— My name is Patrick, and I'm an alcoholic, he said.

— Hi Patrick, someone else said.

— My mother left us when I was fifteen for an investment banker, he said. He threw me a fiendish smile. He was on his way, you could tell. Claire was next to him, and he had a hand up under her shirt, rubbing her belly, which you couldn't tell to look at it yet but that belly was pregnant with my grand kid. On TV Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen were doing "Sisters" from White Christmas. No sound came from the TV, since that part of it was broken, but we knew what they were saying. She wore the dress and I stayed home, said Patrick.

I went down to the basement where there was a radio to listen to and I did crossword puzzles, surrounded by boxes full of Sarah's old things.

Last month this girl went missing and we were keeping up on it. There were updates almost every day in the newspaper. Same with the television news and the tabloids and everything else. In church we prayed that the Lord would bring little Sam Hutchinson to safety. We prayed for the Hutchinson family, that the Lord would bring them comfort. You could hear people chatting about it in the supermarket. Samantha Hutchinson. You saw her face everywhere. Sometimes I had dreams about her.

In the morning I took a walk to Center Street where they sold newspapers and I bought a paper. On Center Street I also bought some flowers for Claire. I could see the distant city in part, sprouted up like someone just dropped a few seeds and walked on. The flowers I bought hadn't quite bloomed yet, so in a few days when Claire returned from her parents' they'd still be fresh, the flowers would. The blue-gray sky and a latent heat were pronounced. I stood in the empty parking lot.

— Claire? I said, stepping inside. I'd seen the truck in the driveway. I snuck the roses into the refrigerator and then I said again, Claire?

Then a thought came to me and I thought, what the hell. Patrick was on a plane to California, I thought to myself. I thought, what the hell.

— Hey come here, I said. Come out here on the couch. When she didn't answer I said in desperation, I bought some roses for you, Claire. I pictured those undeveloped buds being chilled.

— I'm on my way out the door, she finally said. She showed up holding a coat. Patrick said you had some cigarettes somewhere?

— Jesus the last time I smoked was, I said. I opened the newspaper and looked it over.

— You didn't think they'd expect me so early, did you think that? What time is it, she said. She held up her coat and dug in a pocket for something. I'm just killing some time is all I'm doing here, she said. She threw the coat across a chair and held in her hand a lipstick. Then she went to go put some on. I searched the paper for some news about Sam Hutchinson. But there was nothing. It was the time of year when they'd put in something for the kids about the North Pole or Santa Claus, or else something about local houses with complex decorations and lights and so on. Something seasonal and high-spirited. I searched the paper for something cheerful.

Claire came back in and kissed me on the mouth. She slung a purse over her shoulder and grabbed the coat again.

— Might as well take off I guess. Where're those flowers you said. I'll bring those flowers to my mother if you were being serious, she said.

— They're not bloomed yet, I said. Tell your mother hello, though, for me. Would you? I said. Would you tell her Merry Christmas from me please?

— Jesus, Nick, she said, and then she was gone.

Though not for an investment banker, my wife did leave us when Patrick was fifteen, for this man in California called James. James, if you can believe it. I got a kick out of that. And all she did was one day she walked out the door with just a suitcase—a single suitcase, is all she took with her—and she drove off in her daddy's old Plymouth, for good. That was her prized possession, that Plymouth. It didn't even suit her a bit, but she loved it just the same since it was her daddy's. Later she sent us a letter, me and Patrick, which said where she'd gone off to, how she was filing for divorce and whatnot, and she told us how come, and she said to Patrick that she was sorry. Since then we'd spoken only once, and briefly, the day my old man passed away.

This is what came to mind as I sat there searching the paper for a high-spirited word or two, that we'd only spoken once in four years. And I thought, maybe I should ring her up. Maybe she'd have some high-spirited words of her own for me. Merry Christmas, maybe she'd say. Then I'd wish her a happy holidays, too. See what she was up to of late. Rekindle the flame. There was no telling what. I set the paper down and went to the kitchen, where the phone hung with its twisted old cord under it like a tail. A dingy grayness surrounded the thing, decades of grime on the wall. It was a cruddy looking thing, I thought. It wasn't a dignified thing you'd use to call up your ex-wife and bridge a four-year chasm, I thought. On the couch I slept.

Sarah used to tell me I was a professional wheel spinner, meaning Christ knows what. Patrick spent a week with James and her once and when he came home I asked him about James. What did he do. James, Patrick said, was president of an architectural consulting firm. He had an ex and a kid, just like Sarah.

I'd once had a job writing articles for a local paper, but Sarah always said that wasn't real writing, nor was it hardly a profession. Write a book then, she'd say, if you're such a writer. I never wrote a book though. When she left I quit the newspaper and started working at the Hampton Inn where my brother David was manager, doing upkeep. I was in charge of keeping things working, I think is a good way of putting it. When something broke, they'd call me. I was a maintenance man, you could say, at the Hampton Inn. Plus when David wasn't there I'd keep an eye on his office for him. I'd sit in there and keep watch on things.

Most times it was slow going at the Hampton, but around Christmas there was a surge, since everyone needed a place to stay who was in town visiting family for the holidays. You learned this working the front desk. Visiting family for the holidays? you'd ask them. Before he left for London each year I helped David put up decorations in places, like the plastic tree in the lobby which we trimmed with tinsel and some lights. David spent his Christmases in London with this British girl Emily he was seeing, and with him gone it was like I was in charge, in a way.

David had in his office a bottle of Tullamore and some glasses, and this couch that was oxblood leather. There was a photo of him with Emily in London, and this other photo where the two of us are just kids together and our old man is standing there behind us, looking tall.

The office got pretty quiet when you shut the door. This poster of all blue squares was pinned to the back of it and there was also, in David's office, this plant I'd brought over for him from home, one that Sarah had left behind when she went off for James in California. David's phone he kept in a drawer, since he said it was an eyesore, so I dug it out at set it on his desk. I looked at it. It made our phone in the kitchen look like an antique, which maybe it was. I picked up the receiver and dialed Sarah's number, then hung up right off. I did this twice. Then I thought maybe if James answered the phone I'd ask for myself, say Is Nick around please. See how he reacted to that. I poured some of that Tullamore from the bottle, then waited. I sat there. David had this old typewriter on his desk instead of a computer. He wasn't the type of person who put a lot of trust in technology. He wasn't one of your people who'd run out and buy the latest and greatest of something, whatever it was. I wasn't sure if he even used that typewriter for anything, or if it was just there to make a statement.

In London they didn't even know about the Sam Hutchinson case, I didn't think. Even if they found the girl, David wouldn't know about it until he got back home.

I dialed Sarah again, listened to it ring this time, once, then put the receiver back in its cradle. I stood up and David's old chair made a startling squeak. I pushed the chair in and it made another sound, then it sat silent in the office as I walked back out to the lobby.

I'd brought Claire here once, so she could see where I worked. I showed her one of the suites. She sat gazing out the window that faced the city, then pulled the curtain closed and rolled over to the other side of the bed. She patted the mattress, smiling at me. I sat down next to her. She put her hand on my thigh and reached up and kissed me on the face, then pulled off her t-shirt and laid it across her thigh. Her stomach was rolled up in little rolls and her breasts hung there like pale fruit, I thought. She looked up at me.

Claire was shaking her head when she walked in the door that same afternoon. She shook her head and went to the kitchen and opened the fridge and shook her head some more and said, Don't ask.

I didn't ask anything. I just went, Hey there sweetheart.

— Good Christ, she said. God damn if those two aren't the craziest sons of bitches in the world. She was talking about her folks, I knew. She shut the fridge and came and set herself down on the couch, her back to me, and turned on the television. We're talking probably about the two craziest sons of bitches in the whole world, she said. She wasn't talking to me necessarily.

— You pick up some flowers for your mother on the way? I asked.

— Christ, she said, you should have seen her. Running around everywhere like the god damn house was going to burn down. Shit. I told them to let me know me when everyone wasn't going crazy, and that's when I just left. I walked out the door.

— So now you're back already, I said.

Claire watched the TV in silence. I watched too. That face could show up at any time on that screen. You never knew when.

At the time Claire was waiting tables at this old diner called the Red Hen, a little place that seemed to have some big dreams but really nothing much else going for it. Sometimes it could be pretty depressing inside the Red Hen, to tell the truth. For one thing the owner was this old guy who Claire said let drug dealers work for him because he was too soft to put them out on the streets, so you never knew who was clean in there and who was pushing something under the table. It was all right though, most nights, and since it was the two of us now, Patrick off in California with Sarah and James, we went there for dinner. We spent Christmas Eve at the Red Hen—Claire flirting with her co-workers and asking could they just let us slide on the bill, giggling and kicking me beneath the table, her shoes off and her socks pulled tight. Then we were hand in hand in a Christmas tree lot, in this parking lot full of felled evergreens, the evening air warm and heavy. We hadn't had a tree since Sarah left us, Patrick and I hadn't, and it was like her and me again, ten years prior, twenty years prior, hunting for a Christmas tree together.

— This one's a doll, Claire said, and walked on. Here's one needs a place to call home, she said. She tugged on a needled bough like you'd pull the tail of a cat. This one, Nick. Here it is, she said.

We dragged the tree over to the truck and tossed it in, Claire laughing against the weight of it. On the way home she'd look back into the bed and check that it was still there.

I carried some boxes up from the basement and I told stories to her as the ornaments were pulled out. Some of the stories involved Sarah, of course, and I cut these ones short or edited her out of them, and put the ornaments lower on the tree, or else in back.

— Sarah's still a part of our lives, no matter how you look at it, I said then. Better or worse. I mean, that's family for you.

I went to the bedroom and dug out one of Sarah's old necklaces. I hid it in a tight fist.

— Close your eyes, I told Claire. I went behind her and clasped the thing around her neck. Merry Christmas, I said. I said, I was going to wrap it, but.