“Hi,” I said. I sat up, my back pressed against the wall.

He crawled the rest of the way in and sat down next to me, his knees touching mine. We sat without words, both of us looking down at our feet. “It’s cold,” he said.

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I got mad at you. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You’re my best friend.”

Joel’s eyes welled up. “I’ve missed you.”

I put my arm around him.

“I’ve missed you too, buddy.”

“I really liked her,” he said.

Then I began to cry. “I know. So did I.”

The truest grace is not to forgive, but to have never found fault.

GRACE’S DIARY

EPILOGUE

Christmas tales have always been about redemption. I suppose that’s what Christmas is all about. My whole life I have hoped for redemption. Redemption and grace. I don’t deserve it, but I still hope.

My father fully recovered from the Guillain-Barré. By the next summer he was walking without crutches. We moved from that dump of a neighborhood and built a home in the Cottonwood area, a nice suburb of Holladay. Not long after, my aunts and uncles sold the old house to developers, who bulldozed it, along with the clubhouse, to put up low-rent apartment units. I was glad to know it was all gone.

Years passed. My father was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He died July 4th of 1976, the day America celebrated its Bicentennial. My mother is still alive. She resides in southern California in a townhouse about a mile from Joel. She never remarried.

Joel and I never spent a summer together like that again. By the next summer I was into cars and girls and all that comes with growing up. But Joel did all right for himself. Turns out he was better at baseball than any of us knew. He made the varsity baseball team his sophomore year of high school—the first time a sophomore had ever done that. He wore his letterman jacket and had a thousand friends and even more girlfriends. Unlike me, Joel managed to be cool.

He made All State in baseball his junior year and by his senior year word of his talent had spread wide enough that he was hounded by scouts from every major college. Joel returned to California, attending UCLA on a full-ride athletic scholarship. He played in the Pioneer Leagues for two years, then played second base for the Mets for another six before his knees gave out. He has a baseball card with his face on it. Imagine that, my little brother on a baseball card. Just like DiMaggio.