The Secret of Christmas (Chapters 1-3)
A Christmas gift exchange forces the Reishosan to get personal, which isn't something any of them are very good at (well, except Stan).
Chapter 1: SAM
December 1, 2010
Mia held the Doc’s old top hat in her hands, her face beaming and eyes twinkling. Great. Because apparently they had nothing better to do on a Wednesday afternoon than to draw names scrawled on scrap paper and waste time thinking about what useless tchotchke they could wrap in glittery paper to give away.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
Sam sipped his coffee and refused to make eye contact with Mia as she glided around their gathered assembly in the living room, lowering the top hat so each member of their family could draw out a name.
As always, Dr. Davalos started, and, as always, he looked at the name he withdrew, tucked it in his shirt pocket, and went back to reading his paper. Uly went next, again as he always did. Or at least, as he always had since Sam had been forced to participate in this farce.
Something about being the only blood male relative? December and March were stark reminders for him of just how Greek his benefactors were.
Christmas was the time of year when everyone lost their minds. Traditions became more important than breathing. Mia Davalos was perfectly rational for the other eleven months of the year, and as soon as December rolled around, she turned into a carbon copy of every other starry- eyed, mistletoe-minded power-shopper in Union Square.
At least he’d have a few days before the stupid carols started blasting, before the family draped garland and bows and twinkling lights over trees and banister railings and every other surface in the house.
She paused at his knees and held the hat out to him. “Sam?”
“What?”
“Come on.”
“Why?”
Mia scowled at him. “Sam, we do this every year. You’re not getting out of it.” She lowered the hat closer to him.
“Come on, Lurch, don’t be a spoilsport.” Karl cackled from his usual spot on the living room floor.
Sam ignored him and focused on Mia and her shining dark blue eyes. “This is a waste of time, Mia.”
Across the room, folded up in one of the wing chairs behind Karl, Stan went stiff, his big eyes turning liquid. “Sam, it is not!” He bobbed his head fiercely. “It’s Christmas.”
“Yes, Stan. It’s Christmas.” Sam rolled his eyes and sipped his coffee, still refusing to reach into the hat.
Ronnie heaved a loud sigh and slumped deeper into the sofa, resting his head on the upholstered backboard. “Why you gotta do this every year?” He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and stabbed it in between his lips.
Mia narrowed her eyes at him. “Ronnie Akkard, if you light that—”
“I ain’t lighting it.” Ronnie drawled, not moving.
“You’re supposed to be quitting.” Mia’s narrowed gaze didn’t shift. “I ain’t lighting it.”
“He ain’t lighting it, Mia, geez.” Karl snickered, elbowing Stan in the knee. “It’s like a pacifier.”
Ronnie snatched a pillow and nailed Karl in the side of the head with it. “Well, it is!” Karl shouted.
Bang! Another pillow in the side of Karl’s face.
Karl leapt to his feet, and Stan pulled him down while Ryan finally got off his backside and took the next pillow away from Ronnie. Ronnie resumed his reclining and folded his arms across his chest, and Ryan reset the pillows, casting a glance at Sam.
“Would you just draw, Sam?” “I’ll pass this year.”
Mia shoved the hat in his face. “Wrong answer.” She smiled cheerfully.
“Hey, I got an idea.” Karl barked a laugh from the floor. “For December, we should change his name to Grinch instead of Lurch.”
Sam glared at him.
“You’re still green.” Karl shrugged. “Or at least your armor is.”
Sam started to answer, and Mia shoved the hat in his face again. “I have a better idea.” Her cheerful smile looked less happy and more forced. “You draw a name out of the hat, or I tell you who you’re buying a gift for. And you won’t like it.”
“I won’t like it either way.”
“Yes, but this way you get a fair chance of pulling the name of someone you don’t want to murder.” Ryan sank into the couch cushions, running a hand through his hair.
Sam leaned forward.
“Yeah, yeah.” Ronnie waved his hand. “There’s only one or two of us you don’t want to murder. Just draw the stupid name already, you big jerk.”
Sam snarled, set his coffee down, and shoved his hand into the top hat. He pulled out a piece of torn scrap paper and shoved it in his jacket pocket.
“There. Happy?” He took his coffee and resumed sipping. “You didn’t look.” Mia frowned.
“That wasn’t part of the deal.” Mia furrowed her brow.
“Mia.” Ronnie moaned. “He took a name. I’m next. Can we get this over with please?”
Mia huffed and moved to Ronnie, holding the hat out for him to reach into. “Why is this always so traumatic?” She mumbled. “How can all of you dislike Christmas so much?”
“Hey, I love Christmas!” Karl protested. “Aye.” Stan drew back in shock.
Mia said something back to them, but Sam tuned it out. It wouldn’t take long for her to make her way around the circle, forcing each of them to draw a name out of the hat. As soon as she was finished, they could go about the rest of their day and pretend like it hadn’t happened for the rest of the month.
At least until Christmas Eve when he’d have to think of some kind of gift or face her wrath. The scrap of paper felt heavy in his pocket. Maybe he’d get off easy and it would be Ronnie. He could buy him a flash drive. Or Mia. He could get her a necklace. Or Uly. The kid always needed new grips or blade tape for his fencing swords.
Karl tipped over as Ronnie hit him with another pillow, and Ryan had to intervene again.
If he ended up with Ryan, Sam would get him a new flannel shirt, since the man didn’t own any other types of shirts. He could get the doc a gift card. That was easy. Or if he’d gotten landed with Karl again, he’d get him another box of off-brand cheese crackers.
As Mia moved on with her top hat of cheer, Sam snatched the paper scrap out of his pocket and glanced at the name written on it in neat letters. He stifled a groan and shoved the paper back in his pocket.
Of any name he could have drawn, this was the worst-case scenario. It was Stan.
Chapter 2: STAN
December 10, 2010
Stan balanced carefully on the ladder as he draped the last strand of lights over the stonework exterior of the window. Carefully, methodically, he attached the lights to the side of the house and ducked his head to stare into the Doc’s neatly ordered first floor office.
The good doctor himself sat at his large oak desk, rocking sightly in his leather desk chair while he flipped through a hefty sheaf of papers.
He bent lower, narrowing his eyes to see through the windows, but he was too far away.
Buttons.
It wasn’t as if he could get into Dr. Davalos’s office without the man noticing. Between his work schedule and the doc’s own daily routine, it was impossible, and he couldn’t exactly go inside while the doc was there. Dr. Davalos was a smart man. He’d know why.
Mental note. Spend more time in the doc’s office during regular hours in the future in case you pull his name again next year.
The Doc sat forward and placed the stack of papers on his desk, and Stan quickly resumed stapling the lights to the window frame. As he did, he knocked the pack of staples off the ladder, and they tipped over, staples sprinkling down on the juniper bushes planted beneath the windowsill.
“Brilliant.”
Stan set the stapler on the top rung of the ladder and descended until his trainers hit the sharp gravel. He bent and began collecting the staples he could see. He’d have to ask Ronnie for one of his high-powered magnets to get the rest.
“Hey, fish face!”
Stan yelped and jumped back as Karl appeared next to him with a shout. Stan’s shoulder struck the ladder, and it tipped sideways. The staple gun slid off and cracked against the crown of his head. In shock and pain, he dropped the staples he’d collected and winced as he gently probed the growing knot in his hair.
“Hi, Karl,” he said.
Karl grimaced. “Ouch.” He pointed to the window. “Need some help with that?”
Stan sighed and offered a smile at his loud friend. “Well, I could now, since I’m seeing double.” He bent and picked up the staple gun.
Karl stared at his feet. “Fish face, the staples go on the house. Not in the bushes.”
Stan shook his head as he climbed the ladder again. “That’s not how we do it in London.” “How do you do it in London?”
Stan blinked.
Karl Goodson. Simple. Practical. Verging on naive. Delightfully American.
From the ladder, Stan held out his hand for the gun, which Karl gave to him. “With crumpets, mate.”
“Crumpets?”
“Aye. Very sturdy, crumpets.”
Karl shoved him with bark of laughter.
Loud. Brazen. Outrageous. Yes, Karl was intrinsically American, and Stan loved everything about him. Karl ruffled Stan’s hair and pulled the ladder closed.
“You done here, fish face?”
Stan gazed sadly into the doc’s office. “Sort of.”
“Why sort of? Lights are up.”
“Oh,” Karl said softly. “You were spying on the doc?”
“Not spying!”
“You were so spying.” “I was not.”
“Like Bond, James Bond.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “Nothing like that.”
Karl pursed his lips. “You’re right. Nothing like that. You’d need a girlfriend to be like James Bond.”
“Oi!”
“And you’d need to drink martinis.” Karl shrugged. “And you just drink tea.”
Stan snapped the staple box shut with a flourish. “I’ll have you know, James Bond drinks tea as well.”
“A hat?”
“Yeah.”
Stan frowned. “What sort of hat?”
“I don’t know. A hat.” Karl led them away from the window and into the yard. “He’s bald, so I’m sure his head gets cold. Maybe something fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy?”
Karl puffed out his chest, the ladder creaking under his arm. “Yeah! A big fuzzy hat. With antlers!”
“I don’t think fuzzy antlers are his style.”
Karl furrowed his brow. “Well, I’ve known him longer than you have.”
“A few months longer.” Stan poked his arm. “We got here the same year, Karl. Or don’t you remember?”
“Still known him longer.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “Who did you draw?”
“Oh, easy one.”
Stan groaned quietly. “Easy, eh?”
“Yeah.” Karl patted his shirt pocket. “Mia.”
Stan sagged slightly with relief. Karl was right. Of all the other members of the house, Mia was probably the easiest to buy for. Not that she was vocal in her needs, wants, or desires, but that she would be kind and grateful about any gift she was given.
Yes, very thoughtful.
“What are you thinking of getting her then?” Stan bit his lip.
“A skillet.” Karl beamed proudly. Stan’s expression fell. “A skillet?”
“Yup.”
“Well that—that’s quite practical.”
“Right?” Karl grinned. “I mean, she makes pancakes for Christmas breakfast, so she needs a new skillet for that.”
“That’s right!” Karl straightened his shoulders. “Best present ever.”
They reached the tool shed and Karl stepped inside to place the ladder on the hook at the back while Stan set the staple gun in the tool bench drawer. He scratched his chin and chewed on the inside of his lip.
His voice broke, and he hoped Karl assumed it was just his voice cracking. “A what?” Karl scrunched up his nose.
“A comedy musical,” Stan said. “On Christmas Day, I was always amazed at the presents I got from my dad.”
“Did she?” he asked.
“No.” Stan looked down. “I asked her once, and she told me that he just watched me. He paid attention to what I liked, to what made me happy, and that’s how he knew.”
Karl crossed his arms. “Is that why you were spying on the doc?”
“I wasn’t spying.”
Karl raised his eyebrows at him, and Stan chuckled in spite of himself. “Okay, aye, yes. That’s why I was spying on the Doc.”
Karl tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he gazed toward the ceiling. “So—are you saying my skillet idea is a bad idea?”
“That’s not nice, Karl.”
“He sucks at presents, Stan. Even you can’t deny that.”
“He got you a gift, Karl. It’s not like he forgot.”
Karl glared at him. “He got me cheese crackers.”
“You like cheese crackers.”
“They were the fake ones. The ones that taste like cardboard.” Karl flapped his hands. “He should have labeled them cardboard crackers, and I wouldn’t have got my hopes up.”
Perhaps he’d had happy Christmas memories, and he’d been forced to leave them behind. To substitute the Davalos clan and the other Reishosan for the family he no longer had.
Stan shook himself and looked toward Karl.
The stocky Midwesterner had shifted topics to what Mia had stocked the pantry with for lunch. Any conversation about gift-giving would be shelved until he started thinking about it again in a few weeks. That was just how Karl operated.
It was quite a puzzle.
Stan smiled.
Chapter 3: KARL
December 15, 2010
Palm trees didn’t look right covered in Christmas lights. Christmas lights only went on pine trees or garages or barns or on misshapen hangers bent to look like giant stars that stood up in the front yard.
But San Francisco did lots of stuff differently than Karl was used to. As far as he was concerned California was a completely different planet.
It didn’t bother anybody else, so it wouldn’t bother him either. It was just—weird. They were halfway through December, and it hadn’t snowed. It hadn’t even been cold.
People were still wearing shorts and t-shirts.
This was his second Christmas on the west coast, and while having a place to sleep and a pantry full of food was great, it just didn’t feel like Christmas unless you were bundled up thicker than a fat snowman and your feet were still too cold to move in the depths of your boots.
Or until you taped over the keyhole in the front door to keep the bitter north wind out of the house.
Or until you froze your backside off in the back of the hay wagon while old man Shoemaker used his tractor to haul kids around the town so they could see the lights.
That was Christmas. Not this.
Palm trees lined with twinkle lights. Fake ice in a temporary rink outside Union Square. Beach bums and hipsters milling around the holiday markets that had taken over the downtown city streets.
Karl paused and draped his elbows over the railing that lined the man-made ice rink, watching the crowd of skaters moving in a circle inside.
Last year, Christmas had been exciting. His first Christmas in California. His first Christmas as a superhero. He’d saved the city repeatedly from soldier attacks. He’d found himself a new family, one that didn’t always get along but that at least cared a little bit about each other. Last year, it was all part of the adventure.
This year?
Well, it had lost some of its magic. At the house, Mia would be making her fancy, unpronounceable cookies. There was a fancy unpronounceable bread too. And this week Dr. Davalos and Uly would direct the family as they set up a fancy light display in the yard, shaped like a pirate ship with billowing twinkle-light sails. They did it last year too, and according to Uly they did it every year.
It was a Greek thing.
And that was cool. It was all cool. But, for a brief moment, Karl let himself miss the quiet Christmas Eve nights at his grandparents’ house, playing cards next to the wood stove, drinking hot apple cider and crunching popcorn. In the morning there would be cinnamon rolls as big as his face after he and his grandpa had done the chores. They’d open presents. Dig into their stockings. And wrap themselves up in fuzzy blankets to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.
But that was a long time ago. Things were different now.
He gathered himself and pushed off the railing, forcing himself to wander back into the holiday market, looking from booth to booth for anything that might be good to get for Mia.
Out of everybody, why did I have to get Mia?
He shoved his hands deeper into his jeans pockets.
It wasn’t that Mia wouldn’t be happy. Stan had been right about that last week. Mia would be grateful and nice about anything he gave her, even if he handed her an old sock. But for the first time, Karl really wanted to get her something she would enjoy.
Mia had done so much for him, and he didn’t do a good job of telling her. He wasn’t good at saying thank you. So this was his chance to help her understand what she meant to him—giving him a home when most people wouldn’t even give him the time of day.
The market had pretty much everything you could imagine. Handmade leather purses and wallets. Hand-woven scarves and hats. Wooden carvings and painted landscapes. Ceramic vases and glassware.
He walked to the end of the market and sank into a park bench, blowing out his breath in frustration. This was impossible. How was he ever going to find anything that would work?
Maybe he should just give up and go back to the skillet idea.
“Excuse me.” A soft voice broke into his thoughts. “Is this seat taken?”
Karl twisted and looked up into the bright face of a girl about fourteen or so, Stan’s age.
She had long blond hair all tied up in some kind of fancy bun that girls knew how to do. “Uh, no.” He shifted to the side. “Help yourself.”
Karl realized he’d been staring.
“Can I help you?” The girl raised a single eyebrow at him. Karl blinked at her.
You know? Why not? He turned to face her. “Can I ask you a question?” The girl raised her other eyebrow.
“You’re a girl.” Karl shrugged. “So I’m guessing you might know.” Both eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.
“I need to buy a present for someone,” Karl said. “A girl. Well, a woman. I mean, she’s a girl, but she’s older. But not too old.”
The blond teenager leaned away from him, beginning to grimace slightly.
“I need to get her a Christmas present, and I’m not good at buying gifts for people.” Karl sighed and sank against the back of the bench. “Can you—what should I get her?”
Karl scowled. “Who?”
The girl rolled his eyes. “The lady you need to buy a present for?” “Oh.” Karl sat up. “Yeah. She’s—nice.”
“She’s nice?” The girl giggled. “That’s deep.”
Karl rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, she is. She’s super smart too. And she makes great cinnamon rolls and awesome sandwiches and the best dang pancakes I’ve ever eaten. I was going to get her a new skillet, but my buddy said that probably wasn’t the best Christmas present.”
The girl stuck out her lower lip. “A new skillet isn’t a bad present.”
Karl perked up. “Right? See, she always makes us pancakes on Christmas morning, so I thought she could use a new skillet.”
“Yeah.”
“Your buddy’s right. Bad idea.”
Karl sagged again. “I just—don’t know what else to get her.”
The girl sat forward on the bench and grinned. “Tell me about her.” “I did.”
The girl gasped. “She’s a dancer?”
“She used to be. She was a ballerina.” Karl nodded, proud that he’d remembered something Ryan had told him in passing a year ago. “With the tights and the tutus and the uncomfortable shoes.”
“She used to be?”
“Yeah, she’s not anymore. But she still does those weird stretchy things.” The girl scowled. “You lost me.”
“Yeah, yoga!” Karl snapped his fingers. “She does that bendy stuff.”
“Wow,” the girl giggled. She shook her head. “Okay, well, does she need a new yoga mat?”
“They have mats?”
The girl laughed out loud.
Karl wondered what was funny.
Suddenly, the girl stood up and gathered her bags in her arms. “Come with me.” She hooked her free arm around his elbow and pulled him to his feet. “Where we going?”
“This way.”
She led him back into the holiday market, between booths and around clothing racks, to a vendor table toward the back. Karl had passed it on one of his journeys through the market, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. The booth was full of sports equipment, and the back wall was covered with round tubes with rolls of foam inside them.
“Socks?” He scowled.
“Yoga socks.” The girl pushed them into his hands. “See the grips on the bottom?”
Karl turned the socks over to see the rubber circles embedded in the material. “Does she do yoga?”
The girl hesitated slightly. “Sort of. It’s kind of like yoga, but her feet sweat. A lot. And her teacher is grouchy, and whenever she slips she gets in trouble. So I saw these and figured that they’d be a good gift for her. I bet they would be a good gift for your friend too.”
It felt more like Christmas now.
Keep your eyes peeled for the exciting conclusion tomorrow! MERRY CHRISTMAS!