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I frowned. “You let them grow up without Santa?”
“Igrew up without Santa,” Mackenzie said.
“How does that even make sense?” I asked.
Mackenzie shrugged. “My mom never wanted us to believe in something that wasn’t real. She would tell us the story and we still did the whole ‘magic of Christmas’ thing but she liked to keep it straight. She said that if we found out one day that she lied to us about something so big, we wouldn’t trust her. It makes sense. Rachel carried on with the tradition.”
I shook my head. That didn’t make sense at all… except that, in some ways, I guess it did.
“Mom said trust was the most important thing there is between people, and you shouldn’t find a way to break it,” Mackenzie added. “Especially not when your kids believe in everything you do. When they’re young, their whole world revolves around their parents, and that’s their stability, and Mom never wanted us to feel that was taken away.”
“Your mom sounds like she was a very caring person,” I said.
Mackenzie nodded. “She really was. Rachel is so much like her.” For a moment, Mackenzie looked emotional, but in a blink, her mask slipped back into place, and her moment of weakness was gone.
I took out my phone and frowned.
“I don’t have signal,” I said.
“Really?” Mackenzie checked her phone, too. “Shoot.”
I grinned at her attempt not to swear.
“That means we can’t take care of the car or the tree, and we can’t reach out to the hospital.” Her voice trembled ever so slightly when she said the last part.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere I need to be until tomorrow—it’s a freak accident, right? We’ll just hang tight here and…” I’d wanted to saydo some workbut without power or phone lines, that wasn’t going to happen. “Have fun.”
“What are we going to do?” Rory asked, speaking for the first time today. She’d been silent since the moment I’d woken up.
“We should build a blanket fort,” I said.
“What’s that?” Tammy asked.
My jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what a blanket fort is!”
When they shook their heads, I nodded, determined.
“We’ll just have to build one so you can see. I build a mean blanket fort, you know. When I was a kid, I was a top-of-the-line blanket fort architect.”
Tammy and Benjamin giggled, excited.
“You sound very qualified,” Mackenzie said, her eyes dancing with laughter.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I said. “Let’s clean up the kitchen and then we’ll have to get to building so we can have lunch in the fort.”
The kids cheered and jumped up, putting their plates in the sink. They pushed their chairs in, and Tammy helped Mackenzie clear up the pans that she’d used, too.
While they did that, Benjamin and I walked to the living room to see how we could get it started.
Mackenzie and the girls appeared a moment later. Mackenzie carried a stack of blankets and sheets, and she’d found some rope, too.
“Ah, the tools of the trade,” I said and took it from her. “Thank you.”
Mackenzie laughed. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Larson. I used to build blanket forts too, so you’re going to be under scrutiny.”
“Do I smell a competition?” I asked.
Mackenzie laughed. “It’s just blankets, Troy. Not everything is about winning.”
