Tack’s father was stunned and silenced by Allison and Daniel.
I can do restaurant wishes, he thought. Little steps, little stages, then it’s over, nicely shaped like a calendar or a tree. But a child? A child they have not even seen? A child to whom God knows what has happened in her eight years?
Yes, he thought. God knows. And God knows that for Daniel and for Allison none of that matters.
He looked at his son and saw that Tack was envious: Daniel and Allison got to do the right thing. His son wanted to be the hero. Well, I’ve done something right, thought Tack’s father. My child has a heart big enough.
He listened to Allison, and studied her face, and he, too, believed: she would be a good mother to this eight-year-old who wanted a family.
But behind her, he could see the invisible roll call of social workers and forms and permissions and interviews, of administrators and foster systems and paperwork. You didn’t just show up at the door and claim a kid. Twentieth-century America could not work that way. So there was no guarantee here. Allison and Daniel, in love with having this child, in love with taking Katie home and giving her a family for Christmas … might not.
But there was hope.
“How can we help?” Tack said anxiously to his father.
His father nodded. “There are two things we can do,” he said. He asked the Rowens if he could call the social worker assigned to Katie. “Not to get anybody in trouble,” he assured them. “But to start the paperwork. Katie wanted a family for Christmas, and that’s now; that’s in a few hours.”
The social worker on duty at the emergency room snorted, “You must believe in Santa Claus. Getting it done by morning is impossible. It would be impossible to get it done in six months!”
Matt agreed. He knew the speed of paperwork.
Tack’s father just smiled at the social worker, smiled at his son, put an arm around Matt. “There is no Santa,” he agreed, “but there are good neighbors.”
He made the phone call to Pollard. He coaxed Pollard to leave his warm home—on Christmas!—at one in the morning!—when it was snowing and ten degrees out.
Matt looked around the waiting room. The stranger who had picked up Liz and Katie was gone. Matt had never said thank you to him. Matt did not even know his name.
People do want to help, he thought. He was stunned by the size of this Christmas present he had never asked for but that had been given to him anyway.
He watched Allison and Daniel, imagining them as parents, and he was satisfied that they would not be like Liz’s dad and mom; they would be like—
—like the Knights. Katie would have a family like Tack’s.
If Pollard let it happen … If the rules let Pollard let it happen …
“Dad?” said Tack. “What was the second thing? You said there were two things we could do.”
Mr. Knight nodded. He walked the two boys out of the hospital, away from the doors, away from the waiting wheelchairs, away from the lights and fences. They went down the sidewalk, away from the buildings and the cars. They walked to the corner, where the wind gathered the snow and hurled it, and the sky was invisible past the city lights and the falling snow.
Mr. Knight said, “God. This is the inn. There’s room. Let Katie stay.”