Chapter 12 - Ben #2
"The reindeer?" Alex's voice was soft.
I nodded and led him away from the festival crowds, toward the quieter streets that led to my workshop. The colored lights faded behind us, replaced by the gentler glow of porch lights and the deep blue of an early winter evening.
Neither of us spoke until we reached Cedar Street. Then Alex said, "She wants an answer by December 27th."
"Claire?"
"The audition would be on January 3rd. Enough time to get back to New York, prepare, and do it right this time." He walked steadily beside me, his breath misting in the cold. "She thinks I'm crazy for not jumping at it immediately."
"What do you think?"
"I think when I first arrived here, I would have been on the next train." He stopped walking and turned to face me under a streetlight. "I think now I understand there's more than one kind of success."
"Are you—"
"I'm not saying no to the audition. I'm not saying yes either." He reached for both of my hands. "I'm saying that I want to make this decision as the person I've become, not the person I was running away from being. Does that make sense?"
"It makes perfect sense."
"Good." He smiled. "Now take me to your workshop and explain the reindeer thing, because I've been patient since I arrived, and I'm dying of curiosity."
I laughed. "You might regret asking."
"Try me."
We walked the last block in comfortable silence. When I unlocked the workshop door, warm air and the smell of wood shavings spilled out to greet us. In a corner, a restored Flexible Flyer I'd been planning to donate to the children's ward rested against the wall.
Alex pointed toward the sled. "Is that the one we used?"
"Different one. This one's for the hospital—for the kids who can't go outside this winter." I approached it and ran my hand along its polished runners. "I restore one for the kids every few years. It's kind of a family tradition."
"Your family has a lot of traditions." He moved closer to the workbench where the oldest pieces of my inheritance waited. "Ben, what exactly am I about to learn?"
I pulled out the chair my grandfather had built fifty years ago and gestured for him to sit. Then I reached for the wooden box I kept on the highest shelf—the one I'd never shown anyone who wasn't blood.
"I told you about my great-great-grandfather Johan getting rescued by the stranger in red."
Alex nodded.
"And I mentioned the reindeer hoofprints, too." I opened the box, revealing a set of tools so old the handles had worn smooth from generations of use.
"The stranger gave him these tools before he left.
Told him this valley would be a good place to build things.
Meaningful things. Things that would bring joy to children.
" I lifted out the oldest chisel, its blade still impossibly sharp after more than a century.
"He also told Johan that his family would always have a connection to Christmas. "
I set the chisel down and gazed into Alex's eyes. "The reindeer know me because the Blitzen family has been... tending them, I guess you could say. During the Twelve Nights. For five generations."
Silence stretched between us.
Alex said, "You're telling me Santa Claus rescued your great-great-grandfather."
"I'm telling you someone rescued my great-great-grandfather.
Ever since then, my family has had a connection to this valley's Christmas magic that I don't fully understand, but I can't deny.
" I gestured at the tools, the sled, and the craftsman's marks carved into everything I made.
"The hoofprint marks aren't decorative. They're... I don't know.
A signature. A promise. Something that ties every piece I make to whatever Johan experienced that night. "
Alex rose from the chair and crossed to where I stood. He picked up the ancient chisel, turning it over in his hands with the same reverence he'd shown Ryan's letter.
"This is insane," he said quietly.
"I know." I watched him turn the chisel in his hands, my pulse pounding. This was why I'd never told anyone outside the family. The secret was too strange and too much to ask of someone who wasn't born into it. He could still walk away—back to New York and a life that made more sense.
I wouldn't blame him if he did.
"I believe you." He set the chisel down and reached for my hands. "Which probably makes me insane too."
"Probably." I exhaled. "Still want that answer after Christmas Eve? Knowing you'd be signing up for generations of weird family secrets and obligations to possibly-magical reindeer?"
Alex laughed. "Ben, I've spent the past two weeks watching a theater building respond to human emotion, drinking tea that makes my tongue change colors, and preparing to convince sick children that I'm actually Santa Claus.
" He stepped closer, eliminating the distance between us.
"Your family's Christmas reindeer connection is honestly not the strangest thing I've encountered since coming home. "
"When you put it that way..."
He kissed me then—slow and sure, tasting of hot chocolate from the festival. I pulled him closer.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and smiled.
"The hospital is confirming Christmas Eve." He typed a quick response, then tucked the phone away. "Santa will be there. I already told Ryan I'd make sure Marcus got his letter."
"You're going to be amazing."
"I'm going to try." He kissed me again, quick and soft. "That's all I can promise. But I think—" He looked around the workshop, at the tools and the sled and the evidence of generations of Blitzen magic. "I think trying is enough. More than enough."
I could have let it rest there. We'd shared enough impossible things for one evening. Snow was falling outside, and Alex was warm in my arms.
There was one more thing. Something I'd been holding for almost a year, waiting for the right moment—or maybe dreading it.
"There's something else."
Alex tilted his head, watching me cross to the corner cabinet—the one I kept locked. Inside, wrapped in a cloth I'd woven myself, sat the piece I'd been holding since last winter.
"Your grandmother came to see me last January." I set the bundle on the workbench between us. "She brought me something to restore."
Alex froze.
"She said you'd come home eventually. That Yuletide Valley would call you back when you were ready to hear its voice.
" I unfolded the cloth carefully, revealing the music box beneath—smaller than the one we'd accidentally activated together days earlier, older, its brass fittings tarnished but intact.
The restoration had taken me months. I'd carved new hoofprint marks into the base so subtle you'd miss them if you weren't looking.
"She'd been searching for this for fifteen years. Finally found it at an estate sale in Vermont."
I watched recognition break across Alex's face like a sunrise.
"That's—" His voice fractured. "That's my mother's. The one Dad sold after she died."
"I know. Your grandmother told me the whole story." I touched the brass winding key, worn smooth by generations of fingers. "She asked me to restore it. To add the family marks. She said when you finally came home, you'd need something to remind you that you'd never really left."
Alex reached for it with trembling hands. His fingers hovered over the wood, not quite touching, as if afraid it might disappear.
"She knew," he whispered. "She knew I'd come back."
"She never doubted it. Not for a second."
He finally let his fingers rest on the lid.
"It used to play 'White Christmas.'" Alex's thumb traced the edge. "Mom would wind it up every Christmas morning while Dad made pancakes. I'd sit on the floor in my pajamas and watch the little figure inside spin."
"Open it."
He lifted the lid. Inside, the tiny painted figure had been carefully repaired—a dancer in a red coat, arms raised mid-twirl. When Alex wound the key, the mechanism began to play.
Not "White Christmas."
"Silent Night."
Alex tensed. "She changed it."
"She had it modified before she brought it to me. Chose the song specifically." I moved closer, touching the small of his back. "She said it was the first carol you ever sang on stage. Age six, in the children's choir. She was in the front row."
"I remember. That was the same year I was in The Nutcracker, my first acting performance." His voice was barely audible over the tinny notes. "I was so scared. She told me to find her face in the audience and sing just to her."
"She never missed a show after that."
Alex pressed the box to his chest, and his shoulders shook with silent sobs.
"She knew about your family, too, didn't she?" He managed the words between ragged breaths. "About the marks. The reindeer. All of it."
"She was one of maybe three people outside the Blitzen line who understood.
She never told me how she learned—just said some magic recognizes its own.
" I turned him gently to face me, brushing tears from his cheeks with my thumbs.
"She asked me to take care of you when you came home. Said you'd need someone patient."
A broken laugh escaped him. "She was matchmaking from beyond the grave."
"Apparently, matchmaking skills are common in Yuletide Valley."
"Damn." He clutched the music box tighter, the melody still playing, winding down slowly. "She planned all of this. The music box waiting here. You waiting here. She knew I'd fall apart at that audition and come running home, and she just—she set everything up so I'd land where I needed to be."
"I don't think she knew you'd fall apart. I think she knew you'd eventually realize this is where you belonged." I kissed his forehead. "The falling apart was the path that got you here faster."
The music box played its final notes and fell silent. Alex stared at it for a long moment, then carefully set it on the workbench beside Johan's ancient tools—two impossible inheritances, side by side.
"She left me a letter," he said quietly. "With the will. I haven't been able to open it."
"Maybe you're ready now."
"Maybe." He turned back to me, eyes red-rimmed but clearer than I'd ever seen them.
"Ben, I don't know what I'm going to tell Claire.
I don't know if I'm staying or going or what any of this means for my career.
But I know—" His voice steadied. "I know I'm not the same person who got on that train two weeks ago.
And I know that whatever I decide, it's not going to be because I'm running away from something. "
"I've been hoping to hear that."
The music box sat silent on my workbench, but I still heard its echo—"Silent Night," chosen by a woman who'd known her grandson would need to remember who he was before Broadway and all of the years of performing instead of living.
Whatever came next—Broadway auditions, family secrets, or magic I still didn't fully understand—I knew one thing for sure, some things were worth waiting for.
And Alex Garland was worth waiting forever.