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Anger flares.
“And you watched as I and all our other friends frantically searched for them?”
She sniffles. “Yes.”
“You realize missing that flight cost me a lot of money.”
“I’m sorry. You can have all the money in my piggy bank to pay it back,” she mutters.
“Cobie, this is very serious. You’re in a lot of trouble. Your mother and I are going to have to discuss your punishment.”
“I know, and Santa won’t forgive me either, and I’ll be put on the naughty list,” she whimpers.
I hug her to me, and my eyes meet Sela’s watery stare.
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t forgive you. Just because I punish you doesn’t mean I don’t forgive you, but being forgiven doesn’t always mean you escape the consequences of your actions. Do you understand?” I tell her in a much calmer tone.
She nods as she holds my neck.
“Come on. Let’s go back to the inn, and we’ll talk about this more in the morning.”
I stand with her in my arms, and she keeps her tight grip on me as the three of us walk in silence with only the sound of the soft crunch of the snow beneath our feet.
By the time we reach the front steps of the inn, she is fast asleep.
Sela opens the door for me, and I march straight to our room and lay her on the bed.
She turns on her side and cradles her pillow.
I step back into the hall and shut the door quietly behind me.
Sela is propped against the wall, her face still glistening from her own tears.
I blow out a breath and lean against the wall next to her.
“That was intense,” she whispers.
“Yeah, I wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation,” I admit.
“For what it’s worth, I think you did a pretty good job,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“You know, you still have time to make it to Paris before Christmas,” she says.
For some reason, the thought doesn’t appeal to me anymore.
I shake my head. “Why would I force her to go when she went through all this to avoid having to go with me?”
“That’s not it,” she murmurs.
“Yes, it is. I should have let her stay at home with her mother and baby brother. I was being selfish.”
She pushes off the wall and faces me. “Yes, but not in the way you’re making it out to be. No, she obviously didn’t care to go to Paris. Not because she didn’t want to be with you, but because she wouldn’t have known another soul. When you’re little, you look forward to spending time with family and friends during Christmas. You want to do the cheesy holiday traditions—baking cookies, singing carols, building snowmen, and playing an angel in a live nativity with ornery donkeys.”
I laugh.
“One day, she’ll be a teenager who wants nothing more than to Instagram her fabulous trip to Paris for her frenemies to drool over, but that time is not now. Trust me, when the time comes, the last thing she’s going to want to do is hide something so that she’s stranded with her father for four weeks in a row.”
