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This time Mary Paige laughed. “I’m joking. She shouldn’t christen you.”
“She better not,” he grumbled, looking more like a disenfranchised court jester than a jolly elf.
One of the other elves handed Brennan a bag of candy and a bag of Christmas-colored plastic beads. “This is for the folks who will be lined up to watch Santa’s arrival.”
Brennan opened the bags and set them between the two of them, not even disturbing the dog curled in his lap. Pretty telling that he was considerate of the pup. Maybe Brennan wasn’t such a Scrooge after all. Could be he was totally redeemable.
“Okay, let’s start throwing this crap. Sooner we get this done the faster I can take this absurd hat off and give this beast to my grandfather.”
Or maybe not.
“Cheer up,” she said, “it’s Christmas.”
Brennan hurled a strand of beads out the window toward a group of revelers. “Bah—”
“Humbug,” she finished for him.
7
BRENNANOBLIGEDTHEwaving throngs gathered along the route of the streetcar by throwing the baubles and pasting a smile on his face.
What he really wanted to do was drop the bags to the floor, shove Izzy away, pull Mary Paige onto his lap and kiss the living daylights out of her.
What was coming over him? Was he getting a seasonal fever? She was as much as his type as hair ribbons or pink cupcakes. Brennan ate kittens like her for breakfast.
“Oh, look at that darling little girl,” she said, waving like a lunatic and making him want to both roll his eyes and kiss her. “Isn’t she cute?”
He looked at the kid in question, noting her perfect little blond curls and furred parka. His imagination took off—he envisioned Mary Paige with a blond toddler on her hip and a goofy smile on her face. She looked so happy. Natural. Just right.
“Brennan?” She elbowed him.
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
He nodded but realized she couldn’t see him because her focus was on the crowds lining the street. It was mini–Mardi Gras out there. “Yeah, sure. Just a long day.”
“Have you always done this?”
“What? Ridden on the streetcar for the lighting?”
She nodded, still smiling and waving like the spirit his grandfather had envisioned. And the onlookers waved back like trained seals, their smiles equally happy.
What was he missing that he couldn’t abandon himself and be like those people? Wouldn’t life be easier if he could yank some joy from it? But he didn’t know how. He was who he was.
“Yeah, like, did you do this with your family when you were young? Your grandfather said this has been a tradition for over thirty years, so I’m assuming it was something you did as a child.”
His mind flew back to another child who sat upon his mother’s lap, laughing and tossing trinkets all along St. Charles Avenue. That boy had loved riding the streetcar with Santa Claus, sneaking glances at the jolly fat man, worried that perhaps pulling his sister’s hair had earned him a lump of coal. He could remember the smell of his mother’s perfume—something French and expensive—and his father’s booming laugh as he directed Brennan’s sister, Brielle, to clear the window with her throws. Brielle had giggled and teased Brennan the way older sisters did. It had been wonderful to be a six-year-old Brennan, a boy loved, worshipped, safe in a world that never should have shattered.
“I rode when I was small.”
Mary Paige must have heard something in his voice because she turned toward him. “So, you stopped when you grew up?”
“Something like that.” He didn’t want to talk about his childhood. About Brielle. About love and loss and things coming unraveled.
About the real reason Christmas made him growl.
“Must be good memories,” she said, patting him on his thigh, waking Izzy from where she dozed. Izzy looked up with sleepy eyes and a yawn.
