Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Beside me, Erik goes very still.
His mother nods slowly. “That’s…”
“It’s me,” Erik says, the words rushing out with a relief that feels like he’s been holding them back for a lifetime. “That’s me.”
In that moment, the world fractures and reassembles before I can catch my breath. Everything rushes in at once, the way Erik froze in front of his childhood home, the way his hands shook after handing the boys their gifts, the way he turned away too quickly, his breath ragged, his eyes too bright and too far away, already slipping backward, already reliving something I hadn’t known how to see.
“That’s where it started,” his mother says softly. “For us. For your mother. For The Christmas Kindness Drive.” She looks at me then, her voice balanced despite the emotion beneath it. “She started it, Savannah. She started it for us. For my family. For my boys.”
Erik finally looks at me, really looks at me, like there’s no hiding left now.
“My mom was leaving,” he tells me, his voice bare now. “It was a bad situation. Four boys. No money. No tree. No presents.”
My chest aches, tight and hollow all at once.
“Your mom found out,” he continues. “I still don’t know how she knew about us. She just… showed up.”
His mother smiles through her tears. “She filled an entire shopping cart with gifts for my boys and dressed it up like a sleigh. I thought there had been some mistake. I kept waiting for someone to come back and say it wasn’t meant for us. To take it all away.”
I look down at the photograph again, taking in my mother’s face, bright with kindness and already choosing generosity without needing recognition.
“She never told me,” I whisper.
Ruth Levin steps closer. “She didn’t give to be remembered. She gave because it was her calling in this life. She knew what it felt like to be without and never wanted anyone else to feel that way.”
Erik swallows hard. “That red truck,” his voice breaking as his fist presses against his chest. “It was my safety. I slept with it. Took it everywhere. I kept it until the wheels fell off.”
Something inside me caves in completely.
“And when she got sick?” I ask quietly, my gaze locking with his. Our eyes are both shining now, caught in that knowing space where the truth has already passed between us.
Erik’s voice stays steady, even as his eyes don’t. “I kept it going,” he confirms, proudly. “I talked to Mrs. Kincaid, and we agreed this was too special to let it end.”
I think of that big box of photos I came across last night, all of the ones that Erik took over the years. For every year I was gone, for every year my mother couldn’t continue what she had created.
He didn’t just keep the drive alive.
He protected it.
“I wondered,” I say softly, “why you broke down today. With those boys.”
Erik exhales, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “They ran to me instead of the toys.”
His mother reaches for his arm. “Just like you did, with Diane.”
This wasn’t just kindness passed along in small, quiet ways. This was lineage. This was history, moving forward instead of fading out.
Ruth to Diane, Diane to Erik, and Erik, faithful and unassuming, carrying it forward year after year without asking, without waiting, without needing anyone to notice. He did it for her. He did it for me. He did it because that’s what love looks like when it’s learned early and honored often.
My mother didn’t just leave me memories. She left me a legacy. She left me people, and a kindness that refused to stay still, that kept moving through hands and hearts long after she was gone.
The man standing beside me, the one who loved her, who honored her, who carried her generosity through every Christmas I missed, didn’t just love me. He loved what made me.
And suddenly, devastatingly, beautifully, there is no denying it.
15
Savannah
By the time Christmas night finally settles over Pineview, the town feels as though it has reached the end of something and set it gently down.
All around the square, windows shine with quiet life. Families are tucked away inside, coats hung by doors, shoes kicked aside, tables crowded with half-cleared plates and cooling desserts. Laughter presses softly against the glass in muted bursts, the sound of it contained but undeniably Christmas Day. Wrapping paper lies folded or forgotten where it fell. Gifts have been opened. Stories have been told. Joy has been gathered and held close, sheltered from the cold.
Outside, the air sharpens, clean and biting, carrying the scent of snow and pine and the faint trace of woodsmoke drifting from chimneys farther up the hill.
Erik and I walk side by side through it all, close enough that our coats brush with every step, the contact constant and unintentional, a quiet awareness that settles into my body and stays there. We do not touch in any way that could be called deliberate, and yet neither of us pulls away, neither of us widens the space, as if we are both conscious of how easily it might disappear.