A Christmas to Remember (5 page)

Those words were easier said than done. Adam’s family was coming into town in three days. They were all staying at his house, he’d said, because he had the room to have them all, and because he had the kids this year. Between the fact that Adam made her crazy with anxiety and an entire houseful of strangers, she was about as worried as she’d ever been about getting things right. How could she be confident with all of that going on? Then she thought about the one area of her life where she was the most comfortable, the most successful: children. She decided, right then and there, that she was going to focus on David and Olivia. Everything else—she hoped—would fall into place.

She crawled out of bed and peeked through the window. The snow was still falling, the streets so covered that she couldn’t tell where the yards ended and the road began. The trees were topped with piled snow, their branches like black sketch marks on a white canvas. The frigid air made the panes of the window so cold that just standing there she had made them foggy from her breath. It had been a long time since she’d seen snow like this. As the gray clouds lightened with the day, she decided she’d better get ready. The children would be up soon.

Her room had an en-suite bathroom with a closet full of huge, fluffy white towels. She turned on the water, the steam filling the room, and got in. As the water sheeted over her, she thought about the day ahead. She pictured David and Olivia standing by their block tower. Had they ever gotten dirty? Had they ever been allowed to let their creativity run wild? She hoped that they had, but watching them yesterday, she wondered. Carrie decided that today they should play in the snow. What children don’t like to play in the snow? And there was certainly enough of it.

When she got out of the shower, she dressed, got herself ready, and grabbed the food-coloring bottles from her suitcase. She hadn’t heard from the kids yet. Were they with their father? Maybe she had been wrong about him. After all, it was only one night, only a snapshot of life in the Fletcher household. Perhaps they were all downstairs and he was making them pancakes or something.

She walked quietly down the hall until she reached their rooms, and checked on David first. He was in his bed, playing with a stuffed animal dinosaur.

“Hello, David,” she said with a smile. “Have you been up very long?” He looked over at her shyly, his eyes darting down to his dinosaur. He didn’t say anything so she asked, “When did your dinosaur wake up?”

“When the clock said six-oh-oh,” he said.

Six o’clock?
she thought.
That was an hour ago.
“Have you really been up that long?” she asked. He nodded. She didn’t know what rules Natalie had put in place, but the last thing Carrie wanted was to have the children sitting alone in their beds for an hour. They were probably starving. “David, as soon as you wake up in the mornings, will you come and get me in Natalie’s room? Even if I’m asleep. Would you do that for me?” He nodded again. “Why don’t we go and check on Olivia?”

David rolled over onto his belly and swung his feet off the side of his bed, hopping off. He grabbed his dinosaur and stood next to Carrie. His curly hair was bunched in haphazard clumps on his head and his pajama bottoms were twisted, but he didn’t seem fazed as he darted over to the corner to grab his slippers. They were big, puffy things in the shape of lambs. He struggled to hold his dinosaur and get his heel into the slipper, but after a few tugs, he got it on and stood up.

“Ready?” He nodded again. As they walked down the hallway, she asked, “Have you seen your daddy yet this morning?”

David shook his head. “He goes to work.”

“Did he leave already?”

“I don’t know.”

That sadness that she’d felt earlier was back in full force. Why didn’t Adam’s own son know if he was in the house or not? Why hadn’t David felt that he could get up and go see his father? And why hadn’t Adam even checked on his children before he left? It was all a stark contrast to the warmth that she’d seen in Adam’s face last night. It didn’t make any sense.

She opened Olivia’s door, and when she did, the little girl sat up in bed and looked at them with groggy eyes. Her hair was in a braid, loose strands puffed out around it, falling down along the sides of her face. She rubbed her eyes. “Can we get up?” she asked.

“You can always get up on the mornings when I’m here. Just come and wake me up. I’ll get up with you whenever you’re ready to start the day.”

Olivia looked at David then back at Carrie, her face showing uncertainty. “Okay,” she said quietly.

These were the facts that she had: One, there were two children in front of her who clearly had not ever played or acted the way she expected children to act. Two, Adam didn’t seem to have prepared in the slightest for Christmas. And three, Adam had put her in charge.

“Kids, what do you want for breakfast?” she asked. They continued to look back and forth at each other. “What do you usually have?”

“Oatmeal and fruit,” Olivia said.

“Do you like oatmeal and fruit?”

Olivia didn’t answer.

“What would you rather have?” Carrie stopped in the hallway and kneeled down to their level. “It’s okay. Tell me.” Neither of them answered. They were only four. Perhaps they genuinely didn’t know what they wanted to eat. “Would you rather have pancakes?” she asked.

Their eyes were as big as saucers. “Yes!” Olivia answered.

“With chocolate chips or bananas? Or both?”

“Both,” David finally spoke.

“Yes, both!” Olivia said hopping on her toes.

“Perfect. Let’s go make pancakes. After that,” she pulled out the small bottles of food coloring that she’d brought from her last job, “I’d like to take these out into the snow and make a rainbow volcano. Would you like to join me?”

She hadn’t heard such noise come from these two since she’d gotten there. They were whooping and stomping and giggling all at once.

“
That’s
the answer I wanted to hear,” she smiled and stood back up. “Now let’s go make those pancakes.”

When they got to the kitchen, Carrie pulled two chairs over to the sink. “Wash your hands, please. We need clean hands to make our breakfast. Hold them out.” She squirted foamy soap in each of their hands, piling it up as if they were holding a fistful of whipped cream. When they started to laugh, she squirted more until their little fingers were lost in the suds. “Hang on. I don’t think I’ve put enough on. Rub them together,” she said, trying to hide her own laughter at seeing their expressions, and squirting more. The children looked at each other, clearly trying to decide if she was serious. Then, she turned on the water and asked them to rinse.

After hand washing was complete, Carrie scooted their chairs over to the island in the center of the kitchen. It was a large slab of granite with cherry wood cabinets underneath and sleek, chrome drawer-pulls and handles. “Hop up,” she told the kids, and they climbed onto the chairs again. Olivia was on one side of the island and David on the other. All they were doing was standing on chairs, but they were giggling like crazy. Olivia’s chest rose and fell with every giggle, her eyes darting from side to side, and David’s smile was wide and jovial, his dimple showing on his cheek just like his baby picture.

“Why are you laughing?” Carrie asked, nearly laughing herself at the sight of them.

“I’m very tall,” Olivia said with a grin that spread across her entire face. She put her hands on the counter and leaned on it, hopping up and down in her chair. Carrie laughed and shook her head. She’d missed this age. She set the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in front of her and began measuring out the amounts into a bowl she’d found in the cabinet beside the sink.

“Let’s make sure your hands are dry,” she said, wiping Olivia’s fingers with a towel. “You’re in charge of mixing.”

“What do I do?” she asked.

“Put your hands in the bowl. Then, wiggle your fingers until it’s all mixed up.”

Olivia put her hands into the bowl of dry ingredients. “Oh!” she said. “It’s soft!” She wiggled around, sending a cloud of flour into the air.

“Perfect. You’re doing great! Keep going!”

“But what will
I
do?” David said, his lips twitching downward in disappointment.

“Not to worry, you get to be the river maker.”

“The what?” he asked, his face lighting up.

Carrie set the milk down in front of David, along with an egg and some butter. “You’re going to make a river in Olivia’s mountain of flour. A milk and egg river. Have you ever cracked an egg before?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Okay then. We’ll need to practice.” She pulled out another bowl and three more eggs from the fridge, setting them in front of David. “Still mixing over there Olivia?”

Olivia had so much flour in her hair that it looked like cotton candy. “Yes!” she said as a clump of flour sailed overboard onto the counter.

“Excellent. Now, David. Here’s an egg. Tap it along the side of this bowl until you see a crack in it. Give it a good whack.”

David tapped. Then harder. And harder, his little toes pressing against the chair in concentration, until he yelped, the yolk drooling down the side of the bowl. His fingers were yellow and dripping, and she handed him another egg.

“Try one more time. You’ve almost got it.”

Once they got the wet ingredients all into David’s bowl, she showed him how to spoon them in, making his river. David was a serious little boy, but this made him laugh. As they mixed the batter, Carrie asked, “What would you like for Christmas, Olivia?”

“I’d like Daddy to take us ice skating.” David seemed to perk up at the mention of his father.

“Has he taken you before?” Carrie had taken kids ice skating quite a bit in the winter, and she’d seen a Richmond outdoor rink online when she’d researched the area.

“One time he said he would, but his work called, and he forgot.”

Carrie felt the disappointment that Olivia had probably experienced that day. She couldn’t imagine not keeping her word with a child. How would they ever grow up to be trustworthy adults if they weren’t taught what trust was? She hoped that something out of his control pulled Adam away from her request, and he really didn’t forget, because that would just be terrible. “Would you want to go with me?” she asked.

Olivia seemed to be contemplating the question, her lips pressed together in thought. “I want to go with Daddy because he can skate with David. I want to skate with Snow White.”

“Oh!” Carrie chuckled. “I didn’t realize that Snow White was part of your Christmas wish.”

“Yes,” Olivia said, her face serious as if her request were completely feasible. “I want to go ice skating with Daddy and Snow White.”

“And I want to skate with Daddy,” David said.

“Well that would be a lot of fun,” Carrie said with a smile.

The counter was full of bowls, raw egg, and flour, the children wrist-deep in it all, their faces so intent on their tasks, smiles on their lips. Carrie stopped for just a moment to take it all in. How could these children have been denied experiences like these? It was clear that they’d never done anything like this in their lives. This—right here—was what she was meant to do with her life. It didn’t make her feel important or overly successful in a business sort of way, but it made her feel like she was doing something real. Something meaningful. And she didn’t want to give it up, as much as she knew she’d have to if she ever wanted anything more.

“Good morning.” Carrie nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of another adult voice in the room. Once she’d recovered, she looked toward the double doorway to the kitchen where Adam was standing. She could see the shape of his strong shoulders through his pressed shirt, the masculine quality of his hands as he fiddled with the cuff, pulling it over his watch. She caught herself staring at him, and internally, she was begging herself to get it together, but there was something about him that was so magnetic, so handsome, that she couldn’t look away. She smiled instead.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, looking at her in a way that she swore made him seem like he wanted to say something other than just that. His face was curious, as if he were surveying the entire scene around him without having to take his eyes off her. She nodded, trying to ignore her assumptions and take the question at face value. Why would he want to know anything more than how she slept? She was reading into things. The way he looked, standing in front of her, she could hardly help it. Carrie wondered if he ever let himself go. Did he ever walk around the house in socks, scruff on his face, flannel pajama bottoms? She wished he would.

Adam finally looked at his children, the edges of his mouth turned up just slightly. Then, his gaze moved along the mess on the island. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

Carrie wiped a runaway strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist, wondering if she’d put a streak of flour across her face. Worry tickled its way up her neck. What if she was overstepping her bounds? What if Adam didn’t think that making pancakes at the age of four was an appropriate activity? She’d have to have enough self-confidence to explain herself, and she still felt like falling over every time he entered the room.

“Yes, everything’s fine,” she said nervously. “We’re just making breakfast.”

He nodded slowly. “Well, I’m off to work.”

She waited for the children to say, “Bye, Daddy!” and try to hug him with their dirty hands, but they didn’t say or do anything. They just watched him with blank faces. Finally, David offered a little wave. Adam held up his hand to say goodbye then turned around and headed down the hallway. Her worst fears were confirmed. These children didn’t know their own father. They didn’t have a bond with him at all. They were missing out on such a warm, kind man, and he was missing out, too. He was missing seeing their faces light up with joy, their sweet giggles, and all the tiny moments that were slipping away. Why didn’t he make an effort? What was keeping him from getting to know his children? Carrie looked at their perfect, little faces, and she couldn’t fathom how he could live with them day in and day out when they were here, and not spend every single minute with them.