4. Come here. Let me fix it.

She'd had the little jewellery box since she was six. It had been a Christmas present and every time she looked at it, Sharon still remembered that initial sense of joy. At first she'd kept whatever little treasures she believed worthy in it but as she got older, she started keeping her jewellery in it instead. Every time she opened it, the little ballerina inside would spin to the delicate tunes of The Nutcracker. Frail and a little weathered by the hands of time, the tiny little figurine had her hands raised above her head and one foot pulled up against her knee. As the music played, she spun and spun in perfect little pirouettes. She wore a pink little tutu that matched the ballerina shoes and the tiny little flower in her blonde hair.

The music box had moved with her wherever she went. College. Then the academy. Her first apartment. The home she and Jack bought and then left. The next apartment where she lived with Emily and Ricky as she tried to get her life back on track. And eventually the condo, the place she now called home.

It was Christmas Eve and the condo was alive with the hustle and bustle and voices of family. From her bedroom, Sharon could hear Emily and Ricky laughing, heard her father's booming voice as he told another anecdote from when he was young. Even though her children were in their twenties now, they never grew tired of hearing their grandfather speak about the days gone by.

Sharon pulled the light grey long sleeved sweater over her head, brushed her hair and then turned to the mirror. There, in its trusted spot behind her perfume bottles, stood the little music box and she reached for it. It didn't hold much of her jewellery anymore, she had an expensive stand for those things now, but it still had a few things inside. One of Emily's bracelets from when she was six. Ricky's first watch with a red leather strap and a Micky Mouse face behind the round glass. Her wedding ring that she hadn't worn in years and her grandmother's favourite rosary.

Sharon gently opened the lid, prepared to hear the by now so familiar tunes of The Nutcracker. But the little ballerina didn't spin and the dainty music didn't find her ears. Instead there was only silence and Sharon's heart ached a little when she looked down at the ballerina, frozen in time.

Sharon poked it softly with her index finger and she heard a couple of notes as the ballerina turned around a little. Sadness settled in her chest as she began emptying the box, leaving all the little treasures on her dresser, and turned it over. The light blue silk lining had worn and weathered over the years and the flowers painted on the outside of the box had faded but it was still in great condition. As she turned it over, Sharon looked for a way to fix it but to her frustration, she couldn't find anything.

She looked up when she heard her father's voice behind her. "Sharon? Is everything alright?"

She turned around and saw William O'Dwyer standing in the doorway of her bedroom. In his seventies now, he was still the handsome and tall man whose picture she kept on the sideboard in the living room. His hair had greyed and his face had wrinkled but he still had the same twinkling bright green eyes Sharon had been fortunate enough to inherit. He looked smart in his khaki pants and white button down shirt.

"Everything's fine, Dad," Sharon smiled and walked over to him, still with the music box in her hand. She showed it to him. "Do you remember this?"

Willian's eyes lit up as his daughter handed him the music box. "I can't believe you still have this. You must've been what, seven, when we you got this?"

"Six," she corrected him and for a single second she experienced a flash back to her younger self sitting by the Christmas tree on Christmas morning unwrapping her presents. The music box had been her most prized possession.

William gently opened the lid and looked inside the box. The ballerina still didn't spin. "Didn't this used to play music?"

"The Nutcracker. And until tonight, it did indeed play," Sharon answered. She reached to take the music box from her father's hands. She caught a glimpse of his golden wedding band. Her parents had been married for almost sixty years. Once she had hoped to achieve what they had but she'd soon learnt she wasn't going to get it.

"I think it's broken now."

She went to put it back on the dresser but her father called her back. Sharon turned around, music box still in hand. William's green eyes had fixed on his daughter and he spoke softly. "Come here. Let me fix it."

She remembered him talking to her in that same tone when she was eight and scraped her knee after she fell from the swing. Or when she was fifteen and Jonathan Dawson broke her heart by asking Judith Watson to the school dance instead. She walked across the bedroom and placed the box back in her father's hands. If someone had told her ten or twenty years ago she would be standing here in the bedroom of her own condo giving her music box to her father to be fixed, she'd have laughed at them.

"Go join your mother," William said and put a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "If I'm not mistaken, Rusty is trying to get her to give up her egg nog recipe."

Sharon grinned. No one had ever managed to get that recipe out of Ruth O'Dwyer but Rusty wasn't just anybody and she feared that her mother might just cave under the keen journalist's questions. She left the bedroom and followed the sounds of voices and laughter back to the living room.

"Oh! There she is!" Ricky exclaimed.

Emily moved over on the couch so her mother could sit and the conversation picked back up. It turned out Rusty wasn't about to obtain the illustrious recipe but he had persuaded everyone to sing Christmas carols. And at the first notes of Silent Night, Sharon smiled.

When the song finished, something else caught her attention and Sharon's head snapped around when she recognised the delicate tunes of the Nutcracker Suite. There, behind the couch, stood her father, with the music box in his hand. The little ballerina was dancing again and the music sounded as perfect as it had always done. Sharon's eyes met those of her father and he smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Sharon."