Page 41 of Blame It On The Reindeer

“Real mature.” She nodded, leaning in to rub her gloved fingers across my cheek. “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know. But you need to. Brody, you saw your mother for the first time in fifteen years. People could hear you yelling from across the street. That’s how I know it didn’t go well. Tell me what happened.”

I wanted to push her away and insist that she leave me alone, but I also couldn’t deny that her forcing her way in to be there for me meant something.

I scrubbed a hand down my face and leaned against the fence post that I knew wasn’t broken.

“I didn’t know she worked there. I was expecting the old man, then suddenly she was there,” I started, looking at her as she stood beside me. “She said she’s been clean for five years and that she’s never stopped loving me, but I just couldn’t see past the anger. Then she said that she hoped we could learn how to live around each other now that I was back in Sugarplum Falls, and that did it. It set me off in a way I can’t even describe. After that, I wanted to get as far away from here as I could. Away from her.”

“I can’t even imagine how hard that was for you. I wish I had the right words to say, but I don’t. I haven’t experienced a loss like that before. Or had the weight of grief consume me. But Brody, it is absolutely okay to be angry as long as you work through it. You can’t allow yourself to sit in it forever. That’s not good for you.”

“I know.” I swallowed back the emotion that was rising, not wanting her to see me fall apart again. “I don’t know how to move past my anger toward her. It’s all that I feel when I think about what happened to my dad or how I spent five years basically raising myself after he died because she wasn’t there. She was physically there but checked out long before he passed.”

“Anger is an important part of the grieving process. You have to work through it, along with the sadness. If you don’t, it’ll never get easier. And no matter how much time passes, you’re not going to get over your dad dying. That loss will forever be a part of you because he was such a big part of you.”

I sniffled as a rogue tear slid down my cheek.

“I was going to wait until Christmas, but I have something for you,” she said, extending her hands to take mine.

“You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“I know.” She smiled at me over her shoulder as she led us out of the barn and out into the chilly air as we headed to her SUV.

“I was at Sugarplum Gifts today, looking for something to add above the bench where Santa and Mrs. Claus sit. While Hadley was showing me options, I found this in a pile of things they had recently taken from Mr. Secton. He owned the pawn shop in town but recently closed it so he could retire.”

I looked at the brown gift bag in her hand, filled with tissue paper on top.

“I don’t know much about it,” she said cautiously as she handed it to me. “But I knew I had to get it as soon as I saw it.”

I held the bag in one hand and pulled the tissue paper out. My breath got stuck in my throat as I spotted the baseball glove and ball inside.

“Is this?” I asked, unable to complete the sentence. It wasn’t like I had told her what the set my dad had given me looked like.

She held the bag as I pulled both out, my eyes immediately filling with tears as I read the note from my dad.

She wrapped her arms around my waist and held me as I cried, no longer able to hold it in even if I wanted to.

Twenty-Six

Jasmin

“Ican’t believe you were just going to leave town without saying anything,” I said, nudging him in the ribs as we ate pizza on his couch. “All this work I’ve put in to get you to loan me the reindeer, and then you try to pull a stunt like that?”

“You’ve just been using me all along, haven’t you?”

“Maybe.” I lifted my chin and smiled smugly as his fingers tickled my sides. “But really, I would have tracked your ass down in Wyoming and stolen the reindeer from you.”

“Wow. You don’t joke around when it comes to Frosty Fest,” he teased.

I looked up and cocked my head.

“Did you just call it Frosty Fest?”

“Oh, shit. I mean the Frozen Palooza.”

I shook my head and sighed heavily, giving him the best glare I could muster.

---