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“Ah, do yours also sing the theme song on a loop?”
“They sure do.” I opened my mouth, possibly to sing the Pony Pals theme song. Possibly to offer him five hundred dollars and a kidney for his Peachblossom. Possibly to ask how he felt about open marriage. The important thing was that I closed my mouth before I did any of those things.
“I can only imagine what I put my parents through when I was a kid,” he said. “BigPower Rangersfan. Big.”
“Ha! Yeah, me too.”
We browsed garlands in silence. “My mom wanted some garland,” I said at last. “But I don’t know how long her banister is.”
“Ah,” Dr. Stephen Florris replied. “Well, you could always get two of the standard length and either just use one, or cut the other one if the first one isn’t enough.”
“Good point,” I said.
Like a fucking idiot.
I moved my browsing slightly closer to him. His coat did not smell like a basement. It smelled like cloves. He finally found a garland that suited him, wished me well, and went to check out. I waited until he was gone, then grabbed two garlands and started toward the register. I stopped when I caught a flash of yellow.
Dr. Florris had forgotten his Dollar General bag.
The top of the bag sagged slightly, revealing Peachblossom’s small, pink face.
I glanced around. I was, once more, the only customer in the shop. I picked up the bag and took it to the register with me. I should have given it to Katya. I realized that even as I didn’t give it to Katya. Dr. Florris would surely be back for it. But it seemed to me that I could hold onto it, then use it as an excuse to meet up with Dr. Florris again, and—
Right. The wife thing.
When I arrived at my car, I was still holding the Dollar General bag. I put it in my trunk. In the morning, I would call Dr. Florris’s office and tell him Peachblossom was safe and sound.
It just sucked that he’d bought the last one.
That really, really sucked.
I wanted so badly for the girls’ first Christmas in our new home to be perfect.
“But you belong to Dr. Stephen Florris,” I whispered to Peachblossom. “You belong to Dr. Stephen Florris.”
Does she? Liar Bob whispered suddenly to me. Which was weird, because he’d told me years ago he was moving to Brunei, and I hadn’t heard from him since. That must have been a lie.
“Of course she does,” I whispered back.
Or is it finders keepers?
“It’s not.”
All’s fair when it comes to love and Christmas. Just remember that, Fran.
I slammed the trunk shut and scrambled into the car.
ChapterFour
It was Sunday, and my options were: text Cass that something had come up and I couldn’t do coffee. Move back to Boston immediately and forget I had ever tried to re-make a life in Christmas Valley. Or, find something to wear and go to the coffee shop.
Mom had already picked up the girls, so I had the house to myself. I leaned in the doorway of the girls’ room, partly to remind myself that I wasn’t a total failure as a dad—the room was a fucking delight, with its twin beds with pink Pony Pals comforters and matching floofy dust ruffles—and partly to avoid having to decide whether to leave the house. Me and Liar Bob used to close our eyes and manipulate time in that concrete pipe at recess, which I’d thought was because he was magical, but may have actually been my very earliest attempts to consciously enter a dissociative fugue state. The point was, if we just sat there and let our minds float away, suddenly recess would be over and Marcus Kreymbourg wouldn’t be able to chase me and punch me for having a girl’s name.
But Liar Bob wasn’t with me now, and as much as I wished he were here whispering comforting words like,Yes, Frances, one day you’ll be rich and famous and then they’ll all be sorry, it was just me, my rising sense of “what the fuck were you thinking?” and a room that looked like a Pony Pals advertisement had vomited all over it.
I wanted to stay home, just me and my new significant other, Xanax. Except staying home also meant facing the fact that my daughters and I had been here for weeks now and, apart from the girls’ room, everything was still in packing boxes because I was failing at life. I’d tried to open a box a few days ago, realized that the sweaters it contained smelled like home—Boston, Ben, and Bvlgari Aqua—and I’d sealed it back up and eaten an entire pack of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes instead.
Three minutes later I was in the car heading for the coffee shop.
