Chapter 4 - The Box With Two Names
The box contained a beginner music-learning tablet and a set of headphones.
I'd bought Lily the same model of headphones and carefully wrapped them myself.
The retailer's receipt, folded beneath the packing paper, carried my email address.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Beth looked from the receipt to our mother.
“Did you take gifts out of Austin's bag?”
Mom recovered quickly.
“Those weren't even the expensive presents.”
It was a confession wrapped in an insult.
“How many?” I asked.
“Austin, don't make a scene in front of the boys.”
“How many gifts did you give away?”
Her silence answered more than I wanted it to.
Connor set the box on the table.
“I didn't know it was Lily's,” he whispered.
“Of course you didn't,” I said.
Tyler's eyes filled.
He thought he might lose everything he'd opened.
Beth gathered both boys to her.
“No one's blaming you,” she told them.
Mom looked relieved, as if that settled matters.
Then Connor said something worse.
“Grandma said we were the good grandchildren this year.”
Beth went very still.
“What else did she say?”
“She said Max and Lily weren't ready for nice things.”
Mom raised her voice.
“Children repeat things incorrectly.”
“Funny,” Beth said, “how every child in this house remembers the same version except the one you prefer.”
I went through the photographs from Christmas morning.
A robotics kit sat near Connor's feet.
A blue soccer jersey hung over Tyler's chair.
Both had been in my shopping cart weeks earlier.
I began comparing receipts and boxes, item by item.
The list kept growing.
Not everything had gone to Kansas City.
Some gifts had been diverted inside the chalet.
Mom had created two categories of punishment without telling anyone.
The cousins got a reward for obedience, while my children were supposed to watch.
Beth called her husband, Daniel, who'd stayed home to work.
He listened, then asked her to put him on speaker.
“Carol,” he said evenly, “did you give my boys presents purchased by Austin?”
“I enhanced their Christmas.”
“That wasn't the question.”
Mom marched out.
Beth apologized so fiercely that I had to ask her to stop.
She hadn't known.
Neither had the boys.
The distinction mattered.
At lunchtime, I told Lily and Max the truth in terms they could understand.
Someone they trusted had hidden some of their gifts on purpose.
The grown-ups would make it right.
Max considered this quietly.
“Did Grandma want us to think we were bad?”
I struggled to answer.
Lily answered for me.
“Yes,” she said.
“That's exactly what she wanted.”
Later, after the children had gone outside with Beth, I found a sealed envelope beneath the list of holiday rules.
It was addressed to me.
Across the flap, my mother had written: OPEN ONLY IF AUSTIN REFUSES TO COOPERATE.
Inside was a printed statement about my parenting.
At the bottom were lines for witnesses to sign.
May you like
And on the first line, someone had already written Beth Bennett's name.
