When I returned home from the shelter after serving dinner, I went for a long run. September turned to October, and I added more layers and kept going. One day in November, Bo and I stopped to get the mail. I pulled out a few bills and a magazine and there it was. A regular sized envelope with T.J.’s name and address handwritten in the upper left-hand corner.

I hurried upstairs and unlocked the door to my apartment, unclipping Bo from his leash. When I opened it and read what was inside, I started crying.

***

“Open the goddamned door, Anna. I know you’re in there,” Sarah yelled.

I was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. The last twenty-four hours worth of Sarah’s voice mails and texts had gone unanswered, and it was only a matter of time before she showed up at my apartment.

I opened the door. Sarah charged into the apartment, but I sidestepped her and went back to the couch.

“Well at least I know you’re alive,” she said, standing over me. She took in my appearance, her eyes flicking from my messy hair down to my wrinkled pajamas. “You look like hell. Have you even showered today? Or yesterday?”

“Oh, Sarah, I can go a lot longer than that without a shower.” I pulled a fleece blanket over my legs and Bo rested his head on my lap.

“When’s the last time you went to the shelter?”

“A few days ago,” I mumbled. “I told Henry I was sick.”

Sarah sat down on the couch. “Anna, talk to me. What happened?”

I went into the kitchen and returned with an envelope. Handing it to Sarah I said, “I got this in the mail the other day. It’s from T.J.”

She opened it and pulled out a business card from a sperm bank. Under the phone number it said, I made arrangements.

“I don’t understand,” Sarah said.

“Look on the back.”

She flipped it over. On the back, he’d scrawled in case you never find him.

”Oh Anna,” Sarah said. She pulled me into her arms and held me while I cried.

Sarah convinced me to take a shower while she took care of dinner. I padded back into the living room with my wet hair combed back, wearing a clean pair of flannel pajama pants and a sweatshirt.

“Don’t you feel better now?” Sarah asked.

“Yes.” I sat down on the couch and pulled on thick socks. Sarah handed me a glass of red wine.

“I ordered Chinese,” she said. “It should be here any minute.”

“Okay. Thanks.” I took a sip of wine and set my glass on the table.

She sat down beside me. “That was quite an offer T.J. made.”

“Yes.” Tears welled up in my eyes again and spilled onto my cheeks. I wiped them away with the back of my hand. “But there’s no way I could ever hold a baby in my arms that had his eyes, or his smile, if I couldn’t have him, too.” I picked up my glass and took another drink of my wine. “John would never have done something so selfless.”

Sarah wiped a tear I’d missed. “That’s because John was kind of an asshole.”

“I’ll go back to the shelter in the morning. I just had a rough patch.”

“It’s okay. It happens.”

“I never loved John the way I loved T.J.”

“I know.”

***

I dragged a Christmas tree up the stairs and shoved it through the doorway of my apartment. When I finished decorating it, my first tree in four years sparkled under twinkling lights and shiny ornaments. Bo and I spent hours lying in front of it, listening to Christmas music.

I helped Henry decorate the tree at the shelter, too. The kids pitched in, hanging the snowflake ornaments we made out of construction paper and glitter.

Dean received an early Christmas gift. He’d filled out an application at a nearby restaurant and they’d hired him two weeks ago. Reading the orders the waitresses thrust at him wasn’t a problem anymore, and he turned the food around fast, quickly earning himself a reputation as a hard worker. He used his first paycheck to put down a deposit on a furnished apartment. I co-signed the lease, paying the first year’s rent up front. He didn’t want to accept it, but I convinced him to, for Leo’s sake. “Pay it forward someday, Dean.”

“I will,” he promised, hugging me. “Thank you, Anna.”

I spent Christmas Eve with David, Sarah, and the kids. We watched Joe and Chloe open their gifts, wrapping paper flying, and spent the next hour assembling toys and installing batteries. David played so many video games on the PlayStation I bought for Joe that Sarah threatened to unplug it.

“What is it about video games that turn men back into boys?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but they all love ’em, don’t they?”

Chloe strummed her Barbie guitar, loudly, and after an hour of listening to it, I made a mental note not to buy her any more instruments. I wandered into the kitchen where it was quiet and uncorked a bottle of cabernet.

Sarah joined me a minute later. She opened the oven and checked the turkey. I poured her some wine, and we clinked our glasses together.

“To having you home to celebrate with,” Sarah said. “I remember last Christmas, how hard it was without you, and Mom and Dad. Even with David and the kids I still felt a little bit alone. Then two days later you called. Sometimes I still can’t believe it, Anna.” She set her wine down and hugged me.

I hugged her back. “Merry Christmas, Sarah.”

“Merry Christmas.”

I went to the shelter at noon on Christmas Day, bearing gifts for the kids: hand-held video games for the boys, lip gloss and costume jewelry for the girls, and stuffed animals and books for the younger kids. The babies received soft fleece blankets, diapers, and formula. Henry dressed up like Santa Claus to pass everything out. I fastened reindeer antlers to Bo’s head and tied jingle bells to his collar. He barely tolerated it.

I was reading Frosty the Snowman to a lapful of kids when Henry walked over holding an envelope. When I finished the book, I sent the kids off to play.

“Someone made an anonymous donation a couple days ago,” Henry said. He opened the envelope and showed me a cashier’s check made out for a substantial amount. “I wonder why someone would do that and not give me the opportunity to thank them,” he said.

I shrugged and handed the check back to him. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want anyone to make a big deal out of it.”

That’s why.

Bo and I walked home after I helped serve Christmas dinner. A light snow was falling and the streets were empty. Without warning he bolted, yanking the leash out of my hand. I sprinted after him, stopping short a few seconds later.

T.J. stood on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. When Bo reached him, he bent down and scratched him behind the ears, looping his hand through the end of the leash. I approached, holding my breath, propelled forward by sheer longing.

He stood up and met me halfway.

“I’ve thought about you all day,” he said. “On the island, I promised that if you just held on we would spend this Christmas together, in Chicago. I will always keep my promises to you, Anna.”

I looked into his eyes and burst into tears. He opened his arms and I fell into them, crying so hard I couldn’t speak.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” he said. I buried my face in his chest, breathing in the smell of snow, of wool, of him, as he held me tight. A few minutes later, he put his hand under my chin and lifted it. He wiped my tears, as he had so many times before.

“You were right. I did need to be on my own. But some of the things you wanted me to experience already passed me by, and I can’t go back. I know what I want and it’s you, Anna. I love you, and I miss you. So much.”

“I don’t fit in your world.”

“Neither do I,” he said, his expression tender yet resolute. “So let’s make our own. We’ve done it before.”