“Well, I think we both need to this year. The girls will expect it.”

“I guess we’re all the family they have at the moment.”

I wondered when, if ever, the girls would head north for a family Christmas with Bryce and Wendy. This year? Next? Never? I remembered the first one Bryce had spent with our family. It was the same visit when Wendy had given me the alligator night-light. My mother had pulled out all the stops. To a four-year-old the house had looked like a fairyland. Tinsel, colored lights, a tree in the entryway as tall as a castle. I’d helped my mother decorate at least a million cookies. And she’d helped me make paper chains to hang in my room, one link for each day before Christmas, so I could remove one at a time and keep track of the coming holiday.

“Do you remember the first Christmas Bryce spent with us? It was the best ever.”

“You weren’t even in school yet. You can’t possibly remember that Christmas.”

“How’s this? You had a cookie cutter of Santa’s sleigh. And we made so many sleigh cookies, we bent it completely out of shape.”

“I’m impressed.”

“See, even then, I knew I had to pay attention to details.”

“What else do you remember?”

In my heart I thought of that year as the Christmas-of-Wendy. After they married, Wendy and Bryce had traveled far and wide for his career and couldn’t travel home. Other years they visited his parents in California for the holiday, because he was an only child. Until his parents died, Wendy and Bryce hadn’t made it back to Florida for Christmas. And by the time they owned a home in Connecticut that was large and welcoming enough for all of us, I was in college or grad school, and busy with my own set of friends.

“Wendy took me Christmas shopping,” I said. “She bought me a sparkly red dress and shiny gold shoes. And we had candy cane milkshakes.”

I was feeling entirely too sentimental tonight. But now I remembered how my sister had dressed me up in my new finery and let me twirl around the living room with my skirts flying and Christmas music playing on the family stereo, while our guests for the evening applauded.

“By the time that night was over, you were tired and very cranky.”

“Trust you to remember that.”

She actually smiled. “Wendy and Bryce went out, and you wanted to go, too. Instead I tucked you in and read you The Night Before Christmas.”

“Not that horrifying story about the emperor who imprisoned St. Nicholas until he died?”

She was quiet a moment. “I guess I was worried about your soul.” Then, as if on cue, we both began to laugh.

“Wendy thinks you should have been a nun,” I said as I sobered. “She’s said it more than once. Usually if we’re alone having a few drinks.” I thought about the few times we’d let down our hair without our parents. They were only memorable because they’d been so rare. But I treasured each one.