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“Well, however it turns out, congratulations. Acceptance at a place like that is an accomplishment.”
“It really is, in my family,” Erika said.
“I was the first person in my family to graduate from high school, much less attend college, so I get it.”
“See?” Erika turned to Imogen. “This is what I like about Americans. They’re so much more upwardly mobile than we are.”
“I hate to burst your bubble, but I don’t know if that’s actually true,” Cara said. “That’s the perception, for sure, but I think the fact is wealth begets wealth.” What followed was an interesting discussion on class, social mobility, and national differences. It sounded like Cara and Erika had a lot in common.
“But sometimes, you have to find reasons to hope,” Erika said.
“Oh, for sure,” Cara said. “I don’t mean to sound like a doomsayer here. I’m not talking about you, anyway, just this idea that anyone can make it in America if they work hard enough. You can always find individual cases where that’s true—I’m one of them—but I don’t think that’s the same thing as upward mobility being baked into the system.”
“A few years ago, we started getting one of those Santa baskets at our house.” Erika looked at Imogen. “Does she know what those are?”
Imogen responded by looking at Cara with her eyebrows raised.
“Nope,” Cara said.
“Well, there’s this... Santa thing here. I realize that sounds ridiculous.”
If she was saying that the Christmas mania in Eldovia extended to adults believing in Santa Claus, then yes, that did sound ridiculous.
“Four Christmases ago, my father was very ill,” Erika said. “He had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, and he was declining quickly. After he died, my mother got a job in the mail room at Morneau, but for a year there, when he was so sick and my mother was taking care of him, we had no income other than what my sister and I could bring in babysitting and dog-walking. Things were very bad. That first Christmas morning after he fell ill, we found outside our front door the most enormous basket—two of them, actually. One contained the fixings for a Christmas feast, which wasn’t something we’d been able to splurge on. The other contained presents for all of us. Mine was a voucher for thecinema. It wasn’t much, but itmeantso much. I still remember going to that film. It was only a silly romantic comedy, but I hadn’t done something purely fun like that for so long that tears came to my eyes as the opening credits began. Those baskets came every year until we got back on our feet.”
“How curious,” Cara said.
“Yes, and it always seems like the people who need them, get them. Everyone always says that the baskets appear for people who need a little Christmas magic.”
“Who sends them?” Cara asked.
Erika shrugged. “Nobody knows.”
“Santa sends them,” Imogen said, her firm tone at odds with the twinkle in her eye.
“But it’s not really Santa,” Cara said.Come on.“Is it you?”
“It is not me.” Imogen held up a hand like she was swearing an oath.
“What is Santa, really?” Erika said. “That’s what I wrote my university entrance essays about. I come from the land of Christmas, and Santa comes to my house.” She grinned at Cara. “I know it sounds like one of your Hallmark movies—”
“They’re notmyHallmark movies.” Cara hated to interrupt, but she wasn’t letting anyone assign her ownership of those drecky, borderline-unhinged movies.
“But what I said was that Santa for the modern world needs a new metaphor. He—or she, or they—can be a radical. Bringing not magic but actual, material help where it’s needed. A selective Santa who doesn’t distinguish between naughty and nice but between wealth and poverty. A redistributive Santa.”
“Santa as Robin Hood,” Cara said. It was a cool idea.
“Exactly,” Erika said.
“But who’s behind it? Don’t you want to know?”
“No,” Imogen said staunchly. “I do not. Sometimes looking at a thing too closely can ruin it.”
Chapter Nine
Eight days until Christmas
Just over a week until Christmas, which meant it was crunch time for Matteo and Kai. Unfortunately for Matteo, he was nowhere near the workshop that was currently standing in for the North Pole. He was, in fact, sitting in his car in Riems, outside the home of Leana Hauser, a retired Morneau board member, waiting for Ms. Delaney, who was inside. As he was working on tracking down a shipment of panettone that had gone missing, a text arrived.
