Page 2 of The Omega's Beary Merry Christmas

I was confused, but then she took out her phone, tapped away, and turned it to face me.

“This is a house-swapping app. One my son uses. He’s in the mountains, though, so he wouldn’t be a good swap for you.”

She turned it around and tapped away again, letting out a long sigh and returning it to her pocket. “It won’t let me in without an account, but what they do is—you put in your requests, and you bank them. Then they do magic so that, let’s say, you wanted to go to the beach and someone at the beach wanted to go to the snow, and someone in the snow wanted to go to the mountains, and someone in the mountains wanted to come to the city—they organize everything to make all those swaps happen at once.”

“Sounds expensive.” Which was the original problem.

“Except it’s not. It’s only a one-time fee because everybody is getting a room out of it. I don’t know. It might be nice. And you don’t pay unless you make a swap, so no risk.”

It sounded complicated and scam-filled, but if her son did it, maybe it was fine?

“Maybe. Thanks. I’ll look into that.” I would, too, but it probably wasn’t going to go much further. This close to the holidays, everything remotely close to water that wasn’t covered in ice would be long gone.

My phone rang, and I had to get back to work. But all day long, what she said about the app kept playing in my mind. Maybe tonight, after she went to bed, I’d look into it. Who knew? Maybe it would get us right on the exact beach where we’d promised to take her as the big sandcastle extravaganza was happening.

If not, at least it didn’t hurt to try. Because there was nothing I wanted more in this world than to give her exactly what Mark and I had always dreamed of—a home filled with love, acceptance, adventures, and, one day, a dog.

But today was not that day.

Today was about making sure bills got paid and taking a stab at our first adventure. It was a start.

If only I could really mail the letter to Santa and it was something he could deliver on. But I didn’t know how. And even if I did, he specialized in toys, right? Not experiences? Santa couldn’t magically build a beach in his toy factory and deliver it to us on Christmas morning.

If only he could because I could use some big old Santa Christmas magic about now.

Chapter Two

Bert

My brother crossed a line this time.

“You can’t possibly think this is okay.”

The coward was already at the airport when he let me know what he’d done. Or maybe not a coward because Rudy had no fear. Of anything. Not even me, which, under current circumstances, he probably should be. We hadn’t had a physical fight since we were cubs, but this?

The ultimate betrayal.

“Look, they’re calling my flight. Can we talk about this when I get back?”

“Rudy! Cancel this whole thing while it’s not too late.”

“Oh, bro, it is too late. We’re part of a complicated swap system where one person goes one place and another goes to another then a third goes to the first.”

“Freezing? You use three quarters of the wood we cut to keep that place blazing from the first autumn breeze. And you’re a bear! If you get cold, just shift and cuddle with yourself.” This conversation was going nowhere, but I had a vague idea that if I kept him talking, he’d miss his flight and have to come home.

“I have the right to take a vacation just like everyone else,” he whined. “You just don’t want me to have any fun.”

“Actually, right now? I hope it rains every minute while you’re at the beach. No…that the place you’re staying is right in the middle of an off-season hurricane. Only you because I don’t see why any of the other people should have a bad time.”

“Final call.”

“Rudy! You can’t do this. You don’t have any right.”

Click.Dammit! There wasn’t really a click, just that silence that indicated the person on the other end of the line had disconnected. Leaving me hanging in more ways than one.

He broke the one rule we had for sharing our land: no humans allowed. But he wanted to go away for the holidays and did a house swap through some app where he got to head out to sunny climes and left me here to try to figure out how to protect our home and land from strangers who might be a threat to us.

He cared not even a little bit about that. When would I learn not to expect better from him?

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