Buckingham Nicks A/U Series Part 7: Say You Will

It's Alright, She's On Her Way (Part One Finale)

Santa Monica, California
Christmas Eve🎄
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
(8:00 pm)
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Jodie McVie had inherited his mother's confidence, but tonight, he was terrified.

Sitting in the living room at Aunt Stevie's house, he thought back to the old house in Venice Beach, the one Aunt Stevie had deemed her dream house - the one she'd sold in 1983 despite Uncle Lindsey's insistence that it was not haunted, that she did not have to take the dog and sleep in the closet to escape the ghosts...the house where he and Julia had spent the ages of birth to six learning to crawl, learning to walk, and always crawling or walking towards each other. He, along with the Buckinghams, had recreated the magic of the Venice house in Santa Monica over the years - surpassed it, even - but tonight, watching Aunt Stevie float around the house she'd built with love and care and antiques and music and her usual Stevie Nicks chaos and warmth, he was thinking not of the homes that had been his second homes all his life, but of the home he hoped to create with Julia and their own family after they were married.

All he had to do now was muster up the courage to speak his mind and pull out the ring.

"Here we know that Christmas will be green and night...The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night...Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way to say Merry Christmas to you..."

Jodie's attention turned to Julia, twirling around the center of the room with her little sister Amber in her arms, both dressed in velvet because they were, after all, Stevie Nicks' daughters, and Amber was squealing with delight and dangling a damp, chewed-up sugar cookie shaped like a stocking in her hand as Julia danced with her to the old Bing Crosby Christmas album. Her long, flowing golden brown hair whirled in the air as she dangled Amber head-first to the carpet from her bent elbow and Amber giggled like a little girl who'd just turned five - because she was one - and it would have been clear to anyone else watching that Amber worshipped her big sister Julia...and that Julia was having the time of her life making that little girl smile.

"Hey...Stevie wannabe...you're cleaning up the barf tonight if you keep spinning that kid full of dessert around like you are!" Stevie was holding a glass of wine and a CD of The Carpenters Christmas Portrait album in her hands as she entered from the kitchen, smiling too much for her admonishment of her oldest daughter to be taken seriously. She added, "Ever try to get little girl holiday puke out of velvet?"

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience, Mom," Aaron chimed in from where he sat on the sofa beside his father, the two men sharing the task of polishing off the plate of sugar cookies as if they were starving and had not just eaten Christmas dinner.

"Two kids under five, three major tours, all dressed like Stevie Nicks," Stevie reminded her son, who had been one of those children she was speaking of once upon a time. "And that was before Karen came into my life, so yes, I speak from experience!" She laughed, which made Aaron laugh, almost choking on a sugar cookie shaped like a Christmas tree.

It was Sara who decided to change the music, taking the Carpenters CD from her mother's hand and placing it in the multi-disc tray of the stereo. She used the remote control for the stereo system her parents had had specifically designed a few years back to advance to the ninth track, her favorite, "The Christmas Song", the room suddenly filled with the melodic tranquility of the late Karen Carpenter singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Only Julia was aware that Sara, who would be fifteen in April, had snuck a glass of wine just before her appearance in the living room.

But only Julia was unaware that in a few minutes, her life was about to change.

Stevie, Lindsey, Christine and John had all gone out to dinner on Friday night and discussed the fact that all of Stevie's little jokes twenty-five years earlier were about to become reality - Jodie McVie was going to propose to Julia Buckingham on Christmas Eve, with both families watching. Christine's fear of flying, which had been part of her reason for retiring after The Dance had almost gotten in the way of her missing the moment, but with a Xanax and some wine during her flight from Heathrow to L.A.X., along with her daughter and flying buddy Olivia, had done the trick.