A Christmas to Remember by Jenny Hale

felt in the way, and she wished that she hadn’t bothered to ask him to help them get a tree. She imagined that this was how David and Olivia must feel. Again, he’d dismissed her actions as if they meant nothing, and that was probably true. Last time, she’d been frustrated, irritated by his behavior, but this time, her feelings were hurt. This time, he’d completely upset her. She could feel the heat still on her skin despite the cold, and she was glad for her scarf because it would hide the red spots that were now burning her neck. She’d only been trying to get him involved with his family, feel the Christmas spirit a little, but it was apparent that she had been wrong. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going to fix his family. She wasn’t going to get him to know what presents to get his kids. Swallowing the lump in her throat that was forming from the way he was making her feel at that moment, she took the card from his hand and went to gather the children.

Chapter Eight
    L abel your bad habits and eliminate them . Carrie underlined the sentence and marked the page with a bookmark. In her journal, she listed her first bad habit: meddling in people’s business, her employer’s family business, to be precise. After the Christmas tree fiasco, there was no way she was ever going to put herself in that position again. She’d care for the children and show them love, but she wasn’t going to intervene anymore. Adam had made it quite clear by his actions where his family fell on his list of priorities: they were at the very bottom.
    Not to mention the way it had made her feel when he’d just dismissed her, handing out his credit card with barely a glance in her direction. She couldn’t help thinking that he was missing the point of life. He had a lot of money and very nice things, but he didn’t enjoy any of them. He came in after dark, ate, and went to bed alone. He never sat in his living room and enjoyed a good book or had a nice talk over a long dinner. He didn’t sit back and watch his children play, knowing that every second was gone the moment it happened, and he’d never get it back. He couldn’t enjoy himself. Had he ever? The four days he’d taken off for Christmas should be interesting, she thought.
    Carrie tried to see it from his side, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she was just spinning her wheels; she hadn’t gotten anywhere with him. He’d seen the trip as just another tick on his list—Get Christmas tree: done. It had not been about spending time with his children at all. And the worst part was that their outing had given the kids yet one more time when their daddy hadn’t made a difference in their lives. He was as absent standing there as he would’ve been at work. Carrie could have just as easily bought the tree herself. She had a sinking feeling, given the way the children acted around him, that it was always this way.
    The trouble was that she genuinely liked Adam. He was friendly, usually, and seemed like a nice guy in general. She was rational enough not to expect anything more, but her instincts told her she knew he was capable of more, and that’s what upset her. Did his children ever get to see the look of affection in his eyes when he smiled, the feeling that they were the only ones in the room? Did they know that he was kind?
    She thought about all those little moments she’d had with her own dad: The back-yard barbeques when he made smiley faces with ketchup on her burgers and sneaked her soda when her mother wasn’t looking. The Saturday mornings when she’d jumped onto his back while he lay in bed sleeping, and he’d spin around from a sound sleep and become the Sleeping Bed Monster, tossing her into the air. The quiet days when he read the newspaper next to her while she read her favorite Nancy Drew book. None of those were life-shattering events, but collectively, they painted a picture of love that she couldn’t have had