5. Ezra
I awoke Christmas morning when a small mass collided with my stomach.
“Mewwy Chwistmas, Daddy!”
I blinked my eyes open slowly to find my son hovering over me, his face shining with joy, lips stretched into a wide grin.
Snaking my hands out from under the comforter, I settled them on his tiny torso—and dug my fingers into that ticklish spot at his hips. A moment later, he rewarded me with loud giggles, flopping sideways on the bed to get away from my torture.
“Daaaaaad!” he shouted as I rolled over and continued my assault.
At last, I stopped, chuckling as his laughter faded.
“Merry Christmas, my boy.”
Hansen was on his feet in a flash, jumping up and down on my bed as he chanted, “Pwes-ents! Pwes-ents!”
My heart grew about ten sizes at the sight of my son’s smiling face.
Without argument or a sound of protest, I rose from the bed, tossing on a white cotton tee and a pair of pajama pants—yes, they matched Hansen’s—and padded out to the living room.
Though I was the chef in the family, I’d learned a lot from my dad over the years, and he was in the kitchen, the scents of bacon and Swedish pancakes floating through the air. Beyond the windows of our house, the sun was barely lighting the sky.
Being awake so early may not have been my first choice, but the upside was, I wasn’t hungover. Still, I needed coffee if I was going to survive, so I shuffled into the kitchen, mumbling good morning to my dad.
“How’re you doing?” he asked softly. Across the great room, past the demarcation line between the kitchen and living room, Hansen sat near his mountain of presents, practically vibrating with excitement. He waited patiently for me and Dad to join him and give him the go ahead to tear into his gifts.
Today was a hard day for both of us, and I may have gone a little overboard.
“I’m fine,” I grumbled as I filled a mug to the brim and took a large swallow, the scalding liquid burning a path down my throat.
“It’s okay if you’re not,” Dad said. “It’s the first big holiday—”
“Thanksgiving was the first big holiday,” I said, cutting him off. “And we survived that just fine.”
My dad gave me a disappointed look at my tone, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Shannon was gone, and talking about my feelings wasn’t going to change that.
Besides, where she was concerned, my feelings trended more toward anger than despair.
Thankfully, Dad didn’t press and, after removing the last batch of pancakes from the pan, he washed his hands and joined me and Hansen in the living room.
Watching my son open his gifts did wonders for lifting my spirits, and after he finished and we ate breakfast, we spent the remainder of the day taking his new toys from the packaging and playing with them. Later that afternoon before the sun went down, we headed outside to make snowmen and sled down the hill near our house. Though he was nearly three, Hansen had never seen snow like that. We’d taken a few trips up north to Vermont when he was a baby, before life had gone to shit, but this was the first chance he’d gotten to truly enjoy the season and be the toddler he was.
When he started to complain about the cold—he lasted far longer than I’d expected—we returned to the warmth of our home, and I set to preparing our Christmas dinner.
Next to Hansen’s smile and laughter, cooking was the one thing in the world that soothed me. With a knife in my hand, chopping potatoes or fileting salmon, my jagged edges smoothed. Food was my happy place, the arena where I was confident. Where everything made sense, and the worst thing that could happen was accidentally over or undercooking a dish.
I’d been formally trained, but my earliest memories featured me and Dad in the kitchen, experimenting and bonding. I hoped that when Hansen was bigger, we could have those times together too.
A few hours later, we were gathered at the dining room table, an impressive array of food spread out before us.
Yes, impressive even to me, the man who cooked it all. I may have gone a bit overboard.
There was the aforementioned salmon, which I’d filleted and broiled with garlic butter and lemon slices. I’d made a mountain of garlic parmesan Hasselback potatoes, a huge salad topped with thick chunks of tomato and black olives, and my grandmother’s turkey stuffing. I’d never met the woman, but my dad had her cookbooks hanging around, and I’d attempted a number of her recipes over the years. That would always be one of my favorites, my lone traditional Christmas offering to our dinner table. My cooking style tended more toward blending Swedish cuisine and American, and I typically balked at anything status quo.
But damn, that stuffing. I could never pass it up, and I loved feeling connected to the woman responsible for raising my father.
Yeah, I came from a long line of single parents.
Dessert was not my forte, but I still managed to whip up a decent-looking array of Hallongrotta, butter cookies topped with raspberry filling. I even added some shaved coconut because I knew it was Hansen’s favorite.
“So what’s your plan for the next week?” Dad asked when we’d finished our meal. He reclined in his chair and settled a palm on his stomach, which he pushed out comically far for Hansen’s benefit. My dad was wiry, even in his fifties.
“In terms of…”
“Work,” he said. “What’s your schedule look like?”
Even though it was slow season, Leon and Lena had asked if I wouldn’t mind opening the kitchen for a few days for locals to come in and enjoy a meal with their out-of-town families during the holidays. I’d jumped at the chance. I loved my dad and my son, but it was better than sitting around this house wallowing.
Plus, the Delatou family was coming in for dinner in a few days, and I knew Brie was going to be there. It’d be the first time I saw her in nearly six months, and my skin tingled with anticipation.
“We’re open on the thirtieth, and then we’re shut down until April first.”
My dad raised a brow. “And what are you going to do with all that free time?”
I shrugged. “I was thinking maybe we could get started on some of the projects around here.”
The house was by no means a dump, but it was woefully outdated. For the time being, it worked, but we needed to reconfigure a few things, like add another bathroom—particularly one with a tub—and gut the entire kitchen.
“I want a blue woom,” Hansen said.
That was another thing. If we were going to put down roots here—which I had every intention of doing—this house needed to become a home.
And if my boy wanted to paint his bedroom blue, we’d paint it blue.
“Of course, bud,” I said, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “You can paint it whatever color you want.”
“I want it blue like the sky,” he said matter-of-factly, though it took some mental gymnastics to translate his little boy speak. “And staws on the ceiling.”
“Done,” I said. “We’ll even go shopping together and you can pick it all out yourself.”
“Weally?” he asked excitedly.
“Of course,” I told him. “It’s your room. It should be the way you want it.”
Hansen was out of his chair and throwing himself into my arms a heartbeat later. “You the best daddy eva.”
My heart melted into my ass, and I caught my dad’s gaze over Hansen’s little brunette head. He was smiling wistfully at us, as though remembering the days when I thanked him for something as simple as a fresh coat of paint.
I vowed in that moment to be better. Hell, the man had uprooted his entire life—which, admittedly, largely revolved around his grandson—to move with us. Instead of acting like an asshole and making him carry my emotional baggage, I should’ve been doing everything in my power to make sure he stuck around. I wouldn’t have survived the last six months without him around to help with Hansen while I put in long hours at my new job, and it wouldn’t kill me to remind him I was grateful every now and then.
“So what do you say?” I asked Dad when Hansen had run off to his room to play with his new toys. “Do you want to help me fix this old place up?”
My dad studied me for long moments, and I resisted the urge to squirm. Thirty years old, and the man still made me feel like a little kid sometimes.
“On one condition,” he said finally.
“What’s that?”
“We get rid of all the wood paneling in this entire fucking house. It’s too goddamn dark this time of year to be living in a cave. Plus, it’s just fucking ugly.”
I barked out a laugh, the tension in my shoulders easing instantly.
“Sure, Dad. We’ll get rid of the paneling.”
He grinned, clapping his hands together. “When do we start?”