of toys. It looked Germanic and old, or at least old-fashioned, perhaps because the girl resembled Shirley Temple with her big eyes, ruby mouth, and fat sausage ringlets.
“Yep,” Lawton said. “I always liked her … But I could never figure out why an angel would be bringing toys.”
“She’s not an angel,” Lucy scoffed with faux indignation, as if Lawton had dubbed her a hooker. “She’s just a girl. And that’s her shopping cart.”
“The hell,” Lawton said, pointing and peering through his long bangs in dire need of a cut. “See that. It’s called a halo.”
“You think hell and halo belong together?” I quipped, trying as hard as I could to be natural, light, festive, lest I give myself away. I had still not so much as glanced at Coach but was aware of his every move, and felt an electric current whenever he came near me.
Lawton laughed and said, “Hell, yeah, they do.”
Lucy stared down at the girl-angel in disbelief. “Well, son of a gun. You’re right!” she said with a little laugh. “But are you sure it’s not a tiara?”
“It’s a halo, dammit,” Lawton said.
Caroline giddily covered her mouth, thrilled with all the swearwords, as Lucy squinted further. “Well. Now I love her even more. She’s an angelic little shopper!”
“Just like you, Luce,” Coach Carr said, putting a hook on a snowman ornament. “I bet there’s some Channel and Vespucci buried somewhere in that cart.”
Everyone laughed at his joke, knowing that he was intentionally butchering Chanel and Versace, as I turned to Lucy and asked where the angel came from. I knew that she was eager to share any story related to her mother, and it was my job, I decided, to give her ample opportunity.
“Mom got it when she lived in Austria,” Lucy said. “When she was a little girl. It was one of her favorites. Right, Dad?”
“That’s right,” he said, although we all knew that Lucy was the authority on family heirlooms, and that he was likely just agreeing with her.
Caroline lunged for it while Lucy admonished her to be careful and said that she was going to hang this one because it was “very breakable and very, very special.” She placed the angel near the top of the tree in the glow of a white light, then gave her cart a little push, watching it swing for a few seconds before returning to her bins.
And so it went, Lucy unveiling ornament after ornament, tweaking our placement, telling stories about her mother. I never would have predicted it, especially based on her mood around Thanksgiving, but she seemed to be genuinely happy, no trace of melancholy despite the intense sights, scents, and sounds of Christmases past pummeling us with the reminder that something—someone—was missing. Harry Connick, Jr., was crooning in the background. The aroma of snicker-doodles, Mrs. Carr’s specialty, wafted from the kitchen. It was even turning blustery outside, wind beating at the windowpanes, which Lucy mused her mother would have loved. In fact, her mood was so unexpectedly stable that I started to suspect her little white pills were involved, or at least an extra kick in her eggnog. Then again, maybe she had simply reached another small turning point in her grief. Maybe time really did heal all wounds.
Just a few minutes later, however, I landed upon another theory—that it was only a very convincing con job—when I heard Lucy say to Caroline, “Honey, isn’t this a magical night?”
Caroline said it was, taking another cookie from the snowflake plate while Lucy fired off a frantic few digital photos, close-ups of her daughter’s profile, her own eyes glistening with a faraway sadness. Of course she wasn’t feeling any better, not on the very first Christmas without her mother. She was simply doing her best to head-fake her daughter, put up a brave front, follow the advice her mother would have given her: Make things perfect for your family, never mind your own feelings. Her mood was as contrived as their fake tree, but still artful and beautiful in its own way. Later, when she and Neil were alone in their bedroom, I suspected that the tears would flow, but, for now, she had embraced her solemn duty to diligently construct and create memories for Caroline. I felt my heart fill with admiration for her and wondered if I could be so strong in her shoes. I didn’t think so, but I suspected that motherhood has a way of bolstering your emotional reserves.
We all kept working until