Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 68

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Second Chances in New Port Stephen - Chapter 68

Zoe attacked the frankly ludicrous mountain of beribboned gifts while the adults watched and
snapped pictures. Most of the presents were from her grandmother, who couldn’t ever pass up
the chance to outdo everyone else. “Clothes,” Zoe said, holding up a red velvet dress with a frilly
lace collar. Where the hell was a four-year-old supposed to wear such a thing, Nick wondered.
Zoe was a polite kid, and they’d taught her to be gracious anytime she received a gift, but even
she was having a hard time not looking disappointed. “Pretty,” was the best she could do before
laying it aside to tackle a box that contained a tiny pair of roller skates that Nick and Laurie had
bought on sale the previous summer. “Yes!” Her enthusiasm bubbled over as she hugged the
box. “I love them!”
“Santa put a helmet and knee pads in there too,” Laurie said. “You have to promise to wear
them when you skate so you stay safe.”
Zoe nodded fiercely. “I promise.”
Kay snorted and mumbled into her own wineglass, “Nanny state nonsense. A child can’t even
skin a knee these days?”
Nick considered telling Kay that letting kids crack their heads open on bare pavement was not
the free-market utopia she pretended it was, but it was Christmas. He could pick his battles for
Zoe’s sake.
After presents came dinner. In years past, Kay’s holiday dinners played host to dozens of guests,
but then her husband, Peter, had passed away, and things changed. Nick had liked Peter; he’d
been a quiet man, kind of reserved, but a grounding figure in Kay’s life. After he died, she’d
gotten isolated. Suddenly old friends weren’t good enough to invite around because of this or
that slight, imagined or not. There was also some dispute over Peter’s will that Nick had never
fully understood, and because of that, Kay stopped talking to most family members, including
her son, Laurie’s younger brother. Laurie reported that she’d started sharing lots of weird
articles on Facebook about conspiracy theories and what was wrong with America, then got into
awful fights with her few remaining friends in the comments. “I’m cutting toxic people out of
my life,” Kay had declared, though what she’d really done was alienate herself from everyone
who’d ever cared for her. Instead of a table full of cousins and siblings and church friends,
Christmas dinner was only the four of them.

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Nick missed Linda from church and Cousin Carl, not because they’d been particularly fun
people, but because they’d been warm bodies, buffers for Kay’s nasty comments. Now the only
cover Nick had was Laurie, and if she and her mother were in the midst of a cold war, that didn’t
bode well. The only neutral topic he could summon up was the food. He whistled at the array of
dishes as he sat down at the table. “Wow, Kay, what an amazing spread. Thank you for cooking.”
Like Zoe, Nick had been trained to be gracious, even when presented with five different kinds of
under-seasoned starches.