Chapter 10 - Leave It Crooked
The following Christmas Eve, Victoria left her office at four thirty.
Her assistant watched her close the laptop.
“Everything all right?”
Victoria glanced around the room.
The desk was clear enough.
The company would survive a holiday without her answering every email.
On one corner stood Emma’s photograph. Beside it was Lily’s drawing, now slightly faded from sunlight.
“Yes,” Victoria said. “Everything is all right.”
That was not completely true in the sweeping, permanent way she had once demanded from life.
The hotel still had difficult months.
Some employees remained angry about what had happened.
The legal case had not restored every missing dollar.
Grief still found her in grocery stores when she saw a red winter coat.
But she had learned that a good life did not require every wound to disappear.
Downstairs, Daniel stood near the lobby tree holding a toolbox.
Victoria stopped.
“You’re supposed to be off.”
“I am.”
She pointed at the toolbox.
“Then what’s that?”
“Christmas camouflage.”
He opened it.
Inside lay a small bakery box.
Victoria laughed.
“You brought dessert in a toolbox?”
“Nobody steals a toolbox labeled drain inspection.”
“That is disturbingly effective.”
Across the lobby, employees gathered around a long table laden with food. The hotel had arranged staggered holiday meals for everyone working through the evening, including overnight staff.
Elena waved.
Ruth, now working in a nonsupervisory accounting role after the completed employment review, stood beside her. Her cooperation had helped establish the full scheme, but rebuilding trust remained daily work.
Victoria greeted them both.
No speech waited.
No photographer had been hired.
People ate, complained affectionately about the weather, and argued over which department had produced the best cookies.
Daniel watched Victoria listen to a dishwasher describe his daughter’s first semester in college.
A year earlier, she had known three hundred and eighty-seven employees as a number she feared failing.
Now she knew more of their stories.
That mattered.
At five fifteen, they drove to his house.
Lily opened the door before they reached the porch.
“You’re late.”
Daniel checked his watch.
“Dinner’s at six.”
“Cookie inspection started at five.”
“A serious oversight,” Victoria said.
Lily took her hand and pulled her inside.
The tree leaned slightly toward the window.
Its ornaments were uneven.
Two strings of lights blinked at different speeds because Daniel still had not replaced the older set.
Victoria thought it was beautiful.
Four stockings hung above the fireplace.
Daniel.
Lily.
Rachel.
Victoria.
On the mantel, beside a candle, stood a small photograph of Emma that Victoria had brought with Lily’s encouragement.
Nobody had been removed to make room.
After dinner, Megan arrived with pie and an unnecessarily competitive board game. Lily laughed so hard during the second round that she slid halfway out of her chair.
Victoria laughed too.
Daniel caught himself watching her.
Not because she looked younger.
Not because sorrow had vanished from her face.
Because she looked present.
Later, when Megan took Lily upstairs to inspect a newly assembled dollhouse, Daniel carried two mugs of cocoa into the living room.
Victoria stood beside the tree.
“This branch is going to give up,” she said, touching a cluster of handmade ornaments.
“I’ve been saying that for years.”
“Should we move a few?”
He smiled.
“Rachel used to tell me to leave it crooked.”
Victoria lowered her hand.
“Then we should.”
He set the mugs down.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you.”
She turned.
For one startled second, her eyes dropped toward his pockets.
Daniel shook his head, smiling.
“No ring tonight.”
She laughed softly.
“I wasn’t—”
“You absolutely were.”
“A little.”
He took her hands.
“I’m not asking you to rush anything. I’m asking whether next Christmas, you’d like this to be your home too.”
Victoria looked toward the staircase, where Lily was explaining something to Megan with great authority.
Then she looked at the stockings.
At Rachel’s name.
At Emma’s photograph.
At the man who had once found her alone and offered dinner without asking her to become easier to love first.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Daniel drew her close.
Upstairs, Lily shouted, “Are you kissing?”
Megan answered before either adult could.
“Mind your dollhouse.”
Victoria laughed against Daniel’s shoulder.
Outside, snow gathered on the porch railing.
Inside, the tree remained crooked, the cocoa cooled, and the people they had lost were remembered without keeping the living apart.
At six exactly the following evening, there would be leftovers.
There would be dishes.
There would be Lily insisting that one exceptionally hard cookie had been an isolated incident.
And Victoria would be there.
May you like
Not because she had nowhere else to go.
Because, at last, she had somewhere she wanted to stay."
