Holiday Cheer from Andrew Grey and Amy Lane

The Dark and the Light

The Dark and the Light

TURNED OUT, Cassidy loved kids.

Or maybe it was LizBet, Brandon, and Kennedy—he loved those kids.

LizBet was three, the baby, and Brandon and Kennedy were twins at seven. Kennedy was, in her words, a “girly girl” and came with a literal suitcase of dolls with doll parts and doll cars and doll clothes. Brandon had a similar suitcase, but with action figures.

LizBet had a diaper bag “just in case” and a couple of toys of her own.

For half an hour, as Mark and his mother set up for cookie baking, they played on Cassidy’s living room floor. Cassidy was content to oversee as the kids asked him questions. So many questions.

“So do you get to race in that chair?”

“No place to race,” he told them, not wanting to admit that he needed to build up his upper-body strength a lot more in order to be a proficient racer. His arms and chest had been sore for the past two days—and he’d been grateful not only for the nurse who came by in the mornings for a few hours, but also for Mark and his mother, who came by in the afternoons. Mark had spent the past two nights in his guest room with Gus-Gus, although Gus-Gus, apparently guessing there might be snacks in his future if he sucked up enough, had taken to sneaking into Cassidy’s bed in the middle of the night, and Cassidy had no objections.

“Aw.” Brandon, in particular, looked crushed.

“But your uncle Mark pushes me super fast down the block sometimes,” Cassidy told him, chuckling. “Gus-Gus runs alongside us, barking. It’s almost like a parade.”

Brandon’s expression brightened, and he pulled out a blank pad of recycled paper and some crayons. “I’m gonna draw a parade !” he said excitedly.

“Did a tree really fall on you?” Kennedy asked, quietly stealing one of her brother’s dinosaur toys. When he didn’t notice, she put a Barbie on its back and started galloping them both around the house-shaped suitcase she’d brought all her stuff in.

“Yes,” he said, still unable to believe it himself. “I was walking to my car, and it came crashing down and poked through my leg.”

Her eyes got really big, and she grabbed a Lego block from Brandon’s suitcase and sent it crashing down on Barbie’s leg. “Like that?”

“Yes, but with more wind and more branches and less Barbie.”

She giggled. “But this is Barbie’s adventures with the tree. You have to live your own.”

He nodded. “Well, I’m done with mine. She can keep going.”

LizBet squealed and snagged one of Kennedy’s Barbies, then sucked on its foot.

“LizBet!” Kennedy stared at her little sister, taking in the Barbie she had—obviously an older one—and the fact that LizBet might be drooling a little but she wasn’t chewing. “Oh, fine. Just don’t pull her hair out.”

Cassidy caught sight of a bald Barbie near the bottom of the pile. “She’s done that?” he asked delicately.

“No!” Kennedy retorted. “Of course not. I gave her a haircut. But she might. I need to be careful.”

“Of course,” Cassidy said, nodding gravely.

“Little sisters can wreck a lot of toys,” Kennedy said.

“I did not know that.” Cassidy found himself nodding a lot when he talked to them. He wasn’t sure why that was.

“Did you have little brothers?” Kennedy asked. “Because Brandon could wreck my toys, but Dad won’t let him.”

“I had foster brothers and sisters,” Cassidy said. “We didn’t really know each other well enough to get into wrecking each other’s stuff.” He’d had quite a bit of his stolen , but he didn’t want to tell her that. They’d all had so little, him and the boys and girls he’d grown up with. Stealing each other’s toys had been a way to get some control over that. He hadn’t really begrudged the other kids what they’d taken, although he would have liked some things of his own.

“Why did you have that? Where were your mommy and daddy?” Kennedy had big brown eyes, a lot like Mark’s, and they grew particularly limpid.

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “They left me with people who would make sure I had food and a roof over my head and would get to school on time. I’m pretty sure they thought it was the best thing for me.”

Kennedy squinted at him as though the words coming out of his mouth had nothing to do with the language she knew. “ You need an action figure!” she said emphatically. “Uncle Mark! Your boyfriend needs an action figure for Christmas! And dinosaurs! And a Barbie! He didn’t get any as a little kid—it’s your job to make sure he gets some now!”

Mark came into the living room, wiping his hands all over one of Cassidy’s brand-new kitchen towels. Cassidy didn’t care. Mark’s dark blond hair was rumpled around his eyes, his blond stubble was coming in patchily because he hadn’t shaved in two days, and he was wearing the tatty crocheted sweater that had made Cassidy think he was a wayward college student when he’d first moved into his mother’s garage.

And he had flour on his nose.

He looked delicious, and if he wanted to wipe his hands all over Cassidy’s walls and then his cream-colored carpet, Cassidy was totally fine with that, as long as he got the same warm, sweet smile he was getting now.

“Kennedy, calm down,” Mark said. “We’re going to decorate Cassidy’s house and bake cookies, and we’re going to make sure he has a good Christmas. I don’t think he needs an action figure to make that happen.”

Kennedy’s lower lip wobbled. “But he didn’t have any toys when he was little! Uncle Mark, he needs toys !”

“Naw,” Cassidy said cheerfully, touched that she would be so passionate on his behalf. “I don’t need toys—I get to sleep with Gus-Gus the dog! When I was a kid, I wanted a dog more than anything, and now I get to borrow your uncle Mark’s—it’s great!”

Mark scooped his niece into his arms and kissed her on the cheek. “See? Now go down to the end of the hall and wash your hands so you can help Grandma and me make cookies.”

She hugged him tight and kissed him back before burying her face against his neck. “But he didn’t have any toys,” she said softly.

“He’s fine,” Mark said. “Look at him—Grandma’s going to teach him how to crochet, he got to play with you guys today, there’s going to be cookies. If you guys keep coming to see him, it will be like he gets to be a kid all over again, okay?”

She nodded, but like she didn’t agree with anything that had been said. Still, she trotted down the hallway to wash her hands without any more fuss.

Brandon stood up without prompting and showed Cassidy his picture. “It’s a parade!” he said proudly.

Cassidy stared at the crude line drawing—but the man in the wheelchair was obvious, as was the stick man behind him pushing and the potato-shaped dog with the giant head who was attached. The balloons were purely Brandon’s invention, though, as was the clown stalking, erm, following the entire parade.

“That’s fantastic!” he said brightly, while behind Brandon’s head, Mark was mouthing, Run away! Run away!

“Do you like it?” Oh, the kid was so sincere.

“I do.” Cassidy nodded with emphasis. “Why don’t you go put it on my refrigerator before you go wash your hands, okay? That way I can see it every day!”

“Yes! I’ll show Grandma too!”

Brandon disappeared, and Mark sent Cassidy a droll look. “And you both will have nightmares for the rest of your lives.”

“Is he the only kid in the world not afraid of clowns?” Cassidy asked, keeping his voice quiet. “That’s terrifying!”

“I know!” Mark rolled his eyes and laughed and then scooped LizBet into his arms, where she giggled and shrieked before he hauled her to the bathroom too.

Yvonne came out of the kitchen as he left the living room. “Here,” she said, handing Cassidy a spoon laden with cookie dough. “You finish that off while I set you at the table. We’re going to take turns, you see? Mark and one kid are doing decorations while I ice cookies with the other kid, and we’ll switch off in the middle.

“Isn’t there a third kid?” Cassidy asked, not sure he could be counted on to chase LizBet down his hall, even though he was getting mildly more proficient at steering the chair.

“The third kid is going to sit in your lap and drink from her sippy cup and hopefully fall asleep,” Yvonne said, nodding like she could make it so just by wishing. Then she sighed. “At least I hope so. If she gets too wound up, she’s going to have to cry herself to sleep tonight, and she’ll be a nightmare between now and then. Let’s hope you’re as good with her as you were with the other kids.”

Cassidy snorted. “I wasn’t great with them,” he said. “All I did was talk.”

“But you made them feel special,” Yvonne told him, getting behind the chair and pushing. “Sometimes that’s all kids really need. Do you think that boy draws a killer clown about to devour strangers in a parade for just anyone?”

“It really is scary?” Cassidy asked. “It’s not just me, right?”

“Oh my God, no—that’s nightmare fodder right there. Now eat the cookie dough, sweetheart, or you’re going to hurt my feelings.”

Suitably chastened, Cassidy began to lick the spoon, falling into an ecstasy of butter and sugar and vanilla.

“Good?” Yvonne prodded.

“Should be illegal,” Cassidy said after swallowing. “I’m not even sure how it’s not.”

She laughed, delighted, and Mark came back in, herding children. Cassidy was suddenly the still center of a warm tumble of children and cookies and the Christmas decorations he’d bought on the cheap the year before but had yet to strew across his living room.

He held LizBet, who cuddled right into the crook of his arm, content as he’d never seen a child as she dozed. Yvonne and Brandon decorated cookies while Kennedy and Mark strung tinsel and lights around his window frames, the laughter and chatter quiet enough not to disturb LizBet, but present , all of it, through a fog of Christmas music that Mark had Cassidy pull up on his computer.

For a moment—a lovely moment—Cassidy wasn’t just a party to the Christmas fantasy of his childhood, he was the center of it, an active participant, not an observer hiding in the shadows.

About a half hour in, Mark came and pulled a sleeping LizBet from his arms.

“Where are you—” Cassidy began, but Mark shushed him and moved the little girl to a blanket in a corner of the living room, where she curled into a ball. He covered her with another blanket—this one obviously one of his mother’s creations—and she snuggled down, far enough away from all the hubbub to be able to sleep comfortably, but close enough that she could be seen and comforted when she awoke in a strange place. Mark and Kennedy had finished decorating his windows, and Kennedy had run to the kitchen to rewash her hands and help with the cookies.

Mark returned via a stop at the kitchen counter for a rack of cooled cookies. One more trip brought some mini bowls of frosting and some sprinkles, and a towel to cover the table.

“You think of everything,” Cassidy said, grateful.

Mark shrugged. “You know we’re going to eat half of them anyway.” He gave a wicked grin and invited Cassidy into this fantasy world, where good boys really did get cookies and people sang Christmas carols while stringing tinsel.

“I hadn’t planned on it,” Cassidy said. “Don’t we… I don’t know… save them for Christmas?”

“But Christmas is in two and a half weeks!” Mark laughed, waving a butter knife with a dollop of pink frosting on it. “By then Mom will have made two more batches. We have to make room! Why aren’t you decorating?”

“I’ve never done this before,” Cassidy said helplessly.

Mark blinked. “Okay, that had not occurred to me, and I’m sorry. But never fear—I am the son of Yvonne and Harvey Taylor, and they taught me well! Here—you’ve got a butter knife over there. Choose a cookie and a frosting color.”

Cassidy did so, picking a cookie that was shaped like a snowflake and a fluffy glob of white frosting. “Done.”

“Now smear—but gently. A gentle smear. All over the front of the cookie.”

“Smearing—oh!”

“Lucky you!” Mark all but sang. “You broke off a piece of cookie, and it’s already frosted . That means you have to eat it for luck.”

Cassidy laughed and popped the piece in his mouth. For a moment their game drifted away and he was consumed by the heady taste of sugar cookie and frosting.

“Good?” Mark asked, his smile absolutely irrepressible.

Cassidy nodded shyly. “Yes. Now what?”

“Well, your snowflake is crooked. It won’t do. I think you should eat that one for symmetry—”

“Symmetry.” He managed to say it with a straight face.

“Yes, symmetry. Because, you know. You ate the other piece.”

“And it was delicious,” Cassidy said. “Wouldn’t that be… I don’t know. Self-serving. To eat the rest of the cookie?”

Mark cackled, frosting his own reindeer-shaped cookie. The head broke off, and he held it up, very seriously. “Of course not. It’s for art! Art, you understand. That is the only reason you’re eating that cookie,” he said, before popping the head in his mouth.

“Of course,” Cassidy said, taking another bite. Then, with his mouth completely full, he said, “Who’s Art?”

Mark laughed so hard he sprayed crumbs across the table, and Cassidy barely managed to swallow his own cookie before he did the same.

It took them a good long time before they managed to overcome their giggles and start frosting cookies again. This time, Cassidy kept his cookies intact so he could arrange them back on the cooling rack. The quiet after their giggle attack soothed him, and he relaxed into Mark’s conversation as though he always had a good-looking man to play with on the weekends. Surprisingly enough, Cassidy found he had some questions of his own.

“Your father’s name was Harvey?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Mark said, sighing. Behind them, Yvonne and the twins were singing to Brenda Lee while they cut out cookies and put them on the cookie sheet, and he lowered his voice, probably so his mother didn’t hear. “Late-diagnosed pancreatic cancer, which sucked. He was a good guy. The best.”

“What made him so good?” He wanted to know what made a good parent. Yvonne and Rose seemed to be good parents—the best—but what made a man a good father?

“He only yelled a little,” Mark said promptly. “And only when we got on his last nerve.”

Cassidy frowned. “He yelled?”

“Only a little.” Mark nodded. “And we were all pretty young when it hit us that he was mostly joking when he did it. He just had this great booming voice that made the yelling sound worse than it was. Mom would keep us all quiet and out of his way, and then he’d clean something—the garage, the kitchen, the living room—and then, when he was done, he’d make dinner or go get takeout and the world would be all okay again. I think he just needed to vent steam and have his family hear him, that’s all.”

Cassidy thought about that for a moment. “That made him a good dad?” He was having trouble understanding. Yelling scared him—it always had. He’d never been sure there was a good thing at the end of the yelling.

“He never yelled at us , you understand,” Mark said. “He just… would walk into the kitchen and notice the cracked tile and yell at the house for falling apart. He’d see the dent in the molding of the foyer and yell at that. He never yelled at things that had feelings that could be hurt. He just yelled at inanimate objects because the real living people were giving him fits. I… I remember one day when a—” His eyes flicked behind him. “—a student died in a car accident. Dad was close to the kid, and he was devastated. He came home and yelled at the kitchen table for having dings in it, and at the counters for being old, and then he sat on the kitchen floor and cried. Mom came out of her room and sat down next to him, and they cried together, and then they took us out to eat. I was in grade school at the time, but I’ll never forget the two of them sitting next to each other and leaning against the cabinets, and how I realized then that he really wasn’t yelling at us when he did that. Like I said, he just needed the people he loved to hear what was in his heart, and that’s all he had.”

Cassidy nodded. “So a good dad isn’t perfect,” he said, getting—just a little, probably—what Mark was trying to say.

“Exactly,” Mark said. He closed his eyes and smiled faintly. “And he liked to tell dumb dad jokes. He and Mom would swing by fast-food places on Friday sometimes, for a treat. One day before a holiday break, he had me in the back of the car and asked me what I wanted. I said a sundae, and he said, ‘But it’s Friday,’ with a completely straight face, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. It was such a dad thing, you know?”

Cassidy nodded. It wasn’t that any one thing hit him, as Mark spoke. It was like there was an entire picture, and each story told one shade or one brushstroke—or one piece of wood—in who Mark’s father had been.

“And he coached our soccer teams,” Mark said. “I mean, he loved the sport way more than we did—even when me, Dani, and Keith were playing. But that didn’t matter. Because when he was coaching us, we got to talk to him when we were helping him set up and take down, and he told dumb jokes and got excited about the plays and the team and how well he wanted us to do. And we’d get excited because he got excited, and it didn’t matter how much we all sucked at soccer, we wanted to do well for him , and he wanted us to do well so we’d have fun. And it became fun because we got to be with our dad. It was sort of a big happy circle, instead of a vicious one, you know?”

Cassidy nodded again. He didn’t know—not really. But it was one more color in the palette, and Cassidy’s picture was getting clearer.

“And he believed in us—in whatever made us happy. Keith said, ‘I’m going to be an accountant,’ and Dad said, ‘Sure!’ And Dani said, ‘I’m going to work in finance!’ and Dad said, ‘Sure!’ And I said, ‘I’m going to be a doctor!’ and Dad said, ‘Of course—but, you know, we wouldn’t mind if you wanted to join a band either.’”

“Was he kidding?” Cassidy asked.

Mark shrugged. “Only a little. They knew med school wouldn’t be easy, and, well, Mom was still hoping for that artist. But I really wanted to be a doctor, and what he really said was, ‘We’ll do whatever we can to help.’ And then they did.”

Cassidy hmm ed. “That’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Mark said, eyes growing red-rimmed. He’d answered enough of Cassidy’s questions, Cassidy thought. “Did you have any good foster dads?”

Cassidy swallowed. His turn. “A couple,” he said vaguely. “Ed and Cora were nice. I… I went to live with them when I was fourteen. I was so very obviously gay by then, and they were fine with that. Kind. I think… I think I might have stayed with them until I aged out, but when I was sixteen, Ed was in a car wreck. I…. Cora said she was going to the hospital to see how he was doing, and while she was there, the placement people came and took me and my foster sister away. Tilda was eight—I’d only known her a month, and she got placed somewhere else. I got put in a halfway house for teens. I… I asked about them, in the halfway house, and they told me Ed had died, and that was policy, to take the kids away when there was a sudden upheaval in the family. I… I don’t even think Cora was given a chance to say goodbye.”

“Damn,” Mark said, looking horrified. “That’s… that’s terrible. Cassidy, I’m so sorry.”

Cassidy shrugged. “Anyway, after that I aged out into college, got a scholarship for a degree in media, and, you know. Got a job with Rose and her magazine. I… I was just wondering if all good dads were like Ed, but I guess they’re not.”

“What was Ed like?” Mark prodded.

“Quiet. He liked to read aloud to me and Tilda, and that was better than TV. He really loved Terry Pratchett. And even though I spent less than a year there, I… I started reading sci-fi then, and then I just kept on reading, as much as I could. It was like a huge gift he never knew he gave me, you know?”

“That’s really nice,” Mark said softly. “Anything else you remember?”

“Old things—my watch,” he said, showing Mark the old timepiece that Ed had given him when he’d been with them for a couple of months. “He liked old models and old clocks—he repaired this, but he had a lot of his own, so I kept it.”

“I’d wondered,” Mark said softly, glancing at the watch. “What about Cora?”

Cassidy smiled. “Cora liked to knit—like your mom crochets, I guess. I… I have one scarf she made me. Our only Christmas together. That’s why I noticed your sweater. I just… just really like things that are handmade.”

Mark smiled softly. “My mom’s yarn stash is… well, impressive. It takes up an entire bedroom, and that doesn’t count the boxes in the hallway and the living room.”

Cassidy found his eyes bulging. “Her… yarn stash?”

Mark nodded, that soft smile not fading. “And Dad never complained. He’d ask her why she needed so much, and she’d say—still says—it’s potential. Every skein, as pretty as it is, has potential to be something fabulous , and she feels like she’s surrounded by all the things she could possibly make, and they’re just waiting for her time and attention.”

“That’s amazing,” Cassidy said. “And he understood that?”

“Yeah.”

Yvonne came to the table in that moment and looked critically at their handiwork. “Well, they’re decorated,” she said bluntly. “I think they need sprinkles.”

“We’re getting there,” Mark said. He held up a little bottle full of tiny colored candy. “See?”

“Sprinkle away!” she urged. “What had you both so involved, though? I was asking if you were ready to clean up so I could start dinner.”

“Oh!” Mark looked around guiltily. “Sorry—having too much fun! Anyway, we were talking about your yarn stash. I was trying to explain your theory of potential.”

“I think I get it.” Cassidy smiled at her, well aware of their small conspiracy not to mention fathers in front of her for fear of spoiling the glow that seemed to envelop her after the day. “It’s why I get buckets of wood chips for my woodworking pictures. I don’t need all those scraps, but… you know. Potential!”

“Exactly!” Yvonne clapped her hands in excitement. “You know, since you can’t really use any of your woodworking tools until you’re back on your feet, I should bring by some yarn and teach you to crochet. You like to play with color, and you’re good with your hands. You’ll be a natural. Would you like that?”

Cassidy smiled up at her and tried really hard not to send Mark a glance as well. “Of course,” he said, feeling only a little like a fraud. “I’d love that!” The idea of learning something to do with his hands while he was laid up—something that didn’t need the total absorption of woodworking and could still engage some of the same skills—really did appeal to him.

But the excuse to spend more time with Mark and Yvonne and the kids and this family appealed to him more.

DINNER WAS —surprise!—lasagna, and Cassidy was effusive in his praise. Yvonne laughed and told the kids that this was how it was done—she was tired of hearing complaints from her children that she was trying to make them fat.

Of course the grandchildren loved it, and Cassidy felt… spoiled.

By the end of the evening, he was exhausted from all the noise, from the kids, from the excitement, and as happy as he’d ever been in his life.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Mark said as he stood up to follow his mom out. “I need to get my clothes for tomorrow. I’m sleeping on the guest bed again, if that’s okay, but I need to leave you in the morning after I walk Gus-Gus. Work.”

“Of course,” Cassidy said. He hadn’t told Mark this, but just knowing the other man was under his roof at night had led him to dream… things. Fantasies, spun sugar, about how he would wake up in the morning and this man would be there, smiling at him, and his life would be happy and warm.

He knew it would end. His leg would get better, and Yvonne and Mark would go back to their regularly scheduled lives. Perhaps a little warmer and friendlier—Cassidy would ask if he could walk Gus-Gus, and he’d definitely keep mowing the lawn. Mark, for all his devotion to his mother, would be working residents’ hours after Christmas, and they’d both been so kind. Cassidy would find ways to repay their kindness, to stay in their lives, but he had no delusions.

Mark Taylor was every boy’s dream—handsome, kind, so much fun—but he’d long ago reconciled himself to the fact that Cassidy Hancock did not get every boy’s dream. He would content himself with the joy of having new friends and of knowing that if another tree fell from nowhere and hit him on the head this time, more people than just Rose would miss him.

But in the meantime, he was going to treat the whole situation like the Christmas he’d never had as a child, and he was going to accept his good fortune as some sort of karmic balance for swimming in the smoky depths of disappointment for so long. Good people were being kind to him.

He would be kind in return and enjoy their company.