hours when no one was around to see, and stuffed into a milk carton. I knew Wills had never been in a situation like that.
“Too busy with work.” He shrugged. “What kind of decorations are you putting up?”
I let him change the subject. “Holly.” I hummed a few bars of “A Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and he grinned. “Pine garlands and pine cones, mistletoe, poinsettias. I usually stencil reindeer, Santas, and Christmas trees on the windows every year too.”
“I wish you’d let me help.” He sounded so wistful.
I went to him and put my arms around him. “Sure, babe. Whatever you want.”
He leaned into me. “It’s too bad we don’t have a fireplace.”
“A fireplace, hmm?” That was an interesting idea. The living room had originally been a bedroom, and behind one of the walls was a bricked-up fireplace. It couldn’t be that difficult to get it unbricked, and what a great Christmas gift that would be!
I’d already gotten him most of his gifts, a cloisonné globe and stand for the corner of his office, some games for his computer, a new case for his laptop, an Armani tuxedo that appeared to be black—until the light struck it just right, and then it became obvious that it was actually midnight blue—along with a traditional white, five-pleat dress shirt, tie, and cummerbund. Wills had a narrow waist and long legs. Hopefully the tux wouldn’t need too much in the way of alterations.
Now, how would I be able to get the fireplace opened without him knowing? He’d be bound to notice the dust.
“It would be neat to hang stockings from it,” he was saying. “We did that back home. Marti and Jar would get so excited, pulling out all sorts of surprises. That was the most fun to watch, they’re so much younger than me. I got to fill the stockings.” He was lost in the memories, and it was easy to see they were very happy ones. “Jill would film it with the camcorder.” He laughed softly. “You’re lucky, babe. You didn’t have to sit through fifteen years’ worth of Christmas movies.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
“You say that now. We’re talking hours’ and hours’ worth.”
I still wouldn’t have minded. “Did you roast chestnuts in the fireplace?”
“Yeah. Just like in the song.” Wills nuzzled a patch of skin below my ear. “We’re a very Norman Rockwell kind of family.” He let me go. “I think I’ll give Dad a call and see if he and Jill would mind sending my ornaments here.”
“Your ornaments?”
“My Mom gave me one every year before she died. Even the year she died there was one, although I didn’t get it until the following year. It was a little boy pulling a smaller boy on a sled. She’d had it made especially for me. Merry Christmas to the new big brother.”
“She was pregnant at the time of the accident?” Wills had never spoken of her, beyond telling me she’d been killed in a car accident when he was five.
His expression was so sad. “Yeah. Mom and Dad had just found out. No one else ever knew. We moved back home…” He saw my confusion. “Dad was so broken up he asked my grandparents if we could stay with them, and then I overheard him telling Grandpa to sell our house. That was almost worse than Mom dying. I could pretend she was coming back, but the house…It would be there, but it wouldn’t be ours.”