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A bellow on the monitor got their attention. “Uh-oh, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Ha! I’ll get her,” Leon said. “You relax.”
On the way to the nursery, he had an epiphany. While Ava was away, he’d make Christmas for the family like Roberta suggested. He’d have three full days to decorate inside and out. As soon as he could, he’d call his mother and make arrangements to enlist her help.
They spent the day relaxing together, making up for being apart for three days, and when Violet was napping, they made love for the last time before she had to leave to care for Alex’s daughters.
“I hope this isn’t our normal,” he said, holding her in bed.
“What? You mean the interruptions? I think that’s adulthood, to tell you the truth. We’ll weave our life around it somehow.”
“Ugh. I’m regretting wishing that fire academy would hurry and be over with. That was easy compared to this.”
“We didn’t know each other then, though,” she said. “My life would be so meaningless without you.”
So she packed up and left before dark to make the two-hour trip, and as soon as her car disappeared down the hill, he got on the phone to Roberta.
“You’re going to get your wish.”
“What is it?”
“Ava has to be out of town for a few days, so I’m going to put a call out for help from my brothers and decorate the house inside and out.”
“How exciting! I’ll start putting together boxes of ornaments, Lenny. I have hundreds, you know.”
“It’s my lucky day, I guess,” he said, teasing her. “I need you to get on the phone and start rounding up volunteers.”
By the next day, six people, including several Saints, arrived with ladders and boxes of strings of lights, everything needed to make a house a home for Christmas. The guy next door, whom Ava had won a lawsuit against, even came outside, curious about all the young guys working on her house. Leon was courteous, but vague.
“We’re decorating her house for Christmas,” he said, explaining the obvious.
“So are you the guy I see living there now?”
“Who wants to know?” Leon said, towering over him.
The guy put his hands up and backed away. Leon felt Ava would be safe when he didn’t make any more inquiries after that. Her other neighbors were sworn to secrecy, many of them offering to help out, as well.
For the next three days, friends and family worked, wrapping palm trees in lights, swagging lights and red velvet ribbon across the wrought-iron gateway to the courtyard and the stucco wall that enclosed her property.
Inside, the transformation from minimalist house to Christmas fairyland was complete. When they talked several times a day, Leon never let on to Ava that anything was going on.
On Thursday morning, his last day before he had to return to work, he got the call.
“Chelsea isn’t doing well enough to be discharged today,” Ava said, upset. “I don’t know what to do. I need to get home so you can go to work tomorrow.”
“Can the kids miss school Friday? Just bring them here.”
“I never thought of that. Yes, I’ll tell her we’re coming back to my house after school today.”
Chelsea was so grateful to have Ava on her side that she was fine with the girls missing a day of school.
“I’m on my way!” she cried, having picked the girls up at three thirty. They would head back to their old house for the first time in almost two years.
The car wound around the serpentine road leading to Ava’s house. What she saw didn’t register right away because it was not only totally unexpected, but it had transformed the house so completely that she didn’t recognize it.
“Ava, is that our house?” the oldest girl, Jennifer, cried. “It looks like the North Pole!”
The younger girl, Samantha, screamed with delight. “Look at that! Santa won’t have any trouble finding our house this year.”
