The 13th Gift (16 page)

The kids remain quiet while John sits with eyes closed. Even Nick sets his fork down and stops munching.

John’s memories draw me back to my own childhood and the meals my mom prepared on Christmas Eve. Fried whitefish, Polish sausage, cabbage rolls. The feast was a precursor to midnight mass, where Mom sang Polish Christmas carols with the choir. Though my dad, who was of Hungarian descent, didn’t understand a word of the lyrics, he had memorized them over the years and belted them out as if native-born.

I am wondering what holiday memory will linger with my kids, when John opens his eyes and catches us staring at him.

“Sorry,” he says. “Who wants dessert?”

The kids flock to the buffet line. That’s when John asks me about their dad.

“Was he sick long?”

I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to be sad or feel bad about how much I am enjoying this evening. But Rick is part of our story, and I can’t deny his existence any more than John could forget his mom.

“He was sicker than I realized,” I finally say. “This is our first Christmas without him.”

John places his hand over mine and says, “That’s tough, but I can see you’re strong. My dad died the year I graduated high school. I wanted to kick the whole world that first Christmas. Mom wouldn’t let me. She told me to remember the good times.”

Ben, Nick, and Megan file back into their seats with bowls of chocolate pudding, ice cream smothered in hot fudge, and a variety of cobblers, which Megan declares is a healthy dish because it contains fruit. I have my doubts.

“Somebody’s going to be sick.”

“Not a chance,” Nick says. “I could eat a ton of this stuff.”

Megan eats about half of her cobbler, then pushes it away and looks at us expectantly.

“We should get going. We might have a gift waiting at home for us.”

We tell John about the anonymous gifts and our hope to pass on Christmas cheer to others this year.

“That’s why I invited you to join us,” Nick says. “You were alone. We weren’t.”

“Thank you,” John says. “It’s been fun, a night to remember.”

Nick holds his stomach and grimaces. “I’d like to forget some of those chicken wings.”

Our dinner ends quickly with my son’s next announcement.

“I’m going to explode,” he declares. “Better get me home.”

We offer John a ride.

“I’ve got to walk off these wings,” he says. “It’s just a few blocks.”

“What if your mom’s not home?” Ben asks.

“I have a key. If she doesn’t show up soon, I’ll call her.”

We turn toward the car, but John holds me back.

“Remember the good times,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

We’re nearly home when I notice a car pulling away from the curb just past our driveway.

“Follow it,” Nick shouts from the backseat. “It’s gotta be them.”

Ben speeds up, but I caution him not to get too close.

“We don’t want to give ourselves away.”

Nick and Megan order me to slump down in the front seat, so I won’t be recognized. They do the same in the back. Nick tosses a crumb-coated knit cap from his coat pocket to Ben to wear as camouflage.

“Dude, where has this thing been?” Ben asks, refusing to wear it. “It smells like cereal.”

Nick grabs a handful of the crud from his pocket and sniffs it, then tastes a sliver.

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” he says.

Ben reminds Nick that he’s supposed to be sick.

“Take a right. Take a right,” Nick hollers inches from Ben’s ears. “They’re turning.”

“Looks like a Chevy, older model,” I say, but Ben thinks it’s a Ford. Neither of us is sure.

“It’s blue,” Megan whispers through the gap between my seat and the headrest. “Or maybe black or dark purple.”

“Or maybe it’s just dark outside,” Ben says. “Put your seat belt back on.”

“Go left. Go left.” Nick again shouts driving directions, but he’s been slumped behind the driver’s seat and has missed the Volkswagen that turned in front of us, blocking our prey. He’s watching the wrong vehicle.

We follow the car through Bellbrook neighborhoods, down Kensington Drive on to Clarkston, then Possum Run. We lose it, or maybe it loses us, at the stop sign on Little Sugarcreek Road. We drive around for half an hour but never spot the car again.

Finally, Megan calls off the search.

“Can’t we just go home and see what they left us?”

“I should have kept my foot on the gas. We could have had them,” Ben says.

I laugh off his comment.

“You’re lucky to be driving at all.”

Ben latches the safety locks on the car doors before we pull into the driveway, to prevent his brother and sister from bailing out before him. Once he releases the locks, all three run for the porch and the gift bag waiting there.

Megan reaches it first.

“Cookie cutters! Eight of them.”

“Really,”
Ben says. “I mention our lack of cookies to Dad’s friend, and we end up with a set of Christmas cookie cutters. That’s no coincidence.”

The card is different from the others; there are no fancy letters, no holly leaves or red-booted snowmen, just the words of the carol written in a neat cursive hand.

“It looks like one of your shopping lists,” Megan says to me, then points out two misspelled words in the missive.

“I’ll bet Terry rewrote the card after he left here,” Ben says. “He probably had another gift in mind for today but bought the cookie cutters instead after he dropped off the envelope.”

“That would explain why the card is so plain, no art,” Nick agrees. “Didn’t have time or art supplies to fancy it up.”

We look for patterns in the cards and check for similar handwriting styles.

“It’s funny when you think about it,” Megan says. “We’ve been trying to figure out this mystery for eight days, and we never even asked Terry about the gifts. I think it’s a sign.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Ben says. “A sign of what?”

“That we’re not supposed to know who they are.”

“Hogwash.”

All three kids look at me.

“Hog what?” Megan wants to know.

“If it takes me ’til Christmas, I’ll find out who they are.”

It takes me less than two minutes to stash all of the homemade cards in my desk, so they don’t disappear overnight, and add our new cookie cutters shaped like Santa boots, angels, evergreens, and ornaments to my already extensive collection in the kitchen. When I return to the living room, it’s empty.

I hear the bass of Ben’s stereo vibrating the walls of the basement stairwell and Super Mario music rings out from under the bathroom door. What I think is a Muppet singing a Christmas song wafts up from the television in the family room.

My children have gone their separate ways for the evening. Their disappearance is a letdown after the day we’ve spent together. I’m sitting on the couch alone when I get the idea.

Five minutes later, all the lights in the house go out at the same time.

“Looks like a power outage,” I tell the kids when they join me in the living room. “Christmas lights must be putting a strain on the electric company.”

“Do we have batteries so I can play my Game Boy?”

“Haven’t bought any recently.”

“Anybody seen my cell phone?” Ben feels around the dining room table where he remembers last seeing it, but it’s not there.

We light lots of candles, but even reading is difficult in the dim light.

“How about we tell Christmas stories?” I suggest.

Ben groans. Megan is thrilled. Nick wants to go buy batteries.

“Did I ever tell you about the Christmas Dad bought me a typewriter?”

More groans. I ignore them.

“I had dreamed of becoming a writer since I was a little girl, and the gift was a show of support from your dad. He also told me that he feared success would change us, change me.”

“He gave it to you anyway. That’s a big deal,” Ben says.

“It was a very big deal, but not in the way you might think. The
P
key on the machine was broken off. He told me, ‘It’s kind of a handicap, but I have confidence in you.’

“I was annoyed, but I took it as a challenge. And it was fun, you know, almost like a game that we played together while I was writing. A few months later, I found that broken
P
key in the lock box under the bed.”

“I bet you were angry,” Nick says. “What did you do?”

“I bought him a set of left-handed golf clubs at a garage sale the following year.”

Their dad was right-handed, and he had laughed heartily when he opened the clubs and realized what I’d done. In the golf bag’s special compartment for balls, he found my missing
P
key and a gift certificate for a set of right-handed clubs.

“I don’t remember Dad buying a lot of Christmas presents, but the ones he gave were special, like my electric train set,”

Nick remembers. “He ‘tested it out’ for two days before he let me handle the controls.”

He had tried doing the same when Ben got his first ten-speed bike, but his eldest hadn’t fallen for it.

“He looked silly riding that bike. His knees hit the handlebars,” Ben says. “He crashed it into a trash can on New Year’s Day.”

“Remember the butterfly clips he gave me last Christmas?” Megan asks. “He let me try them out in his hair.”

Rick had come to Christmas breakfast wearing his new bathrobe with a dozen tiny braids in his short black hair. Megan had fastened a colorful clip to the end of each one.

“Not many dads would do that,” she says.

We keep talking—about Rick, about Christmases and presents from the past. It is cozy, and even with the lights out I can feel a sense of being both merry and bright creeping into the house. Then Ben’s cell phone rings.

“Jig’s up,” he says, when he sees it light up in my pocket.

“I’ll go check the breaker box,” I say, handing him the phone with a sigh. “I have a feeling the power is back on.”

M
Y BOSS HAS
been generous giving me time off work, so I don’t argue when he turns down my request to stay home today. He wants me in the office writing “evergreens,” or stories that can run anytime during the holidays.

“Everyone wants to be off this time of year,” he says apologetically. “Newspapers don’t close down for Christmas.”

I’m reluctant to leave the kids, who are now on winter break, but I have little vacation time left this year. I decide to make the best of it and go in early. I stack several boxes of candy by the front door. They’ll be gifts for my coworkers.

Ben is still sleeping, but I check in with my two younger children before leaving to hear their plans for the day.