“Wonderful!” Christina said. “What fun you’re going to have. You can buy some, and you can make some.” With a slightly mischievous smile, she said, “I’m sure your uncle Andy will enjoy stringing popcorn and cranberries.”

—

Later that evening, after Christina said goodbye to Wink and Andy, she took the flashlight out of the kitchen drawer and carried it with her up to the attic. There was a light up there, one poor lonely sixty-watt bulb with a string hanging down to turn it on and off. The attic was enormous, and packed with papers, clothes, and memorabilia of the Antonioni family.

Christina was sure there were boxes of Christmas ornaments up here, too. Her family had always come here for Christmas, and her parents had always gone wild with decorations. She hadn’t intended to put up a tree this year, her first Christmas ever alone in the house. But the thought of Wink seeing Christina’s house without a tree seemed just wrong. Maybe she would get a small tree. She sat on the attic floor and opened the first box.

Wow. Memories swirled around her like mist. Here were the ornaments she’d made with her mother every year when she was a child: red felt stuffed with cotton, cut to shape a snowman, Santa Claus, a bell, or a sled, sewn with green yarn around the edges, and embellished with glue and glitter. Christina held each one, remembering the love and the patience her mother had shown.

There were fancy store-bought ornaments, too, shiny crimson balls and porcelain snowmen, swans, and reindeer. Even the misshapen decorations Christina had made at school every year had been saved in the box.

She pulled out an oval ornament edged in stiff red lace. Turning it around, she saw that it was a picture frame, and the picture was of Christina when she was eight or nine and wore her hair in pigtails. She touched the picture and let memories sweep over her. Baking Christmas cookies with her mother. Sitting around the fire with her parents and grandparents, drinking eggnog and listening to Christmas music. Waking up on Christmas morning and allowing herself a delicious long moment of anticipation before running down the stairs to see what Santa had brought.

Of course she no longer believed in Santa, but she did believe in fate. And in true love. For a moment, she curled up, leaning her head against a cardboard box, and let herself remember the man she had thought she would marry. Jamie. He was such a good guy. She knew she could have had a pretty nice life with him. But she hadn’t loved him in the dizzy-headed, heart-pounding, head-over-heels way she wanted to love someone, so she let him slip away.

“You’ll never get married at this rate,” Christina’s mother had scolded her. “Stop being so picky.”

“Mom, I want to fall into true, deep, long-lasting love like you did with Dad.”