Eleven Keys Under the Christmas Tree

New Year’s Eve

The next night was New Year’s Eve. Jordyn had worked nights most of the week and had the holiday off.

We stayed home and watched the ball drop on the old television in the front room with a bowl of popcorn between us.

At twenty minutes to midnight, a key turned in the front door.

You can hear that lock from anywhere in the house. It is a heavy old mortise lock, and it clunks. Jordyn sat straight up on the couch. I set the popcorn down and stood up.

Cold air rolled down the hall and into the front room, and with it came the sound of people laughing and stomping their feet on the rug, and Rick’s voice saying, “Shh, shh, they might be asleep.”

Rick and Lori had been at the New Year’s dance at the Legion.

They lived out by Northwood, twenty minutes on country roads, and Lori had told Rick in the parking lot that he was not driving those roads after midnight.

So they had done what any Halvorsen would have done. They had driven four blocks to Mom’s house and used their key.

And because Curt and Deanna had been at the same dance, they had come along to help.

I walked into the hall. Jordyn came right behind me. Curt was helping Lori out of her coat and hanging it on one of the hooks, the way he had probably hung a thousand coats on those hooks over the years.

“Happy New Year, kids,” Curt said, and he smiled at Jordyn, and he meant it. “Rick and Lori are going to take the back bedroom tonight. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”

Then Rick saw the jar.

He leaned down toward the little table with his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and read the card out loud, slowly, the way he read everything.

“Welcome home. Please sign in. Forty-five dollars a night covers heat, sheets and hot water. Love, Ethan and Jordyn.”

Nobody said anything. The furnace kicked on in the basement. Down the street somebody was setting off fireworks, little pops that sounded very far away.

Deanna looked at Curt. Curt looked at that jar for a long time. His face did not get red, the way I expected it to. It went still, which on Curt is worse.

He did not say one word to me. He did not say one word to his daughter. He took off his gloves, laid them on the radiator, and picked up the pen beside the guest book.

He opened the book to sign it. Then he stopped at the first line.