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Christmas Orphan

Jake

I practically startle out of my skin. Cat stands next to me, staring at the puppies with me.

“Mommy said she’ll get me a puppy when we have a house,” she says.

I notice she’s not wearing any shoes. It’s bewildering. It’s like a bad dream—not a nightmare; just something excessively weird that will make me feel uncomfortable for the rest of the day.

“Where is your mom, Cat?”

She shrugs. “Dunno.”

I pan the busy atrium for a glossy black head or a pop of red. Nothing.

“Why’d you go away?” she asks.

I wonder how much she knows about terminal illness, medically assisted suicide, and complicated grief.

“Your place is too small. Not enough room for me.”

She nods like this is reasonable.

I stare at Cat’s socked feet, trying to figure this out. “Were you trying on shoes?”

“Yes.”

The mall map nearby shows two shoe stores. There’s no way she went barefoot on an escalator, so I steer her to the one on our current floor. We turn a corner, and there it is. Dodi is nowhere in sight, but Cat’s winter boots are. She pulls them on.

“What’s your mom’s phone number?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m not telling you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s only for if I get lost.”

“You are lost.”

She gifts me with a withering look and flounces disdainfully out of the store, but abruptly stops, eyes trained on something beyond. I follow and spot Santa’s workshop, replete with fleecy blankets of glittery white snow, fake trees laden with gaudy plastic orbs, and Santa himself on a golden throne like a despot of Christmas cheer.

“It’s Satan,” Cat whispers, pointing at the sign.

Satan. Santa. She’s just starting to read.

“That’s mall Santa.”

“No. Satan’s all red.”

“Are you for real?”

“He brings you gifts if you’re good and sends you to hell if you’re bad.”

It occurs to me that I should keep Cat right here, for when Dodi circles back.

“Do you want to ask him for something?”

She shakes her head. “I haven’t been good,” she explains.

“Give him someone else’s name when you talk to him.”

She considers this.

“If you sit on his lap, you can get a picture.”

“Can I take your knife?”

“What?”

She points at the kitchen knife I purchased, forgotten in my hand.

“No. You can’t take my knife, you weirdo. Go.”

I pay the elf a ridiculous sum, and Cat trots up to the dais and stands in front of Santa, hands clasped, feet together, the picture of innocence. More innocent than the last “person” I took to be photographed with Santa. That had been…David. A brief, failed experiment for Grant. I’d assured Santa he was just a clothing store mannequin and it was a gag photo. And then I’d promptly run off.

“I’m Charlotte,” says Cat. “I love spiders. Please bring lots and lots of spiders to my house on Christmas.”

“Ho ho ho, little girl,” Santa booms. He hoists her up onto his knee, and she goes rigid and glowers at the unexpected contact. She looks just like Dodi when she’s been cornered by Doug in an elevator. When Cat catches sight of my grin, her glare is deathly.

“Get up there with your daughter,” a surly elf says to me, and that’s enough to wipe the smile off my face.

“What? No, she’s not my—” The words die in my throat. It’s hard not to think of every single time Andrew went out of his way to correct anyone who mistook me for his son.

“It’s required. An adult has to be present with all minors.”

I skulk up onto the dais and sidle up next to Santa and Cat, and she shoots me a nasty look from Santa’s viselike grip. I connect eyes with Santa, and he frowns at me. I frown at him. He looks—well, all Santas look familiar. I took David to a completely different mall.

“Cheeeeeese,” the surly elf says, and I grimace for the camera, but before he presses the shutter button, an outraged voice rings out, and there she is: Dodi.

She stands by the gate leading to Santa’s little workshop of horrors with a child’s baseball bat wrapped in Christmas ribbons cranked high over her shoulder. She’s frantic and sweaty and furious .