“Did it live up to the hype?”

“It did, Bettie. It lived up to it so much that all my past dreams have shattered into a billion pieces. Ka-boom. I’ll remember it always.” He turns to me. “Will you?”

“I can’t imagine forgetting a Christmas Eve that involves dancing Sugar Plum Fairies and a hamster in your pocket.”

“Hildy. Don’t forget to take care of her.”

“Hall.”

“I’ve added some savings to your bank account, but not so much cushion that by the time it thins out beneath you, you’ll have reverted back to your old habits.”

“Hall.”

“I wonder if I’ve got one more trip to Cracker Barrel left in me. I’m haunted by the chicken tenders I could’ve had.”

“Hall, you’re making it snow.”

He stops chattering. Stares around. “Oh. Sorry.” He rubs his palms together and the flurry ceases, then disappears. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“You must be excited.”

“You can’t possibly imagine. I’ve been waiting to be on the inside of a happy, cozy home for Christmas morning—well, for always. Do you think I should get a Christmas piñata? Is that a thing?”

“We could make it a thing.”

“Good idea. I can’t wait to have the whole family sit down together, hold hands, and recite what we’re grateful for.” He sighs again. “I hope your grandmother says she’s grateful for the life-size wax mannequin I made of her, in character as Priscilla Presley from the 1993 movie My Life with Elvis, for which she won Best Supporting Actress. If I were here in summer, I would take her to the opera, and we’d wear bedazzled denim jackets. That’s the dream. Along with being a meteorologist.”

He’s being serious about the meteorologist part (every morning he watches the weatherman’s report with naked envy), but I think he’s laying the rest on thick, trying to turn my blue thoughts toward sunlight with good-natured rambling. He goes quiet, perhaps thinking about what he would really do if he were here in the summertime. I bet he would love picnics. I bet he’d want to go to every small-town street fair in the Midwest and sample deep-fried novelties. Visit every amusement park. Join a local Wiffle ball league. I’ve never done anything like that and wish we could go on all those adventures together. Hall’s immortal, yet he’s had such a short life.

I switch off my bedside lamp, he flicks off his, and together we stare at the arctic moonlight spattered over the wall, broken up by shadows of snowflake decals he’s affixed to the window.

“Best holiday ever,” he declares.

“Yes, you are.” I turn my face to catch his grin.

He closes his eyes, lips still curved into a smile, propped up on the pillows as if wanting to stay awake. As though he can’t stomach the idea of missing a single moment. “What does tonight feel like for you?” I want to know. “As the Holiday Spirit, I mean.”

He ponders the question. “Like a precipice, and like a pit, depending on whose mood I’m picking up. I feel all the wishes, all over the world, of other people. I feel their loneliness, their anticipation. It doesn’t brush as close now—my focus has only been you lately—but it tends to be either a wonderful night or a painful one. If I could go to those suffering, I’d wrap my arms around their whole house like shielding someone from a bomb about to go off. I’d give them all of my peace.”