“Merry Christmas, Thomas! Thank you, sir!”
***
He had enjoyed spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family. More than he had in years. Not that being with his family had necessarily helped him figure out what to do about Jenny, but it was somehow comforting to spend a few days with them. Colleen had arrived with her husband and the girls on Christmas Eve morning and greeted Sam with a shocked and elated hello. Muirin arrived a few hours later with her husband and baby Colin, who was deposited with his uncle and proceeded to take a two-hour nap in Sam’s arms.
His sisters had married well: stable, loving men who doted on their wives and children. Being around his family was comforting, but Sam found that watching the couples interact only served to intensify a deep ache inside of him. He couldn’t stop thinking about how well Jenny would have fit in with his family, how much his mother and sisters would have liked her, how captivated she would have been by his little nieces and tiny nephew.
He peeked out his mother’s kitchen window as Colleen followed her daughters outside to the swing set in the backyard. Muirin came up behind him, holding her newborn son.
“When’s it your turn, Uncle Sammy?”
Sam had given his sister a tight smile, recalling his blunder when he had blurted out, “Someday. With you,” to Jenny.
He gritted his teeth with regret, remembering Jenny rush out of the courthouse after he’d yelled unforgivable things at her. He’d never apologized to her, and it had been weeks since their emotional farewell. He’d probably have a better chance at converting Ron to the priesthood than having another chance with Jenny at this point.
After church, the girls had stayed up as late as they could stand, waiting for Santa, until their dad finally carried them up to bed. Sam, his sisters, their husbands and his parents had visited in the living room, his dad occasionally stoking a roaring fire, trading stories of Christmases past and passing Colin around to loving arms.
Christmas morning dawned white with sunshine on a new-fallen snow, which delighted the girls almost more than Santa’s bounty, and the day was spent opening gifts, making snow angels, eating and drinking way too much. Colleen and Muirin finally left for home after dinner on Christmas Day. Sam would head back to the city in the morning.
He was standing on the back patio looking up at the sky when his mother joined him.
“Good night for it,” she mused, pulling a thick, wool sweater around her shoulders and buttoning it up against the cold. “It’s clear.”
Margaret Gunderson Kelley was still an attractive woman at sixty. She wore her white-blonde hair in a neat page-boy held back by a variety of hair bands, most of them blue to match her piercing blue eyes, and kept fit by taking a long walk with Sam’s dad every morning.
“Not like Montana.”
“Well,” she said, looking up and smiling, “Nowhere’s like Montana.”
She nudged Sam in the side gently with her elbow. “So, youngest child, did something happen out there?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Aunt Lisabet told me what you did for Kristian. The wedding. Standing proxy. Which, by the way, it would have been nice to hear from you instead of her.” She chucked him lightly in the arm before continuing. “Still, I’m proud of you for helping him out. What a nice boy I raised.”
“You did okay,” he conceded, grinning straight ahead in the semi-darkness.
“But, you’re not acting like yourself. Coming home early for Christmas, Sam? Staying an extra day? Oh I’m not saying I don’t love every second. I do. We all loved having you here longer this year. But it’s not really you, son.”
He cringed at her words and turned to her. “God, I’m sorry about that, Mom.”
“Oh, honey, I’m not complaining. You work hard, you play hard. Your job means everything to you.” She seemed to hesitate, then continued. “I don’t want to pry, but I gather from Colleen that you’re not with Pepper anymore.”
“Didn’t work out.” He turned his head to smile at her. “Don’t start crying now. I know how much you liked her.”
She chuckled, shaking her head. “No. She wasn’t my favorite. I wanted more for you. I wanted something deep and lasting and…” She paused then took his arm and led him to the patio steps. She sat and pulled him down beside her on the cold, rough concrete. “So it’s not Pepper.”
He shook his head. “Not Pepper. And about my job…,” he started. “Don’t fall over in a dead faint, but I’m thinking about quitting. Downsizing the whole work thing.”