Page 79 of The Second Chance Cinema
Drake couldn’t contain himself at the sight of Ellie’s efforts. He had started the day annoyed that he had to go to work on a Saturday and had come home to Christmas again—their firstrealChristmas in this house. Ellie scurried off to the kitchen and came back with hot cider.
“What is all this?” he asked.
“Well,” Ellie started, “I figured, what could be more in the Nielson spirit than a third Christmas event?” She reached toward a small box under the tree and handed it to Drake.
“You shouldn’t have,” he said.
“Technically, that gift is kind of for me,” Ellie explained. Drake handed the box over. She pushed it back his way. “I mean, you should open it still. But, well, it’ll make sense.”
Drake tore into the paper and pulled the lid off the small box. Inside, Ellie had folded a message into a paper square. He jumped up when he read what was on it. “You got the show,” he said.
Ellie nodded. The producers wanted to audition another lead with a connection to the director, she said. Eventually, they came back to her as their top choice. In the year ahead, a supporting cast and crew would be hired based on their chemistry with Ellie. Visiting Ben yesterday, Ellie believed now, had made space for something new. “It was silly to wrap that in a box,” she said. “But I wanted to celebrate, and I didn’t know how—”
“You got the show!” Drake nearly shouted this time. He set the box next to the Christmas village. “Which means I’m marrying a two-time television star, an author—”
Ellie filled in the last part before he could. “And a detective.”
“The Case of the Girl at the Bar.” Drake picked Ellie up and spun her around the room. “I want to know everything. I mean, what did they say? When do you start? What do you wear?” Heset her down. Before he could ask more questions, she handed over a second box. This one was much bigger.
“One more thing,” she said. Drake started to tear it open. Nancy had a sixth sense for fallen paper. Within seconds, she was at their feet, circling as Drake finished unwrapping and rolled the paper into a ball for her to fetch.
Inside this box’s lid was a red toy train. It was just like the one he had as a kid. Ellie must have remembered it from the photo she pulled out of theirMEMORIESbox and tacked to their wall. “This is …”
“For around the tree,” Ellie told him. “You want to set it up?”
“Is that even a question?”
Within minutes, the train cars whirred their way around the tree, circling in search of the North Pole. Nancy paced a bit to follow its path before settling down. Ellie and Drake rested on their stomachs to peer inside the tiny windows.
“I’m glad we got a Christmas redo,” Ellie said.
“I feel bad I don’t have another gift for you,” Drake told her. “I mean, the sweater was dumb—”
“Not dumb. It’s pretty.”
“I wanted to find something cool and old, but I couldn’t, so … I found something new that looked old.”
“And I got you that silly bath set,” Ellie said. “It reminded me of this cologne you put on the night we met. I thought it would be romantic. It wasn’t.”
“I didn’t know that’s why you got it. That’s really thoughtful.”
It was serene lying there and reliving the holidays. At the beginning of the screenings, Drake figured the cinema would show them more memories like this one. The toy train. His chapter as a school mascot. Family vacations to national parks. “I was surprised we didn’t see more holidays and childhood memories,”Drake admitted. “But it hasn’t been all bad. Has it? Seeing the past.”
Ellie shook her head. “No,” she agreed. “It hasn’t beenallbad.” The cinema had forced them to reflect on who they had been before. For so long, she had been trying to shut those parts of her life away. It hadn’t worked. Finding the courage to address them, honestly, was the only thing that had.
A moment later, Ellie got up and walked back to the thing she’d been avoiding inside the closet. Her mom’s gift was still there, exactly where she had left it on Christmas. Wordlessly, she sat back down next to Drake and began to rip it open. She had told her mom years ago that they shouldn’t do presents anymore. Ellie liked to buy thoughtful gifts when she found them—not commercial gifts in service of some holiday. Still, over the years her mom had persisted in giving her too-small, expensive dresses or perfumes that evoked the insides of country clubs.
But this year, her mom had gone in a very different direction.
Ellie hugged the studded leather jacket to her chest.
She’d last seen it in her twenties, but she swore it still smelled like him. She pulled her arms through the sleeves and ran over to the closest mirror near the front door. She’d thought it was gone forever when she dropped it off at the thrift store. It felt so right to wear Ben’s jacket. His favorite jacket.
“How did she …” Ellie started.
“When she dropped off the gift, she said you shouldn’t have done that alone,” Drake told her. “And that she went back for it. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. I started to tell you that when you went to open it but didn’t get it all out.”
Ellie looked up at him. She noticed that Drake was starting to tear up. It felt good to face their past together; to wear it proudly.
