We might have noticed more differences with a dog, Louis thought, but cats are such goddam independent animals anyway. Independent and odd. Fey even. It didn’t surprise him that the old Egyptian queens and pharaohs had wanted their cats mummified and popped into their triangular tombs with them in order to serve as spirit guides in the next world. Cats were weird.

“How you doing with that Bat-Cycle, Chief?”

He held out the finished product. “Ta-dat”

Rachel pointed at the bag, which still had three or four plastic widgets in it.

“What are those?”

“Spares,” Louis said, smiling guiltily.

“You better hope they’re spares. The kid will break her rotten little neck.”

“That comes later,” Louis said maliciously. “When she’s twelve and showing off on her new skateboard.”

She groaned. “Come on, Doc, have a heart!”

Louis stood up, put his hands on the small of his back, and twisted his torso.

His spine crackled. “That’s all the toys.”

“And they’re all together. Remember last year?” She giggled and Louis smiled.

Last year seemingly everything they’d gotten had to be assembled, and they’d been up until almost four o’clock Christmas morning, both of them finishing grouchy and out of sorts. And by midafternoon of Christmas, Ellie had decided the boxes were more fun than the toys.

“Gross-OUT!” Louis said, imitating Ellie.

“Well, come on to bed,” Rachel said, “and I’ll give you a present early.”

“Woman,” Louis said, drawing himself up to his full height, “that is mine by right.”

“Don’t you wish,” she said and laughed through her hands. In that moment she looked amazingly like Ellie… and like Gage.

“Just a minute,” he said. “There’s one other thing I gotta do.” He hurried into the front hail closet and brought back one of his boots. He removed the fire screen from in front of the dying fire.

“Louis, what are you-”

“You’ll see.”

On the left side of the hearth the fire was out and there was a thick bed of fluffy gray ashes. Louis stamped the boot into them, leaving a deep track. Then he tromped the boot down on the outer bricks, using it like a big rubber stamp.

“There,” he said, after he had put the boot away in the closet again. “You like?”

Rachel was giggling again. “Louis, Ellie’s going to go nuts.”

During the last two weeks of school, Ellie had picked up a disquieting rumor around kindergarten, to wit, that Santa Claus was really parents. This idea had been reinforced by a rather skinny Santa at the Bangor Mall, whom Ellie had glimpsed in the Deering Ice Cream Parlor a few days ago. Santa had been sitting on a counter stool, his beard pulled to one side so he could eat a cheeseburger.

This had troubled Ellie mightily (it seemed to be the cheeseburger, somehow, even more than the false beard), in spite of Rachel’s assurances that the department store and Salvation Army Santas were really “helpers,” sent out by the real Santa, who was far too busy completing inventory and reading children’s last-minute letters up north to be boogying around the world on public relations jaunts.

Louis replaced the fire screen carefully. Now there were two clear boot tracks in their fireplace, one in the ashes and one on the hearth. They both pointed toward the Christmas tree, as if Santa had hit bottom on one foot and immediately stepped out to leave the goodies assigned to the Creed household.

The illusion was perfect unless you happened to notice that they were both left feet… and Louis doubted if Ellie was that analytical.

“Louis Creed, I love you,” Rachel said and kissed him.

“You married a winner, baby,” Louis said, smiling sincerely. “Stick with me and I’ll make you a star.”

They started for the stairs. He pointed at the card table Ellie had set up in front of the TV. There were oatmeal cookies and two Ring-Dings on it. Also a can of Micheloeb. FOR YOU, SANNA, the note said in Ellie’s large, sticklike printing. “You want a cookie or a Ring-Ding?”

“Ring-Ding,” she said and ate half of it. Louis popped the tab on the beer.

“A beer this late is going to give me acid indigestion,” he said.

“Crap,” she said good-humoredly. “Come on, Doe.”

Louis put down the can of beer and suddenly grasped the pocket of his robe as if he had forgotten something-although he had been aware of that small packet of weight all evening long.

“Here,” he said. “For you. You can open it now. It’s after midnight. Merry Christmas, babe.”

She turned the little box, wrapped up in silver paper and tied with wide satiny-blue ribbon, in her hands. “Louis, what is it?”

He shrugged. “Soap. Shampoo sample. I forget, exactly.”

She opened it on the stairs, saw the Tiffany box, and squealed. She pulled out the cotton batting and then just stood there, her mouth slightly agape.

“Well?” he asked anxiously. He had never bought her a real piece of jewelry before, and he was nervous. “Do you like it?”

She took it out, draped the fine gold chain over her tented fingers, and held the tiny sapphire up to the hail light. It twirled lazily, seeming to shoot off cool blue rays.

“Oh Louis, it’s so damn beautiful-” He saw she was crying a little and felt both touched and alarmed.

“Hey, babe, don’t do that,” he said. “Put it on.”

“Louis, we can’t afford-you can’t afford-”

“Shhh,” he said. “I socked some money away off and on since last Christmas…

and it wasn’t as much as you might think.”

“How much was it?”

“I’ll never tell you that, Rachel,” he said solemnly. “An army of Chinese torturers couldn’t get it out of me. Two thousand dollars.”

“Two thousand-i” She hugged him so suddenly and so tightly that he almost fell down the stairs. “Louis, you’re crazy!”

“Put it on,” he said again.

She did. He helped her with the clasp, and then she turned around to look at him. “I want to go up and look at it,” she said. “I think I want to preen.”

“Preen away,” he said. “I’ll put out the cat and get the lights.”

“When we make it,” she said, looking directly into his eyes, “I want to take everything off except this.”

“Preen in a hurry, then,” Louis said, and she laughed.

He grabbed Church and draped it over his arm-he didn’t bother much with the broom these days. He supposed that, in spite of everything, he had almost gotten used to the cat again. He went toward the entryway door, turning off lights as he went. When he opened the door communicating between the kitchen and garage, an eddy of cold air swirled around his ankles.

“Have a merry Christmas, Ch-”

He broke off. Lying on the welcome mat was a dead crow. Its head was mangled.

One wing had been ripped off and lay behind the body like a charred piece of paper. Church immediately squirmed out of Louis’s arms and began to nuzzle the frozen corpse eagerly. As Louis watched, the cat’s head darted forward, its ears laid back, and before he could turn his head, Church had ripped out one of the crow’s milky, glazed eyes.

Church strikes again, Louis thought a little sickly, and turned his head-not, however, before he had seen the bloody, gaping socket where the crow’s eye had been. Shouldn’t bother me, shouldn’t, I’ve seen worse, oh yeah, Pascow, for instance, Pascow was worse, a lot worse-But it did bother him. His stomach turned over. The warm build of sexual excitement had suddenly deflated. Christ, that bird’s damn near as big as he is. Must have caught it with its guard down. Way, way down.

This would have to be cleaned up. Nobody needed this sort of present on Christmas morning. And it was his responsibility, wasn’t it? Sure was. His and nobody else’s. He had recognized that much in a subconscious way even on the evening of his family's return, when he had purposely spilled the tires over the tattered body of the mouse Church had killed.

The soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis.