Page 42 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
They left the chocolate store, and Holly brightened again as they went into the toy shop beside it. Here, she bought a set of colorful blocks with letters and pictures, as well as a large wooden pizza-shaped puzzle for her sister Noelle’s sonKaden. “He’s two and a half, so maybe this is too advanced for him, but if so, he’ll grow into it.”
“Noelle is the one who’s flying in tomorrow?”
“Yes. She and maybe Merry are the only ones who are coming home this year. But Noelle wouldn’t miss having Christmas at home for anything. Dad would be devastated if he missed out on grandchild time.”
It was going to turn into a houseful of people. Jace tried to decide how he felt about that. It wasn’t his decision, it was their home, but he might end up spending a lot more time retreating up to Mistletoe Manor if he had to.
“Hey!” a high-pitched voice exclaimed. “Hey, bike guy!”
Jace didn’t realize that he was being addressed until someone tugged on his coat. He turned and found a redheaded tween-age girl grinning at him. There was something vaguely familiar about her.
“You fixed my brother’s bike, right?” the girl said, andoh, it was the bike kids.
“Did you two get that chain looked at like I told you?” Jace asked.
“Yeah, our cousin did. He said it was fixed perfectly. Mom, mom!” The girl waved to get the attention of the woman who was wrapping Holly’s purchases in festive paper. “This is the bike guy I told you about!”
“Oh, hello,” the woman said. She had the same red hair as the kids, although hers was styled in a salon set. “It’s so good to meet you.” She held out a hand, and Jace let her shake his. “Thank you for helping out my kids when they needed it. A lot of people would have just walked right on by.”
“I like fixing broken things, ma’am,” Jace said, dropping his eyes from hers. His gaze went to Holly, only to find her looking at him with a soft, wondering expression.
“Well, tell you what. You saved us the cost of a bike repair, so pick out something else on the house. Anything you like.”
The shop had a selection of dog toys, so Jace chose a squeaky toy for Cupcake in the shape of a pizza slice.
“No, the bacon, get the bacon,” Holly suggested. “Dad glares at me whenever I give him the real stuff.”
“Both it is,” the saleslady declared, and those went in the bag with their other purchases.
As they walked out of the store, Holly said, “Do you do that everywhere you go? Fix broken things?”
“I guess so.” He had never really thought about it. He’d been doing it ever since he was a kid. Stuff was always broken in the group home, and tinkering with it gave him something to do.
“Jace,” Holly said softly, “you are one of a kind.”
Fortunately there was a shop selling Christmas ornaments and cards that they wandered into next, which gave Holly something to look at other than him, and Jace got some relief from the embarrassment of being treated like a treasure, which he was well aware he wasn’t.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said while Holly examined a rack of ornaments in the shapes of different breeds of dogs. “What’s up with the names of the rental cottages? Did you and your sisters name them?”
“No.” Holly poked through the ornaments, clearly not finding the one she wanted. “Mom did.”
“Oh.” Suddenly he felt about three inches high. “They’re, uh, they’re really great. Very punny.”
Holly smiled wistfully. “You don’t have to feel bad. I know they’re a little silly.” She gave the ornaments another poke. “Do you see any hairless dogs here?”
“I don’t think people put hairless dogs on Christmas trees.”
The saleslady overheard her. “Do you mean the crested hairless breed? You’re right, we don’t have any ornaments, but we do have a stuffed toy.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Holly said when the toy was deposited in her hands. “Jace! Feel this! It’s so squooshy.”
It did, indeed, squoosh in a way that the real Cupcake would probably have enjoyed being squooshed if his small body would take it. It was spotted in the same way as the real Cupcake’s hairless body.
“I’m buying this,” Holly declared, clutching it to her chest.
While they waited in line behind a young couple arranging the purchase of a personalized “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament, Holly said, “It’s fine, Jace, really. You might have guessed from our names, but Mom absolutely adored Christmas. She loved everything about it. For Mom, the Christmas season started on November first. She would get through Halloween, becauseweloved that, and she was always there helping us make costumes and hang up bats and spiderwebs, even though she wasn’t really into any of it. But as soon as she got out of bed on the first day of November, the spiderwebs came down and the wreaths went up.”
“That sounds really nice.” Jace thought about the lackluster decorations at the group home, if anyone bothered to put up any at all.
