* * * * *
When she got back to the farmhouse, it was late. She hadn’t expected to find anyone awake, and went in quietly, so she wouldn’t wake anyone up. The place was illuminated by the Christmas lights that twinkled from a huge Douglas fir in the living room and the soft glow of the fireplace. The smell of freshly baked cookies made the air almost taste of chocolate. As she tiptoed through the living room, she spotted Aunt Vidalia in a rocking chair in front of the fire. She was sealing an envelope and she looked up, smiling when she saw her. “Oh, good, you’re home,” she said. “I saved you a cookie. It’s probably still warm.” She nodded toward a plate that held a giant cookie. It was on an end table right beside a giant, soft easy chair.
Unable to resist, Sophia sank into that chair. “You’re going to spoil me so much I’ll never want to leave,” she said. The fire crackled and the tree twinkled. She inhaled the mingled scents of evergreen and burning wood, and a hint of peppermint from somewhere.
“That’s the plan.” Vidalia got up and set her envelope on the mantle.
Sophia couldn’t help but notice the name scrawled across the front. Santa. She frowned, looking at her aunt again.
Vidalia shrugged. “I write to him every year. Leave the letter on the mantle. On Christmas Eve, put out some cookies and milk. And you know, throughout the coming year, most of the things I put in the letter come to me.”
Sophia smiled and said, “Like…a new set of cookie sheets, or a pretty new nightgown?”
“Oh, sweetie, I wouldn’t waste my letter to Santa on such trivial things. No, I’m talking about big things. Healthy grandbabies, happy daughters, the love of my life.” Smiling wistfully, she crossed the room, picking up her pad of candy cane bordered stationary and her red ink pen on the way, and then she offered them both to Sophia. “You should give it a try.”
“What is it with this town and Santa Claus?” she muttered.
Vidalia crooked a dark brow. “You have a problem with Santa Claus?”
Sophia grinned at the intensity in her aunt’s eyes. “Not on your life. Gimme that pen and pad.”
She took both, said good night to Vidalia, and nibbled on her cookie. And then she sat there, alone in the living room in front of the giant, twinkling Christmas tree, and she did something she hadn’t done in twenty years. She wrote a letter to Santa Claus.
Dear Santa,
If it’s true what you told me, then that would be…amazing. So amazing that I think I have to give it a try. I’m going to hope that maybe everything that’s happening to me is for a reason and that it’s sending me toward the life I want. I’m going to hope. What do I have to lose? And I figure I need to get clear on what to hope for. So, Santa Claus, here’s the life I want. I want….
There she paused as a million things ran through her mind. What did she want? She wanted her ex-fiancé Skyler in jail. But that was already a given. He’d been convicted of using her prescription pad to obtain OxyContin and then selling it to addicts. He was only free until his sentencing right after the holidays. The problem was he wouldn’t leave her alone. She wasn’t afraid of him. But he kept calling and when she changed her number, emailing, and when she blocked his email, coming over to her duplex and pounding on her door and not leaving until she called the police. After the third time, she’d stopped sleeping at night.
It was the pounding on the door part that had made her decide to leave New York. She didn’t want anything more to do with Skyler. She just wanted peace.
Nodding, Sophia picked up her pen and wrote, I want such a peaceful, serene life that I sleep like a baby every night.
That was a good start. What else, what else?
I want my good name cleared, the investigation closed, the police to believe I had nothing to do with any of it. And I want the Medical Review Board to find the same thing. Vindication, that’s what I want.
Her only crime, she thought, had been being a little too naive. A little too hopeful. A little too trusting. She’d had everything she’d ever wanted. A seemingly-decent man who wanted to marry her. A respectable position in an elite hospital’s oncology department. A crazy salary.
But even with all that, she hadn’t been happy. She’d been beating herself up for it, too, berating herself for what seemed illogical. Why not be happy when she had everything she’d ever wanted? What was wrong with her?
Nodding hard, she realized that despite feeling she should be happy, she truly hadn’t been. And she wanted to be. So she wrote, I want happiness, true, deep, lasting joy in my life.
Nodding, she decided this felt really good, this exercise in hope. And she thought maybe she shouldn’t have been so hard on herself before. How could she have been happy in the state she’d been in back then? Even before Skyler’s arrest and the subsequent revelations. Her job was stressful and depressing. She’d been tied up in knots all the time and hadn’t even known it. Not until those knots had started to untie themselves.
The drive back to Oklahoma had been like a full-body massage. Her tight muscles felt looser and looser the closer she got. And when she’d stepped out of the car at Bobby Joe and Vidalia’s farmhouse just outside of town, she’d been compelled to heel off her shoes and sink her feet into the grass. She’d taken a deep breath and felt a thousand pounds just ease off her shoulders.
That certainly lent credence to Santa’s theory that she belonged here.
Her career was back in New York, true enough. But she did not want to return to the tension she’d been living, unaware. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
Nodding, she bent over her letter and added, I want clarity. I want to know what it is I’m supposed to be doing with my life and I want it to be something that I love, using my skills, but without all the stress and tension I had before.
This was good. Her letter was coming along beautifully. But there was one last thing, the obvious one, and the most difficult. She wanted love. She wanted the kind of love she saw between Bobby Joe and Vidalia. Uncle Bobby Joe was more relaxed and happier than she’d ever seen him. He looked ten years younger. Vidalia, a raven-haired beauty of Mexican descent, who had cheekbones to die for, obviously adored him. She had five grown daughters and would make Sophia number six if she’d let her. She was the living proof that fifty-something was the new thirty-something. Sophia had loved her on sight.
The two of them together were…it just was amazing to watch. They interacted like cogs in a wheel, like they were sharing a brain, and they were a unit that was far more than the sum of its parts. It was supernatural, the power of what was between them. Damn, she wanted that.
To think she’d been about to settle for something that wasn’t even close. What a narrow escape!
Nodding, she added it to her letter.
“I want love,” she whispered as she wrote the words down. “I want true, deep, crazy, passionate, beautiful, heart-racing, soul-filling, breathtaking love, Santa. And you know what else? I really don’t want to go through the holidays without someone special to share them with.” And then she wrote a little more. I’m going to try hoping this really works, just like you said, Santa. And if it doesn’t, you’re never getting free cocoa from the Long Branch again.
And then she signed it. Love, Sophie.
Frowning, she looked down at what she’d written, surprised to find that she’d written Sophie, and not Sophia. She started to try to make the e into an a, but something made her stop. She put the pen down. Then picked it up again and added, PS. Just kidding about the free cocoa.
Then she folded the letter and tucked it into a plain white envelope. But she didn’t leave it on the mantle or seal the envelope. There were a couple of days until Christmas, and she might just need to edit it.
She held her letter to her chest, closed her eyes and said, “Okay, Santa. Here goes nothing. I really, really hope this works. Ball’s in your court, big guy. Bring on the magic.”