Chapter 16: The Best Christmas

Christmas morning, I woke on Ellie's couch under three blankets with a cat on my feet.

Nobody wanted a thing from me.

I lay there and waited for the list to start in my head: the ham, the pies, the tablecloth, who was allergic to what.

It didn't come.

The only list in the house was Ellie's, taped to the fridge: cinnamon rolls, coffee, don't burn anything, Stian's mother at eleven.

I laughed out loud into the pillow.

By eleven the house smelled like orange peel and bacon.

Stian's mother arrived in her red scarf with a casserole in both hands and a bag of knitted socks over her arm.

"One pair for each of you," she said. "Don't thank me. They're ugly."

They were green and orange and very warm.

Ellie put hers on over her slippers and stood on a chair to hang a star on the tree.

The tree leaned a little to the left.

"It's cozy," Stian said.

"It's crooked," his sister said.

"It's cozy and crooked."

I sat on the floor by the stack of wrapped boxes and handed things out.

I had slipped away at the market on the nineteenth and bought each of them one small thing.

For Ellie, a heavy cast iron pan, because hers had been warped since college.

For Stian's mother, a good pair of garden shears, because she'd told me about her roses in the spring she was going to plant again.

Ellie tore the paper off her pan and held it against her chest.

"You remembered," she said.

"You complained about it for twelve years."

"Eleven. I've loved this pan."

"You have not."

"I'll learn to."

Stian's mother turned the shears over in her hands and said nothing.

Then she put them down very carefully on her lap, and wiped one eye with her wrist.

"Well," she said. "I'll need somewhere to put roses."

"The yard," Stian said.

"I know where the yard is."

His present was the last one, in a small flat box with a plain ribbon.

He opened it slowly and took out a pair of leather work gloves, lined with wool.

His old pair had a hole in the thumb.

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