Chapter 63: Christmas Eve

December moved the way Decembers moved.

With the particular accelerating quality of time that knew it was running toward something and had stopped pretending otherwise. Each day slightly fuller than the one before. Each evening slightly warmer with the accumulated weight of a season that demanded presence whether you were ready for it or not.

The cover was confirmed on Monday.

Diana called at nine. The publication had locked February. Rosa Santos and Mia Santos. Interior honesty across thirty years. The journalist had spent four days with the material and called Diana on the fifth day and said this is the most important story I have written in twenty years.

I sat with that after Diana hung up.

Twenty years.

Rosa Santos had been painting for longer than that.

The seeing always arrived eventually.

Catherine came Wednesday with a thin folder and set it on the kitchen table with the quiet efficiency of someone delivering a final report.

“It is done,” she said.

The formal phase of the investigation. Everything submitted. Gregory’s cooperation. Daniel’s documentation. Elise Moreau’s journalism. Marcus’s European contacts. All of it in the formal record now and moving through the legal process that would take considerably longer but no longer required their active involvement.

“Halliwell,” I said.

“Cooperating fully,” she said. “Margaret called me yesterday.” She paused. “She said thank you.”

I sat with that.

A woman who had been watching her husband operate for thirty years finally doing something about it and then saying thank you to the people who had made doing something possible.

“How is she,” I said.

“Quieter,” Catherine said. “She said she feels quieter than she has in thirty years.”

We had lunch together at the kitchen table and talked about Paris and the exhibition and Rosa Santos’s twenty three paintings waiting in my father’s apartment. Before she left I gave her the West Village key and she took it the way Eleanor had given me Rosa’s key.

Like something worth the receiving.

Saturday brought Eleanor and Marcus and a dinner that started at seven and did not end until eleven. Noah fell asleep on the couch at nine with Gerald and the Triceratops Marcus had given him held against his chest. Marcus and Eleanor sat at the kitchen table afterward talking in the way they had been learning to talk. Not careful managed conversation. The ordinary conversation of a mother and son remembering how to be those things to each other.

Damien stood beside me at the window watching them.

“Every day,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” I said.

Christmas Eve arrived quietly and with intention.

Noah woke at six with the alert energy of someone for whom this morning had been the subject of considerable anticipation.

He appeared in the doorway.

“It is Christmas Eve,” he announced.

“Yes,” Damien said.

“Gerald knows,” Noah said.

“How does Gerald know,” Damien said.

Noah looked at the rabbit with the patient expression of someone explaining something obvious.

“He can feel it,” Noah said.

We made pancakes.

All three of us in the kitchen with the December morning pale and cold outside and the tree in the living room doing its large cheerful presence thing and the city below moving with the energy of a day that understood it was something specific.

Eleanor arrived at eleven with flowers from a market near the brownstone. The cheerful stubborn kind she had apparently decided were her signature regardless of season.

Marcus arrived at noon with wine and a gift for Noah that Noah unwrapped immediately despite it being Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day because Noah’s position on deferred gratification was consistent and well established.

It was a book about dinosaurs.

Illustrated. Comprehensive. The kind that took the subject seriously.

Noah looked at it for a long moment.

Then he looked at Marcus with those serious dark eyes.

“This is the best book,” he said.

Marcus looked at his nephew.

“I thought you might think so,” he said.

Noah climbed onto the couch beside Marcus and began reading aloud which was generous since Marcus had given him the book and entirely in character for someone who considered the sharing of important information a public service.

Marcus listened with complete attention.

The afternoon moved warmly through its hours.

At four Eleanor and Marcus left to prepare Christmas Day dinner and the apartment settled into its late afternoon quiet. Noah was in his room with the book and Gerald and the Triceratops conducting what sounded like a comprehensive cross referencing exercise.

Damien and I sat on the couch.

The tree in the corner.

The city outside going dark in the early December evening.

He took my hand.

We sat quietly for a moment.

“Tell me something,” I said softly.

He looked at me.

“I have been thinking about next year,” he said carefully.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Paris in January,” he said. “The exhibition in March. The baby in April.” He paused. “The wedding.”

I looked at him.

“We have not discussed the wedding,” I said.

“I am discussing it now,” he said.

I looked at the ring on my finger.

“What are you thinking,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said something so specific and so entirely him that I felt it move through me like north facing light.

“Eleanor’s garden,” he said quietly. “In spring. When the window boxes are full again.” He paused. “Small. Just the people who matter.” He looked at me steadily. “You in something you chose yourself. Noah in the suit he wore to the school performance. Gerald in his most dignified lean.”

I looked at him.

“Gerald is a rabbit,” I said softly.

“He is family,” Damien said simply.

I looked at this man.

This completely specific entirely real man who had come to a rainy street and chosen to stay every day since in all the small particular ways that choosing happened.

Pancakes. North facing windows. A hand over mine in the dark.

Every day.

Chosen.

“Yes,” I said. “Eleanor’s garden. In spring.”

He raised my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles.

Warm and unhurried and entirely devastating in its simplicity.

The way he always was.

“Mia Santos,” he said quietly against my hand.

“Damien Cole,” I said back.

He looked at me over my hand with those dark warm eyes.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what,” I said.

“For getting in the car,” he said.

I smiled.

He pulled me toward him and I went completely and his arms came around me and I pressed my face into his neck and felt his heartbeat beneath my cheek steady and certain and entirely there.

His lips at my hair.

The tree in the corner.

The city outside burning with its particular Christmas Eve warmth.

The apartment quiet and ours.

And in April a girl was coming.

With Rosa Santos’s hands whether she knew it or not.

And in spring Eleanor’s garden was going to be full again.

Window boxes and all.

The light comes through.

It was coming through now.

Completely.