Susan Wiggs - Candlelight Christmas

“Damn it, Charlie. It’s a week before Christmas. Shouldn’t you be on your best behavior?”

“What if that is his best behavior?” asked Darcy, coming up behind them. She couldn’t decide whether she was grateful for the interruption of her moment with Logan or frustrated.

“Then I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said.

* * *

“You didn’t tell anybody, did you?” Back on Saddle Mountain the next day, Charlie and André were making a snow fort.

“Only Santa Claus,” said André. “And only in the letter I wrote. A real letter, not an email. You?”

“Same.”

“Yeah, but I saw you talking to Santa today. You must have said something,” André accused.

“I did. The guy in the Santa hut is my dad’s friend Adam. They think I don’t know that, but I do. I had to say something because they expect it. So I said I wanted a snowboard, even though that’s not what I really want.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

They had a stare-down. “So, are we gonna tell each other?”

“Better not.”

“Okay.” The snow was perfect for packing, just sticky enough but not too heavy. “Hey, I think my dad’s going to have a girlfriend,” he said. “I think it’s gonna be Darcy.” He’d already gone over this in his mind. Now he wanted to tell somebody, and André was the perfect choice. A best friend.

“She’s cool.”

“Yeah. Does your mom have a boyfriend?”

André added another chunk of snow to the wall. “Nope. Sometimes my dad used to come around, but... He’s not very nice to her.”

“That blows.”

“Yeah.”

Charlie felt bad for André. Charlie himself had a dad and a stepdad and they were both awesome. He looked over at André and frowned. “Wait a second. We can tell each other our Santa wishes. We can take the best-friend oath, and then we can tell each other.”

André hesitated, staring down at the snow-covered ground. Then he said, “Okay, but the oath is unbreakable, right?”

Charlie thought about things that broke. Bicycle chains. Thin ice. Christmas bulbs. His parents’ marriage. Promises. Sometimes it seemed as if everything was breakable.

Not a friendship, though. Not when you were best friends.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s go inside the fort to make sure nobody hears.”

They crawled through the opening and settled into the icy darkness. Charlie pulled out his flashlight and stuck it in the middle with the beam shining up, lending an eerie bluish glow to the interior of the fort. It felt as if they were the only two kids in the world.

“Okay, do we solemnly swear to keep everything we say and hear a total secret? Forever?”

“I do.”

“Me, too.”

“A dog,” said Charlie. “That’s what I want for Christmas. A dog.”

André’s eyes lit up and a grin broke across his face. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh man. That is so rad.”

“I know. I used to have a dog named Blake. She died, and I thought I wanted to die, too. I miss her so much. I never believed I would ever be happy again. But then I saw this kid playing with a black Lab, and I started thinking it might be time to get another dog. See, there are other dogs that need me, other dogs that can be my dog. This is the biggest thing I’ve ever wished for.”

“It’s big,” André admitted. “Really big. What kind of dog?”

“Pretty much any kind, so long as it’s friendly and wants to play and likes to sleep with me at night. I don’t want to be too picky.”

Charlie’s heart sped up when he pictured himself with a dog. Playing and feeding, lying around, taking walks, games of fetch. With a dog of his own, he would never be lonely.

“I’ve been asking and asking,” he said. “My mom and stepdad said no after Blake died, on account of we’re moving overseas and we move a lot. And my dad said no because he’s always busy working and I’m not home enough. Yeah, right. I know deep down in my heart it would be awesome. It would be a dream come true.”

“That’s totally cool, Charlie. So you think Santa’ll actually bring you a dog?”

“If he’s real, he has to, right?”

“Yep.” They rolled snowball after snowball, and more walls went up. It was awesome, having a best friend, thought Charlie. You could talk, or just be quiet and work side by side. You could tell each other stuff. They finished the shelter, and it was like a dark cave inside, cold and small, a real fort to keep them safe in case of enemy attack.

“What about you?” Charlie asked. “What did you ask for?”

André’s smile sank into a line of seriousness. “Remember the promise.”

“I remember. I could never forget.”

“Good. Because the dog is the biggest thing you ever asked Santa for. My wish is the most serious thing I ever asked Santa for.”

Charlie tried to imagine what kind of serious thing André was talking about.

“You know how we had to come stay with your dad because my mom went away for work?”

“Yep. That’s tough. I miss my mom when I’m away from her.”

“Yeah, but you have your dad. It’s different. I don’t have my dad. And I wouldn’t want him. He’s mean and he does bad stuff. So it’s nice how your dad is letting us come here. But my wish is about my mom.”

“You can’t ask Santa to bring your mom for Christmas. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I know. That’s not what I asked.”

“Then what?”

André drew his knees up to his chest and stared at the flashlight beam. “My mom didn’t go away for work,” he said in a very quiet voice.

“Then where did she go?” Charlie felt clueless, but he could tell André was building up to something big. Like last summer at Camp Kioga, in the cabin when Leroy Stumpf admitted he was scared of the dark.

Only this was bigger. Charlie could tell.

“She’s in jail.”

Charlie frowned. “Nuh-uh. You’re lying.”

“I wish I was.”

“Why is she in jail?”

“She got in trouble. My dad was doing something bad, and they both got caught. The judge sent her to a place called Bedford Hills Women’s Correctional Facility.” André repeated the big words as though he’d memorized them. “She has to stay there until February. It’s a jail. Prison. I looked it up online at the library. Angelica doesn’t know. No one is supposed to know. But I snooped. I heard her crying at night and I heard her talking on the phone, and I figured it out.”

“Oh man. That’s bad, André. That’s really bad.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Sure you do. And I know it, too.”

“I just wish my mom will be okay on Christmas. That’s all I wish.” André’s voice broke then, and he screwed up his face as though he was trying not to cry, and then he just let go and he cried hard, shaking all over.

“It’s okay, buddy,” said Charlie, patting him on the shoulder the way his dad sometimes did when Charlie was sad. “Maybe it sucks now, but it’s going to be okay.” The news made his stomach hurt. He wondered if he should send Santa another letter—Forget the dog. I want the same thing André wants.

“Do you think Santa will grant my wish?” André asked, dragging a mittened hand across his face.

“If he doesn’t, then there really is no Santa.”

“But he’s really real, right?”

“He’s real. So all we gotta do now is not screw up, and we’ll get our Christmas wishes.”

“Okay, let’s make a pact. We have to be good. We have to not screw up.”

“So, are we still going to stay up all night on Christmas Eve and wait for Santa?”

“Sure.”

“What if he doesn’t come?”

Charlie punched a window into the wall of snow. “Then we’ll know.”

On Christmas Eve, Logan was in his office in town, brooding over the resort accounts. The office was adjacent to the local radio station, and through the wall he could hear the relentlessly cheerful voice of the DJ, Eddie Haven, talking about the town festivities, which would culminate in the Christmas morning pageant at Heart of the Mountains Church.

Logan wished he could scrub the worries out of his brain. He had always been good at numbers. He had always been good at business. That was why the current situation was so frustrating. A looming loan payment and a year-end tax filing weighted the balance sheet heavily into the red. Despite taking a surgeon’s scalpel to the budget, he wasn’t able to stop the bleeding, not completely.

He glared at the screen and brooded some more, until his eyes glazed over.

The front door opened and shut. His father came in, looking around the small space, the shelves crammed with files and work product.

“So this is where it all happens,” said Al.

Logan pushed back from his computer screen, which displayed a spreadsheet with its depressing numbers. “Not exactly O’Donnell Industries,” he said.

“How’s it going?” asked his father.

There was a world of meaning in the question. What his father really wanted to know was whether or not Logan’s crazy enterprise was panning out. Was he making money or losing his shirt?

“I know that look,” said Al. “I realize you think I spent your entire boyhood with my nose in a business ledger, but believe it or not, I knew where you were, every minute. Still do.”

Logan was startled. “If that’s the case, then why did you just stand by and watch me go off the rails?”

“I didn’t stand by, and you didn’t go off the rails. The things that happened, yeah, some of it was hard, but I watched you turn yourself into a man, same as you’re doing for Charlie. A person can get crippled if he doesn’t figure things out on his own.”

Logan thought about all the dumb mistakes he’d made, the way he’d bumbled through the rough years. But looking back, he realized that despite the trouble and the hurt he’d endured, he wouldn’t change a thing. “Tough love?” he asked.

“That’s what I’ve heard it called. Then again, there’s no shame in asking for help. Sometimes,” said his father, “all you have to do is ask.”

* * *

“It’s Christmas Eve.” Darcy came bustling into the office. Her cheeks were bright from the cold, and she looked amazing, outfitted for skating on the lake. “You can’t sit here laboring over the books like Bob Marley.”

He grinned and pushed back from his desk. She was like a breath of fresh air, especially in the wake of his surprising conversation with his father. “Don’t you mean Jacob Marley?”

“Whatever. The point is, it’s Christmas Eve and you’re working.”

He stood up and reached for his jacket. “You’re a good influence on me. Where’s everybody else?”

“India took the four boys skating on Willow Lake.”

“Hope they’re staying out of trouble.”

“I’m meeting them at the skate house and then we’re all heading up the mountain before dark.”

“I’ve got more than work problems,” he said, shutting down his computer. “I’ve got a Santa problem. What the hell are we going to say to Angelica tomorrow when she sings her solo in the Christmas pageant, and her mom’s not there to see? I’m planning to film the whole thing, but it’s not the same.”

Darcy leaned against his desk. “I had an idea about that. I wanted to run it by you.”

“You figured out a way to pull off a Christmas miracle?”

“Not quite, but I thought of something that might help. Er, if you don’t mind me stepping in.”

“Mind? I love that you’re stepping in.”

She smiled. “You know how I’m a rabid Jezebel fan, right?”

Jezebel, the hip-hop star who had filmed a reality show in Avalon the year before, had become an unlikely local hero. “You and about a million others.”

“I watched every episode of Big Girl, Small Town. Do you recall that she was doing community service as part of her conditions of parole?”

“I didn’t tune in to the series, but yeah, I remember the backstory. The show followed her community service project with inner-city kids at Camp Kioga. That’s how the summer program got started.”

“Prior to her release, she did time at Bedford Hills.”

Now a glimmer of light came on in his work-fogged brain. “The same facility where Maya is.”

“Jezebel’s filming a Christmas special there, starting tonight and going through tomorrow. I read about it online. I asked if someone could help us set up a video call so Angelica’s mom can watch her sing tomorrow.” She pulled a tablet device from her bag. “Jezebel is going to provide a device just like this one. There’s an app called RealTime. Her friend in Avalon—a woman named Sonnet—do you know her?”