Chapter 8

Chapter 8AbigailI would never have guessed what the surprise from Clarissa was. With the way she took the bag of chocolate coins from the shelf and half-hid them behind her side, giggled wildly, and whispered something to Julia where I heard her say my name, and then gave me about thirty-five furtive looks over her shoulder, I never in my life would have guessed the surprise she gave me once we left the shop: a bag of chocolate coins. I gasped, pretending I’d never seen them in my life.“Oh, wow!” I took them like it was the best thing I’d ever seen. “Oh my god, I love them!”She thrust her chest out, chin up in the air. “It’s because you study money!”“Ah… yes. Studying money. That’s what I do. Oh, I just love them. Thank you, Clarissa.”She beamed. “You’re going to make a lot of money one day, right?”“Um… you know, that’s the hope, if nothing else.”“Clarissa,” Julia said, putting a hand on her shoulder, but she was badly stifling laughter.“Thanks for the gift,” I said, and Julia smiled sweetly at me.“Were you thinking of somewhere else now?”I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Ah… maybe the bookstore? I think I might be able to grab Stella something there. Never going to compete with her gift-giving game, though.”“It’s not a competition, and you know it. Do you want us to come with, or leave you to it?”“Oh, definitely come with. I need all the help I can get making sure I don’t get her a book she already has.”The bookstore was a charming place, a local shop that smelled like vanilla and oak, and the shelves were squeezed so tight together we had to walk single-file through it. It was halfway through scanning the options, Clarissa sitting in the kids’ corner reading a big book, that Julia sidled closer to me and spoke quietly.“You miss it, don’t you?”I stared at the book I was flipping through, pausing on one page, before I looked at her. “Uh… detective novels?”“Scotland.”“Ah.” A conversation I didn’t want. My favorite. I shut the book and slid it back onto the shelf. “I do. But I’m… glad to be home.”“Hm…” She kept her gaze fixed on the shelf, but I could see she was staring through it, off to infinity. The nerves churned in my chest, and I couldn’t help it.“Er… why?”“Stella and I were talking about it yesterday. Just that you seem like… like there’s something missing. Like something’s not right. I was just wondering if it was that you miss Scotland.”This was grand… I didn’t want to get into telling her about the breakup. I didn’t trust her to not ask too many details like I did Stella, and complaining about a breakup to someone going through a divorce made me feel like a tool. “Well…”“You know, when I was your age, I took a trip to California,” she said, her voice small, distant. The way she was looking off into space, I could tell she was seeing California, not the shelf in front of her. “The coast, the sun, the… the people. It all felt so different, so magical. I left a piece of my heart there. I felt a bit hollow when I came back.” She looked down, coming back to Bellsford. “I was wondering if maybe it was similar.”“I don’t know…” I turned back to the shelf, running my fingers along the spines, feeling the coarse texture of the book covers. “I loved the place. And I’m glad I went, and I miss the sceneries, and I miss the things I got to do there, and I miss the people. But… it wasn’t home. I don’t feel like I left part of myself there.”She gave me an odd look. “You know, you don’t have to pretend to be okay if you’re not.”I gave her a light smile. “Same goes to you, Miss Jackson.”“Ha. I mean it, though.”“And so do I.” I shrugged. “I loved it there, but at the end of the day, I belong over here, on this side of the pond.”It felt like the wrong answer—the troubled look she had, turning back to the bookshelf—but… maybe it wasn’t me.“I’m glad you’re happy being back here,” she said, finally. “It’s good to see you again. Stella’s missed you.”Yeah, so Clarissa had been telling me. Along with some other things. “Thank you. I’ve missed her too.”And she didn’t need to know anything more than that.It was a while longer of browsing before I felt my breath catch, taking down a beautifully decorated book with shimmery gold on the page edges. A classic Sherlock Holmes book, illustrated throughout with expressive pencil-sketch pages. “Stella still likes to draw in her free time, right?” I said quietly. “I’ve seen her still posting her doodles up on Instagram.”Julia snorted. “As if she’d give her mother her Instagram page. You’re the one who’s been stalking it.”“Uh—” I paused mid-page-flip. “I mean, I just see her pop up on my feed occasionally, is all.”She smiled wider. “That’s a good call, though. I bet she’d love it.”The clerk at the register gushed about the special edition while she wrapped the book up in tissue paper, and at Julia’s subtle request, I took Clarissa out to sit on the bench overlooking the Christmas tree in the center from the second floor, sharing snacks with her, while Julia bought the book Clarissa had dolefully put back on the shelf like she was saying goodbye to a lover on our way out. Clarissa kicked her feet below the bench, popping chocolate-coated raisins, and she beamed at me.“Do you think Mommy’s buying me a present?”The girl was getting a little too sharp. I shrugged. “Who knows? She probably just needed some time to browse in private. Sometimes books speak to you in a way you have to be alone to understand.”She frowned, looking at her raisins. “If the books are talking to you, I think that’s called a delusion.”“Okay, you,” I laughed, ruffling her hair. “I don’t even want to know where you picked that one up.”She beamed. “Mommy calls Daddy delusional a lot.”Ah. What a cheerful way to deliver that gut punch. I strained a smile, and I think Clarissa picked up on it, because she pouted.“They’re fighting a lot lately… I don’t want Mommy to live somewhere else.”I put a hand on her shoulder, my heart aching for her looking all precious and timid like this. “Change is scary sometimes… I get it.”She looked up at me. “Do your mommy and daddy fight a lot, too?”I cast my gaze out straight ahead again, feeling a spiritual sigh deep in my body. “Don’t know… I don’t really talk to them much these days.”She looked heartbroken, the poor little thing. “You don’t talk to them? Don’t you get lonely?”“Yeah… sometimes.”“What about your brothers and sisters?”“Don’t have any. Just the three of us.” I put on a smile, nudging her side. “But hey, I’ve got you. And your mommy and daddy are just like parents to me too. And I have friends.”She beamed. “And you have your wife!”“Uh—” I felt my face prickle. The elderly couple at the table close by looked over at us, and I shrank into myself. “Clarissa, let’s not shout things like that out loud.”She frowned. “Why?”“Some things are private. Also… Stella and I aren’t married. Sorry.”She continued as if I hadn’t said a thing, popping a raisin. “Do you think you and Stella would have kids?”I cleared my throat. “We are just friends, and you don’t typically have kids with your friends.”She gave me a dubious look, but she turned back to her raisins. “I bet you wouldn’t fight like Mommy and Daddy.”I sighed, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Clari… your mommy and daddy don’t fight because they don’t love each other,” I said, dropping my voice. “They fight because sometimes when you love someone a lot, it makes it hard to think straight. And then sometimes, when you have two people who love each other a lot, they might change in different ways to the point where they just… aren’t right to be together anymore, but because they love each other still—and because the world tells us there’s a right and a wrong way to be in love—they might fight a lot. But… if two people would be happiest away from each other, then going away from each other is also a way of showing them love.”“Mm…” She looked down. “But that sounds sad.”“It can be really sad. And life has a lot of sad moments. But…” I gestured with my foot, pointing through the railing towards the Christmas tree. “Look at that tree. It’s pretty, right? With all its lights?”“Mm.” She nodded.“If it were completely covered in lights, nothing but lights, it would just look like the big lights on the ceiling. It wouldn’t really be as pretty. It’s because there’s dark parts on the tree too that the lights are pretty. It’s the contrast that makes the lights so beautiful.”She chewed her cheek. I squeezed her shoulder as Julia’s footsteps came out of the shop behind us.“Life is like that, too. The dark and scary and sad parts aren’t just big bad things you want to get rid of. You need them to have the light. It’s only in dark places that you can make light. Sad moments are like the piles of parts in Santa’s workshop—a mess that doesn’t make anyone happy, but everything is in there for you to put together something beautiful.”She smiled at me. “Something like Jemimah?”“Just like Jemimah. Easy there, kid. Things will all work out. Just enjoy the days as they happen.” I gave her a playful little shove, standing up, and she giggled as she jumped to her feet with me, turning around and running towards Julia.“Mommy!” she said. “Were you having delusions?”Julia almost tripped. “What?”I hung my head. “I used the wrong turn of phrase about finding a book that speaks to you…”Still, since it seemed like none of us were hallucinating talking books, we ended up shopping a little while longer, bumping into Julia’s brother John and his son whose name started with T and I could never remember except that trout always came to mind instead. We stuck together, browsing the little shops, and it took a solid half an hour before I managed to tease the conversation in the right direction to get the son’s name—Trent—I’d forget it again in an hour—and I managed to get Trout to take the rest of them into a sporting goods shop while I took my time perusing at the chocolatier, pretending that was all it was and that I wasn’t buying Julia that chocolate Stella and I had discussed.And I guess while I was at it, Stella had been getting so many gifts for so many people that I could get her a little something extra here… I knew how she loved white chocolate with raspberry.We met back up at the entrance just in time for Ron Jackson, the crusty-looking old guy who seemed to run things around the extended Jackson family, to start getting impatient about the last stragglers to join us again. I was in the middle of a conversation with Stella’s cousin Andrew when I got a tap on my shoulder and turned back to where Stella grinned at me, a twinkle in her eyes.“Surprise,” she said.“Hey, you.” I said a few cordial words to Andrew backing out of the conversation, suddenly disinterested in anything not Stella, and I turned back to her. “Find everything you were looking for?”“I grabbed you something special.” She winked, and for one very gay second, I genuinely couldn’t make myself breathe. “I’ll give it to you later today, so look forward to it.”I swallowed and put on a smile. “Not keen on waiting for Christmas, huh?”“I’ll get you something for Christmas, too, but I’m not a patient woman. I’ll give it to you tonight, once it’s just the two of us.”That did not need to sound so salacious. I forced myself to think of other things. Normal things. “Well, now I won’t be able to think of anything else all day.”She grinned. “That’s the way I want it.”Well, good, because she had a knack for making it impossible to think of anything but her.The last person to show up got an earful from Ron Jackson, but with all of us gathered at last, he got to make his big announcement: heading down the street to the events center for a dance. As if I wasn’t already feeling my ears crackling from the overstimulation of the crowds… next to me, Stella groaned.“What, a family Christmas ball in this century? How tacky are we?”I laughed drily, following where the group was buzzing with energy—not all positive energy—out the doors and into the street. “Hey. Old men and their traditions…”“Nothing good can possibly happen at a dance like that,” she laughed.“You don’t see me disagreeing.”She lowered her voice, her expression softening as we stepped out into the windy cold outside, sleigh bells ringing down the lane as people rushed by in either direction with shopping bags. “If you need out…” she said, and I shook my head.“Stella, it’s really okay. I’m an adult. I can handle a little dance.”“If you insist. But adults have needs too.” She slipped her bags onto one arm and squeezed my hand. “Promise it’s okay.”She really was too good to everyone all the time… I’d live, though. Really. The last thing I needed was what it would do to my heart if Stella swooped in and saved me from a crash.