Page 21 of Matches and Mistletoe
He steps toward me, his smile gone. “Gloria, this isn’t what you think. I came out here to warn the leprechauns to stay away from you. I was telling them that you and your family are off limits.” He gestures to the seething, cackling crew of leprechauns shifting behind him in the snow. “You have nothing to fear from us.”
“Liar!” I spit again. “They would have left Ellie to freeze, and taken Mary!”
“Yes, they would,” he says gently. “But I brought your daughter back to you. And you saved Mary yourself. It’s complicated—please let me explain.”
But I don’t listen to devils with beautiful faces. “No! I don’t want to understand. I don’t want an explanation. I don’t want to know anything about your creatures, or about you. Come near my house again, and I’ll get Tom’s old gun and I’ll put a bullet through your face.”
A flash of pain and anger shines in his eyes, gone so quickly I might have imagined it.
“Very well,” he says, his voice as cold as the frosty air between us.
He says something in that strange language to his leprechauns, and they gather around him.
“I was wrong,” he says, his face beautiful and hard. “You’re nothing like the one you reminded me of. In fact, you’re just like all humans. Too weak to listen to anything but your fears.”
I blink, and they’re gone. All of them—the leprechauns, and the Far Darrig as well.
Ellie asks about the stranger the next day, calling him “Saint Nicholas” and begging to eat the candy he brought. But I already took it out to the woods and threw it as far away as I could. Let the forest animals feast on the Fae sweets.
We go to Christmas Eve mass that night, and by some miracle, Mary sleeps through it and Ellie sits quietly. They both fall asleep as soon as we return to the house, and I sit on the couch, trying to drown my guilt in a glass of red wine.
I’m not sure if I feel more guilty for the sexual sin, or for being so stupid as to let a stranger into my house, into my body. Both are definitely unlike me.
And then there’s another guilt, one that I try to ignore. The nudge of guilt when I refused to listen, when the pain flashed in his eyes. I know that pain—I’ve seen it in the mirror. It’s the pain of not being seen, or heard, or loved, by anyone. The pain of being invisible.
Whatever he is—he saw me. He listened to me.
He probably only listened because he wanted to sleep with me.
Still. For a few hours, I was visible. I was heard.
My eyelids are growing heavy, and I set the wine glass on the end table. I’m too tired to get up and find a blanket, or to go to my bed. I need to sleep.
When I wake up, I’m so toasty warm that I don’t want to move. Golden morning light pours into the living room, shining on the thick, soft blanket that covers me.
A blanket I didn’t put there.
I leap up, my heart hammering in my chest.
On the floor around the Christmas tree are several wrapped packages. And there’s a creamy envelope, with “Gloria” written in flowing script on the outside.
My fingers shake so badly I can hardly open the letter.
Gloria,
These gifts do not cheapen what we shared the other night. They are not payment, but penitence. I let myself want something I cannot ever have again. Blame it on this wretched holiday, and forgive me.
By the time you find this letter, I will be gone, and I won’t ever return. So you can breathe easy, knowing that me and mine are far from you and yours.
If you remember anything of me, let it be this warning—do not live in the darkness of what is gone. Find something new. Let yourself hope for the future.
He didn’t sign it. He didn’t have to.
There’s money in the envelope. Much more cash than I’ve seen in my lifetime.
I should be offended. I should scatter the bills to the wind and curse his name. But we need this, my children and I. And I know, staring at the money with rising excitement, that this will change everything.
He didn’t do this to shame me. He did it because somewhere deep in his Fae trickster’s soul, there is something good. Pity, and generosity, and kindness. The spirit of the season.
