Dear Santa

Her red lips pulled down at the corners, the older woman crossed her arms under her bosom. “Well, get over it, because that’s what Mr. B. pays me for. And besides…” She glanced furtively toward the bedroom’s open door, then lowered her voice. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have somebody normal to talk to, for once.”

Mia turned, a smile twitching at her lips. “You don’t like Mr. Braeburn?”

“Oh, please…I got Mr. B.’s number a long time ago. He’s not so bad, once you get past all the crap. But that mother of his…” Etta shook her head as Mia wondered what “number,” exactly, Etta meant. “Talk about a piece of work. Thank God you’re here, is all I have to say. For the baby’s sake, I mean. If Dragon Lady had her way…ohmigod, can you imagine the amount of therapy the poor kid would need down the road?”

“Etta! That’s terrible. And anyway, I’m only here until after the funeral. Which you know. Besides, Grant said he’s already taken Haley to see somebody, right?”

After a hmmph meant to sum up her entire opinion on modern psychology, Etta said, “So. There’s already two blankets on the bed, but if you need more, they’re in the chest there at the foot of the bed, along with more pillows…. What’re you lookin’ at?”

The panorama outside the window had drawn Mia like a fashionista to a sample sale. “Everything,” she said on a sigh, sinking onto the window seat. Although she knew there were other houses close enough to see from here, a miniforest of autumn-tinged trees obliterated all semblance of civilization. In the distance, the sun glanced off a sliver of the Long Island Sound, like a diamond tennis bracelet nestled amongst the foliage. “It really is spectacular, isn’t it?”

Etta crossed the thick-piled white carpet—with the room’s pale, lemon-yellow walls, it was like being inside a meringue pie—to join her at the window. “It is that. And thank God Mr. B. didn’t tear the house down and replace it with one of those McMonsters like a lot of them have. Who the hell needs a forty-thousand-square-foot house?”

It was true. So many of the older houses in the area, erected at the turn of the century as testaments to their owner’s position and wealth, had been replaced in the past decade or so by dozens of insanely overpriced, oversized mansions as testaments to their owner’s overblown egos. Bowling alleys, home theaters larger than your average Manhattan art house, heliports, thirty-car garages… Amazing, how Grant managed with only seven bedrooms and eight baths, the formal dining room that easily sat twenty, the pool and the tennis court and the six-car garage. Still, the place—with its slump rock exterior and traditional floor plan—exuded an aura of settledness that somehow precluded pretension.

It was, quite simply, a lovely house. The kind of house that engendered fond childhood memories, that called scattered siblings back year after year for Christmas and Thanksgiving and wedding anniversaries….

Frowning, she angled her head to get a better look at the pool, now covered, and guesthouse. “He fixed it up?” she asked Etta.

“The guesthouse? Yeah, about two years ago. Before the divorce. You should see it inside, it’s really something. All new kitchen and bath, the works. Listen, I made chowder for lunch, is that okay? Or I can put deli stuff out for sandwiches…?”

Mia turned to her, smiling. “Chowder’s fine.” Then she frowned. “Is Haley eating?”

Etta shrugged. “Not really. But then, she never really ate before, as far as I could tell. How the kid is still alive, I have no idea.” She started toward the door, then twisted back, as if weighing whether or not to say whatever she was thinking. When she finally said, “Lunch is at twelve-thirty,” Mia doubted that was it.

Well. Her clothes put away, her laptop set up on a small desk near the window, she might as well make herself useful and go look for Haley. Who she found—along with her father—out in the park that passed for a backyard. Haley and Henry shared a low-slung swing on a shiny new set, under the watchful eye of her father, seated on the flagstone patio in a white, cast-iron chair, his ankle crossed at the knee. At Mia’s “Hey, there,” he looked up, his frown—permanent, from what she could tell—easing somewhat.

“All settled in?” he asked, his attention drifting back to his daughter.

“Yeah.” Her hands in the pockets of her down vest, Mia lowered herself into a matching chair a few feet away. “Your mother left?”

“Yes, thank God.” He spared her a glance. “I don’t think she quite knows what to make of you.”

“I seem to have that effect on people.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “You know, since I’m here now, if you need to get back to work…?”

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes never leaving his daughter. “But I’m fine.”

Mia followed his gaze. “How’s she been?”

Grant’s shoulders hitched in a semblance of a shrug. “Quiet. Keeping to herself. Except for asking us where Justine is every five seconds. Which the doctor said to expect.” He leaned forward, his hands between his knees. “I went online, did some reading up.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Late last night, after I got back. From the anniversary party?” He nodded, a slight breeze ruffling his hair. Either he hadn’t shaved this morning or he had a seriously overachieving five-o’clock shadow.

“I suppose it’s at least somewhat reassuring,” he said, “to know her reaction is normal.”

“Yeah,” Mia breathed out. “Kinda hard to react to something you don’t understand.” She sank back into the chair, her hands still in her pockets. The breeze picked up, rustling the leaves, sending a few hang gliding onto the grass. “Um…not that I’m trying to horn in or anything, but if you need help with the arrangements…?” When the frown deepened, she said, “It’s what I do, remember?”

“Help?”

“No. Well, that, too. But I meant pulling food and whatnot together for two hundred out of a hat. It’s why God created delis that make up platters of artfully arranged cold cuts.”

“I take it you don’t generally do funeral receptions, though.”

“I have. They can be parties, too, depending on the deceased.”

“Not in this case.”

“No. Not in this case.”

His eyes drifted back to Haley. “I’ll pay you for your time.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, earning her a puzzled glare. Interesting combination. “Just sign a check for the food and we’ll call it square.”

Another nod. Then he said, “I know it’s probably nuts, asking people to trek all the way out here after the service. But I thought it might help Haley. If she could say goodbye here.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mia said, and his shoulders seemed to relax, just a fraction, and it hit her how hard this was on him, navigating these completely uncharted waters with nothing to guide him except, she supposed, a basic desire to do the right thing by his daughter. Well, that, and the best therapy money could buy.

“I also shouldn’t have strong-armed you into this,” he said suddenly.

“This?”

“Coming back,” he said, not looking at her as he slowly ground his knuckles into the palm of his other hand. “You’ve got that pained look people get when they’re forced to be someplace they don’t want to be. It’s just I was so desperate the other day, I reacted without thinking…. I apologize.”

Mia blinked, then laughed softly. “Believe me, Grant—if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be. No apology necessary.”

Under hooded lids, his eyes slid back to hers…and her stomach flipped. Nothing had prepared her for the full force of that probing gaze, riddled with concern. It was almost as if…

Never mind, she told herself as, knocked flat on her mental butt, she looked away until she could right herself again. When she didn’t reply fast enough to suit him, he probed further.

“Then what’s wrong?” he probed further. “Is it work?”

“No!” she said, a knee-jerk reaction to the presumption implicit in the question. “Business is great, O ye of little faith.”

“Then what?”

She messed with a thread dangling from the hem of her sweater, then crossed her arms. “Not that you’d care, but…my building’s going co-op.” Her mouth pulled down at the corners. “I have to either move or buy when my lease is up. In two weeks.”

“They can’t give you only two weeks’ notice, for God’s sake!”

“They didn’t. It’s been in the plans for more than a year. But I’ve been so busy with work…and I kept holding out this tiny hope that we’d win the battle and the landlord would back down.”

“Never mind that that almost never happens.”

“I know,” she said on a stream of air.

“I take it you can’t afford to buy?”

She let out a dry little laugh. “Everything I have—had—is tied up in the business.”