Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fear not then, said the Angel
Let nothing you affright
This day is born a Savior
Of a pure Virgin bright
To free all those who trust in Him
From Satan's pow'r and might
Oh tidings of comfort and joy

Fred Andrews loses weight the way other people lose car keys. In the week after he comes home from his impromptu road trip to Toledo with FP Jones, Alice Cooper watches him shrink in his holiday sweaters, his ribs visible through the fabric and the wool hanging loose on his scrawny frame. She watches this through her binoculars, diligently, in between setting bread dough and mashing potatoes and shoving a full roast in the oven in between sheets of gingerbread cookies.

Hal’s face lights up when he gets home from work and walks into the smell of baking roast. Alice slaps his hand away from the trays of not-yet-cooled cookies with a frown.

“Don’t get too excited,” she lectures him. “It’s for Fred. We’re eating leftover ham and sweet potatoes from last night.”

“Fred,” Hal protests, confused - pot roast is his favourite- “Did you marry him while I was at work?” But Alice is undeterred, turning her attention to icing the gingerbread cookies in green and red with such fervour that Hal eventually picks up another icing tube and joins in. For the second time, Alice slaps his hand away, gentle this time. Hal has a habit of globbing too much icing on.

“Get the second sheet out of the oven for me,” she asks instead, and Hal tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and kisses her on the back of the neck before obeying, a motion that makes her think all the more of Fred - Fred in his kitchen, in the dark, completely alone.

Alice bundles herself up at the front door, leaving Betty with strict instructions to layer the remaining cookies in wax paper and stack them in containers in the downstairs freezer. She wraps a good portion of them in Christmas cellophane, tying it with a silver ribbon and whipping scissors through it until it springs into bright, sparkly ringlets. This she loads on top of the box with the roast, potatoes, and vegetables and heads down the steps in her sensibly heeled boots, her mouth set with determination.

For the first time since they’d moved in ten years ago, the Andrews house is free of decoration. No menorah glints in the window, no Christmas lights deck out the upstairs, no inflatable Santa Claus graces the roof. The lights are off inside, the whole place as dull and as shut-down as an empty home on Halloween. Despite the bright buttercup yellow of the exterior, the house fades into the gloom, sucked from the street by the brilliance of the Christmas lights that surround it. Fred hated all-one-colour houses, but he had yet to say a word about Alice’s home, done entirely in splendid white. With Archie gone, Fred had simply ceased to care, or even pretend.

Fred’s eyes are red when he opens the door, blinking in dull surprise at her appearance. He looks worse close-up, and Alice bites her tongue so she won’t tell him how close he looks to the grave. She thrusts the box at him instead.

“This should feed you for at least a week. 375 in the oven for the pot roast, and you can microwave the potatoes. And don’t even think about throwing it out.” Her breath makes clouds between them in the frigid air. “I will be going through your bins.”

In another lifetime, Fred would have spared her an exasperated grimace, or at least had the decency to act irritated. Instead, he just looks at her with an expression on his face Alice can’t quite read, his eyes dull and unfocused, not-quite-there.

“You’re not doping up, are you?” asks Alice abruptly, planting her red-fingernailed hands on her hips. “Because if you are, I have no trouble calling Mary. And the rehab centre in Greendale.”

“I’m not,” says Fred hoarsely, his voice as thin as his small neck, swallowed by the collar of his rumpled green sweater. He looks down at the box as though first registering its presence, the gingerbread cookies smiling up at him through the cellophane, and seems to remember his manners at last. “Thank you, Alice.” His hands tremble. “This was nice of you.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t cry,” she snaps, frightened by the tears that gloss over his eyes, the lack of Fred that she can see in him, the brokenness of his fragile state. She cranes her neck to look into the house behind him, but naturally, there’s no Christmas tree - nothing but dark, and a single light on in the kitchen.

Fred mumbles a sorry and wipes his eyes with his bony shoulder, putting on the brave face she knows well: all tension in the jaw, his lips pressed together. Alice can’t help herself reaching out for him, placing a hand on the back of his neck and smoothing the hair there with her thumb.

“You’re invited to my house for Christmas Dinner,” she says sharply, hoping the it’s all right, archie will be all right , comes through without speaking it. “Christmas Eve dinner as well, and any dinner in between. But those two are non-negotiable. I expect you at seven o’ clock sharp. You don’t have to bring anything but yourself.”

He nods, trying for a watery smile - Fred knows well by now that this is her way of caring. Alice looks down at her roast, the package balanced between them, and it feels inadequate in the worst way. She sets her lips together and for a moment they look like mirror images of each other, both tense and unhappy, cold on the icy stoop.

Finally, Fred shivers and tries to hide it, shrinking his thin shoulders in slightly further and dropping the mask of bravery so that sadness swims in his eyes again. “Go back next door,” he says politely, his hands curling tighter on the box, the smiling gingerbread men. “It’s cold. I’ll see you on Christmas Eve,”

She pats his hollow cheek as tenderly as if she’d kissed it and steps back off the stoop with a nod, mostly to get him out of the cold. “Eat some of that,” she demands, the brook-no-nonsense tone she’d once saved for substituting at Riverdale elementary. “Tonight. The rest will keep in the fridge. And don’t you dare stand me up on Monday.”

Fred nods and shuts the door as she walks down the steps- there’s no wreath to swing against it so the sound of the seal is final, swallowed by the winter air. Alice turns back to look at it, winding her red scarf higher against her earrings, the overwhelming need to fix something already itching in her fingertips.

She could send Hal over with Christmas lights - Lord knew she’d had to send him over to take Fred’s lights down enough times, because usually Fred’s went up before Thanksgiving and lasted until Easter. Only there’s a nagging feeling in her chest that this time it was different. That this time, Fred needs more help than she can give.

“I don’t understand,” Hal says as Alice is folding shirts out of her dresser drawer, passing in front of him every so often to deposit them in a suitcase. “You’re leaving? Four days before Christmas?”

Alice lifts her hair off the back of her neck, tying it back in a red scrunchie. “You can tell Betty I’m at a very important journalism retreat. Or anything you like, as long as it’s believable.”

He passes her a folded stack of pyjamas. “But-”

“You’ll be fine, Hal,” she argues. “Betty’s old enough to be left on her own, and I have enough frozen meals in the freezer to last until New Year. I’ll have my cell phone, and I’ll be home for Christmas Eve dinner if I can.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Hal replies, watching her stuff socks in the top compartment of the suitcase. “This could be dangerous, Alice. What do you think the odds are of you bringing Archie home? This is a job for the police.”

Alice stops folding stockings, her hands on her hips. “I can handle myself, Hal.”

“I know,” whispers Hal, gripping her by her arms. “And I know your mind’s made up. But please, just think-”

She kisses him on the lips. “Keep the light on for me. And don’t forget the turkey in the freezer.”

To her surprise Hal only pulls her in against him, his heart beating warm and fast against her own. One of his hands gently tousles the back of her hair, tucking her into the warmth of his neck as he shuts his eyes against the hug. Alice ducks her head into his chest, enjoying being held.

“I need to do this, Hal.”

“Come home safe,” Hal whispers, tipping her head up and catching her lips in a kiss. “Promise me?”

She draws back gently and stares into the endless blue of his eyes, her thumbs stroking each side of his pulse point, the places she loved to kiss when they were alone together. She slides her thumb upward to his jaw, his lips, his cheeks, tracing every inch of the face of the man she’d loved for almost thirty years. He closes his eyes and lets her do it, breathing out slowly.

“Hal,” she says gently, prying his fingers off of her skin so she can finish packing. “I promise.”

She drives to Toledo first, leaving before the sun is even up, when the morning frost still glitters beautifully over the doors of her car and the icy pavement. The drive is a nine-hour endeavour, made bearable by the stack of Christmas CDs she keeps in the middle compartment beside the driver’s seat and a cooler stocked with her homemade pasta salad. She pulls over obligingly at the five-hour mark to text Hal and tell him that she’s safe, but doesn’t stop again until she’s an hour from the right highway exit, to fill up the car and to double-check her map. Alice can hold it like a camel.

It’s late-afternoon when she eases her reliable station wagon through the gates of the wintry chop shop lot and parks it at the edge of a fence. Fetching her leather purse from the floor of the passenger side, she double-locks the car doors beside her, wipes her fingers clean on some wet-naps, and sets off at a brisk walk toward the main building. A few lost-looking souls in leather jackets do double-takes at her crisp green wool coat and matching hat, but they direct her to where she needs to go. Her ultimate destination turns out to be a little wooden shed with a Christmas wreath on the door.

Alice slams her fist against the wood, and the door swings open on the first knock.

“Alice Cooper.”

Gladys Jones stands silhouetted in the doorway, looking fearsomely sexy in black plaid and a corduroy cap, holding a wrench in her hand the way one would hold a gun. She tilts her chin up toward the heavens in a confident mockery of Alice’s most condescending stare, her feet planted confidently on either side of the doorframe.

“Did you fuck my husband?” Gladys asks.

Alice’s hands land firmly on her hips, her lips pursed together and her chin tilting fearsomely higher. “Absolutely not,” she declares icily. “I’d rather make love to that fish you have your wall.”

Gladys grins at that, showing a flash of her perfect white teeth, and opens the door a little wider. Her dominant posture doesn’t shift, though her face loosens into a smile. “Then what is it you want?”

A little girl has appeared from behind Gladys, her hair pulled into a tight french braid, squinting out at the intruder. Gladys’ hand lands on the girl’s head, tousling her hair. Alice keeps her eyes trained on Jellybean as she replies.

“I want Archie.”

Gladys shakes her head. “He’s long gone. No chance of finding him unless you know your way around the Canadian wilderness, and even then.” She shrugs. “He could be anywhere.”

“You must have some idea. You must know people up there.” Jellybean tugs on her mother’s hand and Alice can sense Gladys wavering. “I’m not here about FP,” she speaks up. “I’m here about Fred.”

“He’s the one who dropped his son off up there.” Gladys tips her head to one side, her brown hair falling across her cheek. “I saw them leave.”

“And now he needs him back.”

“Mom-” speaks up Jellybean loudly, stamping her foot, but Gladys silences her with a finger to her lips. She opens the door wider and tosses her head at Alice.

“Come in. You look like you need a cigarette.”

Gladys packs in a hurry, because it’s important that they leave before nightfall. She swings her black suitcase into the back of Alice’s car and crouches down until she’s level with her daughter, resting a hand on Jellybean’s shoulder.

“You be good while I’m gone. Call me any time. Mama will see you in time for Christmas.” She smooches each of Jellybean’s cheeks and her forehead for good measure. “I have to bring Archie home to his dad.”

The drive is surprisingly painless. They bicker, predictably, over the music - Gladys wants to dial the radio for the nearest rock station, and offers to pitch Alice’s Josh Groban CD into a snowbank - but for the most part they get along, a mismatched Thelma and Louise. They make good time up toward the border, and by ten PM, they’re pulling up to the border crossing, where a tired-looking security officer peers into the immaculate interior of Alice’s car.

He gives the backseat a once-over and then scrutinizes the women themselves - Alice blonde and dressed in her colour-coordinated Christmas best, Gladys dark and dynamic and exciting in her leather and plaid.

“Sunglasses off, please.”

Gladys obediently lowers her shades, though it’s been dark for hours already.

“How many people?”

“Just two of us.” Alice replies.

“Any livestock, liquor, firearms, or dangerous goods?”

“None.”

“Are where are you going?”

“Toronto,” Alice lies again, leaning her head toward Gladys and flashing her pearly whites as though they were no more than two girlfriends on a getaway. Gladys plays up the part, beaming at him and twirling a strand of her hair.

The officer softens considerably. He has a tiny Canadian flag pinned to his lapel. “For how long, ma’am?”

“We’ve booked the hotel for three nights.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Christmas shopping,” Alice declares, and the Christmas baubles on her earrings must persuade him, or else the expensive cashmere of the new sweater Hal had just given her because he cracks a smile at last and gives their IDs no more than a cursory glance before waving them through.

Gladys grins at her when the border is in the rearview - they’re driving past a huge flagpole and a duty-free store, set against the backdrop of a gorgeous expanse of woods.

“You’re kind of sexy when you’re playing the part,” says Gladys casually, her head tipped back against the headrest.

“What part?”

“Middle-aged suburban square.”

Alice sniffs heartily, pursing her lips and giving Gladys her best PTA glare. “Where did Fred drop Archie off?”

Gladys lifts her head back up, combing her fingers through her hair. “They were headed for a couple miles west of here.”

“Then that’s where we’re going.”

“Too dark. We should find a hotel, wait until morning.”

“Fine,” says Alice, her eyes flickering up and to the left, where a glowing INN sign looms, the back of it painted a mustard yellow for some hotel chain she recognizes from commercials, looking if not quite lovely, at least like it might have pillowcases and a shot at a continental breakfast. “That's what we'll do." 

The hotel has one room left, and the one room has one bed.

In retrospect, she should have seen it coming.

“Didn’t realize you were such a prude,” says Gladys when Alice turns her back to her to undress, seating herself on the end of the bed with one arm outstretched to take some of her weight, fingers splayed on the scratchy hotel quilt. Alice pulls her creamy cashmere sweater up off over her head, facing the corner of the wall.

“What would you rather?” she asks dryly. “I undress on top of you?”

“Your bra matches your underwear, doesn’t it?” Gladys comments and Alice notes that she hadn’t exactly answered the question. “Leave it to Alice Cooper to own Christmas-specific lingerie.”

She’s referring to the pine-green lace bra and panty set Alice is wearing, a year-ago birthday gift, actually, from her husband. Alice purses her lips and steps out of her jeans, into her soft pyjama pants. “Just because it’s green, doesn’t make it Christmas-specific.”

“Right, because I’m sure you have the Christmas stuff too. A full Santa outfit, is that it?”

She’s not far off the mark, but Alice still turns around, fuming, her mouth drawn in a straight line, forgetting that she’s still shirtless. “Shouldn’t we be talking about Archie?”

Gladys just shrugs. “You look nice.” She stands up all at once, unbuttoning her plaid blouse, but pauses before it can fall open. “Do you want me to change in the bathroom?”

“Don’t bother,” says Alice cooly, and marches in there herself, head held high, her toothbrush and pyjama top in her hand, her breasts feeling airy and exposed in only her lace bra.

Glady’s bra had been black and lacy, with wide straps. Alice scrubs her teeth and does her best to forget this detail.

When she comes out Gladys has laid claim to the side of the bed closest to the window, which doesn’t bother her - Alice is used to sleeping on the left side at home. Gladys is in her pyjamas: an old T-shirt and black shorts that show off a jagged-looking scar on her inner thigh. Alice tugs her own pyjama shorts slightly down - pink, part of a matching set - and feels momentarily grateful that they’re long enough to cover her tattoo. Her eye keeps being drawn to the scar, and it occurs to her that if they were more friendly she might ask where it was from.

But they’re not, so she doesn’t.

She misses Hal as she tucks herself in, as she always does when she’s sleeping somewhere away from home. Alice has spent almost thirty years sleeping with his broad arm around her, his legs tangled with hers, his breath on her neck and the heavy rise and fall of his breathing. She hopes to spend thirty more. Gladys is a rustler - tosses and turns and stretches and yawns, bunching the sheets between her knees and periodically flopping from her side to her back. The bed is a decent size, and there’s a good stretch of space between them, enough that Alice feels oddly lonelier than if she were sleeping entirely alone.

They talk over the plan for a long time, get as far as deciding that Gladys might want to come back with her after their hypothetical success, bring Jellybean to see Jughead and FP for the holidays. Alice was right, Gladys had admitted begrudgingly, Christmas was for families to forgive one another. Alice feels oddly warm at her admission, grateful to have done something right. She’d never admit to Hal or Gladys how uncertain she had been in the drive up, the unknowns of this trip scattered in her mind like broken fragments of paper on the wind.

She’d remembered Gladys Jones in high school as smelling always of cigarette smoke, but the woman lying beside her smells like something pleasant and familiar, a scent she finally identifies as similar to vanilla extract. Gladys’ eyes keep straying to the front of Alice’s chest, and Alice is all too aware that the places where the buttons of her pyjama shirt come together have a habit of gaping open when she lays on her side. But she doesn’t move.

They both agree that they’re tired from driving, and Alice finally shuts her eyes, rolling over onto her other side and tugging a pillow into her chest to wrap her arms around. She can’t sleep without holding onto something and she blames Hal for it - the soft, warm, cozy plane of his chest has been her constant comfort since she was eighteen and sneaking in his bedroom window at night.

Yet it’s not Hal she’s thinking of for those last few moments before her consciousness gives way to dreams - it starts that way, but then she thinks of that scar again, the jagged white line of it, and the odd itchiness in her skin when she knew Gladys was looking at her, and then Gladys reaches across her, just for a moment, to turn the light off - her skin just barely brushing Alice’s forearm and yet in the dark of the motel room the touch burns and burns for hours.

There are Serpents in Canada, Alice learns, which she thinks is the stupidest thing she’s ever heard of. But Gladys knows where to find them, and so that’s where they start on Saturday morning when the stretch of desolate woods where Fred Andrews had abandoned his fugitive son proves empty and futile. Canadian Serpents look a lot like Riverdale ones, only the snake on the back of their jackets circles a burgundy maple leaf.

Alice has a lot she could goddamn say about it. But she holds her tongue.

The one they talk to is called Snow Tire, and he has an earring in the shape of a fang and hair so blonde that it’s white. He looks no older than twenty-five, though his hands are as sticky as a child’s. Alice douses hers in Purell when his back is turned.

“Yeah, he stopped here,” Snow Tire says. “We put him up for a while. Then he freaked out and headed off. Had a dog with him.”

“When was that?” asks Gladys. When Gladys talks, the Serpents listen, Alice notices. It used to be like that with her. Only God, was that supposed to be something to be proud of? The kid’s name was Snow Tire, for crying out loud.

“Two nights ago,” the kid answers. Gladys’ eyes light up.

“So he’s nearby. What direction?”

Snow Tire nods toward a patch of woods. “I doubt he got far.”

All the same, it takes them until the sun is sinking low in the winter sky on the second day to find him. They’re standing at the car, back to back in a clearing, hollering “Archie” into the woods they’ve been tramping through for hours when Alice hears the sound. Her parental senses are well-attuned to crying - years of losing Betty at the mall, or Polly at horse-riding practice. She smacks Gladys on the arm to silence her and takes several steps away from her, her heels sinking deep into the powdery snow.

“ARCHIE!” she hollers - the same bellow she’d use to call him and Betty home from the park at the end of the street on a hot summer evening. “ARCHIE ANDREWS!”

“Alice, do you think that’s prudent?” Gladys asks. “The kid is a fugitive.”

Alice ignores her, putting on her most fearsome PTA voice:

“ARCHIE ANDREWS, THIS IS ALICE COOPER, YOUR NEIGHBOUR. COME OUT HERE, RIGHT NOW! I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU HOME!”

The crying again, louder. Alice whirls around and crosses the clearing quickly, following the sound.

She finds her sixteen-year-old next-door neighbour sitting on a log in the middle of the snow, crying and hugging Vegas, who’s beside him. Relief and shock rush over her like a wave, and her hard heart sinks a bit at the display of affection. For as long as she could remember, Archie had adored that dog with his whole heart.

“Archie, sweetheart,” she says gently, drawing her coat tighter around her and sitting down next to him on the log. He turns his tear-stained face to her, his cheeks mottled as red as his hair, his trembling lips pressed together in misery. If he’s surprised to see her materialize from nothing out in the middle of Canadian nowhere, he doesn’t show it at all. Vegas whines and puts his head down on his paws.

“I want my dad,” Archie sobs, looking closer to six than sixteen, and buries his face in Alice’s shoulder. “I don’t even care if you’re real. I want my dad -”

She wraps an arm around his shoulders, unsurprised to feel his jacket is as cold as ice. “I know,” she says softly. “We’re going home. I’m real. And we’re going home.”

They spend one night in Toledo, mercifully in separate rooms. Archie curls up on the bed that’s usually Jellybean’s, and Jellybean bunks with her mother. This leaves Alice alone, her thoughts turned to Hal, as usual, tracing the inside of her thigh where the serpent tattoo was and where Hal liked to put his mouth.

Archie wanders into her room in the middle of the night, and she lets him curl up on the other side of the bed. All the childishness is gone from him - he seems older and leaner, cut from flint, almost adult in a way that saddens and frightens her. Vegas sleeps at the foot of the bed, a watchful ear cocked, and that makes her sad too - that the dog had been on guard duty since Fred had dropped them off together. None of them get a good deal of sleep, but Alice refuses to let Gladys drive the station wagon - that car is hers, dammit, and the insurance is in her name, and she doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right.

They set off in the morning after a hasty breakfast, Jellybean too, and with every mile closer to Riverdale she feels more and more triumphant, and the something that had sparked between her and Gladys feels smaller and less significant, like a star winking out. The important thing was Archie, she reminded herself, and Fred, and though she had no idea what would become of the whole situation once the blissful happiness of the holidays was over, she was prepared to do the work to figure it out.

Archie’s sobs have dried - he looks exuberant and terrified, the look Polly had had on the way to her first summer camp away from Hal and Alice, and later, to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy with Jason’s twins in her belly. Alice squeezes his one hand, and Gladys takes his other one. Jellybean had brought her favourite Pink Floyd album, and sings merrily along to it in the falling snow.

They bicker briefly when they pull up on Elm Street - is it safe to do it in daylight, should he be in disguise, should they have pulled up around back - and finally Gladys gets impatient and jams her corduroy cap over Archie’s eyes, and Alice maneuvers the station wagon up to the Andrews garage, and they enter the house that way, Vegas padding along behind. Fred, trusting soul that he was, had probably never locked the door separating the garage from the house in his life.

“FRED ANDREWS!” Alice hollers into the empty house, the absence of any Christmas decor even more glaringly visible in the daylight, with dust motes floating in the beams of sunlight from the windows. “FRED! COME DOWN HERE!”

Archie trembles in front of her, and she puts a hand gently on each of his arms. He keeps looking from left to right as though he’s never seen the place he grew up before. Gladys hangs back, waiting, her hands shoved in her pockets as soft footsteps above them slowly approach the stairs.

Fred walks down the stairs slowly, still in his robe and evidently coming off another crying jag. He’s wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, his head bowed. When he reaches the foot of the stairs he looks up.

Alice holds her breath.

The moment they see each other passes in an unreal sense of time, like a snowglobe suspended upside down. It goes on forever and yet lasts an instant, broken by Vegas - he barks and runs for Fred, leaps up at his pant leg with his paws outstretched and his tongue hanging, but Fred ignores him for the first time in his life, his eyes only for his child as he runs to Archie and buries him in an embrace. Archie wails with joy and misery, and Fred scoops his significantly heavier son up off the ground like he’s a sack of flour and lifts him in a hug, laughing and crying all at once.

She has never seen two people hold one another that tight - the mess of their embrace, heart and limbs and crumpled faces, pure joy and pure love the likes of which is indescribable to her. Vegas keeps barking, keeps leaping at Fred, but Fred is only gripping Archie and crying and speaking hurriedly to him so that Alice feels - a rare feeling for her - that she’s intruding. She drifts back toward Gladys, who links arms with her, and it doesn’t occur to Alice until later that she might have pulled away.

“Gladys and I have to make another stop,” Alice says to Fred, though she may as well have been speaking to a brick wall - his whole being is consumed by his son, his hands on each side of Archie’s face, Archie clutching them and crying. “We’ll be back.”

And maybe it’s the scene in front of them, the joy of that reunion, reminding her of the two kids she doesn’t have by her side that holiday season. Maybe it’s because she’s tired, because she’s just driven cross-country and all around the fucking Canadian wilderness in boots that really weren’t meant for walking. But she lets her hand slip lower, lets it find Glady’s warm one, and she laces their fingers together and Gladys squeezes and they stand there holding hands in front of Fred who will never know, because there’s no way he can see through the tears - lucky, miserable, wonderful, heartwrenching tears - because his son is home and in front of him and alive, something Alice will never have or understand.

Chapter Text

I'll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams

 They sit in front of the Jones trailer for awhile with the engine running, because even with Jellybean squirming around impatiently in the backseat, Gladys claims she isn’t quite ready to get out yet. Alice squeezes her hand - it gets easier twining their fingers together with practice - and turns to face her in the small confines of the car. It’s snowing again - a few sparse flakes drifting past their windows. A string of lights tacked to the roof of the trailer bangs in the wind.

“If he gives you any trouble, or if you can’t take it anymore, or if you have second thoughts, come to me,” Alice says. The loose string of lights skitters out a few inches, gets tossed back by the wind, and smacks against the window. “We’re having Christmas Eve dinner today and Christmas dinner tomorrow. There’s lots of space.”

Gladys gives her a genuine smile, squeezing her hand. “Thanks, Alice.” She twists around in her seat to look at Jellybean. “Ready to go, JB?”

Jellybean cheers, grabbing her hastily packed suitcase and squirming out the rear door into the snow. Gladys leans in, quickly, and kisses Alice on the cheek - it burns when she pulls back, like peppermint.

Alice watches them walk up to the door through the front windshield. Gladys raps once on the door and then jiggles the handle. It’s locked, of course - Fred Andrews’ blind faith in his neighbours wouldn’t do him a lick of good at Sunnyside Trailer Park - so she has to wait until FP shuffles to the front of the trailer and opens the door.

FP’s mouth drops open. He’s in his plaid pyjama pants and a tight gray henley, the fabric stretched across his broad shoulders and the very beginning of a belly, where a bare quarter-inch stripe of skin is barely exposed above his waistband. Alice lowers her window half an inch, nosily, to hear better.

“Merry Christmas, baby,” Gladys is saying throatily, and then wraps her arms around his neck, kissing him on his ear and cheek and finally the lips - a chaste kiss, like sealing a letter. Jellybean launches herself in between them, and FP scoops her up with a huge smile, turning back into the depths of the trailer to call for Jughead - but not before Alice catches a glimpse of the tears in his eyes.

This is the second family reunion she’s witnessed in the past five minutes, and maybe it should make her long for her own - for hugging Betty when she gets home, for kissing Hal again - but instead it seems to open some kind of yawning pit in her chest, a deep emptiness that aches and distracts her, one she tries to push down and forget. Alice is good at squashing unpleasant things, and almost has it managed when Gladys pulls FP in to a deeper kiss - nothing chaste about it this time - kissing him hard on the front step for the whole trailer park to see, like they’re under the most potent sprig of mistletoe known to man.

Gladys turns to her and waves when they break apart, and FP lifts his hand too in an awkward way, noticing her presence for the first time. Alice sends Gladys what she hopes is a meaningful look, a “call me if the going goes south” look, and reverses the car, back through the gates of the trailer park and out onto the street.

Then she drives home.

Her mind is occupied by her shopping list when she finally pulls up in the driveway - Alice usually starts working on Christmas Eve dinner by eight AM on the 24th, and is dreadfully behind on preparations. Her destination is the kitchen when she finally parks in the garage, snatches her pocketbook up off the seat, and beats it up the front steps into the house, stopping only to shuck her boots, mitts, and coat off at the front door.

“BETTY! HAL!” she calls as she strides into the house, brushing snow off the knees of her pants. “I NEED YOU BOTH TO COME DOWN HERE AND HELP ME WITH DINNER. WE ONLY HAVE FOUR HOURS-”

She cuts herself off abruptly when she walks into the kitchen and is greeted by the sight of her youngest daughter, her hair up in a ponytail and a candy-cane-striped apron tied around her waist, intently focused on spreading pecans out on a baking sheet to roast. There’s a batch of peeled potatoes and carrots sitting quietly on a dishtowel next to the sink, and the mingled smells of cranberry jelly and baking bread drift out from the direction of the oven. More wire baking racks covered in dishtowels decorate the table.

“Betty,” Alice gasps, fastening a hand over her chest in surprise. “What- What is this?”

“Christmas Eve dinner,” Betty speaks up, untying and removing her apron before rushing to hug her mother. “I thought you’d want me to get a head start. The turkey’s defrosted and ready to go, Dad helped me stuff it. I was just about to put it in once the bread came out.”

Alice gapes numbly at the variety of pots and pans on the stove. “You made french bread? Or rolls?”

“Rolls, mom.”

“Did you glaze the turkey? It has to be glazed before it goes in, you know.”

“It’s glazed.”

“And you’ve got the carrots and potatoes ready? Are we having the sweet potato casserole tomorrow, then?” Alice circles the kitchen. “I was going to make that marshmallow slice for tonight. And the snickerdoodles. We’re almost out of cookies. You know how to make gravy, right? Is the fig and cranberry compote done?”

“Mom,” Betty interrupts, her brow creasing together as she tries to follow Alice’s rapid-fire questions. “We always have the sweet potato casserole on Christmas. I made more spritz cookies and snickerdoodles, and we have marshmallow slice in the freezer already. I wasn’t going to make the gravy until after the turkey’s done, and the compote’s in the fridge.”

“Where are the brussel sprouts?”

“In the sink.”

“You put apples in the stuffing?”

“Of course I did.”

“Are these for mashed potatoes?”

“Unless you want something else.”

“Scalloped potatoes,” Alice mutters under her breath. “I wanted scalloped potatoes this year. You’re preheating the bottom oven, right? You know it has to be 425?”

“We can make them from a box, they’re just as good. And yes, it’s preheating.”

“No, it’s fine. We’ll have them for New Year’s.” Alice paces around the kitchen again, worriedly lifting dish towels and checking the oven display. A timer dings, and Betty turns away from her to take out the bread, wafting the fresh smell out into the air of the house. The tops of the buns are a perfect golden-brown, brushed with egg until they shine, and Alice relaxes a little at the sight.

“Did you put candied fruit in the rolls?” she demands.

“Yes, but only half,” Betty replies quickly. “Some people don’t like it.”

Alice runs through her mental checklist again. Everything seems to be accounted for. “HAL!” she calls to the ceiling, just in case, her hands planted on her hips. She turns to Betty, who’s slipped back into the apron, her voice harried and demanding. “Where is your father?”

“He went out,” replies Betty. “Maybe last-minute Christmas shopping?”

Alice huffs. “Leave it to your dad. All right.” She swings open the cupboard door and pulls her own holiday apron off the hook - last year’s Christmas gift from Hal’s mother, and one of the only nice things that Prudence had ever bought her. It was a beautiful subtle red, trimmed in lace. “Let’s put the turkey in. And remember what I taught you about using the thermometer-”

To her surprise, Betty laughs. “Mom, I can put the turkey in myself. I know how.”

Alice puts her hands on her hips. “Then what can I do?”

“Dad’s marshmallow salad.” Betty gives her a bright grin, and Alice’s heart beats harder with love for her, a wobbly, golden love for her youngest that she can never fully articulate. “I can never make it as good as you do. He’ll want your touch.”

Alice obeys, pulling open the cupboard above her head to grab a bag of marshmallows that she’d bought for this occasion. She’s halving them neatly on a cutting board when her thoughts finally turn away from the meal and toward the rest of her neighbours, making a mental index of who might need an invitation to a family meal. She’s opening a can of mandarin orange slices when the brainstorm finally lands, and she jumps a little, almost cutting her finger.

“Betty!” she demands, turning to her daughter, who’s finally slipping the pecans in the toaster oven. “Leave those. I want you to go call Veronica Lodge and tell her she’s invited for dinner. And to stay the night, if she wants.”

Betty looks touched and surprised, “Are you sure, mom?”

“Of course I’m sure! She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, does she? And her mother if she needs an escape, though God knows what’s up with Hermione lately.” Alice cracks open a tub of cool whip and scoops a good amount off the lid with a spatula. She flutters her hand at the sheet of pecans, mentally cursing herself for forgetting to take her wedding ring off. The last thing they needed was for her ring to end up down the drain, or in the turkey. “Go! Leave those! I’ll finish it!”

Betty obediently departs the kitchen, leaving her apron on the chair and hurrying upstairs to make the phone call. Betty recognizes, as all Alice’s family eventually does, that it’s always Alice’s preference to be stressed, to do every sliver of work on her own. Still, Betty’s preparation thus far makes the whole endeavour seamless, and Alice hums happily to herself as she mixes the marshmallow salad, pausing only to grab the stereo remote from the kitchen island and turn on the Bing Crosby.

She’s whisking the tea towels off the trays on the kitchen table to scrutinize the cookies her daughter had made - she needn't worry, Betty’s snickerdoodles are always perfect - when she recalls another family she’s neglected. “BETTY!” she hollers up at the ceiling, and is rewarded with the creak of the stairs as her daughter hurries down, changed into a Christmassy sweater with candy cane earrings.

“Yes, mom? I didn’t make a pie, because we always have it tomorrow, and the brownies are in the fridge for-”

“I haven’t sent anything to the McKellers,” Alice interrupts - the town had taken to mashing the two names together in anticipation of the wedding, and whatever Tom and Sierra’s intentions for a family surname, it looked like they now had little choice in the matter. “Will you go wrap me up a bottle of wine? And I have a box of the chocolates Kevin’s always liked, so you might as well choose something for Josie as well.”

She keeps stirring the salad with her free hand, the other leafing through her favourite cookbook to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. “Make tags,” Alice mutters to Betty distractedly. “The chocolates are in the cupboard with the vacuum, and you know where we keep the wine downstairs. And call your father and tell him to come home.”

Betty leaves the room, and Alice pauses with her finger on a well-worn page of the Dessert section. The three-layer brownie trifle had been Fred’s favourite dessert since their home ec days, and she could always bribe him with some dish of it if she needed him for anything back in high school - usually a protest of some kind, or help with the Register. She runs her thumb over the tacky paper, wondering if she should make two. Maybe one for New Year’s.

Retrieving her best trifle bowl - a wedding present - from the cupboard above the stove, she pulls Betty’s brownies out of the fridge and hunts down instant chocolate mousse mix from the pantry - a cheat, but one that no one ever noticed.

“Veronica would love to come,” Betty reports back, bounding up the stairs with a bottle of wine and two wrapped gifts. “And stay the night. But Hermione has other plans.”

“Well, thank heavens for that,” Alice says, dumping the chocolate mousse in her MixMaster to whip. “I’d forgotten Archie and Fred are coming over, and the less everyone else knows about that, the better.”

A crash as Betty drops the wine on the floor. Alice whirls around, prepared to do clean-up duty, but the bottle, tucked in a gift bag with a generous amount of tissue, seems mercifully unbroken. “Archie?” Betty demands, her face as white as the marshmallow salad. “Archie? What do you mean, Archie?”

“Archie’s home for Christmas,” admits Alice, crossing around the counter to pick up the festive bag housing the wine bottle. She sets it on the counter and scrutinizes the half-empty container of cool whip. “I may need you to run out to the store and buy another one of these.”

“But -  but how? When?” Betty’s getting the reporter edge to her voice, bleeding in through the shock, and Alice can sense an interrogation pending. She abandons the trifle, taking her daughter gently by the shoulders and smoothing the lines out of her sweater.

“It’s Christmas, Betty. Let’s just leave it at that. I’m sure you’ll get the full story from him. Now don’t go bothering him before dinner. He’s with his father, and they haven’t seen each other in awhile.”

Betty just stares at her, her mouth agape, and then shoves the two wrapped gifts into her mother’s hands and sprints back up the stairs, no doubt headed for her bedroom window, which looked directly into the Andrews house. Alice leaves her to it. If she and Archie wanted to exchange smoke signals before dinner, she wouldn’t stop them.

She ends up finding another tub of cool whip in the freezer, and finishes both the salad and the trifle with ease. Ordinarily, she looked down on people who didn’t have the time to whip up their own whipped cream, but something about the texture of the cool whip was essential to the marshmallow salad, or at least Hal thought so.

Hal. She pauses for a moment, caught up in missing him, one of her red nails tapping worriedly on the side of the glass bowl as she transfers both dishes to the already bursting refrigerator. Then she shakes it off and bolts up the stairs two at a time, knowing she’d have to change before showing up at Tom’s house.

Thirty minutes later, showered and re-dressed in a clean blouse and skirt, a snowflake pendant dangling around her neck and matching earrings in both ears, she shoves her stocking feet into her most interesting boots, anticipating a compliment from Kevin. Alice checks the wine bottle one last time for cracks, re-wraps it, and nestles it in a grocery bag beside the two wrapped gifts. She calls out for Betty to keep an eye on the food, pulls her hat on, and slides one more time into the driver’s seat of her car.

Gladys had generously filled the tank for her once they reached the Riverdale city limits, and she doesn’t have to stop for gas. She thinks of that moment now as she guns the engine - how time had seemed oddly suspended to her as she sat there in the dark passenger seat, ice crystals on the windshield and her breath making clouds in the cold air, warm nevertheless in her fur muffler and hat, while Gladys stood out on the pavement in her combat boots, gasoline flowing under her palm into the vehicle. It reminded her in an odd way of that movie Betty had dragged her to on Christmas Eve a few years ago - Carol , the film was called, and Betty had blushed all through it, and Alice shakes away the thought of it as quickly as she can. But the tempo of that moment had matched - dreamlike and full of potential, hesitant and suspended, a ghost of another life.

Sierra answers when she rings the doorbell at Tom’s house, and at last Alice finds herself almost matched in festive attire: the lawyer is dressed in a green power suit with red tassel earrings, wearing a necklace shaped like clear-and-gold strands of Christmas lights that manage to be beautiful instead of tacky. They exchange a hug before Kevin comes barreling into the front room, delighted to see her - Kevin had always been Alice’s favourite of her daughter’s friends, and she the favourite of his friends parents.

“Love the boots, Mrs. C,” Kevin affirms joyfully, and Alice hands him the package that had been wrapped for him. Chocolate Turtles had been Kevin’s favourite treat since he was ten years old, and Alice had been dutifully supplying them as a Christmas gift every year. Tom appears over his fiance's shoulder, looking suspicious of her intentions until she hands him the bottle of wine.

“You didn’t have to, Alice.” He passes it to Kevin, who admires the label.

“Do I get some?” the teenager wants to know.

“We’ll think about it,” Tom replies, though Alice has always known him to be dangerously lenient with the law and his child. If it was up to her, Betty wouldn’t see a sip of alcohol until the day she turned twenty-one, but different strokes, she supposed.

“Is there anything else you need?” Alice asks Sierra anxiously, that need to fix and help all itchy in her fingertips again. She can smell dinner cooking, but she makes her offer anyway. “We have plenty of food if you’d like to come over.”

“We’re all right.” Tom slips an arm around Sierra’s shoulders, and Alice feels the pang of her three days away from Hal again. “It’s a family Christmas this year.”

Alice restrains herself - barely - from nosily asking what Tom’s ex-wife was up to this Christmas. Peace on earth, that was the goal. She holds out the last gift.

“Here’s a little something for Josie, as well.”

“Josephine!” Sierra yells back into the house. “Come up here!”

Josie emerges, dressed in leather pants and a leopard-print halter top despite the cold weather, a Santa hat askew on her head. To Alice’s surprise, she’s followed by the other two members of the Pussycats - both beaming and cheerful, decked out in matching Santa hats. All of their fingernails sparkle, painted in green-and-gold glitter.

“Josie, time for your friends to go home,” speaks up Sierra. “It’s family time, now.”

“Betty told me you were a solo act now,” Alice speaks up as she hands Josie the present. “I’d have brought more if I knew the band was back together.”

“Don’t worry,” says Josie with a bright grin. “I can share.”

“Those are such beautiful earrings, Mrs. Cooper,” Melody breaks in. “Are they real diamonds?”

Alice touches her ear. “They are. Hal gave them to me.”

The girls aww appropriately, and Valerie hugs both Josie and Melody to her. Alice smiles at their closeness.

“These two took me to see Bohemian Rhapsody once school got out,” Josie explains, tipping her head toward Tom and Sierra. She looks over at her best friends, her gaze soft and proud. “It made me realize being a solo act doesn’t always work out.”

The sentiment is so random and so endearingly Fred-like, that Alice has to grin. “It’s a good thought,” she offers charitably. “I was ten years old when that Live Aid concert went on, and I don’t remember a thing, but Fred Andrews would. He and Oscar were big Queen fans.”

“Is he all right?” Kevin asks, his mouth already sticky with caramel, and six sombre faces turn in her direction, like she’s dropped some massive heavy ball of gloom.

“I think he will be,” Alice says, crooking her finger at the sheriff as she tugs her mitts back on. “Tom. A word.”

He walks out onto the front steps with her, where the blustery wind blows snow up against their ankles. There’s a long history of antagonism between them and he holds himself officially, but it doesn’t stop Alice from leaning in to whisper in his ear, cupping her red fingernails against his skin.

“Archie’s home.”

Tom draws back to look at her, ascertains that she’s not lying, and gives her a nod. “Thanks for telling me,” he says, face impassive, and Alice nods in return, the thin wavering line of a truce between them in the face of the greater good. “Merry Christmas, Alice.”

“Merry Christmas, Sheriff.” She waves at the window on the way back down to her car, where Kevin and Josie are pressed unabashedly up against the glass, trying to eavesdrop. When the whole McKeller clan is back inside and she’s situated in front of her steering wheel, she works her iPhone out of her purse and shoots a quick text to FP Jones.

Alice: If you see Fred today, make sure he's eating.

FP: I've got plenty for him to eat 👅👅👅

Alice: your wife is here. Have some decorum.

FP: she's got something for him to eat too 👅

Alice: you are disgusting

FP: takes one to know one

“Merry Christmas, FP.” Alice says dryly, looking down at her phone. Then she tosses it in her bag and fires up the engine.

Hal still isn’t there when she walks in the door, and she sets about scrubbing the pots and pans to pass the time, shooing Betty and Veronica out of the kitchen when they offer to help. Alice turns on the Christmas tree lights and stands in front of the pine for a moment, finding one of the rare pockets of time that their pastor is always talking about, to stop and reflect. She runs her fingers over one of the middle branches, tracing Polly’s Baby’s First Christmas ornament with a gentle touch. Christmas eve was Alice’s favourite night of the year - the hurried preparations, the music on the stereo, the bursting joy and anticipation from every person in the room. But she knew as well as anyone that she used her hurriedness to escape - to swallow up the worries in her own head in a whirlwind of wrapping and baking and decorating.

Still, no use changing old habits now. Alice keeps her eyes on the clock as she moves an ornament or two around, mentally planning out the rest of her evening. She had just enough time to finish the meal and get the house in order, Betty would set the table, Veronica could make the place cards, she’d fetch Fred and Archie from next door, lay out some Christmas cookies as appetizers, open a bottle of wine…

Hal would be home by then and he could entertain while she laid out the dishes, they’d eat and she’d watch Fred like a hawk, put Betty’s snickerdoodles right next to his plate - then they’d retire to the Christmas tree for more drinks after dessert, she’d send Archie and Fred home by eight, and they’d all have time to change for church. After the service, they’d get home and do stockings, read The Night Before Christmas as a family -

She pauses in the act of untangling some tinsel. Veronica. The Coopers didn’t have a single gift for Veronica, and while she knew the girl wouldn’t expect a thing, courtesy dictated she at least fill a stocking. Alice hurries back up the stairs to where she stashes her emergency gifts and selects several boxes of chocolate and a splendid Christmas ornament she’d been saving for Mary Andrews. The thing was too good for Mary anyway. She also picks up a wrapped pair of reading socks originally intended for Betty, and an ornamental picture frame that Aunt Gertrude had given Polly last year, and that she’d hated.

She’s so intent upon her wrapping and tagging, writing Veronica in soft script on each label, that she doesn’t hear the door open downstairs and Hal tromp in.

“Alice!?” Her spouse’s voice floats up from the lower level, swallowed a bit by the Christmas music she’d kept playing. “Are you home?”

“I’ll be right down, dear,” she calls, curling the last ribbon and stacking the lot in a grocery bag.

“There's someone here to see you,” Hal calls up.

Alice frowns, confused, but runs a brush quickly through her hair and hurries down the stairs all the same, a smile already rising on her lips at the thought of embracing her husband after her long trip. “Hal-” she bursts out excitedly, rounding the final corner of the stairwell, and immediately freezes so abruptly that she skids in her stocking feet on the hardwood floor.

“Hi, Mom.” says Polly Cooper.

Alice stares and stares, wondering if she’s gone crazy. Polly has a baby in her arms, and the other tucked into an infant seat that Hal’s holding. She’s in the purple coat Alice had bought her the year she’d started seeing Jason, her hair pulled into two long sections on each side of her face and a lace headband in place on the crown of her head. Her smile is wobbly and small, but true. She looks from Hal to Alice with tears swimming in her eyes.

Alice turns from her daughter to Hal, whose face is glowing with warm light - there are tears in his blue eyes too, and laugh lines crinkled up on his cheeks. The true meaning of Christmas hits Alice like a slap in the face.

Joy! Wasn’t that what all the songs were about? She doesn’t think she’s ever felt such joy before in her life.

“Polly?” she asks, still convinced she’s dreaming, taking a step toward her daughter. Polly hands the baby off to Hal - Juniper, Alice can tell them apart - and runs into her mother’s arms for a hug. She’s almost as tall as Alice is, but that doesn’t stop Alice from hugging her back with all the force in the world.

“Mom,” Polly sobs into her shoulder, and just that one word almost sets Alice off crying. “I’m sorry about the things I said. I missed you so much. If you’ll let us stay, I want to stay again. No one should be away from home at Christmas. I was wrong, I’m sorry.”

“Of course,” whispers Alice, stroking her hair, tears rising in her own eyes. “Baby, this is your home. Of course you can stay.”

“Betty!” Hal is calling up the stairs. ‘Your sister’s here!”

“Veronica’s over,” Alice speaks up quickly, still inhaling the shampoo-scent of Polly’s blonde hair as if she’ll never get enough of it, like Polly will disappear if she lets go. “She’s staying for dinner.”

“Do you have enough?” Polly steps back, wiping wet tears from her eyes. “Did you make marshmallow salad? Are we still going to church? Why aren’t Fred’s lights up? Oh, Mom- ” She buries herself back into Alice’s arms, like she’s six years old again. “I love you.”

“Merry Christmas, Polly,” Alice replies and kisses her all over her face. Hal hands Juniper back to Polly and Alice releases her eldest daughter at last to hug her husband, her arms sinking tight into his soft back and her face tucked into his warm neck, against his pulse. Hal holds her for so tight and so long that she feels like she’s floating.

“Merry Christmas, Alice,” Hal says at last, and kisses her gently.

Polly has run to hug Betty and Veronica, who have tramped down the stairs and are cooing over the twins. They mash together in a big group-hug, sobbing and giggling and talking a mile a minute. Alice lifts one of her grandchildren in her arms - Dagwood, this time, and vows to never let them leave her again. The babies are already bigger and heavier in her arms than she wants them to be.

Hal takes Juniper and they walk into the living room with Polly between them, the lights on the tree sparkling and dancing, casting bright spots of colour up on the glass of the window. Alice reaches down and squeezes Polly’s fingers with her free hand, lifting Dagwood a little higher against her neck - he’s calmer than his sister is and doesn’t make a peep. Polly hugs her tight along her side, and Alice slips an arm around her daughter, forgetting completely for the first time in her life that company will be over soon and that they need to cook and clean and baste the turkey, forgetting everything, in fact, but this moment in time where her family is together, and safe, and whole.

Peace on earth and goodwill to men , she thinks, without a touch of irony, and her heart feels so thick and so full with it that she thinks it might break.

Chapter Text

Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright

Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace

There’s nine of them for dinner in the end: Polly, Fred, Archie, Veronica, Hal, Alice, Betty, and the twins. Hal unearths two booster seats from the basement as well as a myriad of some of Betty and Polly’s old toys, and he and Alice take turns playing with the grandkids as the other sets up the meal. Veronica, Betty, and Polly have formed a hair-braiding group on the family sofa, a teary-eyed, giggly cluster of friendship and gossip and joy.

Hal crushes Fred in a hug when he arrives, abandoning the custom of their usual awkward handshake. Veronica, after a tearful reunion with Archie, seizes Fred around the neck and kisses him on both cheeks. It’s Polly, though, who takes it upon herself to be Fred’s guardian. She follows him around the house as Alice sets dishes out on the table, hands on her hips, nagging him with a fervour that’s terrifyingly reminiscent of her mother.

“Fred, you’re so thin! Haven’t you been eating a thing? I’ll send my mom after you with a pot roast if you’re not careful.”

“It’s already done, Polly,” says Fred with a tired smile, opening his arms and letting her slip into them for a hug. His eyes are on Archie the whole time, who’s drifted across the room to sit down between Betty and Veronica. Polly hands him Dagwood to hold, and Fred’s face lights up like the fourth of July as he hoists the baby high in the air and blows a raspberry under his shirt.

They see neither hide nor hair of Gladys Jones, which suggests the Jones family trailer park Christmas is going better than anticipated. Alice insists they say grace before dinner, holding Hal’s warm hand and Fred’s thin one as the circle bows their heads and listens to her recite thanks for the season and each others company. In the light of the candles burning in the centre of the table, their faces are lit by a warm, beautiful glow.

In the interim after dinner, when the rest of present company is splayed out in the living room, unbuttoning their jeans, Polly heads to the front door and starts bundling herself and the twins into their coats. She announces her intention to bring them to see Penelope and Cheryl at Thistle House, a declaration met with disbelief from both her parents.

“It just seems right,” Polly argues, when her mother objects loudly to the idea. “They’re her grandkids too.”

They bicker, but Polly is easily as stubborn as Alice, and holds her own. In the end, Alice and Hal decide to accompany her to the Pembrooke, where Veronica informs them that Penelope is currently living. Alice holds Juniper on her lap in the car, her lips pursed with disapproval the whole way there.

Penelope’s apartment is a drab little room with a glowing Christmas tree done up in gold and silver baubles. The redhead herself is dressed in a long velvet gown, her burnt arm covered by a black glove that reaches up to her elbow. She glares out at Alice when she opens the apartment door, her gaze only softening somewhat when it lands on Hal, and then entirely when she sees Polly with the children.

“My grandtwins,” she whispers happily, opening the door and letting Polly hand Dagwood over the threshold. Alice has to resist the urge to snatch the baby back and book it down the fire escape to freedom.

Polly’s angelic smile gets them invited in near the Christmas tree, where Hal pulls up kitchen chairs so they can sit in a small half-circle. Alice looks around the small apartment, confused by the silence.

“Where’s Cheryl?” she asks.

Penelope lets out a long-suffering sigh, as though exhausted by the question, looking up from Dagwood in her lap. “Cheryl emancipated herself,” she explains coldly. “She won’t be here.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” declares Alice, her hands on her hips, already planning and regretting that she’s going to have to invite Cheryl Blossom into her home. “Where is she now?”

“You have nothing to be concerned about,” Penelope bites back, a familiar venom in her voice. Alice is glad they're not pretending to be gentle with one another. “She’s with her girlfriend . They’ve taken over Thistle House in my absence.”

Something about the way she says girlfriend gives Alice that odd prickle again, Penelope’s eyes on her for too long, their past thick and unspoken between them. The look on the other woman’s face dares her to drop her gaze, so Alice holds it - startled by how familiar the brown of Penelope’s eyes is after all this time.

“Sit down, Alice,” offers Hal, and Alice realizes she’s the only one still standing. He keeps his hand on her back as she sits, his thumb smoothing soothing circles into her cashmere sweater. Alice lets out a long sigh and releases her hands, which had curled into tight fists. Tis the season.

Penelope coos lovingly over the twins, holding them each on her lap in turn, and Alice is surprised to see that her eyes have gone misty in the Christmas tree light, as though somewhere in the Christmas season, Penelope Blossom’s thorny heart had somehow grown three sizes. It’s not until the clock is inching close to ten o’ clock that Polly apologies and rises from her seat, carrying Juniper with her. Polly has adored the Christmas Eve service at their church since she was a little girl, and is loathe to miss even a moment of it.

Alice has a store of splendid wintry memories of tramping back with her eldest at midnight, Polly’s little hand in hers, their faces aglow and their boots soaked through with slush. “You’re invited, of course,” Polly offers gently to Penelope, but Penelope shakes her head and declares that she needs less religion in her life, not more. Thus ends the most uncomfortable and unpredictable chapter of Alice’s Christmas eve - one that she’s startled to find she hadn’t minded all that much at all, at least not with Hal’s hand resting steady and warm on her back.

“Merry Christmas, Penelope,” Hal says at the door, squeezing her hands in his and smiling. Polly’s jaw drops at the affection - the last she’d seen of her father and Penelope together had been Hal bursting into Thornhill to free her - but Penelope returns the squeeze, a startlingly genuine gloss to her eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Hal.” She turns to Alice with a tense nod. “And to you, Alice.”

This leaves little room for Alice to do anything but return the sentiment. “Merry Christmas, Penelope,” she says stiffly, and the uneasiest of understanding seems to drift between them just for a second - as though for a moment, in a Christmas Eve miracle, a truce had been extended.

The Cooper house has cleared out when they swing back to pick up Betty, Veronica having followed Archie and Fred back next door. Alice pauses on her front porch, a smile creeping up on her lips despite herself as she recognizes a few of Fred’s Christmas decorations: a pine garland wound around the porch rail and a fake wreath tacked to the buttercup yellow siding. Lights shine from the perimeter of each downstairs window, colourful incandescent strands that her neighbour would die before replacing with environmentally-friendly LED’s. Still, she pauses as Hal digs in his pockets for his keys, chewing on her lower lip in contemplation.

“Hal,” she asks quickly as they stream back into the front foyer, Polly excusing herself to change Dagwood’s diaper. “We’ve still got an artificial tree in the attic, don’t we?”

“We have a real tree up, Alice.” Hal’s eyes widen in understanding as they meet hers. “Fred,” they say in unison, and Hal kisses her quickly on the cheek. “You take the girls and the twins to church. I’ll catch up.”

This is how Archie Andrews gets his sixteenth Christmas tree - dragged in in a long white box from Hal Cooper’s attic, and carefully set up in the middle of the living room in the few short hours before Christmas Day. Veronica darts about decorating it with tinsel and popcorn, and Vegas curls up beneath it, his head on his paws and his ears lowered at last. Archie and Fred only hold each other, Fred behind his son with his arms wrapped around him, radiating safety and peace in front of the rainbow of glass lights.

The Coopers cluster onto the sofa after church, Juniper and Dagwood already dozing off in their grandparents' arms. Alice rustles up two more stockings, including Polly’s childhood one - thick and fluffy and adorned with a bell, POLLY spelled out across the front in silver braid. Hal reads The Night Before Christmas to the group, both twins clustered onto his thighs, and Alice watches him the whole while, admiring the warmth in his face, the crystal-clearness of his blue eyes, the few strands of gray in his eyebrows, the soft curve of his jaw, the hair in his ears that she’d be after him with the tweezers for later.

“We’re grandparents, Hal,” she murmurs to him when Polly and Betty have taken the twins to pin up their stockings. Her hand finds his and squeezes it tightly, as though their hands had always been made to fit.

“I know,” he replies, and kisses her on the cheek, under the sprig of mistletoe they always leave above the couch. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

Beds are made, sleeping arrangements settled. Betty takes up sentry by her bedroom window - not to watch for Santa, as she had so often as a girl, her detective skills sharp even then - but to offer a semblance of familiarity to Archie, who stares out the window opposite.

Hal sets up Polly’s old crib at the foot of his and Alice’s bed - Polly’s childhood room doesn’t have space for it. Polly curls up on Betty’s bed until she’s falling asleep, and then drags a blanket down the hall to her own room, a ghost of the three-year-old Alice used to chase around the house in bunny slippers, comfort blanket in hand.

She and Hal stack the presents under the tree once they’re sure the girls are asleep, playing Santa as they had every year since Polly was a little girl. By the time they’re done there’s a sea of them: silver paper and golden ribbon, leaking out from beneath the tree and spreading over the carpet of the living room like lava. Alice, as always, had compensated for her feeling of helplessness this Christmas by overspending, over-wrapping, over-glitzing. But it looks lovely and perfect, and when they’ve spent half an hour wrapping a dozen of Polly’s old toys for the twins to open tomorrow morning, it looks even more perfect still. Hal downs the cookies that Polly had left out, superstitiously, for Santa , though the twins were too young and Betty too cynical to appreciate the gesture.

Then they go to sleep, Alice curled up to Hal the way she likes it, and when she closes her eyes she sees them at that church service again, the way a stranger would have, well-dressed and gold-haired and beautiful spread out in their pew, candles in hand, but most importantly, happy. The whole Cooper family happy. She’d spent years trying to get a Christmas card to look just like that.

Juniper wakes up fussing in the middle of the night, and Alice rouses herself from the blankets to see Hal already up and holding her to his chest.

“Go back to bed, Alice,” he says softly, jiggling the little girl in his arms. “I’ve got it.”

She doesn’t, though. She follows him downstairs to the Christmas tree, clicking it on with the remote when he doesn’t pause to do so himself. It had begun to snow during the night and it falls in thick drifts past their windows now, heavy and pure, visible through the reflection of the tree in the glass. Alice stares at the dark shapes of their reflection - husband and wife, an infant between them, the light on at the Andrews house across the way - and something in her heart goes hushed and soft, like the blanket of snow falling over a little town.

Hal turns on the stereo, as low as it will go, and they listen to Bing Crosby singing Silent Night. Alice admires Hal in the golden glow of the tree: his broad back and his sure hand and his tenderness with his granddaughter, and in this tiny moment, before the hustle and bustle of Christmas Day is upon them, everything feels as right and okay in the world as sunshine.

Merry Christmas to all, she thinks, wrapping her hands around Hal from behind and crossing them over his soft middle, and to all a good night.

And it is.