The Perfect Gift

C H A P T E R 🎄15

L I S A

Up until the door opened and I saw Rosie for the first time that day, Christmas morning had been a Christmas clusterfuck.

So, I had this "great" idea on Christmas Eve, right before I fell asleep.

I'd already made arrangements with a notary public from Rochester to meet on December 26. How hard would it be to toss him a few thousand dollars to notarize my documents on Christmas Day instead?

As it turned out, not hard at all.

Ten grand is difficult to turn down. And considering that I was willing to go to him and complete the process in his garage without disturbing his family or his Christmas morning, it should have been a win-win.

Problem was, his agreeing to sign the document was the only thing to go right all morning.

First, there was the snow.

Sure, I was used to snow in the Big Apple. Whenever we got a big downfall, I'd call a taxi because they put chains on their tires for traction. Nobody drove themselves in New York when it snowed—or at least, I didn't.

But there were no taxis to be located in Greenfield on Christmas day. I figured, how hard could it be to drive in snow?

I got in my Lambo, put it in reverse, and promptly spun out into a series of donuts and slammed into a telephone pole.

I wasn't hurt, nobody else was hurt, and I was the only one with damaged property. I had the car towed and bought a four-wheel-drive vehicle off a man who happened to be shoveling his sidewalk.

It was a stroke of luck that he had a For Sale sign in the windshield of the Jeep parked in his front yard.

He gave me a quick primer on how to drive in the snow—take it slow, pump the brakes if you start to slide, and turn into the skid.

I did a much better job with the Jeep. A Lambo just had too much torque for snow.

I drove up to Rochester and met with the notary. No problem.

But when I went to get into my new Jeep, I slipped in a damned icy patch. I managed to catch myself and not break my neck, but my phone had worse luck.

In fact, it flew out of my pocket and cracked on the ground. And it really cracked. I tried to make a call, but it was a goner.

So, I set out toward Greenfield with a new-to-me Jeep and a dead phone.

The icing on the cake? I got stuck behind a snowplow the whole way back from Rochester. On the narrow, winding country road, with nowhere to pass.

It added a good half-hour to my journey.

It was just one of those days, but I figured it was worth it to turn over the gallery to Rosie and her family on Christmas morning.

That was, until I looked into Rosie's tear-streaked face and realized how much I'd fucked up.

She thought I ran out on her and Miles.

Fuck, that's what I would have thought if our positions were reversed and she didn't call or text me.

I pulled her in against my chest and hugged her. "I'm sorry, Rosie. I'm sorry I disappeared like that."

"Where did you go?" she mumbled into my chest. "I woke up, and you were gone. The hotel said you'd checked out."

"I did. I wanted to run up to Rochester and get the paperwork notarized. It was supposed to be a Christmas surprise. But everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong."