Secret Santa. Cynthia Reese

      She’d escaped out the back door at a near-dead run, accepting the stack of Tupperware containers filled with goodies from one of her mother’s friends just so she wouldn’t be delayed by an argument. Charli hadn’t even had the courage to say goodbye to her mother. She’d go back. Later. She’d call. Later. But for now, she simply needed some quiet.

      At that exact moment, Gene Autry started belting out “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Charli banged her head against knuckles that gripped the steering wheel. Neil and his blasted Christmas lights. All they did was remind her that this Christmas was going to be the absolute worst Christmas ever, in a long, long line of horrible Christmases in the Prescott family history.

      That wasn’t entirely true. Neil’s Christmas lights reminded her of that. But Neil himself... He’d been so sweet. He’d hung right in there with her and her mom the night her dad had died. He’d come by her mom’s every day, and Charli was so grateful for the way he’d made her mom smile in those early moments.

      At the funeral, Neil had waited patiently for the many, many people to greet them at the graveside. There, under the green tent the funeral home had provided, he’d gripped Charli’s hand in a tight comforting squeeze and assured her she could ask for anything she needed. The man had a kind heart—she could tell that.

      So maybe if she walked through the gap in the hedge and asked him for this one night if he could forego the music...he might.

      She hoisted herself out of the car on legs that still felt wobbly. As she approached the hedge, she saw Neil, his back to her, happily tinkering with a snowman’s lights, adjusting the display with his good hand.

      She cleared her throat, but the music drowned out the sound. Somehow it seemed too intimate to watch him without him knowing of her presence as he fiddled with the lights, completely engrossed in his task. His attention to detail rivaled some of the surgeons she’d trained under, and he could have no greater focus to his task than her favorite chief resident.

      “Neil?”

      The name got his attention. He turned around. A smile lit up his face and warmed her, despite the raucous rendition of “Rudolph” in the background. “Hey! You’re home! How’s your mom?”

      “She’s—she’s okay.” Charli’s throat closed up on her as she thought about her mom and how much she’d loved her dad. All her mom had ever wanted was to make her dad happy. And now the main purpose of Violet Prescott’s life was gone.

      Neil crossed the lawn to where she was. He stood there, smiling, his eyes full of energy and merriment that the music seemed to fuel. Suddenly Charli thought it way too much to ask him to cut off the Christmas carols—would he think she was some sort of Scrooge? And he got so much joy out of the display.... Would she get that amount of joy out of anything ever again?

      “I’ve got some hot cocoa if you’d like,” Neil offered. “Or I could scare up an omelet.”

      She shook her head. “No, no, thank you. My mom’s friends have all conspired to make sure I don’t starve to death for the next century. I’ve got a carload of Tupperware filled with food.”

      “Oh, okay. Yeah, every time I went to visit, it was always packed with people—the funeral home, your mom’s house....”

      Charli felt tears burn her eyes. She turned her head, embarrassed that a week after that awful night, she still had to be on guard against her emotions. She was a doctor. She couldn’t be falling apart every minute of every day.

      Neil touched her sleeve. “I—I’m sorry.”

      For a horrifying moment, she thought she wasn’t going to be able to keep back the tears. His voice was so kind, so gentle, as if he understood exactly the depth of the pain she was going through. She was certain that if she looked Neil straight in the face, she’d surely lose it.

      But the will that had gotten her through medical school and the grueling years of residency saved her. She swallowed it all down and promised herself a good cry later when she was alone.

      “I—I have a silly favor to ask,” she said when she was able to face him again.

      “Sure, anything,” Neil told her.

      “Could—just for tonight—could you go without the music? I—I can’t explain it....”

      Neil didn’t hesitate. He walked over to a weatherproof box she hadn’t seen before and killed the music. He turned around, palms ups, and said, “That better?”

      Charli had been prepared to argue and debate and prove her point—something she had many years of experience doing first with her dad and then with every single one of the professors and doctors who’d trained her. To have a guy not question her, but just give her the thing she asked for, was almost too much. She felt her composure begin to falter.

      Neil must have seen something on her face, because he closed the gap between them and steered her to the front porch steps. She sat there, staring at his awful decorations, unsure what she might say that would end the silence but not reveal what was on her mind.

      Before she could figure that out, her phone buzzed.

      She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the screen. “My mom,” she said apologetically, and answered it.

      “Charli!” her mom exclaimed in greeting. “Honey, where did you go?”

      “I—I had to have some air, Mom. I just needed to be alone. I’m sorry. I’ll come back.” The thought of being in that hive of activity nearly undid Charli.

      “No, no, don’t come back for me...but, honey, you don’t need to be alone. You need people, people who care about you. Right now, the thing that will do you the most good is— Oh, thank you, Ellen, thank you for the tea. Charli, the thing that will help is to be around people.”

      Charli knew her mom meant well, but this was a meeting of the minds that would never happen. It was the same vast chasm of difference that had made her mom think ruffles and lace would suit Charli, when in reality, all Charli had wanted to do was pull on a T-shirt and jeans and tag along with her dad. How could Charli explain to her mother that being among people was the thing she could stand least right now?

      It wouldn’t happen. Charli knew that. “I am around people, Mom,” Charli told her. She glanced at the man who sat quietly beside her, looking off into the distance and pretending not to listen. He actually made a move to get up and give her privacy—score more points for him—but she laid a hand on his arm. “I’m with my neighbor, Neil Bailey.”

      “Oh!” Her mother’s tone slid from its prior worry straight to relief and delight. “Oh, Charli! That’s good. That’s very good. I should have known you’d need some companionship your own age. And Neil is so nice and so handsome, too.”

      Charli couldn’t help but blush at her mother’s words. She knew where this was heading. She tried to cut her off, afraid Neil might overhear her mother’s effusiveness.

      “Mom, it’s not like that—”

      “He was just too kind! And did you see that beautiful write-up in the paper about your father? Neil did a fine job. Will you tell him that? And tell him to come by and visit me, so I can thank him properly. Oh, Charli! You couldn’t have found a finer gentleman.”

      “Mom, I don’t need that sort of—”

      “Oh, nonsense! Every woman needs a good man. That’s what we are made for. I had your father.” Here, her mother’s voice sounded choked. “For all these years, he stood by me, when I was so— He could have left me. And he didn’t. All the misery I caused him.”

      “Mom...” Charli didn’t need to hear her mother’s regret play out again. She didn’t need to be reminded of her mother’s battles with her shopping addictions.

      Her mother, though, pulled out of her sharp dive into moroseness. “You stay. Charli, stay right there. And get to know that