A Cliché Christmas(52)

“Nan, you don’t know—”

“Georgia. I don’t care nearly as much about the wrong she’s done to you as I do about what your heart chooses to do with it. No one’s life is exactly as it seems. Everyone is capable of being redeemed.”

That seemed questionable when it came to Sydney Parker.

I stared at my Yoda-like grandmother and thought of every credible argument as to why I wasn’t going to get out of this car.

But her expression was steady.

If there was a woman more stubborn than me, it was my Nan.

I grabbed the plastic-wrapped snowman plate filled with buttery goodness and trudged up the driveway as slowly as humanly possible. I noticed then that this was the only house on the street without Christmas lights or a giant inflatable snow globe in the yard.

Hiking up my pants along with my pride, I said a prayer under my breath as I knocked on Sydney Parker’s front door.

A man—John Parker I assumed—swung the door open. His disheveled dark hair looked like a peacock’s tail after a fight. But his face was handsome, young, with a light scruff around his jaw. There was no doubt he was the father of one Miss Sydney Parker.

“Who are you?” His glassy eyes ticked back and forth rapidly, putting my nerves on edge. There was something off about him, about his voice and the way he stared at me. It was as though he could see something I couldn’t.

“I’m—” I shoved the plate toward him. “I’m Nan’s—Nancy Cole’s granddaughter. These are for you. Merry Christmas.”

The man tilted his head, blinked once, and snatched the plate from my hands roughly. “You want money—a delivery fee?”

“Um, no, they’re a gift.” I started to turn away from the awkward man when I heard—

“Daddy? Who’s at the—” Sydney stopped dead in her tracks, her face a canvas of a variety of emotions—going from weary exhaustion to wide-eyed disbelief and then finally revealing a slow-simmering humiliation that pinkened her makeup-free cheeks. She touched her dad’s shoulder, and he shrugged her away, the plate of homemade cinnamon rolls slipping out from under the plastic wrap and splattering onto the floor. I sucked in a sharp breath—and resisted the urge to run from this porch and never look back.

“Stupid girl! I haven’t paid for those yet!” His brow crumpled in anger.

“Daddy, go wait in the other room, please.” Sydney dropped to the floor, scraping up frosting as he stood there rocking back and forth on his feet.

He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then he looked back at me. “You said today’s Christmas?”

“It is.” My voice squeaked with doubt.

“Daddy . . . please. Go wait in your recliner. I’ll get your breakfast to you in just a minute.”

With one final glance in my direction, he shuffled away, muttering to himself. I suddenly realized why Sydney didn’t want to meet with the costume committee in her home. She was hiding her mentally ill father.

Sydney tried to clean up the frosting on the beautiful entryway tile with the edge of the plate, but she ended up just swirling it around in the process. Something inside my chest pulled tight. I didn’t like this girl, or the things she’d done to me, but when every instinct told me to turn away from her, I couldn’t.

I couldn’t leave.

I knelt down beside her, and her eyes flicked to my face.

“What are you still doing here? Go home to your family, Georgia.” Her voice caught on the word family. It was a word that had snagged my voice plenty of times.

“Do you have any paper towels? I think those might work better.”

She stood up without speaking and left the entryway. She was back moments later with a roll of paper towels. I took one from her hand and wiped up the sticky mess without saying a word.

When we were both standing, Sydney’s shoulders sagged with the weight of a thousand lifetimes. And something inside me shifted—something that felt less like comparison and more like compassion.

“Let me get you a new plate of rolls. Nan has extras in the car.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. He’s not supposed to have sugar anyway—it doesn’t mix well with his medications.”

Oh. “Well . . . um . . . Merry Christmas, Sydney.”

The smile that came to my face wasn’t my normal forced-for-Sydney-Parker grin. It was instead an authentic, joy-filled smile. And I meant it.

Whatever was going on inside this house, or inside her world, it wasn’t easy. It didn’t justify what she’d done or make me understand her motivations, but it did make her human.

Just like me.

The door closed with a soft click, and I headed down the driveway toward Nan.

“Georgia?”

I spun back around to see Sydney’s pale face staring back at me from a small crack in her front door.

“Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas.”



That afternoon Weston picked us up to join the Jameses’ traditional Christmas dinner. Even though Savannah was still undergoing treatments, there was much to celebrate, like the Christmas pageant fund-raiser and bake sale, which had brought in more than double what we’d expected. Other than the book I planned to give Nan later that night, I hadn’t shopped for gifts. But this year, I didn’t feel the absence of fancy packages. Every possible hole in my heart had been filled, and I had never loved a Christmas Day more.