Chapter 15 - THE FIRST CHRISTMAS WITH HER OWN THERMOSTATOne year after the garage, Claire hosted Christmas Eve.
That sentence still makes me smile.
Her apartment was too small for anything elaborate.
Beth brought ham.
Luke burned the dinner rolls.
I brought a pie Claire accused me of buying even though I had definitely bought it.
Marcy from across the hall stopped in with cookies.
Claire’s oxygen tubing ran neatly along the baseboard.
Nobody apologized for it.
At six-thirty, Claire glanced at the thermostat.
Seventy-two degrees.
She pressed the button.
Seventy-three.
“You’re going to cook us,” I said.
“My house.”
I raised both hands.
“Your house.”
Her health had not magically improved.
She still had bad mornings.
She had spent four days hospitalized with pneumonia that autumn.
The difference was that illness no longer automatically transferred authority to somebody else.
When she went to the hospital, Marcy fed her cat.
I brought clothes.
Her pulmonologist treated her.
Claire remained Claire.
The financial case eventually restored a meaningful portion of the disputed money, though not every transaction could be proved improper.
Dad sold his fishing boat to meet part of the repayment obligation.
Beth said he moved into a smaller place outside Gresham after legal bills made the old house impractical.
I had not seen him in months.
Claire had not seen him at all.
He attended court-ordered counseling.
Whether it changed him was not something we could measure from a distance.
His letters came about once every six weeks.
The first three stayed unopened.
Then stopped arriving for several months.
In November, one came without a return address.
Claire placed it beside the others.
Christmas Eve dinner ended around nine.
Beth left.
Luke carried trash downstairs.
Claire and I sat on the couch beneath a ridiculously small artificial tree.
“Remember last year?” she asked.
“Unfortunately.”
She looked toward the thermostat.
“Sometimes I wake up cold and panic.”
I waited.
“Then I remember I can change it.”
She smiled faintly.
“Such a stupid thing.”
“Doesn’t sound stupid.”
Claire stood and walked toward the kitchen.
She opened the drawer containing Dad’s letters.
For a moment she touched the top envelope.
“Do you think people like him actually change?”
I could have given her a comforting answer.
“Sometimes.”
“That means you don’t know.”
“I don’t.”
She nodded.
Then she took out the newest letter.
Not the first.
The newest.
She carried it back to the couch but did not open it.
Outside, rain tapped against the Portland windows.
Her oxygen concentrator hummed steadily beside the wall.
The apartment stayed warm.
Claire rested the envelope on her knee and looked at her own front door—the one only she, Marcy, and building management had keys to.
“Maybe next Christmas,” she said.
She put the letter back in the drawer.
May you like
Then she crossed the room and turned the thermostat up one more degree.
Because she could.
