Happily Letter After(66)

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.” She ran to her room and came back with a worn manila folder. Articles were bulging from it. It had to be at least two inches thick and had a fat rubber band tied around to keep it closed.

I took the folder, confused. “Why wouldn’t you tell me about finding these?”

She looked down. “I thought you’d get mad at me for writing to Santa. Because I really don’t need much. And that’s, like . . . greedy. I know. I just wanted a special friend for us . . . and some socks for you.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m not mad. Why don’t you go take your shower and get dressed, and then we’ll take the Duke to the park.”

“Okay, Daddy!”

Birdie took off, and I stared at the folder for a long time, unsure of why it wasn’t sitting right with me. So what if Amanda kept a box of Santa clippings? She probably hadn’t been hiding them. Perhaps the folder had been in the box with a bunch of other files, and that one had been on the bottom. She’d taken them out to use the box for something else and hadn’t noticed she’d left one behind. I was certain there was a logical reason.

Yet that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach wasn’t going away.

Trying to shake it off, I slipped the rubber band off the file and opened the folder. There had to be a hundred articles snipped from magazines in here. Sifting through, the first twenty or so were all from the Santa feature. It seemed Amanda had kept each of the weekly articles that ran throughout November and December and for quite a few years. I guess she really had been a big fan. But as I dug further, I noticed there were other articles, too. A few dozen on makeup tips, then a bunch that seemed to be about women in business—dealing with office politics and stuff like how to dress for success. Amanda hadn’t been big into makeup, and she definitely never worked in an office. So it all seemed pretty random. Since they were clippings, not all of them had a date. But some did at the top. She’d cut out these articles over years. But why? And why hadn’t she ever mentioned her little collection?

Then it hit me.

Makeup articles.

Business etiquette.

Santa letters.

They weren’t random. They had one thing in common.

I flipped back through the columns and searched each for the name. I hadn’t noticed the writer listed on my first look. The Holiday Wishes articles had the writer listed only as Santa Claus.

But the other articles, the ones on makeup and business etiquette, each and every one of them were the same.

Sadie Bisset.

Years and years of articles written by Sadie.

And only Sadie.

What the fuck?



Sunday afternoon, Birdie talked me into taking her and two friends to one of those trampoline places. Sadie came along, and we planned to go to the Barking Dog restaurant on the Upper East Side afterward. It was one of the few dog-friendly, dog-themed restaurants in the city. Though my daughter was disappointed when I’d said Duke couldn’t come. That crazy dog wasn’t ready for that type of outing yet. Actually, I wasn’t sure he’d ever behave himself enough to go into a restaurant.

Sadie and I sat having coffee in the waiting area while the kids did their hour of jumping. I’d been anxious to say something to her about the articles that I’d discovered. I wasn’t sure why, but I couldn’t just chalk it up to coincidence and let it go.

“So . . . Birdie told me about her writing to Santa yesterday.”

“Oh. Wow. I’m glad she finally came clean about that. I hope you were able to act surprised.”

I nodded. “She had no idea I already knew.”

“Good.”

“But something interesting came up during our conversation.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“She said she wrote to you because her mom had liked the Santa column.”

Sadie’s jaw dropped. “Her mom?”

I nodded. “She found your Santa articles in a file. Amanda had clipped all of them out from the magazines and saved them.”

“So all of this”—she motioned with her hand back and forth between us—“happened because her mom was a fan of the column?”

“Apparently so.”

“That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? Basically your wife, who’s been gone four years, is responsible for us getting together, then.”

“That’s not the oddest part.”

“What do you mean?”

“There were other articles in the folder, too. Written by you. They dated back to when you first started with the magazine, or close to it. Apparently Amanda had saved all of them.”

“Wow.” Sadie shook her head. “That’s . . . I can’t believe that.”

I don’t know what I’d been looking for, but I watched Sadie’s face closely. She was genuinely surprised. Maybe even more shocked than I’d been yesterday.

“Just my articles? Or other writers’, too?”

“Just yours. Years’ worth of them.”

Her brows knitted together. “I don’t understand. You mean she was a fan of mine?”

I sipped my coffee. “I guess so. Do you get a lot of those? Fans who collect your articles?”

“I have gotten some fan letters over the years. People who say they’ve followed my articles in the magazine and stuff. But that’s just a freaky coincidence, isn’t it?”