The Christmas Tags I Read Out Loud

“Sugar,” she said. That was Daddy’s name for her. Mama never used it. “Sugar, look at me.”

Misty turned her head.

“You are not in trouble,” Mama said. “You hear me? You are not in trouble with anybody in this room.”

Misty folded over into Mama’s Christmas sweater like she was five years old, and Mama held on to her and rocked her a little, right there on the couch, and patted her back.

The kids didn’t notice much. Gunner had already gotten his dump truck out of the box and was trying to figure out where the battery went. Harley was helping him. Dakota opened his long box and said, “Aunt Leah, a ground blind!” in a voice that cracked right in half.

After a while Misty got up and went in the kitchen. I gave her a few minutes. Then I followed her.

She was standing at Mama’s sink with the water running and nothing in it. Just standing there with her hands on the edge of the counter, looking out the window at the creek and the hillside.

“Misty,” I said.

She turned the water off. She didn’t turn around.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Leah. I’m so sorry.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know.” She turned around then, and her face was a wreck. “Last year I sat on my bedroom floor on Christmas Eve after you left, and I peeled every one of your tags off with my fingernail. Fourteen of them. And I wrote new ones. And I told myself I was doing it for them.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “But it was for me. I couldn’t stand for them to know I didn’t have anything. That their mama had three candy canes. I wanted them to think somebody in that house was still taking care of them. Even if it was a lie.”

“You do take care of them,” I said. “You’re the one there every night. You’re the one who drives Harley to the dentist and sits up with Gunner when he’s got the croup. Christmas morning is one morning.”

“It’s the one morning they remember.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, because she was right.

“I didn’t want them to think less of you,” I said. “I only wanted them to know somebody remembered them on purpose. That’s all. I swear that was all, Sister.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it so bad. You were never trying to hurt me. And I took your name off anyway.”

We stood there a minute in Mama’s kitchen with the sugar cookies on the counter and the coffee pot ticking. Out in the living room Gunner drove his dump truck into the coffee table.

Then Misty said, “I need you to help me with something.”

“Anything.”

“The support.” She said it low, like it cost her. “I’ve been too ashamed to do anything about it. I kept thinking he’d just start paying again. That he’d call. He’s not going to call, is he.”

“I don’t know, Sister.”

“I don’t either. But the kids can’t wait on him to figure out who he is.” She took a breath. “There’s a state office that goes after it. I looked it up in October and then I put the paper in a drawer.”