Page 53 of Run, Run Rudolph (Fairy Godmothers and Other Fiascos #2)

~ Tamara ~

“ W hat are you still doing in bed!” My mom had to be standing right over top of me, given how loud her voice was. I scrunched my eyes tighter and pulled a pillow over my head. “We have to be at Oma’s in fifteen minutes.”

She tugged at my pillow, and I groaned, rolling out of reach.

Oma’s Christmas Eve brunch. I used to look forward to it, especially the rice and pineapple dessert she’d make for me with the half-melted mini marshmallows in it.

She only whipped it up once a year, and she always did a double batch, just for me.

She’d made it every year since I was thirteen, and only once had she tried making something else—a chocolate log.

To me, nothing said Christmas like her rice dessert, and I’d been so disappointed in the log that she’d gone straight into the kitchen to rush out a batch of the rice dessert.

It had made me feel guilty, spoiled, but also so very cherished and special.

Oma would always be my favourite person in the world.

But today, even the thought of her holiday dessert couldn’t rouse me from my heartache.

I’d saved Christmas, Haden, and myself, but I’d lost something precious. I’d lost Haden and his love, and I needed some time to come to terms with it. I needed a good wallow before picking myself up by my bootstraps and faking a smile until it finally felt real again.

“You’re not even dressed!” my mom chirped. The drawers of my dresser screeched open. “Where’s your Oma sweater?”

I sighed and flipped onto my back, bringing the pillow with me. I felt hungover. Was this a side effect of being pulled into the magical world, and then spit back out again?

“Tamara,” my mom said in exasperation. I peeked out from under the pillow. The room streamed with sunshine, and she was done up in her usual Christmas outfit, dressed in red and green from head to foot.

I pulled the pillow tighter over my eyes. Everything about Christmas reminded me of last night. The laughs. The kisses. The fun we’d had. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to face the holiday. Not this year.

“Get a move on. Where’s your Oma sweater?”

“Wearing it,” I mumbled. Oma and I wore our matching ugly Christmas sweaters or sweatshirts for every meal and gathering during December to ensure we got our money’s worth.

In our family, that meant I’d worn my Oh-What-Fun-it-is-to-Ride sweatshirt last night, and would wear it again for today’s brunch, and tomorrow’s supper.

My mom had tried to get in on the tradition, but unfortunately for her, that was during her separation from Dad, which meant I’d been a hissing, scratching and biting thirteen-year-old who’d snarled at her like a feral stray who wanted to be left alone.

Needless to say, the sweater thing stayed between me and Oma.

“Go ahead without me,” I mumbled from my mini haven of sorrow and lost love. “I’ll catch up.”

“We are not going separately. Your father is delivering last minute Christmas hampers, so he’s arriving on his own. I don’t want us all straggling in one at a time, as if we don’t like each other.”

I sighed, knowing I wasn’t winning this one, but was willing to give it one last-ditch attempt.

“I don’t like Christmas anymore. I’m staying home.”

A cool hand immediately slid between the pillow and my forehead. There was a pause, then my mom said in a motherly tone filled with affection and impatience. “No fever. Time to wake up, because you’re dreaming. You love Christmas.” She gave me a gentle pinch.

“Ow!” I protested, even though it hadn’t hurt.

I lifted my head out from under the weight of my pillow.

Was that all last night had been? Dreams?

From the flying reindeer to Haden’s kisses, all just fiction thanks to a lonely, overactive imagination that had gone into overdrive while I’d been asleep?

“A dream?” I asked.

The bedding was whipped off me. A throaty noise of disapproval came from her direction. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”

“Mm-hmph. I told you that already.” I covered my eyes with an arm, wincing at the light.

The lull between last night’s storm, and tonight’s oncoming one meant the sun was uninhibited, and sending its rays ricocheting off the bright white snow outside, into my room to attack my retinas. “Close the curtains.”

“You need to get dressed.” My mom sighed, and the sound of my dresser drawers opening and closing took up their banging again. “How many Christmas sweaters do you have?” she asked in wonder.

“Lots.” Well over a decade’s worth.

I rubbed my fingertips together, marvelling at their tender sensitivity. A nip of frostbite. Last night hadn’t been a dream.

I rolled onto my stomach, head back under my pillow. I could hear Mom sorting through my drawers, and I was fairly confident she was picking out fresh undergarments for me, like she had when I was two. I should never have given her a key to my place.

Cringing at the thought of her pawing through my delicates, I hauled myself out of bed. “I’m up.”

She handed me a stack of folded clothing. “Go shower.”

I flung the bra she’d stacked on my sweater and jeans into the corner. “That one’s itchy.” I grabbed a fresh one. It was no longer white, more of a sad grey, with its elastic all stretched out, but beautifully comfy.

“You smell like the barn.” There was an unfamiliar hint of approval in her tone, and I wondered briefly if Estelle had messed up last night while setting my life back to normal.

My mom’s car plowed through a snowdrift at the end of my driveway, with me in the passenger seat.

I’d tried to drive, getting as far as sitting in Benjamin, who was free of snow and reindeer hair, as well as hoof holes and paint scratches.

But he wouldn’t start. He hadn’t been plugged in.

I’d snatched the bundle of mistletoe from my mirror on my way out, clutching it like a magical lifeline back to kisses with Haden.

I sagged into my mom’s car, and hung the green sprig from her rearview mirror, staring at it like it held the answer to last night, and how to carry on now that I was the only one who remembered it all.

Mom’s tire tracks were still in my driveway from her earlier arrival, as was the rectangular levelling of snow where her car’s undercarriage had dragged through the drifts.

But there were no tracks from Haden’s truck.

Had he really not been here, or had the wind filled in the tire ruts while I’d slept?

The idea that he hadn’t seen Rudolph, or laughed with me over Blitzen, or kissed me after playing Nerf gun tag in the hardware store made me glum. I leaned my arm on the door and rested my head against it.

“I was thinking about you, and your lack of a male companion,” my mom started.

I groaned. “Please, no.”

“I was thinking ,” she repeated firmly, “how Kade was never quite right for you. The two of you just never quite clicked in the way I’d like to see. He didn’t get to know you properly. Not in the way a partner should.”

I blinked once, twice. Had she really just said that?

I lifted my head to look at her. This was not a normal conversation with my mom. Something had definitely been set back incorrectly when Estelle had time-hopped me out of my sticky magical problem last night.

“Say that again?” I requested.

“You need a man who’ll stick up for you, and help you reach your own goals.”

My mind immediately thought of Haden, and all the ways he’d stood by me last night. Everything from unsuccessfully refusing to let me shield him from Mrs. Claus in court, to paying for all of our supplies and x-raying Rudolph.

“I do?” I asked.

“Yes. Someone who understands you, and who’ll have your back.

Maybe someone like…” She laughed, her hands coming off the steering wheel for one precious second of terror as the car slipped a few inches to the right, caught in the fresh snow, before correcting itself back into the packed-down snowy tracks. “Silly idea.”

I sat up. Who did she have in mind for me? I could tell by her tone it wasn’t Teddy, the borderline alcoholic bachelor she was certain would turn himself around if he just dated the right woman. Or if it was someone I might already have in mind. “Tell me who.”

“Oh, it’s silly.” Her cheeks flushed. “But I was thinking how you and Haden always get along with your little smirks that drive everyone crazy and?—”

“We smirk?” That sounded annoying.

“Oh, I can’t describe your connection. I think you’re a bit of an introvert, Tamara. And he’s a bit more your speed. And while I know he’s a lot older than you, he does like horses.”

I laughed, the feeling like rusted barbed wire vibrating in my chest. “Well, he is a vet.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you think he likes me? You know, like that?” I asked, feeling pretty much as though I’d reverted back to being an insecure teenager again, but unable to help myself.

Kade seemed to have been able to see the attraction between Haden and me, or at least, suspected it.

If my mom recognized it, too, it gave me some hope that even if Haden had forgotten last night, we might be able to start something anew.

“And can you slow down?” I needed more time to explore this conversation, and we were nearly at Oma’s.

“It’s fine. The roads aren’t that bad. Not like last night.

I heard five people hit the ditch, and Teddy claimed he saw reindeer!

” My mom laughed and shook her head. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re a strong woman, Tamara.

You need to make the decisions that are right for you.

But I do understand how awkward things might be, given that you dated his younger brother. ”

“Do you think it’s possible, though? That he might think of me in that way? Do you think his family would be on board?”

“Well, I don’t think Kade is quite ready to give up on you yet. He misses the way you love him. He doesn’t have that same depth in his relationships with others.” She laughed. “So, you might need to wish for some outside help on that one.”