All I Want for Christmas by Callie Woods

Author:Callie Woods [Woods, Callie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951542368
Published: 2019-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

11

“Daddy, can I show Ms. Julie my room?” Gabi screeched when they’d entered the house.

“Go pick up your dirty clothes first,” Max warned, and Gabi darted down the long hall.

Max’s house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, and it was both spacious and beautiful. The house was built to look like a rustic wooden cabin, but Gabi knew that the houses up here were also designed to follow fire code. Inside, the entryway was painted cheerfully bright, and the entire house felt inviting to Juliette. It was an odd feeling, but it reminded her a little of her Tia’s house in Southern Mexico.

Photos of Gabi as a tiny baby, as a toddler, and now as the precious little girl she’d become hung in the living room and along the hallway walls. Juliette was entranced. In her mind, she’d always struggled to imagine what her little girl looked like or what she might be doing. She had always attempted to push away the curious thoughts about where she might be, but those thoughts danced in her head sometimes.

Her daughter had never been further away than her hometown. Juliette had been the one who got away. She found herself reaching for a picture on the wall, her fingertips brushing against the glass to trace the edges of newborn Gabi’s face. Juliette was already embarrassed that she’d started crying at church, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to hold it in any better here.

Max stepped beside her, close enough to smell the pine scent of his aftershave. “I’ve changed my mind,” Max said in a low voice. “You can tell her whatever you want to tell her. Whenever you want to tell her.”

“Really?” Juliette turned to meet his eyes, to gauge if this was really happening. “You’ll let me do that, Max?” The look on his face was solemn. Serious. His eyes were intense as he stared at her, and she was sure that he was just as close to crying as she was.

“As long as you promise not to leave again.”

Juliette nodded. “I wish I’d never left.”

Although, in some ways, she was glad that she had. There had been something down there in Mexico; something to the small town and the love of her father’s family. She’d felt a connection that she’d lost after her parents had died. She’d never felt connected to her grandmother and fortunately, coming home had opened up a new possibility of a relationship between them. But if she was truthful, it hadn’t existed when she’d lived here before. She had been too young and too scared to connect with anyone after the accident.

It had been somewhere in that several thousand-mile journey to her father’s village in Southern Mexico that had given her a chance to heal. A chance to grieve, and a chance to move on. Perhaps being surrounded by so many people had increased her odds of always having at least one of them. Truthfully, she’d worried about her grandmother’s health long before her grandmother had “convinced” her to come home.

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