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Valencia had been trying to give me something innocent and sweet, so was my stranger; only, it was tainted by my past.
    Would everything be this way for me forever?
    Pushing my negative thoughts aside, I made my way out of my room and followed my stranger. For the first time, I got to see the true expanse of the home in which we shared.
    I made my way down the hall where Christmas garlands adorned the walls. There was a smell of cinnamon in the air, and the rooms were dim enough to truly allow the Christmas lights to sparkle from the living area. The rooms around me were there, but the doors were shut, so I couldn’t see inside.
    The living room filled my eyes with tears. Two stockings, filled to the brim with goodies, hung along the stone fireplace. A small train set ran in circles around the bottom of a short, fat tree. Its uneven sides were certainly something most would have shied away from, but much like me, Giano had given it a place in this home.
    The multicolored lights seemed to dance as the jingles played softly in the background. The hodgepodge of ornaments adorning the awkward shrub called out to me. As I reached them, I could see they were the makings of a small child and her family. A paper wreath with macaroni noodles, painted in green and held to the branch with a yarn string, reminded me of all the ornaments I had made at school that Mama had easily discarded as waste. Everything I had ever wished to see in a Christmas tree sat before me in this very room.
    Without a second thought, I turned to my stranger and wrapped my arms around his waist, holding him close. Ever so slowly, his arms wrapped around my back in the safest, most loving embrace I had ever felt in my entire life. Did he know he had made a wish come true?
    Tenderly, I reached out and touched the many mismatched ornaments and thought about the love and attention that went into making each one. I felt him watching me, but I couldn’t tear myself away.
    After allowing myself a moment, I glanced over my shoulder. Once again, he was off in his own world of thought. Was he, too, remembering Christmases past?
    A pang punched me in the gut when I couldn’t help wondering if he was wishing it was his dear Angelina here with him and not me. Of course he was. She’d had parents who truly loved and adored her. She hadn’t merely been the next expected step in her parents’ life plans like I was for Father and Mama.
    Fighting, I was successfully keeping the tears at bay when a hand suddenly gripped my shoulder. Looking up, my eyes met his dark brown ones, and the sadness I expected to see there wasn’t present. Instead, I found his eyes dancing with a quiet joy.
    “Wanna open your presents?” he asked, rendering me speechless.
    I never expected to have a “normal” Christmas morning. The only gifts I had ever been given by my parents were those the socialites my mother associated with would approve of.
    Looking at my stranger, I wondered what he might have gotten me. Rather than try to form words, I simply nodded my head and moved away from the stumpy tree.
    One by one, I opened each carefully wrapped package, finding surprise after surprise. From the art supplies to give me something to pass the time to the violin for me to learn music to the necklace of a bird symbolizing the chance to be free from my past, each and every gift had been bought with my needs in mind. He hadn’t given me the things he had planned to give his own daughter.
    Although I had to be Angelina in public, he still found ways to remind me I wasn’t the replacement for his daughter. For the first time since Papa Valencia had died, my heart filled with happiness. For the first time since the loss of my grandfather, someone cared about me, not what I represented or could provide.
    Once I had opened all of the gifts, we went to the kitchen for breakfast. I took in the granite countertops and the stainless steel appliances and thought this was a kitchen much like my family had,