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But the cost to me would be too high.
“Go, please,” I said.
He turned away, walking through the crowd that went absolutely silent when he stepped on the stage. They’d been waiting for this. Waiting for him.
They could have him.
I had me. And my life. Back in Vegas.
I turned and left before he got to the stage.
24
Ethan
The crowd was big. Standing room only. Even on the stage I couldn’t see Lexie standing in the back. Dad was sitting up front, though. Smiling at me. Ben was there, looking nervous and proud. All the kids.
Chelsea, too, tear-streaked and miserable.
I turned on the microphone and stepped away from the speaker so there wouldn’t be any reverb. I saw the cameras come up, of course. I should have expected that.
“I’m Ethan Kringle. Welcome to the Kringle Christmas Celebration. We’re so glad you could all join us here tonight. My father and mother started the Inn and Christmas Tree Farm as a community and I am proud to be a part of that community. Of your community. Tonight we have something special for you. A Holiday Pageant that the kids have worked so hard on, organized and nurtured by Lexie Platzski.” I wanted to claim her. I wanted to say my wife. But I understood her point. By making her mine I was slotting her into my life. My mother would have been so disappointed in me. I was still sick from what I said to her. Fix her? What the hell was wrong with me?
“Some of you might have met her at the front desk or the Jamboree. Lexie has added something amazing to this community. Something I didn’t realize that we as a family were missing. That I, as a man, was missing. She is authentic and real. She is her own person in all the best ways. I love her very much.” My voice cracked and the room was silent. “Get to know her and you will, too. The way my family does. The way these kids do. Oh, and I’m the man in the video. If you’re coming after her, you’re coming after me. Now, let me introduce Santa’s reindeer.”
There was some not-so-quiet rumbling from people who knew about the video, but most people just applauded. I stepped to the side, turned off the microphone, and Ben, wearing antlers, and to my surprise, Chelsea too, swept back the curtain and as promised, the show went on.
The crowd gasped and oohed and aahed. The twins were off rhythm, but they were off rhythm together. Ben, who was standing in for one of the kids who wasn’t performing, did every bit of choreography.
God, Lexie should be so proud of these kids.
I made my way along the wall to the door where I’d left her, shaking a few hands as I went.
“Your wife is amazing,” Avery’s mom and dad said as I went by them.
“She really is,” I said and finally made it to the wide-open barn doors. No sign of Lexie.
There was thunderous applause all around me as the reindeer left the stage. Chelsea, still in her reindeer antlers, but now with her veil thrown over them, stepped to the middle of the stage and sang her quiet, pretty version of “Silent Night.” Made more emotional by the crack in her voice and the way her breath shuddered because she’d been crying.
I stepped out into the cold and dark, hoping to see the glow of Lexie in the shadows.
No sign of her outside.
I went back inside, opened the gate we’d built on the stairs leading up to the workshop so no one went up there and took the stairs two at a time.
No sign of her upstairs in the workshop.
I knew. Of course I knew. I’d known the second I said “Fix you.” The second I believed she needed to change to fit into my life. Instead of my changing to fit into hers.
She was gone.
I came back down the stairs only to find the show over and my father sitting mostly alone in the chairs set up in front of the stage.
“Where’s Lexie?” Ben asked. “Did she see? They did so good!”
“I’m not sure where she went,” I said to Ben and then lied because I couldn’t break his heart. “But I’m sure she saw. She’s so proud of all of you.”
Ben’s mom met my eyes and I could see her sympathy in there.
Yep, I thought. I blew it.
I collapsed next to my dad.
“That was some show,” he said, wiping the tears from under his eyes. “That was a good speech by you, too. I don’t know what video you were talking about.”
“That’s for the best, probably.”
“I figured.”
“She’s gone, Dad. She left.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Vegas, I imagine. Home.”
Dad turned and looked at me, and Chris Kringle was not a man who got mad. But he was pissed. “What did you do?”
