my room, and sat on my bed, staring at it in my lap. I tore it open and found a pair of fur-lined leather gloves. My first suspicion went to Leo Abbot, and then I thought it was also possible Clara had done it. Deep in my heart, I had harbored the hope that it had come from England, even if it had come without my father’s blessings, but who would have taken it out of the package that revealed its origin? No, it simply had to have been left here at the door.
I went downstairs and knocked on Leo’s door. He looked like I had just woken him but rubbed his cheeks vigorously and said hello.
“What’s up, Emma? Something wrong in the apartment?”
“No. I wanted to know if you had bought these for me and left them at the door.”
I showed him the gloves. He took them and looked at them, pretty clearly revealing he had never seen them.
He shook his head. “Expensive. You have a secret admirer?”
“Very secret, apparently.”
“Well, as I’ve said before, never look—”
“A gift horse in the mouth. I know. Thank you,” I said, smiling.
He scratched his head. “Any news other than that?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
He nodded. Then he shrugged. “Well, don’t worry yourself about it. We all need a little Santa Claus from time to time.”
I thanked him and went up to wait for Clara. I prepared some dinner, a pasta and cheese dish and some salad, and waited to see if she would arrive in time to eat with me. We didn’t alert each other to our schedules; however, what I did notice about Clara was that she didn’t have that many close friends. She rarely mentioned anyone beyond someone else who worked at her company. Some weekends she went home to visit with her family in Islip, Long Island. As I anticipated, however, she was very responsible when it came to taking care of the apartment, even addressing some of the issues like the need for better lighting in both her room and the living room.
She didn’t come home in time for dinner. I put what was left over in the refrigerator and went into my room to read. When I heard her enter the apartment hours later, I quickly rose to greet her.
“Oh, hi,” she said, like someone who had been caught sneaking in.
“I don’t know if you ate, but I made some pasta and cheese, and there’s some salad and—”
“Oh, I had dinner, thank you. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I had a surprise waiting for me today.”
“Oh?” She took off her grape-colored above-knee-length quilted coat with its furry dark-blue collar and hung it on the hook by the door next to the raincoat I had been using. “What was it?”
“This,” I said, showing her the gloves.
She took them and looked at them. “Beautiful. Who gave them to you?”
“I don’t know. Only my name was on the package.”
She handed them back and smiled and then stopped smiling. “You thought it might have been me?”
“I thought… I didn’t know what to think.”
“Someone’s trying to say hello in a very nice way,” she said. She looked wistful. “It’s nice to have someone care.” She started toward her room. “Anyway, perfect timing. I hear we’re getting near-freezing temperatures next week.” She nodded at my raincoat. “That won’t be enough.”
“I know. I’m going to do some shopping.”
I waited to see if she would offer to go with me, but she simply smiled and entered her bedroom.
The next day, I did manage to get a warmer coat, in a thrift shop one of the other waitresses had mentioned. I suspected the gloves might have come from Jon Morales, but he didn’t call right before I found them, and he didn’t call afterward, either. For a while, I thought it might have been Buck, but he didn’t do anything to indicate it, nor did he show any special interest in me. Nevertheless, I seriously considered him and even wondered if it might have been Donald Manning, who very well could have told Mr. Wollard how desperate I seemed to be. Mr. Wollard might have sent them. No one came forward to claim giving the gift, and after a while, I stopped wondering about it.
The reason was simple. It was painful to realize that nothing like it, nothing loving and full of concern, had come from my parents and Julia. Perhaps my father had declared, “Let her suffer and therefore learn how wrong she was.” Maybe