Tinsley
Work has been busy which is both a blessing and a curse. I’m a mobile dog groomer. Meaning, I have this decked out, specially equipped van that I drive to my clients’ homes and groom their dog from. It’s a dirty job at times, but so rewarding to get to know each pet’s personality.
I love what I do.
Right now, though, I feel like Lindsey and Keegan need me more than they are able to get me. Part of that is because my sister is also my secretary, appointment tracker, bookkeeper, office manager, and whatever other title you want to give her. With her needing to grieve Kyle and take care of Keegan, I’ve taken on more of her work. It’s always been a juggling act to run a business that is so hands on, but right now it’s like balancing plates and one is destined to fall.
Today is a day off for us both. It’s also Christmas Eve.
Lindsey did decorate the house, trying to keep things semi-normal, and together, the three of us put up the tree. Every ornament seemed to bring up another memory with Kyle. Then we found the box of ornaments from our parents. Going through them all and seeing some of the ornaments they kept left us both in tears from the walk down memory lane.
Our mother was sentimental. She had the gingerbread ornaments Lindsey and I made in grade school. I remember she used to take out the box every year and make a vanilla extract, cinnamon, and nutmeg mixture, adding a drop to each of the ornaments to rejuvenate the smells they had when we first made them. She also had glass ornaments with our handprints on them every year until we were too big to make them.
Mom’s best friend, Miss Marie loved to craft. She didn’t have kids of her own so she would always help mom come up with a new craft for us all to do together. She was like an aunt. Miss Marie was an avid reader. Marie gave me my first romance novel and it has been my escape ever since. Lindsey reads too, but Marie and I would spend hours making scrapbook pages together about our favorite books. Lindsey liked to read, but the crafts weren’t her thing. We still read every day, typically the same book so we can talk about it, but I miss crafts with Marie. After Marie’s husband passed away, she moved to her sister’s in Florida to get away from the snow. She can’t travel anymore so we don’t see her, but I do regularly mail her books.
Stepping inside my sister’s house, the smell of cinnamon hits me just as I hang up my coat and take off my shoes.
“Linds,” I call out.
“In the kitchen,” she replies while Keegan rushes to greet me.
When you walk in my sister’s house she has a small narrow entry way that has a door to her office – our business affairs office – to the left and then leads down about eight feet to the opening to her living room. Off the living room to the left is her kitchen where I move to and find her with a stock pot on the stove.
“Hey good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’?” I ask as I slide onto the stool across her island.
She looks at me in her Mrs. Claus apron popping her hip out a little as she stops stirring. “Apples for four apple pies, Mom’s recipe.”
Her eyes meet mine and they are puffy from tears she obviously has shed today.
“Why four?” I ask wondering what is really going on other than celebrating a holiday without our loved ones. “It’s just us, I love apple pie, but my hips don’t need four of them.”
“The men in Kyle’s unit pulled Keegan’s Christmas list from the mailbox at Toys for Tots day. Together they all pooled their money together to get Keegan some presents. I got an email two days after we met Ryan, Kyle’s friend and superior, and the other man at the store. Remember, it’s the email I told you about.”
“Yes, you told me what they bought so we didn’t spend money we didn’t have to. Why the four apple pies? I thought when the life insurance money was settled you were going to do something for their unit in memory of Kyle and the others who died alongside him. I know money isn’t free flowing right now, but the money will come. I am still paying you. I told you not to worry about Keegan and Christmas.” I ramble on knowing Lindsey and I made sure he got everything on the list that was left after the unit’s gifts.
Things aren’t easy on my sister, but I have made sure her bills are paid and food on the table. Kyle had survivors’ benefits so she will have some money from that as well as the insurance.
“Did the gifts from them not arrive?” I ask panicking a bit. “I’m sure I can go out after dinner and get some more things, but I can’t promise everything on the list, Linds.” I sigh fearing the let down my nephew will have. After losing so much this year, I wanted him to have everything he could put on the list. Materials may not take away the loss of our loved ones, but maybe for a few seconds they can help my nephew forget.
“Gunny Causely - Ryan, will be here tonight after I text him that Keegan is in bed to put the gifts under our tree.” The tears fall down her beautiful face. “He is personally delivering them.”
“Don’t cry Linds.”
“These people have gone out of their way for us. I can’t do much right this minute, but I can bake.”
I feel my own emotions well up and threaten to fall just as hard as her tears.
She turns off the pot and turns to the pie pans beside her. “There is more. Tinsley, Gunny Causely, as you know him, is part of a motorcycle club, Guardians of the Fallen. He said they will be hosting a run in honor of Kyle here in Vermont next year. They are setting up something called a poker run in honor of each lost member of their unit to the crash. The money raised will go to a college fund for the kids. Keegan’s gonna have a college fund.” She sobs. “I don’t know what else to do but send home food. I can bake. So I’ll give them my best pie to give a little part of our family back to them.”
And it happens, the tears fall over. My stomach tightens and my chest feels heavy. These people only worked with Kyle. They were all too far away because of Lindsey’s decision to stay here to help me with my business and be around for our aging parents.
Keegan comes in the kitchen just as I manage to stop crying and Lindsey gets the last of the four pies in the oven. He wraps his small arms around my waist and gives me a side hug.
“Aunt Tins, I missed you today!”
“Oh buddy, Aunt Tinsley loves you so very much and I am so happy to be home tonight with you and your momma.”
He looks up at me and then over to Lindsey. “Why are you guys cryin’?”
“Just missin’ your daddy,” I tell him.
“Aunt Tins, do you think there is Christmas in Heaven? Will my daddy be able to celebrate where he is?”
The world stops. The innocence in his question halts thoughts of anything and everything.
Lindsey drops the pot holder in her hand and loses it. She crumbles to the floor against the cabinets. Keegan releases me and rushes to his mom, while I slide off the stool and follow him over to her, both of us joining her on the floor.
“Mom, don’t cry. It’s okay if Daddy can’t have Christmas. He’s a Marine, so he’ll be okay.” Keegan tries to comfort Lindsey. “Once a Marine, always a Marine. You know, Mom. Even in Heaven, he’s still a Marine. He will be okay.”
Lindsey fights for composure while I drape an arm over her shoulder and pull my nephew to sit on my lap.
“Keegan,” I begin. “Your Daddy was the strongest man I ever knew. I’m sure he’s having Christmas with Pop-pop and Nana.”
Keegan takes his attention from his mom to look at me. He whispers seriously worried for his father. “Aunt Tins, what will they do? I mean angels don’t eat, they don’t have presents. What will my Daddy do? How do they have Christmas?”
I feel my cheeks heat with the warmth of my own tears falling. “Well,” I say finding my voice cracking. “You know your Daddy loved you very much. He was also always everyone’s protector. So I imagine, your Daddy is in Heaven watching over us. He’s celebrating the love we all have for each other and for him.”
“Do you think he’s okay, Aunt Tins?”
I feel myself ready to break. My sister gasps fighting her emotions are she shakes in my arm. Rather than speak, I pull Keegan to me and hold him close kissing the top of his head. It takes me a few seconds to get myself under control.
“I think your Daddy is more than okay, Keegan. You know what they say buddy, love it knows no distance. As much love as we have for your daddy and your daddy has for you well it’s like he’s right here with us because we can still feel that ya know?”
Keegan nods his head against me. “I really miss him,” he whispers. “I wish he could be here with us.”
“So do I, buddy. So do I.” I reply holding my sister and nephew close wishing they weren’t hurting like they are right now.
Thoughts of Kyle’s unit coming are gone as we sit together on the floor of my sister’s kitchen crying and wishing things were different. When we’re all cried out, Keegan is the first to get up, then me, and together we help Lindsey get to her feet and finish the pies.
Quietly we eat a small dinner together each of us caught up in our own emotions. We change into pajamas before Lindsey lays down with Keegan for bed. I told her to stay with him and I would handle getting presents out. Since Keegan was born, I’ve always spent Christmas Eve at my sister’s house to help her with presents and to be here to take pictures and have the experience with Keegan as he wakes up to find all his gifts.
There will be a time all too soon where Keegan won’t believe in the magic of Christmas and the man in the red suit bringing presents and wishes for a good year ahead. Until then, I will get the gifts out and let my sister have a night holding her son close and not carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
I get the stockings filled, including my sisters with a special gift from me to her. Time passes and I find myself dozing on the couch. There is a knock at the door a little later. Looking at the clock it scares me to see it’s after ten. It takes a few seconds for me to realize Lindsey’s phone is plugged into the charger in the kitchen and she was expecting Gunny Causely.
Rushing to the door, I open it to find the man from the dress blues to be standing in front of me with a giant red sack tossed over his shoulder.
He’s tall, his hair is super short on the sides and barely spikes in the front. It’s dark like his eyes. He is wearing a black hoodie with USMC in red letters across the chest and jeans with black boots. I step back letting him enter.
“Sorry to come so late, when Mrs. Miller didn’t reply, I didn’t want to wake anyone but I didn’t want to leave a sack on the front door for anyone to come by and take.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “They are out cold. My sister isn’t a light sleeper, that was always Kyle.”
He laughs and butterflies flutter in my stomach. “Miller said you were funny. He said you were pretty, but he didn’t get close to explaining your sheer beauty.”
I have never been good at taking compliments so I do what I do best – make jokes. It’s my turn to laugh. “Better watch out Marine, you keep complimenting me and Keegan won’t see Mommy kissin’ Santa Claus but rather Aunt Tins.”
“Gorgeous, funny, loyal, hardworking, damn,” he mutters more to himself than to me. “Miller, you really were on point.”
“Huh?” I ask as I close the door behind him after he steps down the entryway.
“Miller, he wanted to fix us up. Always askin’ me to come home with him on leave to meet his spunky sister-in-law.”
Locking the door behind him, I don’t know what to say. When I turn around to move down the small hallway in the entrance, I stop looking up at him.
“Not trying to upset you, or make you nervous.” He tells me.
I don’t know what to say. He seems to read this in me. “You don’t upset me.” He does make me nervous but not for the reasons he thinks. I can’t tell him, I’m nervous because I would love nothing more than to press my lips to his.
“Tinsley, I heard a lot about you from Miller. The life I live as a Marine is hard. It’s lonely. Miller always said I needed to not be married to my career because I would find my time up and I would find it alone. Kyle wasn’t just one of my Marines. He was my friend. Meeting you, something inside me came alive that’s been dead for as long as I can remember. Miller, he asked me to look out for his family including you.”
“We were close, Kyle and I.” I explain as I feel so many emotions. “Kyle respected you, Gunny Causely. He also spoke of you and considered you a friend.” We unpack the gifts while continuing to talk.
“Means a lot you would say that. Thank you. My name is Ryan. I’m only Gunny if you got a high and tight hair cut, or as a female with long hair, pulled back in a bun, and some combat boots.”
“Well, Merry Christmas Eve, Ryan.” I smile and he smiles. The moment he does his face softens and lightens in a way that has my heart thumping wildly.
It feels like some crazy thing out of one of my romance novels because with all the things going on and the fact that this man is a perfect stranger, I find myself wanting to kiss him.
Looking up at the ceiling, I think about Kyle watching over us. Then I look back to his friend as he unpacks one wrapped gift after another.
I wish Kyle was here instead of these gifts. He died training to serve his country. He died for duty. Everything happens for a reason.
Kyle can’t make new memories with us, but he’ll never be forgotten.
I don’t know Ryan Causely, but he will never be forgotten by our family either. So while the stranger finishes I go to the kitchen and make him some coffee.
With a hot mug of coffee in one hand and cookies in the other, I come back to find him standing in front of the tree.
“Alright Santa, gotta have your snack.” I let out a small laugh as I hand him the cookies and coffee. “Make sure you eat them all, but one bite, and leave the crumbs please.”
Ryan Causely smiles at me a full out, show off those pearly whites, smile. He does as instructed before sitting on the couch.
There is this comfort in being around him I have never had before. “We can’t thank you enough,” I say sitting on the couch beside him.
“Tell me about you,” he asks and I feel the rumble of his voice deep in my belly.
“Not much to tell.”
“You love animals,” he begins. “You style their hair, Kyle said.”
I laugh. “He makes it sound so glamorous. Yes, I have a few clients where they want their dog’s hair colored and styled, but mostly I spend the day wearing water and flea soap.”
“What made you go into pet grooming?”
“Growing up, Lindsey and I had this neighbor. They had a Golden Retriever. Honestly, the neighbors weren’t friendly and I still don’t know what the dog’s real name was. Lindsey and I named it Mittens because from far away it looked like the dog were gloves.”
He studies me, giving his full attention to my every word.
“Well, Mittens didn’t have on dog gloves. She was left outside all the time. No bath and in a dirt patch, her paws were covered in black mud. Lindsey and I would sneak over while they were at work and pet Mittens. Her fur was always matted. Eventually, we would take turns with school kid scissors cutting out the tangled clumps. In the winter, we snuck a blanket into her dog house so she would have something to keep her a little warmer in the snow. Mittens kind of grew up with us. In the summers we would take buckets of water and mom’s dish soap to clean her. When Lindsey and I earned money, we would split the cost of a bottle of flea shampoo when we were old enough to understand the dog had a serious problem.”
“It’s nice to see someone who wants to make a difference in the world.”
His words are genuine and I don’t know how to take the praise. “I don’t think cleaning scruffy counts as making a difference in the world.”
Ryan leans forward cupping my chin in his hands to make me look at him. “Anyone who can see any living thing in need, make whatever sacrifice they can to better the situation is making a difference. Do not devalue what you do, Tinsley. Do not lesson the impact you have on everyone around you.”
I melt.
On Christmas Eve, in my sister’s living room, I fall for a man who ties up boots, straps on a weapon, and faces danger every day, but has a smile that gives life, warmth, and happiness in a pit of sorrow we have been living in.
Yes, I melt.