Dear Santa

Chapter Three

“For heaven’s sake, Grant—it’s freezing out here!”

Even though they were in the sun—and it was in the mid-fifties, to boot—Grant’s mother clutched the suede-trimmed collar of her plaid wool blazer, shivering up a storm as they stood at the edge of the circular drive fronting the house. “Of course Haley misses her mother,” Elizabeth “Bitsy” Braeburn said, her voice far chillier than the temperature. Sunlight glinted coldly off her severely pulled-back blond hair. “That doesn’t give her license to rule the roost. And if you don’t exercise some control over the child now, God help us all when she gets to be a teenager.”

“She’s not even four, Mother,” Grant said in a low voice, his hands balled in the pockets of his leather bomber jacket, thinking, You should only know how much control I’m exercising right now. “She doesn’t even understand yet that Justine’s dead.”

“Then tell her again.”

“I have. Repeatedly. As has Etta. The concept means nothing to her.” He tore his gaze away from his daughter—all bundled up in sweaters and fleece-lined everything, sitting cross-legged in the leaf-cluttered grass with Henry in her lap as she kept an eagle eye on the ten-foot-tall entry gate—to look at his mother. Who, for reasons not yet clear, had shown up uninvited a half hour before, impeccably coiffed and tastefully accessorized, as always. “And according to the psychologist, there’s not a damn thing I, or anyone, can do to force things.” He looked back. “When she’s ready to accept Justine’s death, she will.”

The vigil had begun yesterday morning, when Haley announced she was going outside to “wait for Mommy.” Both Etta and Grant had patiently repeated the whole heaven thing, only to be met with an unsettling “Have you ever seen heaven?” When he had to admit that, no, he hadn’t, a tiny chin went up in the air, followed by “Then how do you know it’s real?”

A particularly thorny question to ask someone who didn’t, in fact, “know” anything of the sort. But what was the alternative? At the moment, letting Haley believe her mother was somewhere else seemed a far better option than trying to explain that Justine no longer was.

But who knew the “somewhere else” would prove to be the sticking point, that in Haley’s bright but still developing mind, being somewhere else meant that, at some point, a person could return. Clearly convinced—and rightly so—that her mother would never simply leave her, she simply couldn’t comprehend that Justine wasn’t coming back.

Hence the vigil. And since Grant couldn’t see letting a three-year-old sit outside by herself for hours on end, here he, and his trusty BlackBerry, were. Never mind that, when he asked Haley if she’d like company, her only response was a “suit yourself” shrug.

At least this morning there really was someone to wait for: Mia. Who should be arriving any minute. Hell. His mother hadn’t exactly taken to Justine; he could only imagine what she thought of Mia, with whom she’d only dealt with in the context of the wedding, five years before.

“For God’s sake,” Grant said as his mother’s shivering increased. “Go inside and get warm. I’m sure Etta’s got the coffeepot on—”

“Who on earth is that at the gate?” Bitsy said, shielding her eyes from the sun.

Speaking of the devil. Or—loath as Grant was to admit it—more likely a godsend, he thought as he caught sight of Mia’s old minivan, growling impatiently as it waited for Etta to buzz the gate open.

“That can’t be right,” his mother said as the gates slowly groaned apart. “Grant, you simply must speak to Etta—she can’t go letting in every Tom, Dick and Harry who wanders down the drive by mistake!”

“It’s not a mistake.” Grant said quietly, ignoring his mother’s flummoxed expression as Haley scrambled to her feet, showing her first signs of enthusiasm in two days. “Stay on the grass!” Grant yelled when the little girl started running toward the drive, almost amazed when she actually stopped. As the van passed, Haley spun around, her small legs pumping as she raced it up to the house. A minute later, Mia and his daughter were a tangle of arms and kisses, and his mother—being possessed of a one-hundred-gigabyte memory—said, “Why is she here?”

“Did you bring Mommy?” Haley asked, trying to peer around Mia to see inside the van.

After the briefest of glances in Grant’s direction, Mia crouched in front of the child, shaking her head. “No, sweetie,” she said softly. “Remember? Mommy’s not alive anymore.” She gently tugged a curl. “So you can’t see her. Nobody can.”

Haley regarded Mia for a moment or two before her thumb went into her mouth, her other arm strangling the poor stuffed toy around its neck. Then she settled into Mia’s arms again, her curls flattened against Mia’s bulky sweater, and Grant’s throat tightened.

“That’s why she’s here,” he pushed out. When, however, he noticed Mia’s struggle to stand with Haley clinging to her, he strode over to relieve her of the child, in a move both unpremeditated and instinctive.

Now on her feet, and clearly oblivious to the bits of leaves and dirt on the knees of her jeans, Mia’s eyes darted from Haley—who, while not exactly relaxed in his arms, wasn’t squirming to get down, either—to Grant. A small smile toyed with her mouth before she turned to Grant’s mother, who’d joined them. The smile stretched a little further.

“Mrs. Braeburn,” she said smoothly, extending her hand. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”

A moment passed before his mother apparently decided it wouldn’t kill her to remove her hand from her pocket to shake Mia’s. “All right, I suppose. Considering the circumstances.” She withdrew her hand, readjusting a large tourmaline-and-diamond ring that had shifted sideways over her protruding knuckle.

If his mother’s imperiousness bothered Mia, she didn’t let on. But then it occurred to Grant that, in her line of work, she must deal with women like his mother every day.

“Yes, of course.” Sadness flickered across her face, but the smile never wavered. “You look fantastic, though. I love your jacket!”

Eyes that had seen their share of tweakings over the past few years widened almost imperceptibly—point to Mia, for catching the old girl off guard.

“Um…thank you, dear.” Bitsy’s gaze remained on Mia for a long moment. “Thank you,” she repeated, then turned to Grant. “Now can we go inside before I freeze my assets off?”

“I’m here to tell you,” Etta said, hanging the vintage, black silk dupioni dress Mia planned to wear for the funeral in a white-washed armoire that, in any other house, would have dwarfed the room, “I have never seen that woman at a loss for words. I don’t know if that makes you an angel or a witch, but whatever you are, keep it up! You need me for anything else, hon?”

“I didn’t need you at all,” Mia gently pointed out, shoving shut the drawer to a small Bombay chest by the bed. “Please, please don’t wait on me, Etta—it makes me hugely uncomfortable.”

Her red lips pulled down at the corners, the older woman crossed her arms under her bosom. “Well, get over it, because that’s what Mr. B. pays me for. And besides…” She glanced furtively toward the bedroom’s open door, then lowered her voice. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have somebody normal to talk to, for once.”

Mia turned, a smile twitching at her lips. “You don’t like Mr. Braeburn?”

“Oh, please…I got Mr. B.’s number a long time ago. He’s not so bad, once you get past all the crap. But that mother of his…” Etta shook her head as Mia wondered what “number,” exactly, Etta meant. “Talk about a piece of work. Thank God you’re here, is all I have to say. For the baby’s sake, I mean. If Dragon Lady had her way…ohmigod, can you imagine the amount of therapy the poor kid would need down the road?”

“Etta! That’s terrible. And anyway, I’m only here until after the funeral. Which you know. Besides, Grant said he’s already taken Haley to see somebody, right?”

After a hmmph meant to sum up her entire opinion on modern psychology, Etta said, “So. There’s already two blankets on the bed, but if you need more, they’re in the chest there at the foot of the bed, along with more pillows…. What’re you lookin’ at?”

The panorama outside the window had drawn Mia like a fashionista to a sample sale. “Everything,” she said on a sigh, sinking onto the window seat. Although she knew there were other houses close enough to see from here, a miniforest of autumn-tinged trees obliterated all semblance of civilization. In the distance, the sun glanced off a sliver of the Long Island Sound, like a diamond tennis bracelet nestled amongst the foliage. “It really is spectacular, isn’t it?”

Etta crossed the thick-piled white carpet—with the room’s pale, lemon-yellow walls, it was like being inside a meringue pie—to join her at the window. “It is that. And thank God Mr. B. didn’t tear the house down and replace it with one of those McMonsters like a lot of them have. Who the hell needs a forty-thousand-square-foot house?”

It was true. So many of the older houses in the area, erected at the turn of the century as testaments to their owner’s position and wealth, had been replaced in the past decade or so by dozens of insanely overpriced, oversized mansions as testaments to their owner’s overblown egos. Bowling alleys, home theaters larger than your average Manhattan art house, heliports, thirty-car garages… Amazing, how Grant managed with only seven bedrooms and eight baths, the formal dining room that easily sat twenty, the pool and the tennis court and the six-car garage. Still, the place—with its slump rock exterior and traditional floor plan—exuded an aura of settledness that somehow precluded pretension.

It was, quite simply, a lovely house. The kind of house that engendered fond childhood memories, that called scattered siblings back year after year for Christmas and Thanksgiving and wedding anniversaries….

Frowning, she angled her head to get a better look at the pool, now covered, and guesthouse. “He fixed it up?” she asked Etta.

“The guesthouse? Yeah, about two years ago. Before the divorce. You should see it inside, it’s really something. All new kitchen and bath, the works. Listen, I made chowder for lunch, is that okay? Or I can put deli stuff out for sandwiches…?”

Mia turned to her, smiling. “Chowder’s fine.” Then she frowned. “Is Haley eating?”

Etta shrugged. “Not really. But then, she never really ate before, as far as I could tell. How the kid is still alive, I have no idea.” She started toward the door, then twisted back, as if weighing whether or not to say whatever she was thinking. When she finally said, “Lunch is at twelve-thirty,” Mia doubted that was it.

Well. Her clothes put away, her laptop set up on a small desk near the window, she might as well make herself useful and go look for Haley. Who she found—along with her father—out in the park that passed for a backyard. Haley and Henry shared a low-slung swing on a shiny new set, under the watchful eye of her father, seated on the flagstone patio in a white, cast-iron chair, his ankle crossed at the knee. At Mia’s “Hey, there,” he looked up, his frown—permanent, from what she could tell—easing somewhat.

“All settled in?” he asked, his attention drifting back to his daughter.

“Yeah.” Her hands in the pockets of her down vest, Mia lowered herself into a matching chair a few feet away. “Your mother left?”

“Yes, thank God.” He spared her a glance. “I don’t think she quite knows what to make of you.”

“I seem to have that effect on people.” When he didn’t reply, she said, “You know, since I’m here now, if you need to get back to work…?”

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes never leaving his daughter. “But I’m fine.”

Mia followed his gaze. “How’s she been?”

Grant’s shoulders hitched in a semblance of a shrug. “Quiet. Keeping to herself. Except for asking us where Justine is every five seconds. Which the doctor said to expect.” He leaned forward, his hands between his knees. “I went online, did some reading up.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Late last night, after I got back. From the anniversary party?” He nodded, a slight breeze ruffling his hair. Either he hadn’t shaved this morning or he had a seriously overachieving five-o’clock shadow.

“I suppose it’s at least somewhat reassuring,” he said, “to know her reaction is normal.”

“Yeah,” Mia breathed out. “Kinda hard to react to something you don’t understand.” She sank back into the chair, her hands still in her pockets. The breeze picked up, rustling the leaves, sending a few hang gliding onto the grass. “Um…not that I’m trying to horn in or anything, but if you need help with the arrangements…?” When the frown deepened, she said, “It’s what I do, remember?”

“Help?”

“No. Well, that, too. But I meant pulling food and whatnot together for two hundred out of a hat. It’s why God created delis that make up platters of artfully arranged cold cuts.”

“I take it you don’t generally do funeral receptions, though.”

“I have. They can be parties, too, depending on the deceased.”

“Not in this case.”

“No. Not in this case.”

His eyes drifted back to Haley. “I’ll pay you for your time.”