Page 42 of His Until Christmas

“I could get one for my gran too.” I try to make what seems a surprisingly tough gift choice for Reece easier by hunting through this display for something symbolic of this city. “How about this one?” I’ve found a bauble painted with Big Ben and sprinkled with snowy glitter. “Gran would like it. Maybe your mum would too.”

He pulls himself together. I watch it happen like I’ve watched Patrick centre himself with yoga breathing. Reece takes the same long and slow breaths before admitting, “I always worry I’ll choose the wrong one for her.”

I’ve met his mum several times. Lynne Trelawney is the definition of laid-back. Come to think of it, she’s the teacher Patrick learned all his downward-dog moves from.

Reece isn’t half as zen-like. “Stupid thing to worry about, right? I’m an adult. One who wrote a whole thesis on perinatal and postnatal depression, not the little kid who woke up to find his mother missing on Christmas morning.”

This store is still full of shoppers.

They stop existing when Reece glances down at a bauble I now see features a haloed baby in a hay-filled crib.

“Give her this and risk reminding her of something she had no control over?” He shakes his head. “I gathered the data, Jack. Read article after article. I absolutely understand hormonal imbalances and treatments. How brains are complex, and how pregnancy adds extra layers. You know what none of those articles explored?”

I take a turn at shaking my head, and fuck anyone who notices or has an issue with what I do next. I pull him much closer. “Tell me.”

“Those research papers didn’t have anything to say about the children already in families where a mother needed inpatient treatment.” He ducks his head, studying the bauble. “They talked about genetic propensity, about the increased chance of repeat crises, without acknowledging there could be kids who got to witness their mother struggle not once but twice or more. Kids who were too young to grasp that their mother wouldn’t be away forever.” He meets my gaze. “She needed help after Calum and after Pat.”

I do a quick calculation. “You were six?”

“The first time?” He nods. “Eleven when she started to sink again. That was situational. Lots of extra stresses for her and Dad going on. Still kinda felt like sinking right along with her.”

His vocation comes sharply into focus.

He literally stops kids from drowning. Scoops them out of the sea and helps them play their way back to being happy.

My throat tightens. I have to loosen my scarf to ask this.“She’s good now?”

“Better than good. You’ve met her. She’s everything the textbooks describe about a healthy resolution. Even her yoga practice is exactly what experts suggest for mindfulness and self-care.”

This is rougher from him.

“She worked so hard for us, Jack.So hard. And for other families. After Pat, she set up a whole support network for new mums and dads in Cornwall.” He tells me what I already figured out. “And she’s why I made kids my focus.”

Everything fades again as he voices what has been my own mantra since I first came to London.

“I hate the idea of rocking the boat for her. Or of setting her back.”

“How?”

“By getting it wrong at Christmas.” He pauses for so long that I almost ask what the wordwrongmeans in a Christmas context before he fills the gap for me. “You should see my old bedroom, Jack. I can almost guarantee it will be like Santa’s grotto when I get home. I’ve got a place of my own, but that bedroom at home is where I’ll wake up after our early celebration, surrounded by—” He gestures at the over-the-top decorations filling this toy store. “As if she needs to make up for something I don’t blame her for, but also that I don’t get a chance to leave in the past.”

That’s what he just described doing for foundation children.

He’s also uneasy.

“Fine play therapist I am. The thought of setting her back by saying no to all that razzle-dazzle?” He taps his temple. “Up here, I know it wouldn’t happen. Still gets to me right here.”

He rubs his chest, and my response is equally physical. I can’t help covering his hand and squeezing.

Cover his hand?

I thread us tight together, because when has anyone else explained how I feel every single day lately by describing their own situation?

I can’t explain what that does to me—how it shakes me to the core and yet makes me as strong as any of those caped heroes on his healing wish list.

All I can do is lead him through families until we’re outside, where streetlight angels watch me find somewhere sheltered.

The shadowed doorway of an employment agency probably isn’t a rom-com-worthy location, but that’s where I kiss him. Our mouths meet, and it’s mutual.Needed.Reciprocated, if brief.

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