Page 31 of Holiday Hitch
“If I’m not back in 15 minutes, tell Leah I love her,” Daryl joked.
John laughed a hearty laugh as he watched Daryl ascend the ladder and disappear into the attic.
Once she got her bearings in the attic, Daryl realized it wasn’t as terrible as she’d expected. Mostly it was just dusty and disused.
Her excavation started with the boxes stacked near the attic’s entrance. Based on photos, Leah and Johnny had pulled their childhood stockings from the box a few years prior, so the decorations couldn’t be buried too far back.
A frigid draft moved through the worn boards of the unfinished space, turning her hands and cheeks red. She tried to work quickly to stave off the chill.
“What are you looking for, anyway?” John bellowed from below, reluctantly giving in to his curiosity.
“The Santa suit. You said it was up here, right?”
As she pried the lid off another box and started digging, John called, “I have no idea why you’re bothering to find this crusty old suit. You could probably order one online for five dollars that wouldn’t smell like sweat and beer.”
Daryl shook her head, attempting to ignore the old grouch while she tried a new box. But this one had cookware inside.
“Why did you stop wearing it?” Daryl hollered down to John. For some reason, she found it easier to talk to him when they were yelling at each other through a thin layer of subflooring.
John groaned from below, “The kids stopped wanting to spend Christmas here after the divorce. They spent it with their mother until…” he trailed off.
Daryl knew that the kids not coming here for Christmas was more complicated than just “the divorce”. There were several factors that led to the decision – his attitude toward them, for instance. She also knew that the Christmases since Leah’s mother had passed had been lackluster, to say the least.
Daryl felt a pang of guilt for dragging her feet on the celebration. She felt like she had sucked all of the Christmas spirit out of Leah this year by being such a grump.
“Why didn’t you ever spend Christmas with them at their mom’s house?” Daryl asked. It was a question she never would’ve asked to his face or in front of his kids. But she hated how little he had tried to be around back then and hated how deeply it hurt Leah still. Something inside of her needed to know why a parent would do that.
John stumbled for words for a moment, surprised by Daryl's boldness. He’d always been a straight shooter, often brutal in his honesty, but he wasn’t sure he knew how to answer something so vulnerable.
Eventually he said, “I couldn’t ever forgive their mother for kicking me out, and I couldn’t stand the thought of spending an entire day playing nice. Even for their sakes.”
Daryl paused her rummaging. It was the most honest about his choices Daryl had ever heard him be. And from what Leah had told her, maybe the most honest he had ever been with anyone.
John was quick to qualify his statement, “I always thought I would be a gentler parent than mine had been, but something always stopped me.”
Daryl cracked open a new box and waited for John to finish his thought, guessing she’d get more out of him by listening to him ramble rather than trying to force information out of him.
“It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life, not being there for them. And I still have a hard time giving that to both of my children. But all I ever really wanted was for them to learn from my mistakes. To end up with someone who treated them with the kind of gentleness that their mother always had, that I couldn’t give them.”
Daryl leaned her weight on the box in front of her. She knew she was close to the correct one, but she wanted to hear more of what John had to say.
He wasn’t shouting anymore. Maybe a part of him hoped Daryl wouldn’t hear his confessions. But he continued nonetheless, “I feel like Johnny got that in Tyler. I see them with their beautiful children and know that whatever I broke in Johnny has been fixed.”
Daryl certainly felt that was true. Johnny and Tyler were so tender with each other, even after years of marriage and parenthood. The more Daryl had learned about them as a couple, the more she admired how hard they worked to be together.
“And Leah…” John continued, “I always worried about her. I knew she never quite forgave me, not the way that Johnny had. And I knew that if she ever found that happiness, it would take her far longer. She’s hard, like her father.”
His voice strained, unable to find the words he wanted.
“But ever since you’ve been around, something about her has changed. You weren’t at all what I was expecting, but I sit here every day and pray that you can be the thing she needs,” John finished.
Sensing he was done but unable to find the words to respond, Daryl peeled open the box in front of her. As she rifled through it, she considered what John had said.
Daryl knew she had a long way to go before she was exactly what Leah deserved, but she was willing to put in the work because she needed that soft, tender love too. She needed Leah Vargas more than anything in the world.
As her rough fingers brushed against scratchy red fleece, she knew that she’d found what she was looking for. She climbed back down the ladder with one hand and proudly presented her prize to John with the other. “Ta-dah.”
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