How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

“Is she okay?”

“No. My dad is drunk and outside, and she’s just…”

“I’m coming with you. I’ll follow. You handle your dad and I’ll help your mom.”

“Sophie, you don’t have to do that.”

“Sam. You and me are super fucked up right now, but your mom is family to me and you know that.”

“Thank you,” he said, and I wanted to kiss him. I did. Because I’d never in my life seen a guy who needed to be kissed as much as Fucking Sam Porter. But like he knew I was thinking it, he stepped back. Out of range.

“I’m on your bumper. Let’s go.”

16

Sam

I knew exactly what I was getting into at my parents’ house. I knew this scene by heart. Dad somewhere on the spectrum of drunk between weeping and belligerent. Remorseful and absolutely bat-shit righteous. That was my father’s spectrum. Mom would be in the living room, watching him through the curtains, forcing herself with all of her might not to bring him inside. She knew not to bring him in, because he only got meaner, drunker. Like a stray dog who kept pissing on the rug.

I pulled up in my truck, spraying snow as I skidded to a stop. Sophie had been on my bumper the whole way, blazing through every yellow light to stay with me. She knew where she was going, obviously, but she wanted to be with me when we got here.

She pulled to a stop behind me with less drama. I was out of the truck before my father managed to get himself to his feet off the picnic table where he’d been sitting.

“Son?” he said, holding out his hand, stumbling sideways into the snow-covered bushes but catching himself. “Your mom’s being unreasonable.”

Belligerent on his way to righteous.

“Dad,” I sighed. “You have to go.”

“Go? This is my home!” Like clockwork he was going to launch into how he bought this trailer fifty years ago, but I needed him away from the door so that Sophie could go in and talk to Mom.

She stepped toward the door, like she was going to skirt around him, but he swiveled his big shaggy head her way. “Who are—hey, I know you.”

“Hello Dale,” she said. Calm and careful. “Merry Christmas.”

“You still sniffing around this family?” Dad asked, turning to face me. “God, you got a whole…” he made this gesture like a dog panting at a table, begging for scraps “…thing with the Kanes.”

“Dad, you need to leave.”

“I bought this trailer!” he cried, stepping toward me, and Sophie darted around him and through the front door. I breathed a sigh of relief, imagining Sophie putting her strong arms around my mom’s shoulders.

“Yeah, and you lost the right to walk in and out of it at will a bunch of years ago.” I found myself in the ready position that was ingrained in my bones after so many years as a Marine.

I noticed how little he was wearing. His old camel-colored overcoat that used to make him look dashing was no protection against the cold. He was still lean, the wrinkles in his face deeper. Thicker. Like he’d been thinking big, difficult thoughts. Which he hadn’t.

His hair was gray and fell over his forehead in a thick sweep.

When I was a kid , Mom had sent me into a bar to pull him out because she couldn’t stand to see him flirting with other women, and I remembered women putting their hands through that flop, running their fingers through it while he told them the same old lies about losing his job at the university, about how he’d worked in the labs with people who were trying to cure cancer. He’d made it sound like he’d been an integral part of operations, when he’d been a temporary custodian who’d been fired for drinking after three months on the job.

Mom once told me that the line he’d fed her was that he was working at an advertising agency. Same reality, custodian—until he got caught stealing from the petty cash drawer, but by then it had been too late. Mom was pregnant with me.

“Dad,” I said. “You gotta stop doing this.”

“Visiting my wife. My home?”

“Pretending you care when you’re only here because the woman you’ve been lying to just came to her senses and changed the locks on her door.”

Dad sighed through his nose like a bull and fished his flask out of his pocket.

Again— action before thought—I smacked the flask right out of his hand and it went spinning into the bushes.

“Son. You’re gonna go get that.” The threat in his voice used to work on me. Used to make me shake and tremble. Mom, too.

“No. Listen, Dad, you’re going to leave and you’re not—”

He lunged for me. I mean, I couldn’t believe the guy had it in him. But I stepped sideways and he fell on his face in the snow. He tried to get up on his own but it was so disgraceful, so inept, I took pity on him and pulled him to his feet, holding him by the coat that let him get away with so much.