Page 11 of Playing Santa

“Of course your mother’s right. But there’s more to your beauty than meets the eye. That will never disappear.” Her head is tucked under my chin, so I don’t see her, but I feel her sigh. Then I let her go, reluctantly.

“You don’t know me.” She says, looking up at me, her face a mask, her blue eyes shuttered.

“I know enough. Besides, I’m planning to learn more.” Everything there is.

“So you’re an Army brat. That explains why you’re so gregarious and easy going. You’re experienced at meeting new people all the time,” she says and I don’t miss the wistful note.

“Tell me more about you. How you grew up,” I say

Her face goes into panic and then she shakes her head and scoffs. “You don’t realize how loaded a question that is.”

“Now I’m dying to get the answer.” I nudge her chin back in my direction so I can see her riveting eyes. The way she looks at me, I could get lost. Her eyes tell me more than her words. There’s tragedy underneath. But then I knew that. She lost her parents and she’s a single mother struggling to make ends meet.

“Please tell me. It can’t all be bad. I really want to get to know you. The story behind the beautiful animal-loving, hard-working single mom. You’re very intriguing to me.”

“Then I hate to disappoint you, because I’m more typical than interesting. I lost my parents at fourteen, got pregnant at sixteen, dropped out of school, lived at a rooming house with Jimmy and worked at a food kitchen, then graduated to a one-bedroom apartment and the job at the animal shelter.”

Ouch. I squelch the automatic flinch at her harsh words. Her harsher life. It’s a lot to digest and I take a few beats, a few puffs of cold air, to let her words settle into an understanding of her horrible reality. The aloneness strikes me.

“How did you get the animal shelter job?” I decide to skip over the tragedy of her life and focus on how she got herself from there to here because I think she needs to realize how amazing she is for doing it. I find myself admiring her more and more with everything I learn. Plus, I don’t think I can take hearing the details of her tragedy. It just might break my heart. And the last thing she wants or needs is my sympathy.

She smiles and the edge of sadness leave her eyes. “Good story. I was out for a walk with Jimmy, he was two years old at the time, and we found a scrawny stray kitten. The animal shelter wasn’t far, so with Jimmy on my shoulders and the kitten in my arms, we walked there. Annamarie was running the place then same as now. The minute I walked in I was captivated by all the animals, and by Annamarie. I loved the place and she showed us around, while I gushed at how wonderful it must be to work there.”

“So Garino offered you a job on the spot?”

“Yes,” she says on a laugh. “I don’t even think she had an opening, but somehow she squeezed me in and suggested I bring Jimmy with me. I was in heaven and so was Jimmy. He was only two then. We still lived at the rooming house. I worked both jobs—at the food kitchen and the animal shelter on my off shifts, but the animal shelter job paid better and…” She shrugs.

“It had a better clientele?”

“A little bit. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciated my job in the food kitchen. I worked there in the evenings seven days a week and it provided most of my food and paid for Jimmy and our room. I could walk there from the rooming house and knew the people who worked and volunteered there. They had a policy of hiring people who ate there—as long as they weren’t on drugs.”

With her eyes intense with expectation and her chin high, she waits for me to respond. My heart thuds unnaturally, torn between wrenching sorrow and blind admiration. This girl. She’s so powerfully strong and decent and she doesn’t even get it.

“I recognized there was something about you that I admired besides your pretty face,” I say, keeping it light in spite of my fingers curling into a fist with the need to hug her close again, to make everything right for her, to ease her burdens.

She blushes and purses her lips. “Survival instincts. I did the same thing everyone else would do in the same circumstances.”

“Except take drugs,” I say. And give your child up. But I’m not about to mention that.

“What about Jimmy’s father?” I ask, my words soft. I need the explanation from her for selfish reasons even though Garino already assured me he was gone. She doesn’t owe me any explanation. Far from it. I’m being a pushy bastard and I hope she doesn’t blow me off.

“What about him?” She raises an eyebrow in challenge.

“And the sass comes out.” I laugh.

“Sorry if I’m defensive, but it’s personal, you know. And you’re a stranger.”

“We’re working on that, aren’t we?”

“Fair enough.” She blows out a breath and turns away, but she talks.

“If I’m going to tell you about Jimmy’s dad, I’m going to have to tell you the whole sad story. Get out your hanky.” She sneaks a look at me and I see the bravery blazing from those vivid eyes. I settle closer to her, holding her with one arm because it’s getting chilly.

Jimmy’s still running around with Dasher, his cheeks pink with energy induced warmth.

“Give it to me.” I steel myself.

“I started out life as Veronica Lynch, cherished child with a rosy future getting all the way to eighth grade before things got derailed. On my fourteenth birthday my parents got killed in a car crash on their way home. I had a cake waiting. My mother and I used to bake cakes.” She glances at me and I smile, smitten with her bravery.