How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,16

And it was enough.

More than enough.

When I got my own place I stopped putting up decorations because it seemed so fake. All those years with our house done up like a snow globe and not a speck of real Christmas spirit to be found. A tree and a wreath didn’t make Christmas. People made Christmas. Love made Christmas.

But this Christmas, just when I could have used the comfort of my brother, he and Penny were off somewhere honeymooning. My father was in jail and there was just no way— no way—I was going to my mother’s to feel like crap and get the third degree about Wes’s marriage. When I didn’t have a single answer for her.

Nope.

Not when I was still so raw from what had happened with Sam.

So I found myself performing my one other Christmas tradition. Going to see Sam’s mom, Betty. Every year that Sam was overseas I’d gone out to her trailer and taken her an angel. We had a whole thing going with them. Angels to watch over Sam wherever he was. She would make some kind of elaborate baked good and we’d have a cup of coffee and talk about what we’d heard from Sam. Some days I stayed so long we ordered Chinese food and she’d pour me a glass of beer and we’d talk until the sky was full of stars.

It was a nice tradition.

And the truth was, I knew there was a ninety-five percent chance of Sam being at his mom’s place, but I was not going to let him scare me off. Or take away the one tradition I had left to me this morning.

I could ignore him.

I don’t want this.

I could pretend to ignore him.

Betty lived out at Rustic Ranch, north of the city, and the storm that had blown through last night made getting out there interesting in my Jeep, even with the four-wheel drive. But I was painfully aware that I had nothing else to do. My brother was married. Starting a new family. Work was closed.

Truth be told, I’d never felt so alone.

I got out to Betty’s trailer about an hour later than I’d planned, but I knew it didn’t matter to her. That woman’s open-door policy toward me had kept me sane more times than I could count in the years Sam was serving overseas.

I’d barely knocked before the door was pulled open to reveal Betty in her Mickey Mouse Christmas sweatshirt and the necklace that lit up like little Christmas lights. Betty was a force of nature, and her hair was a silver helmet, unmovable by anything but God.

“There you are, girl!” she said and pulled me into her skinny arms. The trailer was meticulously clean. A tree was covered in blinking lights and dozens of macaroni and glitter ornaments that Sam had made in grade school. Christmas music was playing through the fancy wireless speaker Sam had gotten her for Christmas a few years ago.

Sam had sent me a What’s App message from wherever he was fighting whoever he was fighting, asking me if I could help her set it up. She’d been a reluctant convert, but once she realized she could get every Hank Williams Jr. song just by saying his name, she’d quickly gotten the hang of it.

“Sam said there was no way you’d make it out here today on account of all this snow, but I told him he didn’t know you as well as I did.”

“What’s a little snow in the way of my favorite Christmas tradition?” I looked over her shoulder for any glimpse of Sam. No sign, and my shoulders relaxed. Maybe he was wherever my brother was, getting answers my brother couldn’t give me. Or shoveling sidewalks for Betty’s neighbors or burying himself in ice, never to be seen again. Whatever. He didn’t seem to be here.

And that was the best Christmas gift of all.

“That’s what I said. I found a new gingerbread cake on the internet this year and I’m not so sure about it, but I figure we’ll give it a try.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” I said. And handed her the present. It was one of Joy’s designs and I’d asked her to make a little tweak to it specially for Betty. Joy reminded me that she was paid a hundred bucks an hour and I reminded her that we were friends.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

Betty opened the big red bow and dug through the glittery tissue paper that was a part of the new