This is a moment to cherish.
Mom smiles as she picks up a border piece and connects it at the bottom of the puzzle, humming.
“Is that ‘All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth’?” I ask.
“Yeah. Except we’ve changed the lyrics.” She starts to sing.“‘All I want for Christmas is my mem-or-y, my mem-or-y, my mem-or-y.’” She grins. “Clever, right?”
My eyes sting, and I blink back tears. Forget the woman I wanted to be in the elevator. I want to be like this woman right here. My mother. Laughing in the face of her weakness and being stronger for it.
4
Jeremy Fletcher had a plan. Well, really he had a number of plans. Five years. Ten years. Twenty. But the current one was working out exactly how he had designed.
He glanced at the digital calendar on his laptop. Monday he’d start his campaign with pomander balls. (He’d been calling them spikey oranges until he learned after an internet search that they had a real name.) He’d already purchased a crate of oranges at the wholesale mega store. He owed Nathan and Natalie credit for the idea. They’d come home from school with an orange each, both stabbed with cloves. A mutilated murder of the mandarin variety.
But he had something a little more aesthetically pleasing in mind. He wanted to impress the head of a graphic design firm, after all. If he could arrange the cloves in patterns, maybe even score off some of the fruit’s rind in scrolls and lines, then the pomander balls would both smell and look good. He’d grab Sofiya by two of her senses at once, and she’d be reminded twice as often of his effort and how much he deserved the promotion.
Making one ball for Sofiya would score him a point, but the tally marks would multiply if he came into the office on Mondaywith a pomander ball for each of Limitless Designs’s employees. A sign that he had the thoughtfulness to be a leader. That he appreciated and cultivated a team environment. That he was the person she should choose.
Would Mackenzie have a similar plan of attack? Just the idea of the diminutive woman going on the offensive made him smile. She wasn’t necessarily small, but she sort of shrank in on herself at times. Like in the elevator, for instance. He’d tried to cajole her out of her shell a little, but she hadn’t said a word. Only cast furtive glances his way. If he wasn’t mistaken, her breathing had even quickened. His ego would like to say that was because his charming self had affected her, but the likelier culprit was that she was shy and timid by nature. He couldn’t wrap his mind around Sofiya seeing Mackenzie commanding a conference room or handling a particularly difficult client.
Feet pounded on the stairs from the second story of the house. Jeremy closed his laptop and mentally switched gears from work to homelife. He watched his niece and nephew descend, backpacks slung low at their hips. He tossed each of them an orange, which they caught in midair.
“You guys sure you don’t want to stay and help me with these?” he asked, already knowing what their reaction would be. What eleven-year-old wanted to spend Friday night at home with their parental when they could be playing video games or—he shuddered—spending countless, mindless hours on YouTube watchingotherpeople play video games?
Sure enough, the preteens scoffed. “Unlike you, Grandpa and Grandma let us eat as many cookies as we want.” Nathan tossed the orange back to Jeremy.
That was the difference between parents and grandparents, because when Jeremy was a kid, there had most definitely been a one-cookie rule.
“And let us stay up late,” Natalie added.
“Plus, Grandpa said we can watch arealChristmas movie.DieHard.” Nathan grinned so wide it was almost painful to have to burst his bubble. Almost.
Jeremy pointed at him. “No R-rated movies.”
Nathan sucked his teeth in frustration. “C’mon, Uncle Jeremy. I’m not a baby.”
“You know the rules.”
Nathan’s body sagged, a sullen expression taking over his face. “If you had your way, we’d only be allowed to watchThe Polar Expresson repeat.”
Natalie shrugged. “I likeThe Polar Express.”
“You would,” Nathan mocked. “Youarea baby.”
“I’m thirty-four, and I likeThe Polar Express. ‘Hot choc-o-lat!’” Jeremy danced his fingers with jazz hands like Tom Hank’s cartoon character in the movie.
Nathan rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Middle schoolers were a tough crowd. Jeremy remembered when Nathan would have died laughing at his goofy antics. Not for the first time, he wondered what his sister, Heidi, would have done or said.
But she wasn’t here. She hadn’t been for eight years. Not since—
Jeremy clapped his hands once. The sudden noise disrupted the morose trail his thoughts had started to hike and put an end to the current conversation. “You two remember your toothbrushes? Pajamas?”
“Yep,” they chorused.
“You sure you don’t want me to drive you?”
