Page 64 of The Christmas Yes List

He meets my gaze and continues. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It wasn’t a long relationship between them, but it was the kind that came in like a tornado. Elle was twenty.”

“WHAT?” Some random twelve-year-old kid was acceptable here. Some crush who asked for a pencil in class or something.

I’d even stretch so far as fifteen. Sixteen, maybe.

But twenty? The year before she went off and married Dad? I could’ve been a completely different person. I could’ve not been born at all. This entire cozy, beautiful life we’ve all had here could’ve been just a dream. I am slightly offended on behalf of my own existence. And the fact that I can just imagine poor Dad sitting alone, chopping wood in this horrible alternative-universe timeline, quietly wishing for some sweet woman to walk out on the screen porch and badger him to put on a fresh-pressed flannel for the Christmas party she’d be dragging him to. Living in a cold house because he’s too practical to use much heat. Eating nothing but tin cans of Spam day in and day out.

The poor man.

“She was working at the pancake place on Hoover, down by the state exit, and as you know, lots of people come in and out that way. Truckers. Travelin’ folk. People just making a pit stop before moving on to the next thing. And one day, there came a man.”

The memory is obviously coming clearly now, because as prudent and softhearted as my father is, his eyes narrow a smidge, drawing creases across the corners. This is about as intense as he gets. It’s him basically saying the man was not worth the penny he sat on.

“He was a trucker. Quite a bit older than Elle.”

“How old?”

“Oh, somewhere round thirty. Thirty-five. And he . . . well, he had a way to command a room’s attention. People noticed when he came in. Girls especially. Including your mother.”

“The snake,” I say involuntarily.

“Well,” he continues, tipping his head. Dad is far too much of a gentleman to say the words out loud, but he’s not denying it either. “Point is, the man became a frequent visitor to your mother’s booth on his travels up and down his weekly route, and eventually, after a few months, despite our engagement at the time, he convinced her that what she needed wasn’t me or this town or anybody inside it, really; what she needed was to let him take her away and start over a fresh, exciting life with him. Said he was from a wealthy family back home. That he was a musician with some sure-thing prospects on the horizon. That he was just biding his time riding the road, making the most of the few carefree days he had left. Talked a lot about countries he’d gone to visit. Places he’d gone to see. Famous people. Doing famous things.”

Blow. Me. Over.

My. Mother.

How have I never heard this story?

More importantly, how far into this alternate timeline did Mom get?

“Did she go?” I cry out. I drop my previously crossed leg on the ground, halfway expecting him to say Yes, and she lived happily ever after in Nashville with him, honey. Which is why you’re just a figment of my imagination.

“She didn’t. But . . . she tried.” His gaze flickers to the kitchen window, and he pauses to pack another couple of logs on the belt, his lips beneath his beard working while his mind seems to be considering Exactly how much of this does Elle want me sharing with our daughter?

Whatever his thoughts, he seems to conclude that he can carry on. Relationship advice for the woefully down-and-out daughter clearly trumps family secrets.

I can picture it now, the way he’ll justify this conversation to Mom with the words Well, you said you wanted grandchildren one day! “The man—”

“What was his name?”

“No name,” he says, and sniffs. He obviously knew his name. “The man,” he continues, “charmed Elle enough times that she did, one night, come to me and break the engagement. It was hard for her, and it was . . . hard for me. But she was firm. And frankly, Elle knew everything there was to know about me. It’s hard to compete with a mystery.”

“I guess . . . some people always wonder what’s behind door number three. Even when they’ve got a good thing in hand. The best thing.” Dang it. I’m feeling so territorial over something that happened with Dad nearly three decades ago that I’m going to be a bit peevish with Mom tonight. Maybe just not hear her when she asks me to fetch the eggnog. Borrow her nail polish and keep it.

“Yes, well, anyway,” Dad continues, “she said he was going to be coming by to pick her up that evening. She went on home and told her folks. Called her friends. Called the pancake place and told them she wouldn’t be at work the next day and why. Got all her things packed by the front door. Sat on the front porch steps while her daddy and mama went on and on about how she should change her mind. And waited.”

He turns on the splitter.

Runs a log through like that was that.

I watch him with wide, impatient eyes as the log slowly, painfully creeps through the splitter. The sound of the machine is grating to my ears.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. I throw out my hands. “And, Dad?” I yell over the sound of the machine. “Then?”

The log splits and he clicks off the machine. Tosses the log onto the pile. He shrugs.

“He never came.”