Nolan Trilogy (60 page)

“Snow angels!”  Erica announced, grabbing Leah’s hand and pulling her along the unshoveled sidewalk.  There was at least of foot of snow on the ground already and they had to shuffle their way along toward the other side of the warehouse, away from the street. 

“Plow!”  Erica called, turning her back and covering her head.  Leah was a little too late and the truck with the flashing orange lights and the big blade on the front sprayed her with snow as it slid by, clearing the city streets.  The snow was heavy and wet, and a good chunk of it ended up sliding down inside Leah’s boots. 

“Erica!”  she protested, shaking snow out of her hair, but her friend just laughed, dragging her around the corner into the empty lot behind the warehouse. 

Leah couldn’t remember what the warehouse used to be, but there had been a parking lot behind it, and beyond that, a plot of grassy land in the middle of the city with no purpose whatsoever.  It had come along with the sale of the warehouse, and although Robert Nolan had been approached by several Detroit developers looking to expand their business, he refused to sell it. 

“Ready?”  Erica held Leah’s hand in hers and the girls grinned at each other.  “One… Two… Threeeee!” 

They fell back together, letting the white blanket of snow catch them.  Leah felt her breath leave her body for a moment as she landed, and then she was gasping, laughing, looking over at Erica, her blond hair making wet punctuation on her ruddy cheeks. 

“It looks like we’re gonna have a white Christmas!”  Leah laughed as they scissored their arms and legs in the snow, leaving impressions like white butterflies, satisfying angelic prints that would abide until warmer weather came to melt them away, just like they used to do when they were little. 

“The morning star!”  Erica pointed and Leah saw it, knowing, thanks to their senior year high school science class, it was just the planet Venus appearing before sunrise.  “On Christmas morning.  It has to be lucky.  We should make a wish.” 

“Okay.”  Leah reached over and took her friend’s gloved hand in her bare one.  “Ready?” 

“Star light, star bright...”  Erica began the familiar rhyme and the girls finished it together.  “Wish I may, wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight...” 

Leah closed her eyes, her silent wish so big, taking up so much space in her head, she was sure she must be bursting with it.  When she opened her eyes, she saw Erica watching her, looking thoughtful. 

“What did you wish for?”  Leah wondered aloud.

Erica shook her head.  “Can’t tell or it won’t come true.” 

Leah squeezed her friend’s hand, smiling.  “But we tell each other everything.” 

We used to. 

Their eyes met and Leah felt the weight of that statement, knowing there were things she wouldn’t—couldn’t—share with Erica now.  And Erica… she had changed too, while Leah was gone.  She was different, distant, and wary.  They’d both been through so much separately, Leah wondered if there was anything that could bring them together they way they’d been before. 

“I wished for Grace,” Erica whispered to the stars, not looking at her friend. 

Leah felt tears sting her eyes.  “Me too.” 

And as miraculously as the morning star had appeared, so long ago, to lead three wise men to a baby in a manger cradle, the gap that had grown between the girls during Leah’s absence had been bridged, just like that.  Magically, like the snow falling on Christmas or the bubble lights bursting to life in their little girl memories, they came together again, could breathe and talk and laugh together again. 

They didn’t talk as the sun began to rise in the east, casting the snow in a dusky blue morning light.  They just rested together in their angelic snow patterns, melting the snow with the warmth of their bodies as it fell and trying to catch the big flakes drifting lazily down toward their open mouths. 

“I think I’m frozen to the ground,” Leah finally announced.  Her calves ached with cold from the snow inside her boots. 

“What time is it?”  Erica wondered out loud.  “Is it present time yet?” 

“Erica! Leah!” 

They looked at each other, wide-eyed, hearing Erica’s father calling them.  He sounded angry.  Maybe even a little scared. 

“We’re here!”  Erica sat up, struggling in the snow, helping Leah, and both girls couldn’t help stopping to look at their snow angels, the imprint of their bodies surrounded by heavenly wings. 

“Rob! We’re here!”  Leah called.  She could hear him but not see him, and then he was there, appearing around the corner, clutching his coat around him, still wearing pajama bottoms—and no shoes at all. 

“Daddy, get inside before you freeze to death!”  Erica protested, waving him on as the girls approached. 

“I could say the same thing.”  Rob frowned, looking between them, back and forth.  “What in the world are you two doing out here at five in the morning?” 

“Making snow angels.”  Erica shrugged, smiling, looking sheepish. 

“You two.”  He shook his head, that angry look in his eyes melting when he glanced at Leah, shivering and wet.  “Don’t ever leave like that without telling me! I thought—”

He didn’t say anything else, but he pulled Leah into his arms.  She felt his breath, hot on her neck, felt the warmth of the quivering kiss he pressed there.  Then Rob snaked an arm around Erica’s neck, pulling her into their embrace, kissing her forehead.

“Come on, it’s freezing!”  He steered them both back toward the warehouse, where they shook off their coats and pulled off boots and left everything dripping to dry in the hallway.  Rob went to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee, and Leah settled on the couch under a blanket, still shivering in her nightgown. 

Erica snuck away to her room to change out of her dungarees and sweatshirt, and appeared in the living room again clad in a nightgown before her father came back. 

“So where were you?”  Leah whispered as Erica snuggled under the blanket with her. 

“I wanted to see the snow.”  Erica didn’t look at her.  Instead, she stared at the Christmas tree.  “Remember how we used to wait for the bubble lights to start?” 

“Yes.”  Leah smiled, letting her change the subject.  “You used to swear they were magic.” 

“I wish I still believed in magic.” 

“Me too.”  Leah sighed, glancing up as Rob came into the living room carrying three mugs, one in each hand and another squeezed between.  He put them on the coffee table, yawning and rubbing his eyes, blinking at the two of them on the couch.  He had put his pajamas on for Erica’s benefit, Leah knew, because he’d only been wearing boxers when they fell asleep in his loft bed after making love last night. 

She smiled at the memory, picking up her mug and taking a sip of coffee.  The doctor in the hospital, Dr.  Peters, the same one who had burst into the room minutes after Leah had given birth to Grace all on her own, had told her to wait “at least six weeks” before resuming any “sexual activity.”  He’d added, “If I were you, I’d just keep your damned legs closed altogether and stay out of trouble.” 

But once she was home with Rob, there was no way she could resist him.  Besides, physically she was healed.  It was just her heart that was broken. 

“Mmm caffeine!”  Erica cupped her coffee mug in both hands.  “Are we ready to open gifts?” 

“I thought we might get to sleep in on Christmas morning.”  Rob looked pointedly at his daughter.  “I didn’t expect to be up at five a.m.” 

“It’s six,” Erica countered.  “It’s present time, Santa!” 

“Ho ho ho.”  Rob lifted his mug and took a gulp of hot coffee.  “I suppose you want to be helper-elf and hand out gifts?” 

Erica popped up, rushing the Christmas tree like a linebacker and skidding across the hardwood floor in her socks, nearly overshooting it before grabbing their stockings and bringing them back to the sofa.  The boxes under the tree were all beautifully wrapped—they’d been arriving that way for weeks from Hudson’s.  They not only gift-wrapped purchases, they also delivered them. 

Rob settled between the girls on the sofa as they each investigated the contents of their Christmas stockings.  Rob had played Santa and filled the girls’ stockings, and Leah and Erica had pooled their albeit limited resources to fill his with things like film for his medium format camera and a new tie and pulled taffy, because it was his favorite.  All of them had a big, fat orange at the bottom, and Erica started peeling hers so she could eat it right away.

Leah left hers at the bottom, looking at the array of things Rob had put into her stocking.  New winter gloves.  A slim, studded pocketbook for dress-up occasions.  A bag of black licorice—one of her favorites.  A little plastic globe of Boblo Island that rained silver glitter instead of snow.  She smiled at him when she pulled that out, remembering how he had stood on the Boblo Boat deck and asked her to marry him. 

That was before…

Leah shook the little globe, watching the silver cloud envelope the model amusement park inside. 

“Did you get an orange?”  Rob asked, nudging Leah with his slippered foot.  He had run outside without them, but they were on now, old blue raggedy ones.  Leah and Erica had bought him a brand new pair.  They were in the pile of gifts somewhere. 

“Of course.”  Leah reached into her stocking, pulling it out and putting on the coffee table with the rest of her things. 

“I think there’s something else in there.”  Rob looked at Leah’s stocking—he had purchased it for her just a week ago, because her stocking, the one she’d had since she was little, was at her mother’s.  It was the house she’d grown up in, but she didn’t think of it as home anymore, Leah realized.  This was home, the warehouse with its wide open spaces and drafts, where she slept high up in the loft with Rob every night.  In the weeks since she’d been back, this had become home. 

“Daddy, the orange is always the last thing,” Erica reminded him, popping a wedge of hers into her mouth.  “That’s tradition.” 

“You might want to look again,” Rob insisted. 

Erica frowned turning her red and green stocking upside down and shaking it.  “Nope.  Nothing in there.” 

“Not you, Erica.”  He laughed, watching as Leah reached into her red stocking—it had her name embroidered at the top, just like Erica’s did—feeling around in the toe.

“What…?”  She looked at him sitting beside her on the couch, feeling the shape of the velvet box under her fingers, eyes growing wide. 

“What is it?”  Erica inquired from her perch on the arm of the wing-backed chair on the other side of the coffee table.  She’d moved so she could spread out her loot. 

“Leah...”  Rob moved from the sofa, onto one knee on the hardwood floor, and she looked at him in his raggedy slippers and mis-buttoned pajama top, his hair still damp from his trek through the snow to find his missing charges, and thought she had never loved him more than in that moment. 

“Oh, Rob...”  She felt tears stinging her eyes and couldn’t stop them as she brought the blue velvet box out of her Christmas stocking with shaking hands. 

“Listen, I know...”  He took a deep breath, and then took her hands in his, closing them around the velvet box.  “Things have been hard.  And I know it’s soon, too soon after...” 

She shook her head, thinking of Grace, knowing he was thinking of her too.  At least she’d gotten to see her, hold her.  Rob had never even seen his daughter’s face. 

“But I don’t want to lose you, Leah.  I don’t want to be without you, ever again.  I woke up this morning and found you gone, and I thought… it was like my heart had just walked out the door by itself.” 

Leah held back a sob, knowing the feeling so well she lived it every minute.  She had lived it for months at the maternity home, missing him with every breath she took like having razor blades in her lungs, and now she had him back, but her baby was gone.  She closed her eyes, remembering her wish, feeling tears fall.