Christmas with the Calvins

Chapter Seventy-Four

"Well, it's over." Scott sighed as he walked through the snow with Jack Frost trailing behind him. The second the chilly North Pole air hit his face he was able to think clearly again. He was no longer seeing red and he could already feel the near-crippling guilt for the things he'd said. "This was my second chance at starting a family and I blew it!"

"Hey," Jack looked at him with sympathy in his eyes. "There no one I know who could have possibly held things together so well..."

"Yeah, but I didn't!" Scott stopped walking to turn and face him. "My In-laws resent me. Christmas is a disaster. My pregnant wife wishes that she never met me. Even my kids know what I screw up I am."

"You know, I was gonna wait until tomorrow to give you this but, ah, I think you need it." Frost held out a present to Santa and did his best to look emotional because it was ever so important for his plan that Santa accept his gift. Scott didn't even question where the trickster had been hiding the small package. He figured he couldn't pay enough attention to his family, how could he even begin to guess what Frost had been up to.

"Come on, open it." Jack insisted, forcing the small gift into Santa's hands.

"Thanks." Scott held the present, but still didn't open it yet.

"So, are there times when you wonder if this was..."

"Worth it?" Scott chuckled. He changed his mind and decided to open his gift from Frost after all. He began tugging at the ribbon as he mused. "More than you know. When Jess started dating Barnard I wondered if everything that had led up to that had been the right decision. But then they got married and things felt alright. When Charlie started to slip up and he ended up on the Naughty list, I wondered. But if it weren't for that I wouldn't have met Carol. But then, Bernard fell off the roof. Carol can't even look at me right now. Charlie? I almost never get to see Charlie. There are definitely times where I wish I had never put that red coat on."

"So you wish you'd never become Santa, at all?" Frost hoped his goading wasn't too obvious. He needed to trick Claus into saying the correct phrase word for word.

"I wish I'd never become Santa." Scott nodded.

"At all?" Frost supplied. He knew he needed that last extra bit for the magic to count.

"At all." Scott nodded again. Now that it was out in the air, he felt a little freer. Laura and the kids had always told him that becoming Santa was the best thing he'd ever done, but in the back of his mind Scott had always wondered.

If he'd never become Santa, Charlie probably would have grown up and had a normal childhood. He would have never gone through that rebellious phase a few years back because there would have been no secrets for him to keep from the rest of the world. Lucy would have been able to grow up with her brother and her sister so she would have had a better relationship with the sister that she always misses so much. Jessica would have a normal life by now too. A life with a husband who didn't suffer from a head injury that made him forget everything. A life where she could be closer to the whole family, and he kids could grow up around other kids. And Carol! Carol would probably still be a high school principal and she would be happy. They'd all be happy.

"At all." Scott said it again as he began tearing into the wrapping paper of the gift that Frost had given him. "I wish that I'd never become Santa, at all. Happy?" At last Scott opened his present the rest of the way and realized the "gift" was something that already belonged to him! It was his snowglobe from the Hall of Snowglobes he'd just shown Lucy a few hours ago. His eyes widened when he realized what he'd said, what he'd done! But it was too late to take it back now.

"I am now!" Frost said, his eyes danced with an evil twinkle.

Magical glitter started to swirl from the snowglobe encasing both Frost and Scott in its shimmering light. Frost laughed maniacally as Scott felt his heart sink. How could he have been so stupid? Jessica had been right all along not to trust Jack Frost. She had warned him from the very first day. He should have listened to her and he was going to have to make things right before Christmas could get pushed any further off course.

He and Frost both landed with a hard thud in the snow. Scott looked around and recognized where they were immediately. It was his house. His old house. The one he used to live in with Jessica. They'd gone back in time twelve years to Christmas 1994. A Santa that was not Scott Calvin was walking carefully on the rooftop as Frost and Scott scrambled to their feet. Frost was the first to stand and he immediately cuffed his hands over his mouth and hollered upwards.

"Hey you!" The frosty trickster bellowed. The Not-Scott Santa turned in the direction of the voice which caused him to lose his footing and fall off the roof. As Not-Scott fell onto the snowy lawn below his body disappeared. Only his crimson suit remained as evidence that he'd even been there. The suit lay there growing colder by the second just as Charlie and Scott had found it twelve years ago.

Scott was having a near out of body experience reliving his past from a new perspective but he was forced to put his thoughts on the back burner as Frost ran towards the Santa suit. Scott caught up to Jack quickly and tackled him back down into the snow. They wrestled their way onto their feet once again, but Jack found a shovel resting against the Snowman that young Charlie had built. He hit Scott square in the face with the shovel's flat scoop before shrugging the coat onto his frigid shoulders.