Chapter 4
S CARLETT
This is the third time I’ve used the bathroom to make sure I don’t have armpit stains or stink.
Luckily, everything is good.
Perfect.
Except Santa is a no show again, and this time, he doesn’t answer his phone.
What are the odds of screwing this twice?
He can’t be breaking the law. It would be statistically impossible.
Two men playing Santa getting in trouble with the law on the same day?
No.
It’s not possible.
Honestly, I don’t even want to think about it.
Hands propped on the smooth edge of the sink, I talk myself into breathing slowly and, basically, not losing my marbles.
There is so much at play tonight. So much to lose.
And so much to gain if everything goes right.
A successful party can make me the perfect candidate for a promotion next year.
On the other hand, if this goes bust, I’ll need to start looking for a new job and live off what exactly in the meantime?
The five side hustles I’ve been shuffling around?
The firm knock on the bathroom door startles me.
“I’m coming,” I bark, convinced another crisis awaits me.
I hope it’s not yet another anxious parent making an inquiry about our absentee Santa.
I can’t wait for all this to end and go home, toss my heels into my closet, take a hot shower, put my bathrobe on, and crash onto the bed with a big glass of wine in hand.
All I want is to pass out from the wine and exhaustion and forget about tonight.
The person behind the door knocks again, more slowly this time, but still firmly.
I glance in the mirror, tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and spin on my heels, a sense of dread settling in the pit of my stomach.
I expect bad news.
Something happened with our new Santa.
Maybe he had an accident, bailed on us, or there’s a blizzard outside, and he got snowed in.
I almost yank the door from its hinges while sliding it open.
Maria blinks quickly, signaling nervousness, a sheepish smile plastered across her lips.
“Yes? Please tell no one has lodged a complaint again.”
She shakes her head a few times without a real answer.
“Is there a problem?” I ask.
There must be.
Why else would she looked like she swallowed a frog?
“No problem,” she says curtly. “Someone said they saw a man pulling up in front of the entrance. He was driving one of those big trucks and wearing a Santa suit.”
I enjoy the brief moment of relief, not knowing what the problem is.
“Is he not our Santa?”
“No one else is in the building, so I assume he’s our Santa.”
“Who saw him?” I ask, pivoting to the main room when she touches my arm, compelling me to stay.
There's something strange about her expression, so I stop and pull up closer, adjusting the intensity of my voice. “Does Elisa know he is here?”
She shakes her head again.
“Elisa left before he arrived.”
“What?? Why? Was something wrong?”
She breathes an anemic chuckle.
“No, no. It was nothing like that. Colley had cramps.”
“I hope it’s not from our food.”
“She said he’d had them on and off these past few days, and it was not related to his diet.
They’ve seen a doctor, and his lab tests came back fine, but she wanted to err on the side of caution and take him home.
She also wanted me to tell you that, as far as she’s concerned, everything looked perfect tonight. ”
“Thank God for that,” I say, pushing out a troubled chuckle.
“So why do you look like you pooped in your pants? Santa is here. Everything is going according to the plan. We’re finally on schedule.
Although…” I check my delicate wristwatch engraved with two cardinals, a beloved gift from my late mother.
And then I burst out.
“Oh, my God. How much time have I spent in the bathroom. He’s half an hour late?”
She seems less upset than me. In fact, she’s cool as a cucumber.
“He probably is, but that is the least of our problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“You better see for yourself.”
Her enigmatic smile doesn’t fool me.
She tries to pull away from me, forcing me to follow her, but I’m quicker than her, grab her by the elbow, and pull her to the side.
“What is wrong with ‘this’ Santa?” I ask under my breath, about to lose it if the new option proves to be problematic.
She searches for her words, eyes darting back and forth, panic flashing across her face before she removes my fingers from her arm.
They must’ve felt like iron claws.
“Seriously. You need to see for yourself. Something is off, but it might only be me.”
I wish I could be as collected as she is, but I’m crawling out of my skin. It’s been a long night, week, year.
Decade?
Yes, the rollercoaster started the day I celebrated my 18th birthday.
Three days later I lost my mother to a car accident.
I inherited her house. The house I didn’t want to call my home. Too many memories, not a good environment to mature in and come into myself.
Despite my great relationship with my mother, that was my childhood home, and I wanted to leave it behind so badly.
I wanted to live in the city, experience life, and explore all the possibilities and options an eighteen-year-old could have at their disposition.
I wanted so many things.
Very few happened, tough.
I explored a lot, just not in the way I had envisioned it.
Her place became my place. And needless to say, the house came with a mortgage. A hefty one at that.
I pondered whether to sell it and forget about it, but some nice lady at the realtor's office––she was about my mother’s age––had told me the market would get bad, and I’d face an uphill battle if I wanted to buy another place.
And then my finances weren’t great. I lacked a solid credit and work history, and I had plans to go to school.
And oh, my God. The woman opened my eyes but also put me on the bus to crazy town.
I was terrified at the prospect of selling my mother’s house, not pocketing much money, not being able to buy anything new anytime soon, and squandering the money on some crazily expensive rental that would get me nowhere.
Only toward an uncertain future, perhaps.
So, I learned a precious lesson that day. My life took a turn and has never been the same.
I kept the house, took over the mortgage, worked three jobs to make it work, put myself through school, and did everything right––I thought––before meeting my future husband, Joachim Jensen, two years back.
Throughout this time, I renovated my mother’s place twice––now, I can finally call it my own––and I swore I’d never use it as a family house.
I even told Joachim when he popped the question that we’d need to buy a different place.
He agreed to everything I said.
Joachim was––still is––a math teacher, a great one at that, but he sucked at solving real life problems.
Nevertheless, he fooled me with his safe talk, reasonable view of life, and love for kids, but he was all talk and no follow through.
Nice looking guy, a little shy in bed––at least, he was with me; I had to draw him maps to find my sensitive spots––but overall, he was all right.
Not much taller than me, but he kept himself in shape.
We saved up some money to buy a new place, and in the meantime, we lived at my house. It made sense, although I hated it.
I hated it even more after divorcing him.
Not only did I have to renovate it again and make it look like a new place so I could live there, but I had lots of lousy memories scattered all around, and there was nothing I could do about them. Domestic life snippets clinging to the air like moths to lamps.
Our life together wasn’t the greatest.
Once we put our less than stellar honeymoon behind us, it became apparent we weren’t a good fit.
I was still working from dawn to dusk to make ends meet, and he was mostly taciturn and not involved when he was home.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was his accumulating credit card debt before compelling me to take out a loan with him to buy another car, only to find out the new ride was for his girlfriend.
Yup.
My very married husband got a girlfriend.
The ending was swift and painful with unpleasant financial consequences.
My divorce was finalized a couple of months back.
I had to hire a lawyer because he became difficult and started making claims about things that weren’t his.
He kept the car, credit card debt, and girlfriend.
I had to make my house livable––I won’t sell it in this absurd market and then go and live where exactly?––and put my finances in order.
In the meantime, prices have shot up to an all time high, and my teacher’s salary barely covers the necessities, my mortgage, and the student loan I keep around like it’s a pet.
All in all, I’ve been high strung for a while.
“Please tell me,” I say in the voice of someone teetering on the edge of crazy desperation. “What am I walking into?”
She rubs my skin sympathetically.
“Chill. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Who me? You’ve been all dramatic, acting like our new Santa is a monster,” I take a stab at joking, trying to conceal my nerves. “Is he drunk? Using drugs?”
“I wouldn’t know. Probably not.”
“Probably not??” I get more freaked out by the second. “Let me see him.”
I move and she walks with me without talking or trying to stop me.
“Is he in the other room?”
“He probably is,” she says. “He was outside when I came looking for you.”
I stop abruptly, and she almost stumbles into me.
“How did you know something was off if you didn’t even see him?”
“The woman who saw him told her kid Santa was here, and he was this big muscular guy, which was creepy if you ask me. I thought we were waiting for a teen.”
“A nineteen-year-old.”
“That’s still a teen.”
“I’ve seen nineteen-year-olds who look like men. Let’s go,” I say panicked and irritated.
We begin moving again.
I’m probably getting riled up for nothing.
Who hasn’t seen a big muscular teen?
They’re everywhere.
“My nineteen-year-old cousin looks like a twelve-year-old with an unrelenting case of acne,” she says.
“Shut up, Maria. Twelve year olds don’t have acne,” I say.
“That’s precisely my point.”
I toss a glare at her and push the door to the event room open and my helper quickly goes quiet.