She tried to put herself in his place that night, the night she’d stopped believing in Christmas.

He’d lost something, too. What must it be like to have a dream as powerful as the dream he’d had, and then to have that taken away? She pictured him watching her from the upper level, trying to figure out what to do now that his entire life plan had shattered to pieces. The horrible truth was, she was afraid to contemplate what her reaction might have been if he’d come rolling toward her in a wheelchair. She’d been young and self-centered and focused on glamour and success. She’d built up such fantasies around the sort of life they would have together, with Tony as a famous hockey player, and she as an international journalist. Maybe, just maybe, he had made the right choice, turning his back on her that night. The person she was back then could not have dealt with him. She’d simply had no resources to love a man who didn’t fit her idealized view of what the future would be. Now, years later, she knew the problem of living a life that looked perfect on paper. It was as one-dimensional as the piece of paper itself.

It felt so strange having him here, where she lived. Where she slept and showered and talked on the phone. He was seeing her in a different context, and she desperately wanted him to like what he saw. But how could he, when she didn’t even like it?

“Look,” she said. “About tonight...you don’t have to—”

“Are you kidding?” He set his soda on the counter and turned to her, and when he smiled, it was like glimpsing a dream she thought she’d forgotten. “You think I’d pass up another chance to spend Christmas Eve with you?”

Chapter Ten

chapter ten

“Ma, it’s not the end of the world,” Tony said, wedging the phone under his jaw as he stood back and surveyed the contents of his closet. If he didn’t have a clean shirt, he was going to shoot himself. “It’s just a change of plans.”

“Change of plans, he says. You hear that, Salvatore? He abandons his family on Christmas Eve, and he calls it a change of plans.” Gina Fiore always had two-way conversations with people—one on the phone, the other in her warm, yeasty-smelling kitchen.

Tony’s father, Sal, mumbled something indistinct. He was used to the fact that his wife thrived on drama and, like Tony, secretly found her entertaining.

“Tell you what...” Tony said. He spotted a crisp white shirt, still in the cleaner’s cellophane, and pounced. “I’ll try to get back in time for midnight mass.”

“Mass, he says.”

“It’s the reason for the season, Ma.”

“What about supper, eh? You’re going to miss the torta di spinaci, the bauletti di maiale, the pandoro.”