Chapter Text
It became relentless, the references to some mysterious figure Ms. Bennett couldn’t recall hearing before, but observers would tell her she had the patience of a saint. She would never be the parent to shut down her son’s imagination. She had imaginary friends when she was his age, even if she could not remember their names.
“Mom! You don’t have to take me and Sophie Trick-or-Treating this year. Jack Frost is gonna take us!”
“Mom, save a piece of my birthday cake for Jack, please!”
“Mom, Jack Frost and I are gonna play fetch with Abby!”
And, of course, it wasn’t just this elusive Jack Frost. As Sophie grew a year older and more articulate, she would blabber on about her fairy tales, too, though she seemed very particular about them. The week before Easter, Ms. Bennett decided to take her mind off of the inevitable planning needed for an extended family dinner and popped on some DVD about the supposed origins of the famed rabbit.
“Mommy, the Easter Bunny does not look like that!” Sophie said sternly. She pointed at the short, brown rabbit on the screen like it committed a heinous crime; most likely identity theft, from the way her daughter acted. She demanded the movie be turned off at once. Ms. Bennett acquiesced, it wasn’t a good one, anyway. Sophie gave the DVD the stink eye until it was eventually returned to the film rental her mother got it from.
All this to say, she let her children express themselves. One Christmas season she peered over her son as he sat on the living room floor doodling. She only raised her eyebrow, seeing the large figure not dressed in his usual white and red, but blacker furs, surrounded by strange, furry gorillas. Perhaps it was another of her son’s comic ideas.
As she tucked them into bed that night, with a little bit of difficulty from Jamie, who desperately wanted to say hello to Santa Claus (he accepted leaving him a nice note by the end of it) and she sat herself down at the kitchen table with a long sigh and a cup of cocoa, she had time to think. The snow outside acted as soundproofing, and there was not a sound in the house.
It hadn’t caught her attention as of recently, but seeing the snow outside reminded her of it.
“Mom, please leave some extra cookies out for Jack.”
“Mom, do you think Jack would like this spray gun for Christmas?”
“Mom, did they have Christmas in Pioneer times? I asked Jack, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
Of course, she bought the spray gun, thinking it was her son using his imaginary friend to ask for a certain gift. She had asked if he could put it on the list for Santa, and he refused, saying he wanted to give it to Jack himself.
But that last question gave her pause. Why would her son care about Pioneer times? And why would he need to ask his imaginary friend about it? She didn’t recall it being part of their lessons for the school year, so he would have had to look that sort of thing up on his own, perhaps. And why would an imaginary friend-- apparently from Pioneer times-- keep secrets?
She looked under the tree. She had placed the gifts down just after the kids were sure to be asleep. She approached the pile, to the box where the spray gun was kept. A spray gun, for a pioneer boy, in the middle of winter… She had marked it otherwise. To Jamie, From Santa.
She stared at it a little longer, before she walked back to the kitchen and procured a marker from one of the drawers. She picked the gift up and scribbled over the writing, before writing something else down.
To Jack, From The Bennetts
It was foolish, but Jamie had wanted it that way, anyway. She would entertain the idea, knowing he would probably have ended up playing with it, anyway.
She slipped a few more cookies onto the plate, too.
And then, most strangely, she made another cup of cocoa. She walked onto the porch, and placed the cup on the siding. It would surely become cold, and she would find it frozen the next morning, but she did it anyway.
She walked back inside, emptied and cleaned her cup, turned off all the lights, and tucked herself into bed. It took longer than she would have liked for her to fall asleep. Maybe she expected a thunk to sound from the chimney in the living room.
She awoke a few hours later. She was surprised, thinking she would have woken to her children shooting into her room, shrieking about Christmas Day, but she was the first up. At five in the morning, she would think to go back to sleep, but she never felt more awake.
She decided she would need a coffee to get through the day, since she would surely be feeling exhausted by the excitement later. As she lumbered to the kitchen, however, she found something that woke her up faster than any coffee could.
A skinny, frostbitten, teenaged boy, hunched by a Christmas Tree loaded with gifts that surely weren’t there before, a cold cup of cocoa in his hands.
And he stared right back at her, with shocked, icy-blue eyes. Jack Frost, Jamie’s ‘imaginary’ friend.
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