Katie stoodbeside her mom in their big kitchen, cutting up apples for the pies while her mom rolled out the pie crusts. Three of her sisters had arrived with their families, so the place was already filled with a lot of action, a lot of noise, a lot of delicious scents, and enough Christmas decorations that everything felt exactly like Christmas Eve.
A couple of her nieces were folding the red napkins that went with the Christmas place settings into origami shapes based on some “YouTube research” they’d done, while all the littler cousins were either playing with a car set just under the big Christmas tree or piling on top of a couple of her brothers-in-law.
“You know,” Julianne said, leaning in to point at the apple Katie was slicing, “if you slice along there first, then— ”
“I’ve got this,” Katie said. She could do something as simple as slicing an apple without instruction.
She glanced toward the hall leading to her dad’s office, waiting for him to come out. And waiting for Connor to arrive— she really thought he would beat her there.
She heard the front door open and looked over to see Jack and Noelle come into the family room. “We just got to see the puppies!” Noelle said while holding up her phone, and Katie rinsed the juice from the apples off her hands and hurried over to see.
“Holly’s grandparents are over for Christmas Eve,” Noelle said, “but they let us come play with them for a bit.”
Katie leaned in to look at pictures of the little fur babies as Noelle swiped through them, several of her nieces and nephews coming in close to see, too.
“Three of the five of them already have their eyes open,” Noelle said. “Oh, see this one? She’s the one that’s going to be ours when she’s ready.”
“I’m impressed you two are willing to take on training a new puppy soon after having a baby,” Katie said.
“Yeah,” Jack said, “we might be a little crazy. Funny story— we were babysitting Aiden and Holly when Bailey went into labor. When I called them to let them know, they thought it was Noelle who was in labor.”
“Oh, I wish I was,” Noelle said, putting a hand on her belly. “I’m ready to pop.”
“Happy birthday to Noelle,” her six-year-old nephew, Porter called out in the cadence of the poemThe Night Before Christmas.
Katie, along with everyone else in the room called back, “and to Noelle a good night.”
She had just made it back to the kitchen to continue with the apple slicing when her dad came out of his office and headed straight toward her, a big smile on his face. She started grinning even before he got there. “You, my daughter, did an excellent job on those videos!”
As the head of brand management, her dad was one of the people who she knew would be the first to see the videos she submitted. “You like them?”
“When I first told you that you were being assigned the player who was traded, do you remember that I assigned them to you because I didn’t want to dump it on someone else last minute? That I didn’t think it was professional but that I knew you’d be forgiving of that?”
She nodded.
“That wasn’t the actual reason why. I didn’t want to tell you at the time because I didn’t want you to feel the pressure of it, but we assigned the new player to you because out of all the videographers we hired, you were by far the strongest at bringing out the emotion of an event through your videos.”
“I was?”
“The franchise is really excited about getting Connor, and they wanted a video that would really sell him to the hearts of the fans. And you knocked it out of the park, just like we guessed you would.”
She smiled widely as she took in a big breath that made her feel like she had grown an inch or two.
“It’s not my call what gets aired— Advertising and the GM get the ultimate say on that, but I’m betting they’ll love it and see the brilliance behind it. I also spelled it out for them just in case.”
“Thank you!” she said and gave him a tight hug. She was so deliriously thrilled that it was making her lightheaded. She heard the front door open, and she looked over to see Connor as he rounded the corner into the family room. She practically skipped over to him, wrapped her arms around him, and gave him a kiss.
“Wow, you are beaming.”
“My dad just watched the video I sent the Glaciers of you, and he loves it.”
“Of course he did. You’re very good at what you do.”
She grinned at him. Creating something that others appreciated gave her a high unlike nothing else. Her smile faltered just a bit, though, as she took in Connor’s face. “Is everything okay?”
He smiled, but it didn’t feel quite as genuine as his smiles normally did. “Yes, I’m fine. Everything is good. I’m just a little sore from yesterday’s game. I’m sorry for taking so long to get here— I decided to get chains on the tires of my rental car. And with the snow that has already fallen, I-seventy was moving painfully slow.”
“Happy birthday to Noelle,” her nine-year-old niece, Erika called out, and everyone else, including Katie, joined in to say, “And to Noelle a good night.”
