Second Chances

Santa Claus Is Coming To (China) Town.

Reggie and Carol rushed into the living room to console their distraught daughter, still trembling with outrage.

"What a horrible, horrible man," her mom said, wrapping her arms around Maddy.

"If your mother hadn't barred the bedroom door, I would've socked that jackass right in the chops." Reggie seethed. "Excuse my language."

"If I hadn't seen him with that other woman," Maddy said, her anger transforming into grief. "Who knows how long he would have kept playing me?"

After a thoughtful pause, Carol said, "You think maybe Nathan's right about coincidences?"

Maddy shrugged, then suddenly her eyes went wide. "The cinnamon rolls!"

She burst into the kitchen, threw open the oven door, and pulled out a tray of blackened pastries. They smoked like charcoal briquets.

Maddy muscled the kitchen window open and fanned the smoke with a dishtowel but it was too late. The smoke detector went off, screeching an ear-piercing series of warning alarms.

Reggie and Carol covered their ears.

Maddy clambered up onto the table, fanning the smoke away from the ceiling-mounted detector. Eventually, the alarm stopped.

When she climbed down from the table, Maddy found her dad standing at the sink, scraping the ashen coating from a burnt roll with a butter knife. "You know," he said. "I think some of these are salvageable."

"Oh, Reggie." His wife shook her head.

Maddy continued waving the dishtowel as the smoke dissipated.

"Call Nathan," Carol said.

"I don't know what to say to him."

"You can start with Merry Christmas," her dad said.

Carol added, "Tell him you're through with George."

"Yeah, I guess I owe him that." Maddy stepped into the living room, phone in hand, and called. Nathan didn't answer so she called again. Still no answer.

She texted: Hey, give me a call, okay?

When she didn't get a call or a response to her text, she slumped down onto the couch.

Her mom approached, her dad trailing.

"He's not answering," Maddy said.

"Tell him in person," her dad suggested through a mouthful of charred cinnamon roll.

"First, I don't want to leave you guys here on Christmas Day and second, I don't know exactly where he lives."

"What?" Reggie brushed crumbs from his pajama shirt. "You don't know how to use the internet?"

........

Thirty minutes later, in a Chinatown neighborhood, Maddy exited her Uber. She paced across the slush-covered street and onto the sidewalk searching for Nathan's apartment building. Faded canvas awnings sagged under the weight of snow. Rows of bright vertical signs emblazoned with Chinese characters lined the street. The only English banners were advertisements for tea, back and foot rubs, and a placard clinging to a red brick building that read: New World Hotel.

Residents and tourists funneled around street vendors' tables.

"Eight twenty-two," Maddy said to herself, scanning the addresses. "Eight twenty-six, eight twenty-eight..."

She came upon an old metal gate at the top of a set of cracked concrete steps, which led to a basement apartment nestled between a souvenir shop and a small restaurant where a line of diners waited to enter.