Sinner and Saint

Chapter Eighteen

"It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

"I hate to argue with a classic but it's really not," I muttered under my breath at the old-time tune blaring out of Carmela's ancient record player. She wasn't trying to be some kind of hipster. She'd hauled this thing all the way from South Carolina, claiming it was her great-grandmother's.

"I heard that," she called out as she emerged from the hallway, still in the middle of coiling her graying dark hair into her usual bun. "You don't have to agree with it to listen to it. Just let the music fill your soul. Take in that warm, happy feeling and soak it in."

I paused from icing a pretty albeit uneven border around a cookie and raised a brow at her. "Where did you learn all that bullshit?"

Carmela grinned. "Emily from work. That woman doesn't just love Christmas—she thinks she's the holidays personified. A light-up Christmas sweater, reindeer headband, peppermint tea and humming carols all day long."

"Poor you putting up with all that torture," I said with a laugh, knowing that Carmela thrived during the holidays as much as I did—which was not very much.

Cece died three days before Christmas. What had always been just a non-event for me growing up had become my toughest time of the year since then. Because only days before that horrible night, I'd also lost Stellan.

Kinda hard to be merry and bright after all that, really, and I've had to acknowledge it if only to blunt the danger of denying a trigger. It's going to remain tough for a while but like I have in the last couple years, I just do my best to surround myself with the people I still have and to keep myself preoccupied with a meaningful distraction that puts a little silver lining on the holidays for me.

This year, it was doing up these stockings for all the women at Passage which I was going to deliver on Christmas Eve, tomorrow. The women were going to be off at Evergreen, another social care group in the city who's invited a few other smaller ones to a joint Christmas Eve turkey dinner at their site. While Jamie, Sidney and our program manager, Kareema, were out at the dinner with our group, I was going to sneak in and hang a stocking on each door. Carmela spent some of her free time last week making all the red felt stockings by hand and she came over late this afternoon to deliver them along with the three dozen sugar cookies she'd made.

"It's not too much of a torture. I just try to enjoy it," she said as she came back to the kitchen island where we'd been frosting the cookies. "It's nice to forget every now and then."

My smile faded as I reached out to squeeze the woman's hand.

"It is," I said gently. "Even though I know neither of us will truly forget, it's nice to be able to put some distance between yourself and that memory. Like a faraway picture. You know what it's about but you don't have to always see the details in your head."

Carmela smiled at me. "I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who wants to forget it just enough to be able to live life a little. I felt guilty because it seemed like I wanted to forget Cece."

"Cece's unforgettable and she'd be the first person to tell you that," I said with a chuckle, surprised to realize that it came from a genuine place inside of me. "And while she'll haunt us if we ever forget her, I'm sure she'd prefer we only remember her best memories."

"You're right," Carmela said with a firm nod. "You're absolutely right. Thank you, Kady."

We were just reliving the memory of Cece disastrously trying her hand at baking cookies during our only Christmas at Mission Hill when my phone rang.