“Gavin, can you take the boys into the other room, please?” his mother asked.
He sighed. “I want to go outside and help Dad. I want to see if the ice turns to snow.”
“I’d rather you entertained the boys while I finish getting dinner on the table. If it does snow, it’ll still be there after dinner.” His mother stopped and turned to the set of twins currently chasing each other around the kitchen table, knocking into it and jarring the ingredients his mother was trying to lay out for his favorite Christmas cookies. “Boys! Enough. If you don’t stop, then Santa won’t come tonight and I can just stop baking right now rather than leaving out a snack for him. You’ll scare him away with all this noise.”
Grant and Garrett stopped in their tracks. At five years old, nothing put fear into a kid more than Santa not showing up.
At twelve, Gavin could care less. He stopped falling for that threat years ago. Now he’d rather be outside with his father throwing salt during the ice storm they were getting. Maybe with any luck it’d actually snow, though the chances of snow in Charlotte weren’t always that great. Still, he’d been waiting to have a snowball fight for his whole life.
“Santa has to come,” Garrett said, grabbing Grant’s hand and pulling him out.
“Go get them,” his mother said to Gavin, adding the smile that always melted his tough outer preteen shell even as he tried to deny it. “Just make sure they don’t knock the tree down wrestling.” He went to open his mouth and argue, but his mother had lifted her eyebrow in a knowing look that told him any argument would fall on deaf ears. “They look up to you like you do to your father. Think of it that way.”
He wanted to dispute it, but couldn’t. She knew him well enough. “All right.”
Twenty minutes went by with Gavin playing referee to his younger brothers rolling around on the ground trying to pin the other down. It was kind of amusing.
“Who’s winning, Gavin?” his father asked when he walked in the front door shaking water and ice from his head and broad shoulders. So much for the wish of snow by the looks of it. Stupid rain and ice again. That was all they ever seemed to get.
“Garrett has Grant by one round,” Gavin said.
The twins didn’t even stop to notice their father standing there, as both were too busy trying to pin the other to the carpet. His father ran his fingers through his hair, sending water cascading around the room, grinned and said, “I’m going to go help Mom in the kitchen. I’m starving.”
Helping Mom in the kitchen normally meant “stay out while your mom and I steal a few kisses.” Not that his parents ever said those words to him, but he’d walked in and interrupted them enough in his life. No kid wanted to see their parents kissing.
An hour later, the twins had gotten tired of wrestling and were now upstairs banging around doing something else loud and annoying, but at least they were out of his hair and not his responsibility.
Instead, he and his father were sitting on the couch watching football because it was Sunday and football was always the most important thing on Sundays.
“Dinner is ready,” his mother said, walking into the living room, leaning down and kissing his father on the forehead, then turning toward him. She was going to kiss him too if he didn’t skate out of there fast.
Jumping up, he said, “I’ll get the boys.” Which meant yelling for them at the bottom of the stairs. “Dinnertime,” he shouted. The noises stopped over his head and then four feet could be heard running as they jostled each other out of the way to get to the table first.
They were halfway through the roast beef his mother had slaved over for the past two hours when the phone rang. Mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans. All his father’s favorites. Gavin’s too, because he was just like his father. Everyone said so. And Gavin could only hope he’d reach his father’s big six-foot-four-inch build someday.
His father got up and grabbed the phone before his mother could get it, and dread was filling Gavin’s stomach instead of the food.
“Okay, I’m on the way,” his father said.
“Do you have to?” Gavin asked. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
His father walked over and ruffled the hair on his head. “Sorry, bud, you know how it is. Big fire and they’re calling everyone in right now.”
Gavin knew how it went, but he hated when his father was working. “I know. I’ll watch over Mom,” he said before his father could tell him.
His father leaned down and gave Garrett and Grant a hug and kiss on the head like he always did before he went to work. Then he slapped Gavin five because twelve was too old to be hugged and kissed by his father. “Go to bed early for your mother. Maybe I’ll meet Santa leaving the house when I get home later. See you all in the morning.”
Only it was the last time they ever saw their father alive again.