* * * * *
Darryl looked toward the house, then back at the kids, climbing on the monkey bars and laughing out loud. A little pang hit him in the gut. He sighed heavily. “That song was inspired by a tough time in my life.”
“So you loved someone, and then you lost them?”
“Something like that.”
“But it must’ve been a long time ago, right?”
“Yeah. Seventeen years.”
She tilted her head to one side, but then she pushed her swing into motion again. He watched her swinging back and forth past him as he sat still. The way her hair moved, the way she straightened her legs, toes turned inward as she swung forward, then bending her knees as she swung back. She was enjoying herself. But she was also listening to him with every part of her.
“She must’ve been something, if you’re still hung up on her after seventeen years.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then, looking at the kids, not at her, maybe because it gave him courage, he said, “It wasn’t like that. I was a kid. She was a kid. She got pregnant. I wanted to get married. But she wasn’t ready.”
“So what happened?”
He closed his eyes, kept his face turned away from hers. “She ended it.”
“The relationship?”
“The pregnancy.”
Sophia put her feet down and brought her swing to a stop. He knew it, but still couldn’t look at her. “I’m so sorry, Darryl.”
He nodded, “Me, too. I should be over it by now, I’m aware of that. It’s just…”
He stopped there. Sophie reached out a hand, touched his cheek like she was brushing something off it. He was compelled to meet her eyes. “Just what?” she asked.
He nodded, having decided to talk about it for the first time, and not even sure why. Unless it was just because of her. “I enlisted right after I found out—shipped out a few months later. The truck I was riding in got blown up. I took some shrapnel and…long story short, I’ll never be a father.”
She got off her swing and came around to stand in front of his. He held her gaze because there wasn’t much choice and he didn’t want to come off as a coward. Maybe his eyes were a little damp, but what the hell. “I’ve never told anyone that, besides my sister,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t have told her, but she was with me through most of it. So she knew.”
“I’m so sorry, Darryl. That’s a horrible thing to have to live with.”
He nodded. “It was Christmastime when it all went down. Christmas day when the truck I was in hit that IED. I had expected to be spending that Christmas with my kid, you know?” He sighed. “I wrote that song while I was still flat on my back. After that, I guess I just started avoiding reminders of that time in my life. And that made me tend to avoid all the holiday hoopla.”
“Not easy to do in Big Falls. Worse yet over in Tucker Lake.”
“Yeah? You think they’re more Christmassy than you?”
“Only because there are more of ‘em.” She smiled, but it didn’t meet her eyes, and then they went all sad again. “Must’ve about ripped out your heart when I made the band play your song the other night. I’m sorry about that.”
“You didn’t know.”
“No, but I wanted to.”
He frowned, a little bit distracted from the old ache. Hell, he was so used to it, he barely noticed it anymore. It was just always with him. That empty spot in his heart. “You wanted to?”
She nodded. “I was trying to figure you out. Thought if I played your song, you might…I don’t know. Give something away.”
“I guess I did.”
One of the kids began to howl, though, so he was saved from having to say more. He jumped off his swing and two quick strides brought him to the top of the slide where Cal and his twin sister were both vying to go down first. He quickly gripped the little boy around the waist and scooped him up high in the air, spinning in a circle and making airplane noises. The kid stopped howling and started laughing.
Smiling, Sophie crouched at the bottom of the slide and urged Dahlia to come down. She did, giggling all the way, and then as Sophie caught her and swept her away, Darryl dropped the little boy at the top for his turn.
As he did, he looked down at Sophie, found her eyes on his. She said, “I’ve learned something since I’ve been back here in Big Falls, you know.”
“Don’t tell me. It’s all that everything-happens-for-a-reason stuff you were spouting the other day,” he said.
She nodded. “I doubted it too, at first. But I’m starting to think it’s for real. Maybe nothing’s truly impossible. Maybe things have a way of working out the way they’re supposed to. Maybe if you’re meant to father a child, you will.”
“Right, despite a medically necessary vasectomy?”
“Maybe you’ve just got to believe.”
“You really think that?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t used to. But my first day back here…I had a long talk with a wise old man. He said I came back here for a reason. And then I got here, and everything bad that drove me out of New York went away. I started sleeping at night again. I started feeling peaceful again. I found out the local doc is retiring and the town needs a replacement.” She lowered her lashes to cover her eyes. “I met you.”
He felt a warm rush of feeling sort of pooling up in his chest.
“Santa Claus was right, Darryl. He was right about everything.”
“Santa Claus?”
She nodded. “He was the one who told me all of this stuff. So I wrote him a letter, just like I used to when I was a little girl. And everything I put in there is happening for me. I think maybe I really do belong here. I think maybe…I was led here. I feel like my eyes have been opened. All of the sudden everything looks different. I can trace back every event in my life and see how they had to be just what they were in order to get me where I wanted to go next. And now I’m here, and the life I was meant to live seems close. Closer than ever before.”
He sat real still on his swing, staring at her, his brain trying to process everything she’d said.
“I think I belong here in Big Falls, Darryl. I think I’m going to buy that big Victorian and set up a family practice right there where it’s always been. And that’s the first time I’ve said that to anyone.”
She smiled, and he could read her face perfectly. She’d made that decision just then. She’d made it with him. That felt really good. Then she leaned back and pushed her swing into motion again. Her eyes fell closed, and her hair flew behind her.
“Miracles abound, Darryl,” she said real softly. “Especially this time of year. They’re everywhere you look. All you have to do is let yourself hope, that’s close enough to believing. Just let yourself hope it might be true. And maybe…maybe write your own letter to Santa Claus. It sure has worked for me.” She looked at him briefly as she passed and added, “So far.”