Dear Santa

Then he thought of her when they’d been in here together, as unkempt as Justine had been fastidious, her dark brows drawn underneath a curtain of wind-blown, dark brown waves. And he had to admit, her obvious affection for his daughter, the concern trembling at the edges of her wide, bare mouth when she smiled, had suckered him into feeling a twinge of sympathy for her cluelessness.

He also had to admit, as personality traits went, cluelessness was far preferable to calculated treachery.

Feeling more weary than he ever had in his life, Grant gently tugged Haley’s tangled covers from around her legs, smoothing them over her frail-looking shoulders. She stirred, her eyes never opening, trusting at least in sleep, even if not when awake.

Helplessness and hope collided inside his chest, nearly taking his breath.

Mia waited until she was back in her apartment, a cozy one-bedroom in the West Twenties, before digging out her cell phone to check her messages. At the sight of her parents’ number, she groaned, executing a much-practiced spin-and-flop maneuver onto her sofa as her father’s flat, blue-collar Massachusetts accent burrowed into her ear.

“Just wondering if you’d heard from your brother, or maybe you got a number for him or somethin’, some way for us to reach him? Give us a call sometime.”

No need to ask which brother they meant, since her four older brothers—and their families—all lived within ten blocks of the red-bricked, white-shuttered Springfield colonial they’d all grown up in. One black sheep out of six, you’d expect. Three, however—twelve years ago, her next oldest brother, Rudy, had knocked up his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, and then there was Mia walking away from a six-figure salary to start her own business—was just wrong. Still, at least Mia still touched base with her family from time to time. And Rudy lived with their parents, so their mother could watch his daughter, Stacey, while he was at work. Kevin, however…

She let out a sigh, punching the phone to retrieve her next message, thinking the kid would send them all to early graves. Except at twenty-six, he was hardly a kid anymore, was he…?

The second message was from Venus, her assistant, aka the Butt Saver.

“Girl, where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to call you all freaking day, which is scaring the crap out of me because I know you don’t go to the bathroom without taking your phone with you. If I don’t hear from you by midnight, I’m calling the police. And no, I’m not kidding.”

In her early fifties and the most organized human being Mia had ever known, Venus had been Mia’s secretary at Hinkley-Cohen. And as eager to ditch the nine-to-five—or, in Mia’s case, eight-to-whenever—grind as Mia had been. She immediately hit the callback button, spewing, “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” in the wake of Venus’s “This had damn sight better be good!” Only as soon as she told Venus why she’d been incommunicado, she was all, “You’re not serious? Oh, hell…I’m so sorry, baby! You must be a wreck, I know the two of you were pretty tight.”

Yeah, that’s what she had thought, too.

But now past the initial shock, Mia had to finally acknowledge the tiny flicker of doubt that had grown increasingly brighter since Justine’s divorce, that Justine and she had been drifting apart. Not blatantly, and not all the time—the shopping trip again came to mind—but there’d definitely been the odd moment when Mia would catch Justine looking at her with something approaching regret in her eyes. As though she’d made a pact she now wished she could break. Sometimes Mia would even wonder if her babysitting availability had been the only reason Justine bothered to keep their relationship going.

“Yeah, we were,” she now said to Venus, tears stinging her eyes. “Even if you didn’t understand why.”

“Oh, I suppose I did, if I thought hard enough about it. The two of you being new at the same time, and Justine being all flashy and glittery and worldly and whatnot, and you this subdued little thing when you first got there. What were you, twenty-one?”

“Twenty-two. And I was never subdued! And I haven’t been little since kindergarten!”

“Okay, unpolished, then. Those sorry, clunky shoes you used to wear—”

“Hey. I paid big bucks for those shoes.”

“Then more fool you. And that pitiful thing you called a suit… Honey, I had ancestors from the plantation days who were better dressed. So it was no wonder you gravitated toward her. But you know something? I never did think the friendship was real balanced. That one of you was getting more out of it than the other.”

Mia frowned. “Meaning me, I presume?”

“Hell, no. Miss Justine definitely got the better end of that deal. Flash and glitter might be real pretty to look at, but you were the one with the substance. The solid one. Even if you were younger. She needed you a lot more than you ever needed her.” She paused. “She needed somebody to worship her, to make her less like the little butt-wipe associate she was.”

If Mia hadn’t been lying down already, her knees would have given out from under her. “First off, we were both butt-wipe associates. Secondly, why didn’t you ever say anything before?”

“None of my business? Wouldn’t have made any difference? You seemed to be happy enough the way things were? Take your pick. And the difference was, you took your butt-wipe status in stride. She didn’t.” Her tone softened. “To tell you the truth, mostly I just felt sorry for Justine. She was one insecure chick. And I truly hope she finds whatever it was she was looking for on the other side, since she clearly didn’t here. But I always admired you for sticking by her. The world needs more people like you, baby. And I know you must be hurting right now. So, listen, you want to pull out of the Chin party tomorrow, you go right ahead—”

“No! No, that’s why I came back.” One of the reasons, anyway, the other one being she could only deal with so much masculine brooding intensity at one time. That she’d actually agreed to put herself in the path of that brooding intensity for three or four entire days…

“You sure?” Venus said. “Because everything’s under control from my end, and we’ve got Cissy, Armando and Silas lined up, they could practically handle things without either one of us—”

“I’m sure, Vene. Anyway, it’ll do me good to focus on something else. But I did agree to go back for a few days, after the party. For Haley’s sake.”

“Oh, that’s right, I forgot about the baby. Poor little thing. But at least she still has her daddy.”

“Yeah, you’d think, wouldn’t you?” Mia briefly explained the situation, which got another huge sigh from the older woman.

“Why is it you have to get a license to drive a car or serve booze or sell a house, but any idiot with a functioning joystick can have kids? Explain that one to me.”

Mia smiled. “I wish I could. Not that I know what I’m doing, either, but I promised to at least give it a shot. So anyway, I’ll meet you at the Chins’ at noon…?”

After she’d squared everything away with Venus, she called her parents, breathing a sigh of relief when the machine picked up. Over at one of her brothers’ houses, no doubt. Once again, she gave a quick rundown of events, that she’d be going back up to Connecticut the day after tomorrow, that, no, she didn’t have a number for Kevin, she hadn’t heard from him for months, when he’d called from Albuquerque.

Immediate obligations dispatched, Mia hauled herself off the sofa to forage in her Lilliputian-size kitchen, thinking perhaps she’d been a bit too hasty turning down Grant’s offer. Now, glowering into the vast wasteland that was her refrigerator, she almost rued that steely resolve—read: stubbornness—that had seen her through high school, college, those first harrowing years as a Hinkley-Cohen butt-wipe.

As she was flipping through the smeared, dog-eared takeout menus tacked up by her phone, her doorbell rang. A quick glance through her peephole revealed the distorted visage of Mrs. Epstein, the self-appointed leader of the tenants’ group hoping—slim though those hopes might be—to stonewall the landlord’s bid to take the building co-op.

Under normal circumstances, Mia liked Mrs. Epstein well enough, her tendencies toward gossipmongering notwithstanding. Tonight, however, she was not in the mood. But alas, the moment she turned to tiptoe away, she heard, “It’s no good pretending you’re not home, sweetheart, I heard the floorboards creak.”

Damn prewar joists.

On a sigh, Mia threw the trio of dead bolts and swung open the door, hanging on to the two-inch-thick (a half-inch of which was paint) slab for support. She smiled. Then frowned. Under a maroon bob, every wrinkle the old woman possessed screamed “bad news.”

“We lost, bubelah. The slimeball can’t kick us out until our leases are up, but there’s no renewing them. We either have to buy or leave. The lawyer said we could contest it, drag it out a little longer, but the legal fund’s all used up already. And the longer we wait, he says, the more it’s gonna cost to buy in.”

It was just as well Mia hadn’t eaten yet, because God knows her stomach’s contents would have made a reappearance. All over poor Mrs. Epstein. She muttered a not-nice word, which got a nod and a “You said it, sweetheart” from the old woman before she shuffled off to spread the joyous news.

Mia shut the heavy door, sliding down onto the floor with her head in her hands.

No way could she afford to buy her apartment. She’d used up nearly her entire savings as seed money for her business; only in the last few months had she been able to start repaying herself, but it would be a good year or two before she’d brought her reserves back up to what they once were. So forget the odd twenty or so grand necessary for a down payment. She didn’t even have the thinnest of cushions to keep her from starving if for some reason she couldn’t work. And mortgage companies didn’t exactly welcome the self-employed—especially when the self-employed were, for all intents and purposes, dirt poor—with open arms.

And the best part of all this? Her lease was up in two weeks.

Two weeks.

She was one seriously screwed chick.

Chapter Three

“For heaven’s sake, Grant—it’s freezing out here!”

Even though they were in the sun—and it was in the mid-fifties, to boot—Grant’s mother clutched the suede-trimmed collar of her plaid wool blazer, shivering up a storm as they stood at the edge of the circular drive fronting the house. “Of course Haley misses her mother,” Elizabeth “Bitsy” Braeburn said, her voice far chillier than the temperature. Sunlight glinted coldly off her severely pulled-back blond hair. “That doesn’t give her license to rule the roost. And if you don’t exercise some control over the child now, God help us all when she gets to be a teenager.”

“She’s not even four, Mother,” Grant said in a low voice, his hands balled in the pockets of his leather bomber jacket, thinking, You should only know how much control I’m exercising right now. “She doesn’t even understand yet that Justine’s dead.”

“Then tell her again.”

“I have. Repeatedly. As has Etta. The concept means nothing to her.” He tore his gaze away from his daughter—all bundled up in sweaters and fleece-lined everything, sitting cross-legged in the leaf-cluttered grass with Henry in her lap as she kept an eagle eye on the ten-foot-tall entry gate—to look at his mother. Who, for reasons not yet clear, had shown up uninvited a half hour before, impeccably coiffed and tastefully accessorized, as always. “And according to the psychologist, there’s not a damn thing I, or anyone, can do to force things.” He looked back. “When she’s ready to accept Justine’s death, she will.”

The vigil had begun yesterday morning, when Haley announced she was going outside to “wait for Mommy.” Both Etta and Grant had patiently repeated the whole heaven thing, only to be met with an unsettling “Have you ever seen heaven?” When he had to admit that, no, he hadn’t, a tiny chin went up in the air, followed by “Then how do you know it’s real?”

A particularly thorny question to ask someone who didn’t, in fact, “know” anything of the sort. But what was the alternative? At the moment, letting Haley believe her mother was somewhere else seemed a far better option than trying to explain that Justine no longer was.

But who knew the “somewhere else” would prove to be the sticking point, that in Haley’s bright but still developing mind, being somewhere else meant that, at some point, a person could return. Clearly convinced—and rightly so—that her mother would never simply leave her, she simply couldn’t comprehend that Justine wasn’t coming back.

Hence the vigil. And since Grant couldn’t see letting a three-year-old sit outside by herself for hours on end, here he, and his trusty BlackBerry, were. Never mind that, when he asked Haley if she’d like company, her only response was a “suit yourself” shrug.

At least this morning there really was someone to wait for: Mia. Who should be arriving any minute. Hell. His mother hadn’t exactly taken to Justine; he could only imagine what she thought of Mia, with whom she’d only dealt with in the context of the wedding, five years before.

“For God’s sake,” Grant said as his mother’s shivering increased. “Go inside and get warm. I’m sure Etta’s got the coffeepot on—”

“Who on earth is that at the gate?” Bitsy said, shielding her eyes from the sun.

Speaking of the devil. Or—loath as Grant was to admit it—more likely a godsend, he thought as he caught sight of Mia’s old minivan, growling impatiently as it waited for Etta to buzz the gate open.

“That can’t be right,” his mother said as the gates slowly groaned apart. “Grant, you simply must speak to Etta—she can’t go letting in every Tom, Dick and Harry who wanders down the drive by mistake!”

“It’s not a mistake.” Grant said quietly, ignoring his mother’s flummoxed expression as Haley scrambled to her feet, showing her first signs of enthusiasm in two days. “Stay on the grass!” Grant yelled when the little girl started running toward the drive, almost amazed when she actually stopped. As the van passed, Haley spun around, her small legs pumping as she raced it up to the house. A minute later, Mia and his daughter were a tangle of arms and kisses, and his mother—being possessed of a one-hundred-gigabyte memory—said, “Why is she here?”

“Did you bring Mommy?” Haley asked, trying to peer around Mia to see inside the van.

After the briefest of glances in Grant’s direction, Mia crouched in front of the child, shaking her head. “No, sweetie,” she said softly. “Remember? Mommy’s not alive anymore.” She gently tugged a curl. “So you can’t see her. Nobody can.”

Haley regarded Mia for a moment or two before her thumb went into her mouth, her other arm strangling the poor stuffed toy around its neck. Then she settled into Mia’s arms again, her curls flattened against Mia’s bulky sweater, and Grant’s throat tightened.

“That’s why she’s here,” he pushed out. When, however, he noticed Mia’s struggle to stand with Haley clinging to her, he strode over to relieve her of the child, in a move both unpremeditated and instinctive.

Now on her feet, and clearly oblivious to the bits of leaves and dirt on the knees of her jeans, Mia’s eyes darted from Haley—who, while not exactly relaxed in his arms, wasn’t squirming to get down, either—to Grant. A small smile toyed with her mouth before she turned to Grant’s mother, who’d joined them. The smile stretched a little further.

“Mrs. Braeburn,” she said smoothly, extending her hand. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”

A moment passed before his mother apparently decided it wouldn’t kill her to remove her hand from her pocket to shake Mia’s. “All right, I suppose. Considering the circumstances.” She withdrew her hand, readjusting a large tourmaline-and-diamond ring that had shifted sideways over her protruding knuckle.

If his mother’s imperiousness bothered Mia, she didn’t let on. But then it occurred to Grant that, in her line of work, she must deal with women like his mother every day.

“Yes, of course.” Sadness flickered across her face, but the smile never wavered. “You look fantastic, though. I love your jacket!”

Eyes that had seen their share of tweakings over the past few years widened almost imperceptibly—point to Mia, for catching the old girl off guard.

“Um…thank you, dear.” Bitsy’s gaze remained on Mia for a long moment. “Thank you,” she repeated, then turned to Grant. “Now can we go inside before I freeze my assets off?”

“I’m here to tell you,” Etta said, hanging the vintage, black silk dupioni dress Mia planned to wear for the funeral in a white-washed armoire that, in any other house, would have dwarfed the room, “I have never seen that woman at a loss for words. I don’t know if that makes you an angel or a witch, but whatever you are, keep it up! You need me for anything else, hon?”

“I didn’t need you at all,” Mia gently pointed out, shoving shut the drawer to a small Bombay chest by the bed. “Please, please don’t wait on me, Etta—it makes me hugely uncomfortable.”

Her red lips pulled down at the corners, the older woman crossed her arms under her bosom. “Well, get over it, because that’s what Mr. B. pays me for. And besides…” She glanced furtively toward the bedroom’s open door, then lowered her voice. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have somebody normal to talk to, for once.”

Mia turned, a smile twitching at her lips. “You don’t like Mr. Braeburn?”

“Oh, please…I got Mr. B.’s number a long time ago. He’s not so bad, once you get past all the crap. But that mother of his…” Etta shook her head as Mia wondered what “number,” exactly, Etta meant. “Talk about a piece of work. Thank God you’re here, is all I have to say. For the baby’s sake, I mean. If Dragon Lady had her way…ohmigod, can you imagine the amount of therapy the poor kid would need down the road?”

“Etta! That’s terrible. And anyway, I’m only here until after the funeral. Which you know. Besides, Grant said he’s already taken Haley to see somebody, right?”

After a hmmph meant to sum up her entire opinion on modern psychology, Etta said, “So. There’s already two blankets on the bed, but if you need more, they’re in the chest there at the foot of the bed, along with more pillows…. What’re you lookin’ at?”

The panorama outside the window had drawn Mia like a fashionista to a sample sale. “Everything,” she said on a sigh, sinking onto the window seat. Although she knew there were other houses close enough to see from here, a miniforest of autumn-tinged trees obliterated all semblance of civilization. In the distance, the sun glanced off a sliver of the Long Island Sound, like a diamond tennis bracelet nestled amongst the foliage. “It really is spectacular, isn’t it?”

Etta crossed the thick-piled white carpet—with the room’s pale, lemon-yellow walls, it was like being inside a meringue pie—to join her at the window. “It is that. And thank God Mr. B. didn’t tear the house down and replace it with one of those McMonsters like a lot of them have. Who the hell needs a forty-thousand-square-foot house?”

It was true. So many of the older houses in the area, erected at the turn of the century as testaments to their owner’s position and wealth, had been replaced in the past decade or so by dozens of insanely overpriced, oversized mansions as testaments to their owner’s overblown egos. Bowling alleys, home theaters larger than your average Manhattan art house, heliports, thirty-car garages… Amazing, how Grant managed with only seven bedrooms and eight baths, the formal dining room that easily sat twenty, the pool and the tennis court and the six-car garage. Still, the place—with its slump rock exterior and traditional floor plan—exuded an aura of settledness that somehow precluded pretension.

It was, quite simply, a lovely house. The kind of house that engendered fond childhood memories, that called scattered siblings back year after year for Christmas and Thanksgiving and wedding anniversaries….

Frowning, she angled her head to get a better look at the pool, now covered, and guesthouse. “He fixed it up?” she asked Etta.

“The guesthouse? Yeah, about two years ago. Before the divorce. You should see it inside, it’s really something. All new kitchen and bath, the works. Listen, I made chowder for lunch, is that okay? Or I can put deli stuff out for sandwiches…?”

Mia turned to her, smiling. “Chowder’s fine.” Then she frowned. “Is Haley eating?”

Etta shrugged. “Not really. But then, she never really ate before, as far as I could tell. How the kid is still alive, I have no idea.” She started toward the door, then twisted back, as if weighing whether or not to say whatever she was thinking. When she finally said, “Lunch is at twelve-thirty,” Mia doubted that was it.

Well. Her clothes put away, her laptop set up on a small desk near the window, she might as well make herself useful and go look for Haley. Who she found—along with her father—out in the park that passed for a backyard. Haley and Henry shared a low-slung swing on a shiny new set, under the watchful eye of her father, seated on the flagstone patio in a white, cast-iron chair, his ankle crossed at the knee. At Mia’s “Hey, there,” he looked up, his frown—permanent, from what she could tell—easing somewhat.

“All settled in?” he asked, his attention drifting back to his daughter.

“Yeah.” Her hands in the pockets of her down vest, Mia lowered herself into a matching chair a few feet away. “Your mother left?”

“Yes, thank God.” He spared her a glance. “I don’t think she quite knows what to make of you.”

“I seem to have that effect on people.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “You know, since I’m here now, if you need to get back to work…?”

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes never leaving his daughter. “But I’m fine.”

Mia followed his gaze. “How’s she been?”

Grant’s shoulders hitched in a semblance of a shrug. “Quiet. Keeping to herself. Except for asking us where Justine is every five seconds. Which the doctor said to expect.” He leaned forward, his hands between his knees. “I went online, did some reading up.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Late last night, after I got back. From the anniversary party?” He nodded, a slight breeze ruffling his hair. Either he hadn’t shaved this morning or he had a seriously overachieving five-o’clock shadow.

“I suppose it’s at least somewhat reassuring,” he said, “to know her reaction is normal.”

“Yeah,” Mia breathed out. “Kinda hard to react to something you don’t understand.” She sank back into the chair, her hands still in her pockets. The breeze picked up, rustling the leaves, sending a few hang gliding onto the grass. “Um…not that I’m trying to horn in or anything, but if you need help with the arrangements…?” When the frown deepened, she said, “It’s what I do, remember?”

“Help?”

“No. Well, that, too. But I meant pulling food and whatnot together for two hundred out of a hat. It’s why God created delis that make up platters of artfully arranged cold cuts.”

“I take it you don’t generally do funeral receptions, though.”

“I have. They can be parties, too, depending on the deceased.”

“Not in this case.”

“No. Not in this case.”

His eyes drifted back to Haley. “I’ll pay you for your time.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, earning her a puzzled glare. Interesting combination. “Just sign a check for the food and we’ll call it square.”

Another nod. Then he said, “I know it’s probably nuts, asking people to trek all the way out here after the service. But I thought it might help Haley. If she could say goodbye here.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mia said, and his shoulders seemed to relax, just a fraction, and it hit her how hard this was on him, navigating these completely uncharted waters with nothing to guide him except, she supposed, a basic desire to do the right thing by his daughter. Well, that, and the best therapy money could buy.