“Not a real one, Dad! A fake one. With a fireplace with an opening big enough for Santa—a first-grade one— to crawl out of, with stockings hanging on it. Those can be real. And then, I don’t know, a chair and a rug or something.”
“Hollybear, I’m not sure I can—”
“You’ve got all the tools. You can use that saw you’ve been using for the baseboard and that other saw that’s more growly and we can buy paint and I don’t think it’ll be too hard for us.”
“I know. But there’s a lot of work I’ve got to finish on this house so we can get moved in before Christmas.”
“This is important, Dad!” Her face was so full of emotion that it surprised him.
He set down his mud pan and drywall tool then lifted her off the step stool and sat on the plastic drop cloth-covered flooring with her. “Okay, okay. Talk to me about why it’s so important to you that I do it.”
She gazed at the window that didn’t have any blinds or curtains. With as dark as it was outside, all it showed was a reflection of the mostly empty room. Then she met his eyes. “Remember that kid I told you about?”
“The one who said he could make the best paper snowflakes?”
She nodded. “My teacher said she needed parent helpers to make the set for our Christmas program, and I was going to tell her that maybe you could help because you’re fixing up an entire house. But Aiden beat me up there and he said thathismomwould be best at it. Can you believe he said that? Like my mom couldn’t do all that when she totally could have!”
“Oh, Holls,” he said and pulled her in for a hug, wrapping his arms around her little shoulders. It couldn’t be easy losing a mom at such a young age.
“So I told him that you’d be better at it than his mom is.” Her words came out muffled against his shoulder.
He pulled back. “Holly.”
“I know. I wasn’t ‘winning friends and influencing people,’ like grandpa Ben always says I should, butplease, Daddy. Please make the living room for us. I know it’s not the same as mom doing it, but I have to show Aiden that he was wrong about her. Please?”
Nick wanted to help her. He knew he needed to do more to fill in the gaping holes left by a parent who had passed. And he wanted to do everything he could to help her not be so sad that her mom wasn’t there for all of it. Could he even do this, though? Add one more thing to a long list of things to finish before Christmas?
He could. He could somehow find a way to make it all work and be awesome for his daughter when she needed him to be.
“Okay.”
Holly sat up straighter, her eyebrows raised in hope. “You’ll do it?”
He nodded, and she wrapped her little arms around him in a hug, which made him feel pretty great. He might not be able to give her all he wanted to, but he could give her this.
When she pulled back from the hug, she said, “I miss Mom. Can I video chat with her on your phone?”
He looked at her, confused. Holly understood that her mom was gone.
Then she gestured to the phone at his waist. “You know, the picture you have of Mom on your phone. I’ve seen you talk to Mom on it.”
Heat rose to his cheeks just knowing that his six-year-old caught him talking to a picture. He pulled out the phone. “You know it’s not really her.”
“I know. But it helps, right? It seems like it helps.”
He swiped to the last page of apps and handed the phone to Holly. “I think it does.”
“Hi, Momma,” Holly said while looking at the screenshot, her voice full of emotion that grabbed his heart. “I miss you. We are in our new house, just fixin’ things up. Check it out.” She turned the phone around, so she was basically showing the picture to the walls. “And Dad’s even letting me help search out all the nail holes and fill them. Mom, I’m making them practically disappear!”
She showed the picture of the tool she was using, then she turned the phone back to face her and said, “I know you’re watching over us, and I think you’ll really like watching us in this house. Well, I better get back to work! Love you lots and lots, Momma.”
She pressed the button to turn off the screen, then handed the phone back to Nick and said, “You’re right. It does help.”
Holly went back to her job of filling the nail holes, this time in the baseboard, humming a tune she was probably making up. It amazed him how quickly she could bounce back from such strong emotions.
As they worked, Nick couldn’t seem to get what his in-laws had said out of his mind. Now seemed as good a time as any to bring it up with Holly.
“So,” he said, spreading the last of the joint compound on the hole repair, trying his best to act nonchalant, “yourgrandparents think I should start dating again. How do you feel about that thought?”
