HOLIDAY STATE OF AFFAIRS

Wading Through the Mud

Friday, December 24, 2010

The newsroom was dark by the time Will changed his clothes after anchoring both his show and Eliot Hirsch's so that Eliot could be home with his young family on Christmas Eve. It was MacKenzie's idea. More accurately, she had volunteered both of them for the task.

The thought of MacKenzie instinctively made him look in the direction of her office. He was surprised to find her light still on. He assumed that she, like the rest of the team, had fled the building immediately following the broadcast.

He peeked into her office. She was sitting at her desk with her reading glasses on, engrossed in some magazine article. "Hey… why are you still here?" he asked.

She looked up at him and smiled. "I'm just finishing a little project I started earlier."

"You don't have a date? It is Christmas Eve." He assumed that she was still seeing Wade. But he couldn't bring himself to ask about him by name.

"Nope… not tonight," she said definitively. "Who is your date for the evening?"

"Not a soul," he replied, taking a seat across from her.

"You are still spending a few days with your brother and his family this coming week, aren't you?"

His brother lived in San Diego. Mac hated the idea of him being alone over the holidays. "I leave tomorrow afternoon," he assured her. "Mac, why didn't you go home for Christmas? That's a big deal in your family."

She shrugged. "Work. And I wanted to experience a New York Christmas."

"Alone?" he asked.

"Tiffany and her family are coming into town on the 26th." Tiffany was the third child—and third girl—in the McHale family, and eight years older than MacKenzie. Will met her when he spent the holidays in 2006 with the entire McHale clan in England.

"That will be fun. What are you doing tonight?" he asked her.

"Going to Midnight Mass at St. Patrick's." She picked up an item off the floor and handed it to him. It was a gift. "This is for you. I planned to leave it on your desk, but… Merry Christmas, Will."

He took the package and immediately felt bad that he had nothing for her. "Thanks."

"Open it now," she pressed. "It's practically Christmas Day. Besides you know it's a McHale family tradition to open one gift on Christmas Eve."

He opened the present and discovered an antique leather-bound copy of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" that was artfully crafted and engraved with gold.

"It's nothing, really. Just something I saw while perusing old book stores in London with my father in November a year ago while on leave from Afghanistan. I thought you might like it," she explained.

"Because I'm Scrooge?" he questioned, half-teasing and half-serious.

"Only 98 percent of the time," she joked back.

He looked at the book in his hand again before admitting, "I've never read it."

"That explains your deficiencies." She paused before continuing in a more earnest voice, "You should. The language is elegant and beautiful, whimsical and poignant."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "Would you like to go to Mass together?" He had no plans and he had fond memories of his mother taking them to church on Christmas Eve.

He caught her by surprise. But she recovered quickly. "What happened to your 'we only have a relationship inside the context of work' rule?" she asked.

"Screw it," he told her. "It's Christmas. We've known each other a long time. I think we can be friends and colleagues from time to time, don't you? Come on, grab your coat and let's go. The cathedral will fill up fast. We can get dinner somewhere after. I'm starved and I bet you are, too."

"Okay," she agreed with a sweet smile—one that always took his breath away. No matter how hard he tried not to feel that way.