Chapter 2
Robin
Three years later.
I loved this time of year.
I lived in a teeny, tiny town called North Pole, Minnesota. It was right next to International Falls, Minnesota, which was the coldest place in the country, if you didn’t count Alaska.
Our claim to fame was being one of those towns that had Christmas cheer all year round.
We had a Christmas store that was open three-hundred and sixty-four days a year. Only closed for Christmas, of course. And a petting farm for retired reindeer. And a town clock shaped like a nutcracker that played part of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy song at noon and midnight every day.
It was a perfect place to live… almost.
I waved to my neighbor as I headed to the mailbox. Then I saw my friend Jan coming down the street.
She’d recently taken over the mail route in our town, and I’d gotten into the habit of chatting with her when I got home from work every day. Not that you can have a long chat at the mailbox, but we got a few words in.
As she pulled up in her mail truck, I noticed a giant bag next to her.
“What’s all that?”
Jan was beaming. “You’ll never guess what I talked my supervisor into letting me do.
These are all the letters to Santa that get delivered here every year.
Evidently, they never clear them out. They just put them in the basement of the post office in the undeliverable section. Today… I’m delivering them!”
“What do you mean delivering them? Didn’t you say they’re letters to Santa?”
“Yeah. Oh, I’ve got a special one for you. You’ll have to tell me what it says after you open it.”
She rustled around in a small box on the floorboard, then pulled out a wrinkled envelope. “Each one of these is like a mystery. Who sent it? And why? And did they ever imagine someone would actually read their Christmas wish?”
I took the envelope and studied it. It was addressed to Santa, all right. And it came from someone called Levi Blackthorne, printed with a heavy, solid hand.
But his name and address were juxtaposed against a backdrop of childish stars and hearts drawn all over the envelope. The print said man. But the drawings said little girl.
Looking back up at Jan, I asked her, “Why this one?”
My friend shrugged. “It had all those cute hearts on it. Maybe he’s looking for love.”
Jan had been trying to play matchmaker for me for years. It hadn’t panned out well.
“Are you sure you’re allowed to hand these out? I thought there were postal regulations about messing with the mail.”
Jan laughed. We’d known each other since kindergarten. So she knew me well. “Robin, that’s what’s wrong with you. You need a little adventure in your life.”
Mrs. Jenkins came out with her toy poodle. Then she stood there waiting at her mailbox three houses down.
That was Jan’s cue to focus on work. “Gotta go. Tell me what’s in the letter tomorrow!”
I watched her leave with a smile on my lips. Jan was always doing quirky little things that I would never have thought of. I was pretty sure mail tampering was a felony, but Jan seemed to live outside the world of consequences. Everyone loved her.
I wish I could be more like her.
No, that wasn’t true. I just wished I had some of the things she had.
Jan had had a whirlwind romance, gotten married after knowing the man for a week, and settled instantly into what appeared to be perfect wedded bliss.
Me, on the other hand, my dating life had been… tepid.
I’d had pleasant dates with a lot of men. Sometimes even a second or third date.
But they always ended the same.
Whoever it was would tell me that I was a lovely woman, and that I’d find the right match for me. Then they’d offer to be friends.
I was evidently really good at befriending men.
It hadn’t been any of their fault. None of them had done that thing you see in the movies, where you’re completely swept off your feet, hormones running wild, ready to mount the man.
So, I’d never felt bad when they didn’t want to date me. The truth was, I had only dated them to try to go through the motions, hoping some feelings might grow between us.
It wasn’t that I’d never felt love. It was that I’d never even felt the faintest stirring of it.
The men I’d dated had been… pleasant. But it seemed like life needed something bigger than that. Pleasant wasn’t enough. Not if you had to see the man every day of your life.
Love had passed me by. And I was settled with that. It was only Jan who was still pushing for a hopeful outcome.
I went inside, clutching the envelope in my hand. I liked to savor the tiny pleasures in life. I’d open it this evening. That way I could anticipate it, like a mystery to unwrap.
Later on, after a shower and dinner, with my tiny dog Hot Cocoa on my lap, I picked up the envelope again.
Jan was always telling me that I needed more adventure in my life.
It was ridiculous that I could think a letter to Santa counted as an adventure.
My life was good, even if a little… predictable.
It really was. I swear.
I had a nice job at the library working with people I liked. A cute little house all of my own. A 401K plan that was slowly but steadily growing. And good friends.
My heart dropped as I thought about that.
Most of my friends were married with kids at this point. Or at least in long-term relationships. I was turning into the classic definition of a spinster. I’d hit my thirty-first birthday this year.
A quiet, unsettled feeling shifted inside me. Who ever heard of a thirty-one-year-old virgin before?
I thought about what I wanted for Christmas.
There was only one thing.
A man who treasured me. Who made my pulse speed up. Who wanted to bend me over the kitchen table and take me hard.
Yeah. I was at the stage in my life where if I couldn’t find love, I’d settle for some wild and crazy sex.
Couldn’t I at least have that?
I stared down at the envelope in my hands. I wasn’t going to find a big, rugged man ready to profess his love inside of it. No one would be coming to sweep me off my feet.
But it would be a pleasant distraction for the evening.
Even though it felt like an invasion of privacy, I ripped the envelope open and unfolded the letter.
A pile of glitter in the shape of teeny, tiny reindeer spilled out, landing on Cocoa’s head. She shook her head, but she was still bedazzled.
I laughed lightly as I tried to brush some of it off of her.
Then, I opened the letter and started reading.
Dear Santa,
I can’t believe I’m fucking doing this. It’s all Annie’s fault. She’s the one who dragged me here today. Okay, I’ll tell you what I want for Christmas only because she’s looking over my shoulder making sure I write something.
I want my niece to stop butting into my business~~~.
The writing squiggled off the page right there, and I tried to imagine what had happened.
Annie must be his niece.
Had she grabbed his pen? Had they laughed before he got back to writing? I felt myself getting intrigued.
Jan was right. This letter was a mystery.
I kept reading.
Okay, fine. She’s really making me do this.
It’s been hard. I can’t get past one day of my life, and I feel like I’m stuck there reliving it over and over again. It even follows me into my dreams, so I can’t get any relief. I just want one day without having to remember what happened.
If I could give myself amnesia, I would. Maybe that would fix me.
Everyone thinks I need to start LIVING again, but how do I do that knowing I lost so many friends that day? Sometimes I wish I’d died too.
My heart fluttered out of my chest, flying out across the miles, wanting to soothe him. Whoever this man was, he had so much pain. I tried to imagine what it could have been. A house fire? A car accident? Or maybe he’d been in the military?
I read quickly, completely absorbed in his story now.
All the women in this town remember me for what I was. But they don’t know who I am now. I’m not the funny guy who plays all the pranks anymore. I’m not the captain of the football team. I’m not the Marine fighting the good fight. There’s only tragedy living in my heart now.
No one wants that.
It’s better that I hide out in my quiet camp, just me and the coyotes night after night.
No one can see how fucked up I am out there.
So yeah. That’s what I want for Christmas. To be left alone. I’ll never find someone who can understand what I’ve been through. I would never even find the words to tell them.
And even if I did fall in love again, I don’t think I’d ever find someone who could look past the scars. They’re my daily reminder of what I survived.
Some stories don’t have happy endings. I know mine doesn’t.
Merry Fucking Christmas.
-Levi Blackthorne
I finished reading the letter with tears streaming down my cheeks.
This poor man. Oh, this poor man.
That night, I couldn’t sleep thinking of Levi.
And at work the next day I was totally distracted. I even merged the wrong data and had to call IT in to undo my mess when I deleted a critical database.
I stayed in that state of distraction all week, imagining what Levi looked like, how hideous his scars might be, if he still felt this way or if he’d managed to find some peace over the past few years. The letter had been postmarked three years earlier.
When Jan came over for her regular Saturday morning gossip session she asked about the letter.
Taking a sip of my hot apple cider, I gave her the barest brushstrokes. I felt protective of the letter. And protective of Levi.
“It was from a grown man, not a child. And I just keep thinking about what he wrote. He seemed so sad.”
“Sad? In a letter to Santa?” Jan studied me curiously.
“Yeah. I could feel his pain coming through the page. I even…” Was I going to confess this to her? “I even tried looking him up online. I found a few Levi Blackthornes on Facebook, but only one from Red Oak Mountain.”
“Red Oak Mountain?”
I nodded. “That’s where he lives. In the Ozarks. At Coyote Canyon Road, number twelve.”
Jan’s lips tilted up, giving her a devious glow I hadn’t seen since we were in school. “You’re getting kind of invested in this guy.”
“No, he’s just a fantasy. I can build up a reality in my mind that’s not true. I imagine him as the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. A gentle giant carrying a wound in his heart.”
“You always did like that Disney story the best.”
I gave her an eyebrow lift. “You know that Beauty and the Beast didn’t originate with Walt Disney, right?”
It was one of those fairytales spun through time. The first surviving written version of the story was from seventeen-forty, written by a woman with the exotic-sounding name of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in France. And before that, it had been an oral tale spanning the centuries.
Being a librarian, I’d picked up all kinds of lore about the written word.
But that story had captured my heart. I’d always imagined that was what true love looked like. When two souls connected, regardless of differences, their hearts entwined, impossible to separate.
I’d always dreamed of finding my beast. A tall giant of a man, with a depth in his heart that common men wouldn’t have the capability of understanding.
“You’re getting really involved in this Christmas letter, aren’t you, Robin?”
A tiny laugh burst from my lips while I nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
Jan grinned at me. “Why don’t you go find him? Meet him? Have a coffee? Then come home and tell me all about it.”
She was being crazy.
“He lives all the way in Arkansas. And that would be nuts.”
“Mm, I don’t know. You could do with an adventure. Get your nose out of your books and go see the country.”
I shrugged a shoulder as Cocoa snuck up and snagged one of the cookies off the tray I’d put out for us. “He’s probably nothing like what I’m imagining. And he said it himself that he just wants to be left alone.”
Jan leaned over and squeezed my hand. “And this is why you’ve never fallen in love. You don’t ever take a risk. Be wild for once in your life. Go into it with no expectations other than having an adventure. You deserve one.”
Could I do that? Should I?
The school library where I worked would be closed for the holidays. I had the time off.
“What about Cocoa?”
“Take her with you. She deserves an adventure, too.”