“Grumpy climbed to the top of the tree in the living room again!” Mom hollered. “Somebody get him down—my hands are full. Patrick? Thomas? James? Brian? For God’s sake, will one of you get him down before he shreds the angel?” She hurried into the dining room with a huge tray of cinnamon rolls and Moravian sugar cake fresh from the oven.
Christmas morning in the Halligan household is a boisterous affair in any given year. Add seven cats (named by Jenny after Snow White’s dwarfs—she’d been a huge Disney fan) to the equation, and “boisterous” morphs into “chaotic” quicker than a fledgling adaptor flits through auras.
Coincidentally, we had one of those, too, Santa having delivered Molly’s dearest wish. She was officially on the road to full-blown adaptorhood, and delighting in exhibiting her new talent to everyone. It had (naturally) been her idea to bring the three cats the Doyles were fostering—Dopey, Doc, and Sneezy—so they could visit with their friends. Happy, Sleepy, and Bashful were running around in blissful joy at being reunited with their brethren. (Grumpy apparently preferred the tree to his feline friends.)
The whole Doyle clan had shown up on the doorstep at the crack of dawn, all of them wearing red- or green-plaid flannel pajamas beneath their heavy coats, their feet encased in sturdy, fleece-lined slippers. Our families traded off every year, one taking Christmas Eve, the other Christmas morning. Frankly, I was glad it was our turn for Christmas morning, because it was damn cold outside, even for the short walk.
Molly, Sinead, and Siobhan had each carried a cat (one short-haired tuxedo, two long-haired gingers). Auntie Mo and Uncle Liam had hauled giant bags of garishly wrapped gifts, slung over their shoulders. A resigned-looking (and no doubt well-armed) contingent of Mark’s agents accompanied them, and had taken up positions outside with our own long-suffering guardians.
Billy was the only Doyle missing from the gang when they arrived, but only because he’d insisted on remaining with me overnight in the basement. Which might have been romantic, except for that whole being-my-parents’-house thing, and besides, Brian had stayed downstairs with us the whole night. I suspect Mom put him up to it once she found out Billy wasn’t spending the night in the bosom of his own family. (Thomas and Laura were using my room again, and James and Devon had the room James had once shared with Brian. Ha. Hope they enjoyed those bunk beds.)
Of course, Brian had smuggled some of his special cookies into the house, and had snacked on them liberally as we watched A Christmas Story yet again. It hadn’t taken long for him to fall deeply asleep, so (according to Billy) we were as good as alone. During the rest of the movie, he had done his level best to convince me, via a whispering campaign and sneaky caresses to my ridiculously sensitive inner elbows, that fooling around in one’s parents’ basement was a sacred rite of passage, and since I’d missed it as a teenager, he would be happy to help me through this essential developmental milestone.
I might have succumbed to his persuasive techniques if, a) I hadn’t been afraid Bri would wake up with a bad case of the munchies in the middle of things and, b) if Santa hadn’t brought me my own special gift earlier that week. Or maybe it was Mother Nature. Whoever. My period had finally started. Sure, it was almost over, and technically I could adapt around it, but frankly I didn’t want anything—not even a short partial adaption—messing with my plumbing until I was sure everything was back to normal. We’d compromised on mutual foot massages, the one I received being twice as long as the one I gave. Which was only fair, because his feet were twice as big as mine. (Hey, you can’t argue with math.)
“Ciel, guess what—I got a drum set! A real one. It’s awesome!” Molly said, once she was done (for the moment at least) shifting through auras, and was adequately stuffed with sugary goodness.
“Whoa! Fantastic, Molls. Who’s it from?” I asked. Auntie Mo and Uncle Liam couldn’t be that masochistic.
Thomas had a huge smile on his face, one arm around Laura. (We were all in our flannel pj’s, too. Tradition dictated it.) “I believe Santa left it for her. He probably heard rumors about the great “Wipe Out” solo at our wedding and figured she needed a professional set.”
“Mmm-hmm. Santa is special that way,” Auntie Mo said. The glint in her narrowed eyes as she looked at Thomas told me there were going to be many loud toys in his offspring’s future.
Mom clapped her hands. “Okay, everyone, you know the drill. Retire to the living room and start tearing paper!” She reached down and snatched a bow out of Happy’s mouth as he whizzed past. “And do not let the cats eat the ribbons! I don’t want to see any of them running around later with streamers under their tails.”
Once upon a time, Mom and Auntie Mo had insisted on an orderly distribution of gifts, with everyone taking turns opening them, and much oohing and aahing over each present in turn. They’d given up on it years ago—there were too darned many of us to keep organized, and it would have taken until dinnertime to get through everything. Frankly, none of us—including Mom and Auntie Mo—had that kind of patience.
Billy pulled me down next to him on the floor close to the tree—an eight-foot-tall blue spruce chaotically decorated with every homemade ornament my brothers and I had made from birth onward, intermingled with the genuine antiques my father was fond of giving Mom every year. (Normally, it was littered with silver tinsel, but Mom had heard it was dangerous for cats, so she had painstakingly removed every last piece of it.) The lights were the multicolored, big-bulb kind. It should have been a tasteless mess, but somehow it was beautiful, even attached to the ceiling with fishing line as it now was.
Billy scanned the crowd. “Guess the spook’s not coming this year.”
When Mark wasn’t in one of the far reaches of the planet for the holidays he usually spent the day with us. Sadly, more often than not, Christmas seemed to invite crazy happenings requiring CIA intervention by someone with Mark’s special skill set. He never talked about his own family, if he even had one. I’d asked Thomas about it once, long ago, but he’d ignored me. When I’d pressed him, he’d told me not everybody was as lucky as we were, and to drop it. For some reason—possibly fear of what kind of pain I’d find buried inside Mark—I’d never pursued it.
“Not sure,” I said. “Thomas said he might stop in later, if it looks like things are quiet on the Loughlin front.”
Billy gave my nose a quick kiss. “Good thing he assigned me to watch you. It’s the one job I’m willing to do on Christmas Day.” He grabbed a package from under the tree. “Hey, Molls, heads up!” He tossed it across the room to her like it was a football, which, coincidentally, it was. She was thrilled, as were all the others in the crowded room when they dug into their own loot. Most of the gifts were simple, thoughtful expressions of affection, nothing terribly extravagant. Joke gifts abounded, as both families considered laughter to be the best present you could give anyone.
Billy’s necktie—the one with lumps of coal and “naughty” written on it in all the different fonts—was well received, by Molly in particular, who’d also gotten him a tie—a green one with spines. “Get it? It’s a cacti!” She chortled her delight as the rest of us groaned. “And you can’t complain, because you only told me not to get you a Christmas tie. Ha! Gotcha.”
“Thanks, squirt.” He slipped it around his neck and quickly knotted it, careful not to flatten the spines. “Now come here and give me a hug.”
Molly beat a hasty retreat. “No way!”
Billy pulled me to him instead (the spines weren’t really sharp) and whispered, “I won’t put on yours now, but don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be able to think of an appropriately ‘naughty’ use for it. Later.”
I shivered. “What a coincidence. I’ll be giving you the rest of your gift later.”
“What’d Billy get you, Ciel?” Siobhan said, parading around in the cowboy hat and boots I’d gotten her. (They added a certain panache to her flannel pj’s.)
Billy looked down at me and grinned. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, I have a retrieval to make.”
“Where are you going?” I said, puzzled when he put his coat on.
“Well, knowing a certain someone’s propensity for snooping, I took precautions. Candy kindly agreed to keep something in her vehicle for me.” Candy had drawn the short straw for Christmas Day duty, along with a fresh recruit. (Al and another guy had been on watch until midnight, so he hadn’t escaped entirely, but at least he was getting to spend Christmas Day with his family.)
“Oh, wait, Billy … as long as you’re going out, take some cinnamon rolls and coffee to the gang outside. Let me get a thermos and some cups.” Mom bustled off to the kitchen, talking the whole way. “I do wish they could come in and join us. It’s so cold out there, and not to be with your family on…”
Billy waited by the front door while Mom loaded up a care package. I waited with him. “Need any help carrying my present in? If it’s heavy, I’d be happy to give you a hand.”
He tugged my hair. “Patience, cuz.”
“So, not heavy? Bulky, then. I’m great with bulky.”
“I’m not going to tell you how big it is. I’m not giving you any hints at all. Anyway, it’s only a few more minutes. Surely you can hold out that long.”
I stuck my nose up in the air. “Huh. Of course I can. Don’t bother to hurry. My patience is infinite.”
Mom came back, still talking. “… not to worry, I put it all together so you can carry it. Tell them to call if they need anything else.” She handed a huge box to Billy. “Now, if you need help I’ll get Thomas. Or James. Or—”
Billy grinned. “Auntie Ro, if you could carry it from the kitchen, I’m sure I can manage it the rest of the way.”
Mom beamed at him. “Thank you, sweetie. Here, let me find a scarf for your neck.”
“Never mind that. I won’t be but a minute.” He was out the door before she could start rummaging through the closet.
Mom hooked her arm through mine and started walking me back to the others. “He’s always been the nicest boy. Full of mischief, but so sweet. I can’t tell you how happy Mo and I are that you two finally realized you loved each other. Do you think he got you a ring?”
Yikes. “Slow down, Mom. Don’t you have enough on your plate right now?”
She laughed. “Oh, honey, you’d be surprised at how big my plate is. There’s always room on it for another helping of love.”
In the living room Thomas and Laura were gushing over the handcrafted cradle Dad had brought in from his garage workshop. Looked like he’d spent every spare minute from the time he’d heard the good news working on it. The lines were simple, in the Amish tradition, and the wood was stained a medium brown, the same color as Thomas’s hair.
Mom rushed over to them. “Wait … there’s more.” She pulled one last package out from under the tree. She’d taken the precaution of tagging it with her own name, to make sure it wasn’t opened out of turn. “This goes with it.”
The happy parents-to-be ripped off the paper to reveal a cradle mattress and six fitted sheets.
“And this,” Auntie Mo said. Her addition was the softest baby blanket ever knitted. (I touched it, so I was certain.) Apparently she’d used every color of baby yarn she could get her hands on, and hadn’t followed any particular pattern. It was gloriously hideous, and I could tell by the way Laura rubbed it against her cheek she loved it with all her heart.
I must have looked at it expectantly, because Mo slipped another package to me. As I’d hoped, it was a replacement afghan, even uglier than the one I’d lost in the fire. I wrapped it around me like a shawl and told her she was the best aunt ever.
A big group hug and ten minutes of everyone raving about the cradle and Mo’s knitting later, I began to wonder what was taking Billy so long. I went to the front hall and peeked out one of the sidelights, expecting to see him shooting the breeze on the street with Candy or one of the other agents, testing my “infinite patience.” I saw two SUVs, but no Billy. Maybe he was inside one of them. It was hard to tell with the tinted windows.
After another five minutes, I stopped being impatient to see my gift and started worrying. It shouldn’t be taking this long. Billy liked to tease me, but I didn’t think he’d take it this far, not when he knew the strain we’d all been under waiting for Loughlin to be caught.
Maybe I should check …
I got my coat from the closet and quietly slipped out the front door—no point in getting anyone else jazzed up over what was probably nothing. Candy and her cohort were in the SUV across the street, gratefully sipping Mom’s coffee and chowing down on cinnamon rolls, their firearms within easy reach. When I asked about Billy, they said he’d gone back into the house right after he’d left the box of goodies. They’d watched him every step of the way.
“He checked his phone as he opened the front door. Looked like he might be reading a text.”
“Huh. Maybe he’s in the bathroom. Or … look, he said he was coming out here to get my present. Could it be something that requires, I don’t know, setting up or special presentation?” He could have sneaked past me while I was preoccupied with the cradle crowd. Maybe he was in the basement right now, preparing a surprise for me.
“Well, he did seem pretty excited about the present. But if you want me to come check the house again, I will. Joe can hold down the fort out here for a few.”
Her cohort smirked. “Oh, sure. I’d be happy to sit out here freezing my ass off while you go warm yours. Of course, there might not be any cinnamon rolls left when you get back.”
Candy practically growled at him. “Touch mine and die.”
I laughed, pretty sure she was joking. “No need. Stay here and defend your rolls. I’ll track down Billy myself.” And my present, because damn, I was really curious now.