Page 87 of A Winter Wish

Lexie took a deep breath. “Ange? I’m sorry for leaving.”

Ange shook her head. “We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect, remember? It’s whether we learn from the mistakes that’s the important thing. And whatever happens to the company, Lexie—I’m glad to have had you in my life. You might not have realized it, but you brought light this year, when I think we would have floundered without it. I think Richard knew that,” she added quietly, while Lexie fought the lump that was rising up her throat.

Theo returned with a beer but didn’t look down at Lexie as he sat between her and Harry—and Lexie couldn’t work out if that was deliberate or not. An itchy feeling started up under her skin. If he wouldn’t even look at her, what were the chances a conversation with him was going to go well?

“Now that we’re all here,” Ange said, projecting her voice, and everyone turned toward her. Apparently Mike wasn’t coming, Lexie noted. Had he left the company for good, then?

Ange smiled, her pale green eyes holding just a tinge of sadness. “To Richard,” she said. Everyone raised their glasses and drank. For a moment, there was quiet around the table, and the chatter and music in the pub came in to fill the space. Lexie suspected that they were all thinking of Richard in that moment—of whatever he meant to each of them. She thought of the letter, which she was still carrying around with her in her bag. She thought of him teaching her to ski, and of being on his shoulders at the fireworks. She thought of the last time she’d seen him, when he’d tried to apologize. She remembered him leaving, too, of course she did. Remembered him bending to give her a hug. I’m sorry, Little Lex. But I’ll see you really soon, OK? This doesn’t mean I love you any less, I promise. And I promise that I’ll still take you to Iceland, one day.

Lexie took a steadying breath. She was who she was because of her dad, wasn’t she? For better or worse. Him leaving had made her into the person she was today—and she had to be OK with that. And do you know what? She was OK with that. Like her dad said, you couldn’t do anything to change the past. But she liked who she was today. OK, she wasn’t perfect. But she’d had a life full of adventure, and she was sitting in a pub full of people she cared about—people she wouldn’t have known, if it wasn’t for him.

“I remember when I first met Richard,” Lexie’s mum said softly, and everyone’s attention went to her. “It was in a queue, believe it or not, to the concession stand at the cinema. I was in front of him, and I could sense him behind me the whole time. It made me nervous, and it meant that I dropped the popcorn after I paid, and it went everywhere.” Her mouth quirked into a small smile. “He helped me pick up every piece of popcorn, chatting away, then bought me a new bag. And when I went back into the film, I just knew—that man was going to change my life.”

Lexie looked at her mum. She hadn’t heard that story before. Maybe she’d asked how they’d met, when she was little, but if she had she didn’t remember it—and after Richard had left it had felt too cruel to ask.

“I remember when he took us to Wales camping,” Fran said. “Do you remember, Lex? We were, what? Fourteen?”

“Fifteen,” Lexie murmured.

“Right. And we were so excited because we’d decided it was like going abroad—because Wales is technically a different country—and then it rained the whole time. But your dad found this indoor arcade place, and left us there with a ton of change, and we thought we were so grown-up, because it was practically like being on holiday abroad on our own.”

Lexie smiled, remembering too. Fran had thought Richard was the height of cool after that, especially when he’d taken them to the pub afterward and let them both try his beer. And that was back when Lexie had still been desperate to show him off, to make her friends see the parts of her dad that she loved.

Rachel gave a watery little chuckle, and Lexie saw Lana squeeze her hand. “I love that. I remember when I broke my arm,” she continued, her voice hitching. “I was fourteen, and Dad was going out and wanted to take me with him, and Mum wouldn’t let him and there was this whole big argument going on. And I was so annoyed that they wouldn’t just let me decide for myself. So I took my bike from the shed. Some idiot came around the corner too fast. It was a red car, I still remember that. Anyway, they didn’t hit me or anything, but I had to swerve out the way and I hit the curb and fell. And I guess I fell a bit wrong—because it was so painful.” Rachel lifted her right hand to run across her left arm, as if remembering. “Dad was the one to find me,” she carried on. “They realized I wasn’t there, I guess, and came looking. Mum was so angry.” Rachel twirled her glass on the pub table, leaving watery marks behind. “But Dad, he was super calm. And he distracted me from how much it hurt during the car journey on the way to hospital.”

Rachel glanced up at Lexie from under her eyelashes. “It was your birthday,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper, so that Lexie had to strain to hear her. “He was supposed to be going to your twenty-first, I think—he and Mum had been arguing about it. But he stayed with me instead.”

An apology, Lexie realized—Rachel was offering Lexie an apology, for getting more of Richard than Lexie ever had. So, that was the reason her dad had missed her party. A reason he’d probably tried to explain, only she’d kept refusing to talk to him. It didn’t make it OK, all the times he’d not been there before then. But it helped.

Lexie worked up a smile for her sister. “I’m glad he was there for you. Sounds like you needed him more right then.” And Rachel had, hadn’t she? Lexie couldn’t claim to know Jody very well, but she had enough of an impression to guess that Jody hadn’t been the mother that Lexie’s own mother had been—so maybe Rachel had needed a dad more than Lexie had.

When Theo finally spoke, Lexie felt relief course through her, at the fact that she finally had an excuse to look at him.

“I remember my interview with him, before he offered me the job. I thought I was fuck—ahh—” Theo glanced at Ange, then at Lexie’s mum, and cleared his throat. “Messing up so badly. He’d asked where I wanted to be in five years, and I’d just shrugged or something. And he’d given me this look, like he could see through me.” Theo shook his head. “It’s weird. That was just over five years ago.”

And look where I am now, was the unfinished sentiment there. For the briefest moment, Theo caught Lexie’s gaze. Something shimmered in the air between them, before he looked away again.

They continued like that for a while—telling stories about Richard. There was something cathartic for Lexie in the remembering—in realizing that he’d been a whole person, good and bad. It didn’t make things hurt less. But it did smooth some of the ragged edges.

Lexie couldn’t help but notice that her mum was texting someone throughout the evening. Every now and then she’d get her phone out and smile. When Lexie moved to sit next to her, she called her out on it. “Who is that you keep talking to?”

To Lexie’s slight surprise, her mum blushed. “It’s my, er…” She gave Lexie a somewhat shifty look—one that was a little funny, coming from mother to daughter. “It’s the man I’ve been seeing, actually.”

Across the table Theo’s gaze snapped to Lexie’s, and his mouth twitched into a smile.

She let out a breath of laughter. OK, fine, he’d been right.

“Good for you,” Lexie said, as her mum blushed still further. “I hope I get to meet him someday soon.”

“Oh,” her mum said, looking a bit flustered and patting her hair down. “Well, yes. He’d like that, I’m sure.”

So maybe Lexie didn’t have to feel quite so guilty that she wasn’t around all that much. But still. “Mum? There’s somewhere I’ve got to go, this Christmas. But next year, I want to spend it with you again, if you’ll have me.”

Her mum beamed. “I’d love to have you. We’ll do the whole lot—I can get stuff in for a proper roast dinner and I’m sure we can do the blinis better than last year…”

“Maybe you can invite your mystery man.” She waggled her eyebrows for comic effect, and her mum waved her away.

Lexie glanced down to the end of the table, to where Rachel was bent toward Lana, her curls falling around her face. She bit her lip as she looked back at her mum. “And I thought…I thought maybe we could invite Rachel. If you’re OK with it. Obviously it’s completely fine if not. I just thought—”