Melody let Michael go and straightened her hair. “You ready to go put the ornaments on?” she asked, grinning at him.
“Yep!” he replied, a genuine smile beaming from his face.
“Great. Why don’t you put that away, and let’s go back into the living room?”
Michael scurried off to put the picture away, and Melody worked her way off of the pirate ship. He was still in the closet when she stepped out into the hallway, nearly colliding with Reid. “Hey,” she said with a grin. “That pirate ship is very impressive.”
“Oh, yeah, thanks,” he said, his hands shoved deep into his jeans pockets. “That was a little consolation prize for moving him across the country, leaving his grandparents and all of his friends behind.”
Michael came flying out of his room and slipped past them, clearly no longer upset about his mom or anything else. “Come on!” he shouted.
“All right,” Reid said, shaking his head. “We’re coming.”
Melody put her hand on Reid’s arm before he could turn around, realizing she needed to say something to him before the moment had passed. He looked at her hand where it rested on his bicep, a question forming on his face, but she didn’t pull away. “Listen,” she said, “I think you should know what Michael was just talking to me about.”
“You look very serious,” he said, a worried tone to his voice.
Melody folded her hands in front of her. “He showed me a picture of his mom.” She waited for that to sink in, and Reid’s forehead crinkled, but he didn’t say anything. “He asked me if I thought his mom might ask Santa for another little boy, and if I thought it was okay if he asked Santa for a new mom.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Eventually, he ran a hand through his hair and asked, “How did you respond?”
“I just told him that sometimes grown ups do things that other people can’t understand, and I’m sure that the reason his mother left had nothing to do with him. I said he has lots of people that love him, and maybe someday, he might have a stepmom.”
“And what did he say to that?” Reid asked, scratching his chin.
“He just said that he loved me, and he hopes that I will never leave him.”
Reid’s eyes widened, and he put his hands back in his pockets. There was another long pause before he said, “Well, I knew he had been thinking about his mom a lot lately, but I guess I didn’t realize it was bothering him so much.”
“I hope my answers were okay. I really didn’t know what to say.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m sure they were. It is hard to answer his questions anyway, let alone when he’s talking about such intense topics.”
Melody nodded. “I just thought you should know.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks.” He offered her a meager smile, but Melody didn’t know if it was sincere. She wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.
“Come on, guys!” Michael shouted from the living room.
“I guess we’d better get in there,” Reid said, turning, the smile no longer frozen in place.
“Right,” Melody replied, following him down the hallway. She honestly felt like now might be a good time to come down with the flu or break her arm so she’d have an excuse to leave, but when she entered the living room and saw Michael standing with an excess bow on his head, an ornament in each hand, she knew she’d have to stay. He’d asked her to help with the tree, and she would find a way to push her own grown up problems aside and give him an afternoon of tree decorating to remember.
Once they got started, it was easier to push the awkwardness of both her conversation with Michael and the relaying of the information to Reid aside and concentrate on having fun. Michael requested Christmas music, and even though Reid was hesitant at first, somehow picking up on Melody’s preferences, she insisted that he turn some on so that Michael could decorate his tree with full effect. So Reid had found a kids’ Christmas station on Pandora and refrains of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” filled the room, which were Christmasy but not overly sentimental.
Michael loved the tinsel and wore a lot of it on his head. As Melody placed a handmade wreath that Michael had created the year before in preschool on the tree, the little boy flung a handful of tinsel at her, and before she knew it, they were in a three-way tinsel tossing war. By the time she and Reid both surrendered, the room was covered in tinsel, and none of them could stand up straight from laughing so hard. Melody had decorated dozens of Christmas trees in her lifetime, but she honestly couldn’t remember ever having so much fun in the process.
Once they were finished and all of the ornaments were in place, Melody realized it was late afternoon, and she needed to get home. She’d let her mom know where she was hours ago, but she had some pictures to post on the website, and she needed to clear a couple of more boxes out of the spare room. She hurriedly helped Michael and Reid pick up the bigger clumps of tinsel and hang them on the tree, but the room would definitely need a good vacuuming, and Reid insisted he would take care of that later.
“I think I better get home,” she said, looking at Michael with an apologetic expression.
“Awww,” Michael exclaimed, his shoulders slumping. “But we are having so much fun.”
“I know,” Melody said. “But I have work to do.”
Michael’s lips puckered in a pitiful display of sadness. “Fine,” he finally said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
His face lit up. “At carpool?”
“Yes.”
“And can I go to your house?”
“No,” Reid answered before Melody even got a chance to respond. “You’re not being rewarded for getting kicked off the bus.”
“I never get anything,” he lamented, crossing his arms over his chest.
Melody held back a laugh. “I think you should remember Santa is watching, and be nice to your dad,” she said, stooping to whisper near his ear.
“Okay,” he said, but his expression didn’t change.
“No hug goodbye then?” she asked.
That was enough to change his attitude, and as she dropped to her knees, he wrapped his arms around her neck. “Thanks for decorating my tree with me.”
“Thank you for inviting me,” she said, squeezing him back. “Be good tonight, okay? And I’ll see you after school.”
“Okay,” and that time he seemed to mean it.
“Michael, go lay your clothes out for tomorrow. I’m going to walk Miss Melody to her car, okay?”
“All right, Dad,” Michael said, and as Melody stood back up, he gave her another wave and disappeared down the hall.