Page 147 of My Favorite Holidate

Once the door is shut, I cut to the chase. “What’s going on with Desert Springs Casino? Are you in trouble? Do you owe them money?”

He winces as he kicks off his boots. “It kind of seems that way,” he says with maybe a tinge of embarrassment, possibly a morsel of regret.

“You were card-counting, Dad. What the hell?”

He meets my gaze with sad eyes. “They say I was card-counting.”

“Were you?” I ask point-blank.

He shrugs. An admission.

I shake my head. “What is going on? Why are you here? You don’t just show up randomly unannounced.”

He sighs, and this one is full of a clear emotion—regret. “I’m in a pinch,” he says, embarrassed, but also borderline begging.

Of course that’s why he’s here. “What happened exactly?”

He waves a hand airily like he can dismiss thespecifics. “You know how it goes. But I could make it back in a game. I could hit the tables at the casinos here in the mountains. I know I could.”

My heart sinks, heavy and leaden. That’s the true reason he hightailed it out of town, catching a red-eye. He’s here not only to convince me to pay off his debt but to snag money for a new score.

I tear my gaze away from him, staring at the window that looks over the deck and out onto the nearby mountains. My heart hurts. My throat aches. My head pounds.

This is all so familiar.

I try to sort through what to do next when what Fable said the other morning echoes in my head.You don’t have to solve it.

I’ve always solved his gambling problems. I’ve always enabled him. I’ve always fixed it.

And if I don’t stop, I’m going to wind up just like him. Maybe not an addict. Maybe not penniless. But loveless all the same.

That won’t do.

It’s time to do things differently. “Why don’t you sit down on the couch and I’ll make a pot of coffee for us?”

“Thank you,” he says, and his voice sounds genuine. Maybe it’s just for the coffee, but at least that’s a start.

A few minutes later, we’re sitting on the couch by the Christmas tree as the sun rises higher in the morning sky, the white snowfall from the other night sparkling and bright.

I hand him a steaming cup, still chewing on what to say exactly. As I gather my thoughts, I glance at theornament my daughter made—a ceramic cartoon fireplace with four stockings hanging from it with names on them.

Dad, Mac, Penguin, and…Fable.

The three of us plus a cat. That’s what I want. I don’t want to be loveless. I don’t want to be tough all the time. I don’t want to be the guy who believes love is a lie.

I want a family. I want togetherness. I want to come back here year after year with the love of my life.

But I won’t be able to get to Fable unless I take care of this roadblock in my heart.

Sometimes you have to do the easier thing first, but eventually you have to do the hard thing.

Like now.

And I finally know what to do because of the love of Fable, my daughter, my mom, and Bibi. All the women in my life are extraordinary, and they love extraordinarily too.

It’s time for me to live up to their example.

I look my dad square in the eye, and I say, “You know what I’d like for Christmas?”