Matt Sanders

They got back to the auditorium just as Mrs. Wellhaven was wrapping up. Ace flew off the stage into his arms, seeming remarkably unscathed by her hour in the clutches of the dragon.

He lifted her up easily, and he felt like the weight and responsibility of loving her, of progecting her from her, from more loss.

He glanced at Aubree over his daughter's head. His tangling with her teacher had the potential to hurt her. Bad.

"Guess what, Daddy?"

"What, sweetheart?"

"Mrs. Wellhaven says one of us, somebody from our class, is going to be the Christmas Angel! They get to stand on a special platform so it looks like they are on top of the tree. They sing a song all by themselves!"

He knew this latest development had the potential to hurt Ace bad, too. His love for his daughter might blind him to her--like every father he thought his little girl was the most beautiful in the world--but he knew Ace's was not a traditional beauty. With her croaky voice and funny carrot-top, she was hardly Christmas-angel material.

"She's letting all twenty-two of you think you have a chance of being the Christmas Angel?" He could hear annoyance in his voice, but Ace missed it.

"Not the boys, silly." She beamed at him. "Just the girls can be Christmas angels. It could be me!"

Ace's voice was even more croaky than ever, excitement and hope dancing across her very un-angel-like features.

Hope. Wasn't that the most dangerous thing of all?

Matt's eyes met Aubree's over the top of Ace's head. She didn't even have the decency to look distressed, to clearly see how unrealistic his daughter's hopes were.

He felt the weight of wanting to protect his daughter from all life's disappointments, felt the weight of his inability to do so.

"I should have beaned Mrs. Wellhaven while I had the chance," he said darkly. And he felt that even more strongly the next morning at breakfast.

"Daddy, I dreamed about Mommy last night."

Matt flinched, and then deliberately relaxed his shoulders. He was standing at the kitchen counter, making a packed lunch, his back to Ace, who was floating battle formations with the remains of the breakfast cereal in her bowl.

He knew his own dreams about his wife were never good. Val swept away by a raging river, him reaching out but not being able to get her. Val falling from an airplane, him reaching out the door, trying desperately to reach a hand that fell farther and farther away...

He often woke himself up screaming Val's name.

Matt hadn't heard Ace scream last night. He tried not to let his dread show in his voice, but didn't turn around to look at her.

"Uh-huh?" He scowled at the lunch ingredients. If he sent peanut butter again was Aubree going to say something? When had he started to care what Aubree had to say?

Probably about the same time he'd been dumb enough to plant that impromptu kiss on her cheek.

It was ridiculous that a full-grown man, renowned for his toughness, legend even, was shirking from the judgements, plentiful as those were, of a grade-one teacher.

"It was a good dream," his daughter announced, and Matt felt relief shiver across his shoulder blades. Maybe finally they had reached a turning point. Ace had a good dream.

He recognized that he, too, seemed to be getting back into the flow of a life. If going shopping and volunteering to help with a town project counted. He suspected it did.

And did it all relate back to Aubree? Again, Matt suspected it did.

In defiance of that, and the fact that some part of him leaned toward liking Miss Dawson's approval, he slathered peanut butter on bread. Ace liked peanut butter. And she liked non-nutritiously white bread, too.

"You rebel, you," Matt chided himself dryly, out loud.

"Do you want to hear about my dream?"

He turned from the counter, glanced at his daughter, frowned faintly. Ace was glowing in her new sparkle skinny jeans and Christmas sweater with a white, fluffy reindeer on it. Even her hair was tamed, carefully combed, flattened down with water.

He turned back to the counter. "Sure. Raspberry or strawberry?"

"Raspberry. In my dream, Mommy was an angel."

Something shivered along his spine. You've been my angel, Matt, now I'll be yours.

"She had on a long white dress, and she had big white wings made out of feathers. She took me on her lap, and said she was sorry she had to leave me and that she loved me."

"That's nice, Ace. It really is."

"Mommy told me that she had to leave me right at Christmas because people have forgotten what Christmas is about, and that she was going to teach them. She said she's going to save Christmas. Do you think that's true, Daddy?"

After David had died, Val had found respite from her grief in that time of year. By the time Ace had come along, she loved every single thing about Christmas. Every single thing. Turkey. Trees. Carols. Gifts. Reindeer poop.

After David's death, she'd developed a simple faith that she had not had when they were children. Val believed God was looking after things, that there were reasons she could not understand, that He could make good come from bad.

While not quite sharing her beliefs, to Matt it had been a nice counterpoint towards his own cynicism.

After she had died, his cynicism had hardened in him. In fact, he felt as if he shook his fists at the heavens. This was how her faith was rewarded? How could this happen if things were really been looked after?

Show me the reason. Show me something good coming from this.

And the answer? Yawning emptiness.

He had buried her in the gravesite in an empty plot that was right beside David. Matt had gone to that gravesite a few times, hoping to feel something there. A presence, a sense of something watching over him, but no, more yawning emptiness.

So his cynicism hardened like concrete setting up on a hot day, and he didn't go to the graveyard anymore, not even when Val's sister, Michelle, went to mark special occasions, birthdays, Christmas.

And now listening to Ace chatter about angels, it felt as if his cynicism had just ramped up another gear.

Why did he have an ugly feeling he knew exactly where this was going?

"I hope so, honey." Because, despite the cynicism, he was aware nobody needed Christmas saved more than him and his daughter.

Unfortunately, he was pretty damned sure Ace's dream had a whole lot more to do with Mrs. Wellhaven's ill-conceived announcement about one of Ace's class being chosen for the Christmas Angel than with her mother.

Ace confirmed his ugly feeling by announcing, sunnily, "In the dream, Mommy told me I'm going to be the Christmas Angel!"

Matt struggled not to let the cynicism show in his face. Still, he shot a worried look at his daughter.

Even with the new clothes and better hair, Ace looked least likely to be the Christmas Angel, at least not in the typical sense he thought of Christmas angels: blond ringlets, china-blue eyes, porcelain skin.

Ace looked more like a leprechaun, or a yard gnome, than an angel.

"Poor Suzzie," Ace continued. "She thinks it's going to be her. I wonder if she'll still be my friend if it was me."

Suzzie Weston, naturally, took after her mother, Ashley, and looked like everyone's vision of the Christmas Angel. chances were she didn't sing flat either.

"You know it was just a dream, don't you, Ace?"

"Mrs. Dawson says dreams come true."

Thank you, Miss Dawson. There she was again, somehow front and center of his life.

"Miss Dawson," he said, choosing his words with great care, "doesn't mean dreams you have while you're sleeping come true. She means dreams you think of while you're awake. Like you might dream of being a doctor someday. Or a teacher. Or a pilot. And that can come true."

"Oh, like stupid Freddy Campbell thinks he's going to be a hockey player?"

"Exactly like that."

"Can he?"

"I don't know. I guess if he works hard enough and has some natural talent, maybe he could."

Ace snorted. "If Freddy Campbell can be a hockey player, I can be the Christmas Angel. See? I'm dreaming it while I'm awake, too."

There was no gentle way to put this.

"Ace, don't get your hopes up." He said it sternly.

She smiled at him, easily forgiving of the fact he was doing his best to dash her dreams. "Don't worry, Daddy, I won't."

"You know what?" he said gruffly. "You're the smartest kid I've ever met." Six going on thirty. Maybe that wasn't such a good thing, but Ace beamed at him as if he'd presented her with a new puppy.

"The Christmas Angel probably has to be smart," she decided happily.

He sighed. Over the next few days, he'd try and get it through to her. She wasn't going to be the Christmas Angel. And he's better let Aubree know he didn't want this particular brand of hopeless optimism encouraged.

An excuse to talk to Aubree, a little voice inside him, disturbingly gleeful, pointed out.

He had to deliver her the board he'd made for her coat hangers anyway. So, maybe he'd kill two birds with one stone. And then he'd be out of excuses for seeing her.

And then he'd get back on track in terms of distancing himself from her, protecting his daughter and himself from the loss of coming to care too deeply for someone.

Which meant he knew the potential was there. That Aubree Dawson was a person you could come to care too deeply about if you weren't really, really careful.

"Come on, squirt, I'll drive you to school." He shoved Ace's lunch into a bag, and went to the table. He roughed her hair, and she got up and threw her arms around his waist and hugged hard.

"I love you, Daddy."

And for one split second, everything in his world seemed okay, and Ace, and the one who had given him a reason to live, seemed like the most likely angel of all.