1. Chapter One

Chapter One

The snow was coming steadily down, but not enough to postpone the trip to the mall. The mall. That would have been his mom’s thing, for sure. She’d been a mallrat, as she called herself, since she was a teenager in the nineties.

Gone now, Darlene Ramsfield was resting in peace at the local cemetery along with her husband of the previous ten years, Ben Ramsfield. No matter what the cops said about the crash that took them both, Gabriel Ortiz would always blame Ben.

It wasn’t the first time Gabriel felt Ben had taken his mother. From the time Gabriel was born, Darlene had been all his. They were the two amigos, the two musketeers, and all the other weird things his mom called them.

They’d take long walks every night to talk over their days once he was in school, and each weekend they’d visit the zoo or museums in the city south of their small town. She devoted her life to Gabriel, but when she met Ben, things had changed.

“Gabe! Gaaaabe !”

Tristan was calling from the bedroom, and Gabriel smiled as he moved away from the picture window in the living room. “What?”

“ Com’eer !”

The only good thing that came from Darlene’s marriage to that man was his two little brothers. He truly loved them. That was only one of the reasons he didn’t let them go into foster care when their parents died.

Gabriel ran up the curving staircase until he arrived on the landing where Tristan was hanging onto the railing. “Gabe, I can’t find my shoes!”

“Dorkness, they’re by the backdoor, in your cubby, remember?”

“Oh,” he said quickly before he ran back down the hall in his stocking feet to his room.

Brandon came out of his at the same time Tristan had disappeared into his own. “Do we have to go? I’m too old to sit on Santa’s lap. What if he’s a perv?”

He really had to block social media from the eight-year-old’s phone. “Go finish getting ready. You don’t have to sit on his lap. This trip is for Tristan.”

Turning his blond head before he turned fully, he hollered back, “Okay, if you’re not worried about our baby brother!”

There were days like today when he was ready to scream and wondered if he had done the right thing. And then Tristan came out of his room, the scarf wrapped around his sandy curls and neck, so all Gabriel saw of his face was his nose. Then, he knew he’d done the right thing.

He loved his little brothers fiercely. The thought of them being with strangers hurt everything inside him.

“Come here, dorkness, and let me fix that.”

“’kay.”

They were eight and five, looked very much alike, and mostly looked like Gabriel, too, except Gabe’s hair was darker, and their noses were a little slimmer than his. Their light hazel eyes, though, were exactly like his and like the mother they’d shared.

Brandon came out of his room, rolling his eyes. “Okay, I’m ready.”

After Gabriel got Tristan’s scarf fixed, he sent the boy downstairs to get his coat and boots from the breezeway. “And don’t mess around with Catnip’s food again.”

“She likes it when I hand it to her.”

“You just had a bath. You don’t want to smell like Tasty Vittles when you’re talking to Santa, do you? He’ll think you’re a cat and bring you cat toys instead of the dinos you asked for.”

That was a threat. His eyes got huge as he nodded his head hard enough that all his curls bounced. “Got it!”

“I really need to get his hair cut again.”

“Why? Everyone calls him a girl. It’s funny,” Brandon said while passing Gabriel on the way to the stairs.

“You know, you’re supposed to stick up for him.”

“Why? Where’s that written?”

Ever since their parents’ death, Brandon had been a mess. He hadn’t cried a tear in the five months since it had happened and kept all his emotions bottled up, except for anger.

“It’ll be written on your face when I smack you,” Gabriel mumbled.

Not that he ever would. Darlene hadn’t believed in hitting her children, and Gabriel wouldn’t have the heart to anyway. But sometimes, it was tempting.

Tristan’s boots were on the wrong feet, so Grabiel hefted him onto the washing machine to fix them. “Remember, Trist, they point out, not in.”

“I fo’got.”

“It’s okay, buddy. Are you excited to see Santa?”

“Yeah!”

Gabriel looked over his shoulder in time to see Brandon open his mouth, so he gave his brother a scathing look, letting him know not to spill the beans about Santa Claus. They’d had the talk. If Brandon wanted Christmas at all, he had to keep his mouth shut.

After all, Tristan had lost enough that year.

It was always an ordeal getting Tristan into the car. The way he wiggled managed to keep Gabriel from getting the belt around him, and the thing was sticky no matter how many times he cleaned it. Besides the fact he hated the vehicle only because of who had owned it. The car was his stepfather's, a dark red Jeep SUV that was newer and better in the snow than his mom’s old Subaru.

They exited the garage, and Gabriel noticed again how the house needed a new paint job. He didn’t have the money to do it, but the HOA was on his ass about it.

He’d move if he thought he could sell the house. And, of course, if he thought the kids could handle another big upheaval.

Ben and his mom had left some money, but not enough for long. He figured if he were frugal, it would last six or seven years of taxes on the house, feeding and clothing the boys, and general expenses. Anything extra and it would tick down even more quickly.

He was fresh out of college and worked waiting tables in a diner on the other side of the small town. It didn’t pay well. Not to mention, he couldn’t work many hours unless he thought he could pay for daycare, and on his wages, there was no way.

A friend suggested that he take up substitute teaching at the local schools for extra money. The same hours the boys were in school, and it would pay decently enough for him not to have to scrimp every dime.

He’d applied and was waiting to hear back, but he wasn’t hopeful. His BA was in zoology. Thanks to his mother and their trips to the zoo, he had loved animals all his life.

“Can I go to the arcade when we get there?” Brandon asked.

“Not alone. After Tristan tells Santa what he wants, we’ll go there for a little while. Five games. Okay?”

He felt a kick to the back of his seat and clenched his jaw. After he turned onto the main road by their house, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself and said, “Five games and a slushy.”

“Fine,” he said with a definite clip in his voice.

“Fine, fine, fine, fine,” chanted Tristan.

“Shut up!”

Tristan simply giggled. He was too young to know that Brandon was being a shithead instead of just being a big brother.

“Hey, guys, let's sing a Christmas song, huh?”

“Rooodolf!”

“Rudolf okay with you, Brandon?”

“I don’t care.”

As they sang the song, Tristan was terribly out of tune, and Brandon didn’t join in at all, but it didn’t matter. The song lasted the trip to the mall, and when he finally found a place to park, it was halfway to Texas.

After getting Tristan out of his booster seat, he held his gloved hand as they walked together to the mall.

He remembered the mall when he was a little kid. He sat on Santa’s lap every year in Reily’s department store. He also remembered the long walks to the mall from the parking lot. It was a journey through time for Gabriel that morning.

Brandon started to get ahead of them, and he rushed Tristan to catch up, then he tried to grab Brandon’s hand. Brandon tore his hand away and said, “I’m not a baby.”

“Then don’t get away from us. There are hundreds of people here.”

“Pervs?”

“Probably a few, yeah.”

He shrugged and still stayed a few steps in front of them, but he was closer, so Gabriel gave him his little bit of independence.

Once inside, Gabriel saw how right he was. There was a sea of people, every kind of person anyone could imagine, and they all suddenly looked like predators to him. From the teenage boys to the old grannies, he clutched Tristan’s hand tighter and kept his eyes fully focused on Brandon’s light blond head.

Gabriel had hoped most people would be shopping online, but he supposed many people, like his mother, missed going out on chilly winter days to forage through the brick-and-mortar stores of their past.

The place was heavily decorated. Shining garland of red, green, and gold hung from the trees that lined the wide corridors, and tall nutcracker soldiers moved on their own between the trees.

A long line of parents with their kids was waiting for Santa twenty feet into the corridor outside Reily’s. Internally groaning, knowing Brandon would be a handful, Gabriel resigned himself to a hellish hour.

Brandon, however, started playing with a boy in front of them, whose mother was an older woman, at least in her forties. “Your boys are adorable,” she said to him.

His boys. They weren’t really, but then again, he guessed they were. Still, he felt the need to explain. “They’re my little brothers.”

“Oh! Well, I’ll admit I was curious. You look awfully young.” She leaned closer and confessed with a warm smile, “I was about to ask your skincare regimen.”

He smiled back at her, then thanked her before asking, “Is the line moving pretty quickly?”

“Better than last year,” she said as if she thought he’d know how slow it was the previous year. He’d been in graduate school then, dreaming of a much different future.

The line moved some, and within twenty minutes, they were finally inside the store. The boys saw the toy displays, and Brandon asked if he and his new friend could look at the toys. He was hesitant, but the woman in front of him said, “I’ll help keep an eye on them.”

“Okay, Brandon, but don’t go anywhere else, and if someone tries to talk to you?”

“I know,” he groaned loudly while rolling his eyes.

After the boys took off in a rush for the toys, the lady empathized, “Boys around the age of those two are constantly pushing buttons. I’m sure your mother is an old hat, being you turned out so well.”

“Uh, she…yeah, she’s an old hat.”

“Gabe, kin I go too?”

Gabriel picked Tristan up into his arms. “Not this time, buddy. Maybe next year.”

He distracted Tristan by holding him high enough to see Santa’s cottage and the top of Santa’s red hat. “I want dinos and Mama.”

The word struck Gabriel so hard in the chest he didn’t feel like he could breathe. “Santa doesn’t bring people back from Heaven, buddy.”

“But Brandon’s gonna wish fer that.”

Gabriel looked over and saw Brandon laughing with the boy as they ran around like feral cats in the aisles of the toy section. “He is?”

“He tol’ me.”

Gabriel kissed Tristan’s cheek. “It’s a good wish, Tristan. I wish it too, but Santa isn’t that powerful.”

The woman must have heard their conversation. She turned and laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry. How long?”

“Five months,” he answered, choking on the number.

“Then she really did do a wonderful job with you.”