Page 47 of The Christmas Box

Then I stand back in the snow to take a look. “All done,” I say. “And if the time comes that it’s no longer needed, it can be removed and the steps underneath will still be intact.”

My companion flashes a pretty smile, her eyes looking especially blue in the bright sunlight. “This is so awesome, Travis. I love that they’re going to come home and just find it here. They’ll be so excited. Christmas magic at its finest.”

Taking that in, I can’t help but give my head a skeptical tilt as I drop a hammer back in my toolbox. “This isn’t magic, Lex. I built it.”

She looks unconvinced. “Isn’t it, though?” she suggests. “Magic can come in many forms.”

But I’m not getting it. “What do you mean?”

She’s still smiling that smile I feel in my gut. “Magic can be…unexpected kindness,” she said. “Generosity. Good will. Talent. Skills. Magic can be a Grade-A Grinch building a ramp for someone who needs it.”

I simply slant her a look and keep arguing. “I still say none of those things are magic.”

“Maybe magic is like beauty then,” she argues back. “In the eye of the beholder.”

When we hear kids laughing from somewhere behind the modest house, we walk around back to see a frozen pond nestled in a little valley. It’s surrounded by long, deep, tree-dappled backyards on three sides, but the winter-bare branches of a wooded area line the far shore. People are ice-skating, and a handful of others stand around a crackling blaze in a firepit nearby.

“That fire looks nice and cozy after being outside so long,” Lexi says, then turns to meet my gaze. “Let’s go down and warm up.”

We could warm up easier and faster by just getting in the truck and heading back to our heated buildings on Main Street, but I don’t point that out. I’m not sure why. Instead, I lower my toolbox to the snow where I can pick it back up later and follow her down a snow-covered hillside to the gathering below.

As we approach the small crowd by the fire, she seems acquainted with everyone there, and introduces me. A couple of men say they know my father and were sorry to hear about his diagnosis. I give a small ‘thanks’, and am glad when the subject changes—someone asks what brings us to the neighborhood.

Lexi looks a little sheepish—except for the lady who requested visitors, we’ve been keeping our wish-granting pretty low-profile, so she seems caught off guard. Finally she answers, “We were just doing a little project at Kathryn and Hank’s house. But don’t tell them it was us—it’s a Christmas surprise.”

A gray-haired woman across the firepit grins. “Don’t tell me you put in a ramp for her.” She claps gloved hands together. “Oh my goodness, that’s just the best Christmas gift. You’re a couple of angels.”

Two things I take in:

I make a good living in Chicago and so do most of the people I know—so if anyone in my circle needed a wheelchair ramp, it wouldn’t be a big imposition to get one. I guess I’ve forgotten that many people here struggle in that way, and that a little generosity can mean a lot. Hell, maybe itisa sort of magic. I just never thought about it that way before.

And people trulylikemy dad. Everyone who knows him seems to feel genuine affection for him. So whatever happened after I left, he became…better. A better man. And maybe I’m suddenly a little sorry I missed out on that.

“Wanna go skatin’?” asks a middle-aged guy in an old-fashioned plaid hunting cap, the kind with flaps over the ears. He points to a tiny shed near the pond, where a bench sits near the open door, the ground around it strewn with people’s boots and shoes. “Got plenty o’ skates in there in perty much ever’ size.”

Lexi tilts her head, clearly as surprised by this as I am. “Will, where on earth did you get a bunch of ice skates?”

“My grandson used to play hockey at a rink up in Crescent Springs, and when I heard they was replacin’ their rental skates, I asked what they’d take fer the old ones – just thought it’d be fun fer folks to come skate here on the pond. And they gave ’em to me fer free!”

Lexi looks up at me. “What do you think? Wanna skate?”

“Haven’t done it in a long time,” I inform her.

“I haven’t done itever,” she confesses. “But I’m willing to try if you are.”

We find skates in the shed and as we sit changing into them on the bench, she asks, “So did you skate out at your farm as a kid? Or somewhere else?”

“Yep, at the farm,” I say. “On a pond behind the house—real shallow, so it froze easy. I got skates for Christmas when I was around nine.”

“How did you learn?”

I laugh at the memory. “Dad would pull me around on the skates, holding both my hands. But hewasn’ton skates – just had his workboots on. So it was the blind leading the blind, but I caught on eventually. Only did it for a couple of winters until I outgrew the skates.” We never replaced them because by then things were bad, both financially and otherwise. “But it was fun while it lasted.”

“You’re gonna have to help me,” she says as we both stand up on the thin blades, wobbly. She reaches out to grab my gloved hand in her mittened one to keep from falling and I squeeze her fingers in mine.

Then I toss her a grin. “Help with wishes. Help with skating. You’re lucky I came back to town when I did.”

It feels good when she smiles back at me to say, “Guess I am.”

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