"There's no such thing as perfect, Jane Hayden."

"Puh-lease, Caroline Dawson. There absolutely is. You and Eleanor are totally perfect. Aging like your overpriced wine - gorgeous, successful, and perfect. Disgustingly so." In the passenger seat of the Rover, Jane rolled her head and her eyes.

"No we're not." The retort slipped out faster and sharper than she'd intended. Best friend or not she wasn't going to air the dirty laundry of her marriage when she herself hadn't figured it out for herself.

Too late. She'd stopped trying long ago to get things past Jane, a DCI now in North Yorkshire and still frustratingly observant.

"Oh?" Jane's head snapped over toward Caroline. Her best friend who was perpetually attached but never for long, Caroline knew that Jane's interest was captured by any chink in Caroline and Eleanor's fairy tale armor. Even if it were only for the scandal of it all.

"Simmer down. No – 'oh'. It's just holidays. I'm overworked and tired. So is Eleanor. That's all there is to it." Caroline emphasized the point with a sweep of her hand. It was the stress of the holidays, of family. And her imploding school. And the fact that she felt like an imposter whenever anyone called her successful. And the fact that her wife spent much of the year traveling for work.

When they'd married and Eleanor left her senior post in pharmaceuticals and started at her best friend's business consulting firm it was meant to be the – perfect – solution for the couple, allowing both to find professional fulfillment. They'd met with success, but more and more limited as the years wore on. And, as always, Caroline wanted more.

Jane leaned over to nudge Caroline's shoulder and animated her eyebrows. "How's the sex holding up?"

Caroline narrowed her eyes and shook her head as she pulled into the car park at the tree lot. Eleanor had sent them packing first thing with orders to return only in the event she found just the right Blue Spruce for the corner of the living room.

"None of your business. That's how." She threw the white SUV into park and they piled out.

Their breath puffed around them in the cold grey morning. Jane veered over to nudge Caroline yet again. She didn't speak but kept shoving and waving her eyebrows up and down.

Caroline planted and turned. "It's fine." She huffed and looked skyward. "When she's here."

Still no follow up from Jane, but an expectant look waited for more.

She thought about Eleanor's return home last night, caught her breath, and couldn't help herself as a smile snuck onto her lips. "It's stupendous, in fact." She'd never before felt right about sexualizing Mrs. Claus, but Eleanor really had done a great job convincing her to let go of her misgivings.

"Ah!" Jane planted a finger on Caroline's black puffy coat and shoved. "Not 24/7/365. But you two are still perfect. 'Stupendous, in fact'!"

She hated to admit it, but over the years Jane had developed a hilariously accurate imitation of her. Caroline planted her finger in Jane's blue puffy coat and shoved right back, punctuating each word. "There. is. no. such. thing. as. perfect."

Jane walked on past Caroline and yelled over her shoulder for all to hear as she entered the lot. "Yes there is. You just refuse to see it."

Caroline double-timed to catch up with her. She almost lost her footing on the ice, but grabbed at the split-rail wooden fence around the trees and righted herself. She opened her mouth with yet another come-back but closed it when she glanced around. The selection was more picked over than the meat counter at the grocery.

Jane turned to Caroline with a pained look. "She said Blue Spruce specifically?"

"Specifically."

"Yeah. Hmmm. Always best not to cross Eleanor. But I think you're SOL, kid."

Caroline had at least ten years on Jane. But she guessed that a woman who made a career in law enforcement and a life in the culture surrounding it ended up calling a lot of people 'kid' regardless of her age.

"Oh don't say that." Caroline exchanged a fearful look with her friend.

Jane clapped her gloved hands on her bare ears. "This is going to take for-ever. And I'm already freezing." She'd recently cut off all of her long black hair. The resulting thick and spiky pixie was adorable, but left little in the way of winter protection.

"I told you to bring a knit cap." Caroline clucked.

"I look ridiculous in caps."

"You don't, you look adorable." She did. Jane had bright brown eyes that grew three sizes larger when they were framed with short dark hair.

Another roll of head and eyes from Jane. "Adorable is a horrible look for a cop."

"Well suck it up, buttercup. We're not going home until we get the perfect Blue Spruce." Caroline pointed to the car. Jane slumped her shoulders and slunk off toward it.

She groaned as they clicked in their safety belts and Caroline started the car. "Why must I suffer for of your impossible devotion to Eleanor?"

Caroline smirked as she pulled back onto Burn Bridge Lane. If they had to go to Leeds and back she'd find the right tree. Whether it was because she wanted to make Eleanor happy or show her up, Caroline wasn't sure. But either way her mind was made up.

"We all suffer for my devotion to Eleanor, Jane. It's just that you don't get the corresponding benefits."

"Ahhhhhhhhh!" Jane shook her fists at the sunroof.


"You're doing very, very well." Eleanor laid her hands over Flora's and gently corrected their course across the piano keys. She was doing very well, but it was nearing the end of the promised hour. Add in yesterday's flight from Munich and train ride from Leeds to Pannal, and her head this morning felt full of broken, blinking Christmas lights.

"Thanks mum." Flora didn't take her eyes off the task at hand. Her rote tone rang familiar of Caroline's 'you're the best but stop talking, I'm concentrating on something else right now,' answers.

Eleanor smiled and pulled her hands back into her lap. Flora continued and finally headed toward the closing bars of the song. If she never heard Fur Elise again, it would be too soon. Of course, that's also what she'd sworn almost two decades ago when she'd taught it to her daughter Lily. The fact that Lily had graduated with honors from University of Edinbugh with a BA in Music and had stayed on, even after completing her PhD there softened the clang of the notes pounding in her head.

Before she fell in love with Caroline she'd had no intention of raising another child – much less another daughter. Two on her own had been plenty. But the package deal of the feisty blonde head teacher and the precocious, artistic toddler had been one nobody in their right minds would have turned down.

Finding the energy at fifty-six to keep up with a vibrant twelve-year-old and give Flora the time and attention she deserved – it wasn't easy but it was always wonderfully worth it.

Flora hit the last few notes and slid her foot over to the damper pedal. The effect, while technically imperfect, was still charming. She gave Eleanor an enormous toothy Greg-half-grin as she finished. She looked like Kate, frowned like Caroline, and smiled like Eleanor. She pulled her close and planted a kiss at the top of her head.

"You are England's next virtuoso. I'm humbled to be here at the beginning of your magnificent rise."

"I am not a virtuoso." So practical – so Caroline.

"Perhaps not. But perhaps you are. And if you decide that's what you'd like, then we'll make it so, won't we?"

"Yep."

Eleanor stood. "Play on all you'd like. After putting my foot right in my mouth I've got to get to the decorations up or I'll never hear the end of it from your mum." She looked around the house and as she did so felt all the worse for being gone. Nothing had gone up. Clearly Caroline was treading water.

"That's right." Another absent-minded reply from Flora who'd returned to try for a quicker run at the opening.

'There's no way I'll keep my sanity if she doesn't stop.' There was little time left to properly hang and distribute the contents of the five large Rubbermaid bins in the basement, each busting with holiday cheer. Little time left if she wanted any to spend with Caroline and Flora before the assorted sides of their families showed up tomorrow. She pictured them clamoring and stampeding in like a feuding, atonal pack of feral cats and dogs as ready to turn on each other as they would be on her.

"Flora, honey. Can we make a deal?" She was also happy to have this film crew in her house tomorrow, and the reason for the intrusion. She was more than proud of Caroline, their family, and their life. But a little embellishment, a little gilding reality always went a long way.

At the offer of a deal, the silence from the piano was immediate. Eleanor never served up terms for her deals she didn't consider generous.

"Talk to me about your next – " Eleanor turned to Flora after she glanced at her chunky, wide-faced silver watch – "two hours."

Caroline couldn't possibly be home before noon. She'd sent her off on a little bit of a snipe hunt. But her wife definitely needed a little Jane-time. She'd winced at the ball of stress she'd come home to last night, and Jane was almost the best de-stress medicine she could muster on such short notice.

"You need help?"

"Yes. Mum needs help. And beyond the joy and satisfaction we'll get from spending quality time together on this magical day, you'll also get an extra hour on the piano all next week for it." A win-win for both of them and for her conscience. At least Flora had no interest for negotiating for Xbox time. Lily had been the master of the art of the deal and Eleanor constantly worried about the screen time that one had come away with.

Flora held up her right hand and Eleanor met it. "High five seals it."


"It'll certainly do."

Eleanor stood with crossed arms and evaluated the tree Caroline and Jane had produced after a long absence. They hadn't arrived back until well after one pm.

Caroline's cheeks were bright and her dense blonde hair up in a short ponytail. She'd rolled the sleeves on her red and white flannel to complete the task of setting the tree in the living room. She and Jane bustled around her with an efficient, 'we've got this ma'am style' and it was abundantly clear that Caroline felt supremely accomplished.

"It'll certainly do?" Caroline crossed her own arms and blustered at Eleanor. But it was missing the strident edge of her anger from the evening previous. A little physical labor and a challenge completed never failed to steady her hot-headed wife.

"Yes. It'll do to impress anyone who sets foot in this house. You've positively nailed it, is what I meant to say."

The tree was impressive. They must have gone half-way to Leeds to find it. Even bare it stood proud and tall next to the imposing black Steinway, Caroline's wedding gift to Eleanor. The white winter light from the French doors to the back garden laid so well on the blue-tinted needles it were as though fifty gay men had worked around the clock to match it to the sage green of their walls.

"Mmmm. Might even say it's perfect?" Jane shot an elbow at Caroline and a raised eyebrow at Eleanor.

"It's absolutely perfect." Eleanor beamed and placed a kiss at the top of Caroline's head.

"Uh huh. Like I said, Caroline. Perfect." Jane shrugged and Caroline scowled at her.

"I have no idea what you two are laughing to yourselves about, but it's impolite. And I've got early tea set. So decide whether you want to sit around covered in sap or change - and hurry up about it. I'm starving."

Jane saluted with two fingers and headed toward the kitchen.

"Come on upstairs Jane – I've got a hoodie for you that you'll want to steal and then ruin" Caroline called back as she disappeared toward the bedroom.

Jane shrugged and did an about-face. "It was just that once. And I can't help what happened with that bottle of whatever it's called. Whoever decided carbonated red wine was a good idea?"

Eleanor chuckled, looked around, and admired her own handiwork. She and Flora had dispatched Christmas cheer around the house as efficiently as north pole elves on uppers. Lights, garland and wreaths set a silver and red palate that snapped the entire place into the mood.

Now – to do something about that horrid capon Caroline had brought home. She picked up her mobile and began dialing for poultry.