Ficlet from Facebook Group
“This is what, now?”
“The Yule log,” Kola and I told him together. Again.
Samuel Thomas Kage, Chief Deputy of the Northern District of Illinois, looked at me with one eyebrow arched in what was hovering somewhere between skepticism and resignation.
“What?” I asked him.
“Why is this a thing? And why are there a billion candles lit in this house right now?”
“A billion, Dad?” Kola said, giving him a pained look somewhat similar to his own. “You don’t think that’s a bit dramatic?”
Sam’s scowl was dark. “The Yule whatever is burning in the fireplace, there are––” He turned to count and then pivoted back to face his son.
“––twelve candles on the mantel, ten on the sidebar, two by the door, and what is this––” He did it again, counting what was on the coffee table.
“––ten right here. No one needs this many candles.”
I shrugged.
“How many are upstairs?”
“Just one in each bedroom,” Kola explained.
“Your house is going to burn down,” he told me, finally shedding his heavy wool and cashmere overcoat so Kola and I could see the Hugo Boss suit underneath.
“Probably not,” I assured him, smiling. “She’s keeping an eye on them, as is the rest of the coven.”
“And where are these witches?”
“Outside with Hannah for a few minutes doing the solstice blessing before they come inside,” I told him, reaching for his cheek before he could walk back to the coat closet. “And don’t be snide. I already told you that wasn’t gonna fly.”
He bent and kissed me, and I felt a bit of the tension roll off of him. I knew it wasn’t just walking into the blaze of candlelight that was our living room when he came home; there was something else going on which had more to do with the reason he’d been called into the office on a Saturday.
“Yes?” I asked him, taking hold of the lapel of his suit jacket before he could walk away. “You promise not to be snide?”
“Yes,” he grumbled, stalking to the closet he’d passed on his way in, hanging up his coat and then walking back to me and Kola. “But you realize I’ve been Catholic since basically before I was born, right?”
“In your mother’s womb you were Catholic?” Kola asked him, shooting him a look before walking to the kitchen, giving the wassail a wide berth as he went by.
“Yes!” Sam yelled after him, following me to the kitchen, gazing at the punchbowl full of what looked like muddy water. “What is that?”
“That’s the wassail she made,” I informed him.
His squint as he leaned close, sniffed it, and then leaned back made me smile. He was so not enjoying the new things in my daughter’s life. “The hell is wassail?”
“It’s hot mulled cider.”
“I don’t want any,” he said petulantly.
“You don’t have to have any,” I assured him, pointing to the refrigerator. “You can have a beer or a hot toddy or bourbon or––”
“Can I have a gin and tonic?”
“Whatever you want,” I said, chuckling.
“Hi, Dad,” Hannah greeted him as she came into the house through the back with three girls and one boy, all in beautiful green hooded capes with gorgeous embroidered awens on them, small in the front, big on the back.
Sam smiled at his daughter and met the other young women and the lone boy, shaking hands and smiling. When they all went into the living room to join hands and stand in front of the fire, he turned to me.
“Awfully nice robes.”
“Yes. Fully lined.”
“Do I even have to wonder?” he grumbled at me.
“Apparently when Aaron was in Norway last month, he was asked to get them something traditional, and that’s what he picked up.”
Sam growled and raked his fingers through his thick hair. “She knows he doesn’t really belong to her, right? That she can’t just say, hey, I’d like a car made out of diamonds, and poof it’s in the driveway the next morning.”
I grimaced.
“Jory,” he said with a note of warning in his tone.
“Oh stop, he knows not to buy her a diamond-encrusted car, and Hannah would never ask for that. She’s much more apt to ask him to build another homeless shelter or for a Yule log from Norway and crystal crowns.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The crowns were on before they went outside,” Kola informed him, passing his father a plate of enchiladas, one cheese, one carne asada, and a chile relleno. “Are you sure you want that gin and tonic, or do you want a Corona?”
Sam grinned at his son. “I’ll have the beer, thank you.”
Kola got it for him, using one of the limes I’d cut earlier for my mojito, and pushed it into the neck of the bottle.
I told Sam to pass me his suit jacket, and after he gave it to me, he took a seat at the island on one of the stools and started to eat as the girls began to chant.
I watched Sam as he listened. First, they did a short invocation about the log and about it burning and the wheel of life turning, and then there was a blessing about solstice and abundance for the coming year.
“That wasn’t horrible,” Sam said under his breath, taking a long swig of his beer after eating a few bites.
“So why did you need to go in on a Saturday?” I asked him, having wondered since he left that morning.
“Task force with the DEA,” he groaned. “They have a high-profile drug smuggler they want to pick up who used to operate out of Vegas, and apparently I have two of the marshals who were undercover there working for me here.”
“So they want to do what, borrow them?”
He grunted.
“But you won’t let them.”
“If you want my guys, then it becomes my op. Period.”
“That’s very ‘my way or the highway’ of you.”
“I don’t care,” he assured me, making a face. “I’ve had too many people get hurt when my office doesn’t call the shots. When someone shows up with a better track record than me…then I’ll consider taking a back seat. Until then—it’s my fuckin’ sandbox.”
I chuckled.
“What?”
“You’re a father in every area of your life.”
“That’s not being a father, that’s––”
“Hey.”
Sam stopped arguing with me and turned as his daughter walked into the kitchen. She pushed the cowl back so we could see her face as she reached the stool beside her father.
“I really appreciate you being so open-minded about this,” she told him. “Brian’s dad threw all his books on Wicca away, and Jill’s mom got rid of all her jewelry that she thought was pagan, even though most of it came from Hot Topic.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Can I ask a question?”
“Of course,” she said brightly, smiling at him.
“Are you still Catholic?”
“Yes,” she said, thinking about it. “I don’t think my feelings about being a witch and my other beliefs are in conflict at the moment.
I’m surprised how many things got taken from the pagan traditions, but I also have faith in things I’ve believed in since I was really small, so…
like I said, at the moment, I still have my faith. ”
“Okay,” Sam said, taking another drink of his beer before he started eating again.
“But you’ll still love me if I become only Wiccan, yeah?”
He nodded as he chewed.
“I mean, Kola is thinking about becoming a Buddhist.”
Sam did a slow turn to him.
“There’s an awful lot that makes sense there, Dad.”
Sam’s gaze was on me.
“I will always go to church with you, even though, as you know, my favorite part is where everyone shakes hands at the beginning.”
He sighed deeply.
“We will always get a tree and put Rudolph on the roof.”
“I’m calling it a Yule tree now, though, Dad, but you can still call it a Christmas tree.”
He nodded and continued to eat.
Kola carried out snacks for Hannah’s coven as she ladled the wassail into cups. I watched her, leaning on the counter as she put a cinnamon stick in each one.
“I’ll bet you money,” I teased her, “that everyone wants hot chocolate instead and no one touches the wassail.”
“It’s traditional for solstice and Yule celebrations,” she insisted, taking the tray of cups out, shooting me a look before she left.
“He’s gonna leave for college,” Sam told me, and I knew that this was on his mind as much as mine. “And he’s gonna do things and meet people, and we’re not gonna know about any of it unless he tells us or he gets in trouble.”
“I know.”
“He’ll go off to California and be a Buddhist.”
I tried really hard not to smile.
“You know most people stay and live wherever they go to school.”
“Many do, yes,” I agreed.
“And I mean, California, that’s a pretty good state, and he’s gonna love the climate, and—I mean, what if he meets someone and falls in love and that person will be from California, of course, and then he stays there to get married and work and––”
“Maybe we don’t have him married the first year, huh?”
“Yeah, no,” he agreed, taking a breath, shaking his head, “I just––”
“I know,” I soothed him, taking his hand. “I’m freaking out too. And her,” I said, sighing as I looked out into the living room. “She’s like us and so very, very different.”
“She’s fearless, and it scares the crap outta me,” he confessed, the misery all over his face. “She’s ready to take on anybody and anything, and I worry what will happen when she finally bumps up against something she can’t charm, break, or move all on her own.”
“I know,” I said softly, letting go of his hand only to cup his cheek. “But we have to be brave and believe in what we taught them. That they’ll be good people even when we’re not around and make smart choices.”
He nodded quickly, draining his beer. “Gimme another one. I don’t have to work again until the day after Christmas.”
“Which is great for me,” I said, turning for the refrigerator. “Because this way you get to shop for stocking stuffers.”
“What?” he squawked, his voice rising several octaves. “If he’s gonna find Nirvana and she’s a Wiccan, why am I getting stuff for stockings?”
“Because it’s tradition,” I said, which sounded a bit lame even as it came out of my mouth. “And because we still have both of them under our roof, and that makes me ridiculously happy since it won’t always be this way.”
“I’m terrified of that,” he confessed.