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A child refusing a present from Santa? That hadn’t been in his brief, either. What now? He glanced at the Chief Elf, but she was biting her lip and looking worried. Clearly this hadn’t been something she’d thought to ask about beforehand, either.
He was just going to have to wing it. As he’d occasionally done in presentations where the account was worth serious money—but this felt much more important.
“Can I have something else?” Sam asked.
“I’ll have to see,” Mitch said. “What do you want?”
He’d half-expected a request for the latest game console, so he was completely floored when Sam said, “I’d like you to bring my sister home for Christmas.”
Bring my sister home for Christmas.
A little girl who was in hospice and clearly wasn’t going to be able to go home again, let alone for Christmas.
This wasn’t his department. No way was he going to be able to give Sam the one thing the child wanted so badly. But he couldn’t take that last bit of hope away. He just didn’t have the heart to trample on the little boy’s dreams. Instead, he said gruffly, “I’ll do my best. I can’t promise, but I’ll do my best.”
God, how he wished he could make that dream come true.
And something inside him felt as if it had cracked.
“In the meantime…” He handed the present to Sam.
“Thank you.” But the little boy made no move to open his gift. He just went to sit down with all the others, his eyes a little less bright.
Being Santa really, really sucked, Mitch thought.
He pulled himself together and took the next present from the sack. “This one’s for Hayley.”
She came up with a shy smile. “Merry Christmas, Santa. We should’ve left you a cookie and a glass of milk, and a carrot for Rudolph, and I’m sorry we didn’t.”
Her thoughtfulness surprised him, and built the guilt factor up just a little bit more. He knew he wasn’t that considerate of other people’s feelings. Look at the way he avoided his family.
“Hey, it’s fine. When you leave me cookies and what have you, it’s when I don’t get a chance to see you because you’re asleep. The rules are different when you see me. You don’t have to give me anything.”
“Yes, I do.” She gave him a handful of carrot sticks. “I saved them for Rudolph from the party. Will he mind if they’re a different shape?”
“He won’t mind at all. He’ll love them. I’ll put them in my pocket and he’ll know they’re there. That red nose of his can detect carrots at a hundred yards. Thank you.”
Then she gave him a Santa cookie. “We all had one. And they’re really special. Just like you.”
No, Mitch thought, he wasn’t special. He was a fake. And he didn’t dare look over at the Chief Elf, because he knew he’d see that knowledge written all over her face. And that he deserved to see it. “Thank you, Hayley, that’s really kind of you. I’ll enjoy that later when I have to fly off.”
He’d just given out the last present and was about to make his farewell speech when a little girl came up to him and tugged his hand. He remembered giving her an art pad and pens earlier.
“Santa, you’ve given everyone a present, but you haven’t gotten one, so I made one for you with the one you gave me.” She handed him a picture of himself with a huge smile on his face.
It was the first time he’d ever been given a drawing by a child. “Thank you, honey, that’s lovely.”
He stared at the picture. It shocked him to the core that it actually made him want to fly out west and see his sisters and the kids—to see their faces when they opened their presents, instead of keeping his distance and being too busy to reply to the text messages they sent to his cell phone to thank him.
Maybe, Mitch thought, he’d gotten Christmas all wrong.
Maybe Christmas itself was a gift.
Not that he was going to admit that to the Chief Elf. He was pretty sure she’d have something to say on the subject, and it wouldn’t be in the slightest bit complimentary to him.
…
“Ellie, it’s snowing. I mean really snowing,” Janet, one of the helpers, said, her face etched with worry.
