Part 2
Andrea put both hands into her coat pockets.
She did it so quickly that Malcolm looked away, giving her the small privacy he should have thought to offer before.
“We need to get going,” she said. “Thank you for keeping her company.”
He could have called a store manager. He could have asked his driver to bring something, or sent an employee through town with a company card. Andrea was already guiding Nora toward the door.
“I hope you both have a good Christmas,” he said.
Nora lifted one hand in goodbye.
Through the glass, he watched them cross to a faded tan sedan. The child kept close, talking up at her mother. Andrea’s hands stayed out of the wind until she needed one to unlock the car.
Behind him, someone asked whether he wanted a photograph by the remaining gifts.
“No,” Malcolm said. “Thank you.”
He tried to remember who had last noticed something he needed without being told. Nothing came to him before the car disappeared from the lot.
On Monday, Patricia Dwyer arrived outside his office to find him reading the company’s holiday sponsorship report.
“Who handles the registration?” he asked.
“For which program?”
“The children’s party. Who makes sure the names match the gifts?”
Patricia set down her coffee. She’d worked for him for sixteen years and knew when an ordinary question was gathering speed.
It took several calls to establish that the company supplied money and a few volunteers. A neighborhood nonprofit collected the forms, combined school lists with its own, assigned donors, and wrote the tags.
“Find out where it went wrong,” Malcolm said. “Someone was responsible.”
Patricia folded her arms.
“What?” he asked.
“You met an upset child. Now you’d like a person to fire.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“They’re volunteers, Malcolm. They’re probably still sweeping the gym. Call them before you turn this into an investigation.”
He pushed the report away.
When the center’s director answered, she sounded prepared to apologize. Malcolm asked her to explain the process instead.
Eventually she admitted that Nora wasn’t the only child they’d missed. Late forms had been set aside and never restored to the main list. Some applications lacked information. A few names had vanished when the school registrations were combined with the center’s.
“We try,” she said. “We’re doing it between everything else.”
He looked at the clean, professionally bound report on his desk.
“What would you need to give those families another chance?”
They worked it out together. The center would contact every household that had been missed and arrange a quiet afternoon with a smaller selection of gifts. No ceremony. No sponsor photographs.
“And don’t put my name on the invitation,” Malcolm told her.
Andrea received the call on Tuesday while sorting socks at the kitchen table. She stopped with one of Nora’s in her hand.
There had been an error, the director explained. Several families had been affected. They could come on Thursday after school and choose something.
Andrea’s first impulse was to decline. She could picture the man in the fine coat making a call, setting things right, and waiting somewhere to be thanked.
Nora had come into the kitchen.
“Can we?” she whispered.
Andrea covered the receiver. “We don’t have to.”
“I know. But if they’ve got things left, maybe I can help choose for somebody.”
Andrea looked at her daughter for a moment, then uncovered the phone.
“What time Thursday?”
The replacement table stood in a smaller room. There was no microphone, and no one had to cross a gym while other families watched. Nora passed a sealed electronic tablet, a boxed truck, and several dolls before stopping at a watercolor set.
She touched the clear lid with one finger.
Twelve small pans of color. A brush held in its own narrow groove. Since October, she’d been asking her art teacher for permission to paint during indoor recess.
“This one,” she said.
A little stuffed reindeer had been fastened to the box with curling ribbon. While Andrea thanked the volunteer, Nora worked the knot loose.
A preschooler lingered in the doorway with her grandmother, clutching the woman’s coat as she watched the few gifts still on the table. They’d missed Saturday’s party; now she seemed unsure whether she could come closer.
Nora held out the reindeer.
“He needs someone to carry him. My hands are full of paints.”
The little girl accepted it and pressed its nose against her cheek.
Malcolm had been helping sort donations at the far end of the room. He laid his clipboard down before coming over.
“Are you a painter?” he asked Nora.
“I can be now.”
“What do you paint?”
“Houses.”
He glanced at the set. “Lots of different ones?”
“Sometimes. I like picking who lives in them.”
Malcolm rubbed a thumb along a nick in the folding table.
“There isn’t much picking to do at mine,” he said. “Just me.”
Andrea looked at him more carefully. His coat was draped over a chair, his sleeves rolled back. A piece of tape clung to one cuff.
He cleared his throat. “We’ll build in a second check next year. Nobody should be relying on one overworked person with a pencil.”
“That would help,” Andrea said.
He seemed ready to accept that as the end of it. She nearly let him.
Then Nora’s coat caught again, and Andrea bent to fasten the safety pin beneath the flap.
“It happens the rest of the year, too,” she said.
“The lists?”
“The missing people.” She straightened. “You can qualify for help and still never manage to get it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Help’s easy to get if you can afford to stop working…”
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