Happily Letter After(3)

CHAPTER 2

SADIE

“What the heck are you doing?”

The next afternoon, Devin came into my office and found me with a roll of Christmas wrapping paper laid out on my desk and a can in the middle. I shrugged and started to cut the paper. “Wrapping olives.”

“Uh. Why?”

I reached into the plastic bag sitting on my chair and held up the item I’d bought on my lunch hour. “How do you think I should wrap these? I don’t have a box.”

Devin’s bushy brows drew together. “You want to wrap men’s black socks?”

I set down the scissors and folded the red-and-white candy-cane-striped wrapping paper around the can. “Well, I can’t send the olives looking festive and not the socks.”

She plucked the socks from my hand and rolled them into a ball. “I have two brothers. My dad used to give me twenty bucks to buy each of them a gift at the holidays. Every year they got socks from the sale rack for a buck, and I used the rest of the money to buy makeup. They wrap best folded like this, into a ball.”

“Oh. Smart.”

Devin leaned against my desk and moved the tape dispenser closer to me. “So who are the olives and socks for? New guy I don’t know about?”

I shook my head. “No, they’re for Birdie.”

“Ohhhhh. Birdie.” She nodded as if it all made sense. “Who the hell is Birdie?”

“She’s a little girl who wrote to the Holiday Wishes mailbox. I want to make some of her wishes come true.”

“And she wished for men’s black socks and olives?”

“Yep. And a special friend for her dad. Her mom died of cancer a few years ago. So sweet.”

Devin frowned. “That sucks. But what’s her dad look like?”

“How should I know?”

She shrugged. “He’s single. And is about to have clean socks. That’s better than half the men you’ve gone out with lately already.”

I chuckled. “True. But I don’t think so.”

“Suit yourself. His kid sounds like an odd duck anyway. Who asks Santa for olives?”

I stopped wrapping and looked at her. “When I was seven, I asked for a rooster because I wanted fresh brown eggs.”

“But . . . roosters don’t lay eggs.”

“I didn’t say I was the smartest seven-year-old.”

Devin laughed as she walked out of my office. “I think you just made a case for why you should google Birdie’s dad. Sounds like maybe you’re a match made in heaven.”



I never ended up googling anyone. In fact, after I sent Birdie the olives and socks, I wished her well in my mind and never gave it a second thought. That is, until another envelope showed up at the magazine about a week later. When I noticed her name on the return address, I immediately dumped the other mail and ripped that envelope open.

A photo fell out of the letter onto the floor. When I picked it up, what met my eyes was a beautiful little girl with golden hair and a bright smile that melted my heart. It was a wallet-size school photo. Wow. This is her. It felt surreal to be looking at the actual Birdie. She was so pretty, with kind eyes and, from everything I knew, a beautiful soul to match. I put the photo aside and read the letter.

Dear Santa,

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God! You are real. You’re really real. I got the olives and socks today. The holes fit on my fingers! Not the holes in the socks. The holes in the olives. The socks didn’t have holes. My daddy’s socks don’t have holes anymore. They were so nice and soft. You should’ve seen him when he found the socks in his drawer! He still doesn’t know how they got there. He said today must have been his lucky day because he found them. And I laughed. It was so funny! And then he took me to the ice-cream place next to his restaurant to celebrate our lucky day. I couldn’t tell him that I was too full because I just ate a can of olives.

Did I tell you my dad owns a fancy restaurant? People wear high heels to go eat there. I prefer to eat in my feetsy pajamas. But Dad makes me wear a dress on date night. That’s on the first Tuesday of every month. Mom used to go with him. But now I do. It’s my favorite day of the month. Not because I like to look all fancy and eat at Dad’s restaurant but because after dinner, Dad comes home with me. He usually works really late.

Oh! And I also didn’t tell him I wrote to you. He would’ve told me it was too early to write to Santa and that I shouldn’t be greedy.

Last night, I told my dad that I really want someone else to braid my hair besides him. He doesn’t know how to do it right. Then I caught him watching a YouTube video on how to braid. I told him I want the kind of braid that goes across the top of my head. The fancy one. He was watching someone make that kind of braid. If he tries to braid my hair like that, then I’m going to feel bad and let him do it. And I’ll look silly.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for showing me that you’re real.

Birdie Maxwell

P.S. I am sending you one of my school photos. They gave me a lot, and I have no one to give them to besides Dad and my grandmas.

P.P.S. I added something to my Christmas list. Did you ever hear of 23andMe? In school we made these big trees that showed all our parents and grandparents on all different branches. Mrs. Parker told us all about how you can spit in a tube and find people related to you going back hundreds of years. I want to add branches to my tree, enough to cover an entire wall in my bedroom! My tree was one of the skinniest in school because I don’t have any sisters or brothers.