Chapter 23
HARDY
“Daddy! Sprinkle McPinkle Pants made poops everywhere!” Avery yells as she runs in and jumps on my bed.
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I look over and notice it’s only six a.m. on a fucking Saturday. Why is my pride and joy waking me up at this ungodly hour on a weekend when I usually have to drag her out of bed at eight a.m. on a school day? I collapse back onto my pillow and close my eyes.
“Daddy, wake up. You need to see the poops!”
“I don’t want to see elf poop. It’s too early,” I grumble as I roll over.
“But you have to come look, Daddy! And I heard him make the poops too.”
I pop an eye open and am startled at how close her face is to mine. “What do you mean you heard it?”
“That’s what woke me up! I heard giggles and then the poop splashes and when I went in the potty he was sitting on the seat.”
“Wait, Sprinkle is a boy?”
“Daddy!” Avery scolds as she tugs me by the hand, pulling me out of the bed.
I reach over to the nightstand and grab my phone and notice a text from Bella.
If you’re reading this, it’s probably morning and you forgot to charge your phone and you’re just now seeing this text.
Morning! I recorded a special sound effect as an alarm and hid my phone in the bathroom under the sink.
There are several minutes of silence after, but you’ll want to make sure to turn the alarm off, so it doesn’t keep repeating.
Isaac and I will be over later to pick you up
There’s a dopey grin on my face as I read her text, and I start to reply and then realize that she won’t see it since her phone is under Avery’s sink.
When I get to the bathroom, I’m genuinely surprised by the scene she’s created.
It makes all the shit I’ve done with the elf look like amateur hour.
Sprinkle is poised cross-legged on the seat of the toilet, his tiny elf ass propped slightly in the air as a Hershey’s kiss sits underneath him.
Several other kisses are inside the bowl and there are several other unwrapped kisses on the floor.
There’s also glitter everywhere. On the back of the toilet, the seat, in the bowl, and on the floor.
“He could have at least made it into the bowl. Now I have to clean elf poop,” I grumble as I squat by the sink and open the cupboard like I’m looking for cleaner. I grab the phone and turn off the alarm, tucking it back into place.
“I can help!” Avery says as she reaches down to pluck a piece of chocolate off the floor.
Since when does this kid offer to help? Maybe the elf isn’t so bad after all.
She picks up the rest of the poops and throws them in the trash can. “I have to tell you something, Daddy,” she says quietly once she’s done.
“Okay?” I swallow nervously, worried she’s going to tell me that she knows that the elf and Santa aren’t real.
“Sprinkle left a bowl of poop candies in the kitchen too and I ate them all.”
I sigh in relief. “Oh. Well, that’s not the best breakfast, but I’m glad you were honest with me,” I say, kissing her forehead as I stand.
“I wanted you to know. Miss Carlisle said it’s okay to make mistakes, but we should admit them. And if Sprinkle tells Santa, I want him to know I did the right thing.”
Something cracks in my chest at her admission.
It’s one of those moments of extreme pride and love that make your heart feel like it’s going to burst out of your chest. They may not happen as often as we’d like, but when they do, they make all the shitty moments of parenting worth it. And this one is all because of Bella.
——————
When Bella shows up with Isaac a few hours later, I’m overwhelmed with love when I see her.
I want to tell her about my moment with Avery.
I want to throw her against a wall and worship her body.
But more than anything, I want to make sure she knows how grateful I am that she’s in our life.
That she helped me save Christmas. And that she brought me back to life.
I never thought I would fall in love again after Lydie died, and while she can never be replaced, Bella has been the perfect addition to our world, bringing us exactly what we needed to heal and to love again.
“You couldn’t have set the alarm for anything later than six?” I tease as she leans in to hug me once the kids run into the kitchen. I slip the phone into her hand.
“Oh shoot! I totally forgot to change that.” She smiles sheepishly, and I can’t tell if she’s kidding or not.
“I’m going to punish you later for that,” I say, swatting her ass as I follow her toward the kitchen.
“Oh, I’m counting on it,” she says over her shoulder.
“Are we ready to go?” Isaac asks excitedly.
“Where are we going?” Avery asks, matching his energy.
“Well, Butterfly, today is the day that we do random acts of Christmas kindness.”
“We call them RACKs,” Bella says, doing a little shimmy with her chest that makes her tits jiggle.
“Mom, I told you to stop making that joke,” Isaac groans.
“It’s fine. Everyone appreciates a good RACK.”
“I know I do,” I say, raising my hand.
“You two are gross,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“What’s gross?” Avery asks.
“Nothing,” the three of us say in unison.
We load up into my truck as Bella changes the radio to a station that plays only Christmas music. When I turn to look at her, she has the biggest smile on her face, and it nearly takes my breath away. She is so fucking beautiful, inside and out.
“What’s the plan, Bells?”
She shakes her head at the mention of her nickname, making the bell on her Santa hat jingle.
“Every year, we spend a day doing random acts of Christmas kindness. When Isaac was little, we would do one a day. As he got older, that wasn’t always practical with our schedule, so we decided to make it one day. ”
“Yeah, but we still do other RACKs when we can randomly,” Isaac pipes up from the back seat.
“What do these RACKs entail?” I ask.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a stack of cards.
“First, we’re headed to the local nursing home to hand out Christmas cards and candy canes to the residents.
I had my students make enough for each of the patients.
The holidays can be lonely for a lot of them, and we want to make sure they get a visit from someone, a card, and a treat. ”
“Can I hand out the candy canes?” Avery asks.
“I got you, Butterfly,” Isaac says, and I watch in the rearview mirror as he hands her several boxes of candy canes.
“This is a tradition we do every year, and I thought it might be fun for you to do with Avery in the future.”
Something twists in my gut at her words, at her implication that this is something I would do alone with Avery next year. Everything we’ve done together this year has been special because of Bella and Isaac, and I want to continue these traditions with them next year and for many years to come.
I barely have time to dwell on that thought before she’s giving me directions to the nursing home. We spend a couple hours passing out cards and candy and even play a few board games with the residents.
When we stop for lunch at a drive-thru, we pay for the people behind us, and just after we’ve finished our food and are driving to our next RACK, Isaac starts shouting.
“Trash cans! Mom, I see trash cans.”
“I’m going to need you to flip a bi—” She looks in the back seat at Avery and corrects herself. “Make a U-ey. We’ve got trash cans.”
I do as I’m told. “What am I missing? What’s so special about trash cans?”
“This was one of Isaac’s favorite RACKs when he was little. We would walk through the neighborhood on trash day and bring in people’s cans. It was free and easy, and he was obsessed with the garbage truck back then.”
I pull into the neighborhood and end up staying in the truck, creeping along as the three of them run up the street pulling in cans.
After every house is complete, Bella pulls out a few small bags of coins, and we head off in search of vending machines to tape them to with notes about paying for their drink.
We’re sitting in the truck as Avery and Isaac run out to tape a few on the machines when I pick up one of the bags and look at the card printed in it. “Did you make these?”
“Yeah. It’s a little weird to just tape a bag of money to a soda machine, so I print out little cards with fun sayings and explain what a RACK is and encourage people to pay it forward and post on social media.”
The kids climb back in the car, and Isaac suggests we park so we can go shop for items to donate. Then we head into the store and grab items for a local food pantry, winter hats and gloves to donate, and a few toys to drop off.
I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun shopping before, and Avery doesn’t even complain in the store once. At checkout, we end up paying for the people behind us and then pile back in my truck as Isaac directs us to a local church that has a mini food pantry outside of it.
He and Avery climb out and fill up the little cabinet and then we head over to a park with a little lending library. Isaac pulls a couple of books out of his bag and turns to Avery.
“Hey, Butterfly, did you know that Santa has a secret program?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“It’s true,” he insists. “Anyone that donates their old toys or books gets extra checks by their name on the nice list, and that means he brings you extra presents.”
“Is that true, Daddy?”
I nod my head in agreement. “It’s true. It’s one of Santa’s rules. But it only counts if you do it to help others. If you do it just to get more gifts, Santa will know, and it won’t count.”
Her eyes light up, and she digs around in the seat pocket in front of her, squealing when she finds a book. She runs out of the truck after Isaac, and they put their books in the little lending library.
Bella turns to me. “That was quick thinking. See, you’re not as terrible at the Santa stuff as you thought.” When she winks at me, it goes straight to my heart, making it race in anticipation.