Barney's brows drew together as he held the phone out to Robin. "Tracy wants to talk to you." Ted's caller ID, a picture of him passed out on the couch at the old apartment, filled the screen.

Why? Robin mouthed. Barney answered with only a shrug. Her fingertips brushed the inside of his wrist when she took the phone from him. She flipped one braid behind her shoulder and put the phone to her ear. "Hi."

"First of all," Tracy began, "how much of what I already told Barney did you hear?"

"All of it. I'm, um, standing right next to him. Decorating the tree," she added. Heat rose in her cheeks. "Barney bought a tree, so we had to decorate it. Well, them. He got three. We were on the first one. Big one first, because that's how it goes, right?" Robin stopped herself there. If Tracy didn't already suspect something was going on, her babbling was not going to help. "What did you need to talk to me about that you couldn't tell Barney?"

Tracy let out a soft breath. "I have one quick question, and it would have been really awkward if I asked him. Could you please describe your engagement ring?"

Robin covered the phone with her hand. "Girl talk," she whispered to Barney. "I'm going to take this in private." She didn't wait for his response, but made her way to the bedroom with long, quick steps and shut the door behind her. "Okay." She perched on the edge of Barney's bed, then focused her sight on the assortment of grooming products arranged on his dresser. Her free hand stroked the soft nap of his winter duvet, the mistletoe dropped from her fingers. Her lips still tingled from the pressure of his kiss. She averted her eyes from the mirror above the dresser. There was no way in the world she wanted to know what she looked like after a kiss like that one, not if she wanted to be there for Tracy. "You're going to have to narrow down the field on that one."

"Right." Tracy's laugh held more nerves than humor. "I mean your ring from Ted. Can you remind me what that looked like?"

Crap, this was one of those things a woman was supposed to remember for the rest of her life. "Okay, but can I ask why you're asking?"

"Because I never got a chance to have a really good look at it?" The nervous laugh at the end of Tracy's question sent up a red flag.

"Yeah, forgive me if I think that's not the reason. Did Ted give you a ring?"

There was a long pause, then, "Not exactly. He didn't give it to me, give it to me. I had to hold his jacket when the paramedics came, and there was a box in the pocket and I looked in the box in the ambulance and can you please please please tell me what your ring looked like before I hyperventilate? Again?"

Robin closed her eyes and rubbed the pad of her thumb over the empty space where first Kevin's, then Ted's rings used to sit. They hadn't been that different from each other. "I really don't pay attention to those kinds of things. It was gold, I think, and it had a diamond in it."

Tracy sighed. "You've just described every engagement ring ever."

Not every ring. Quinn's ring was platinum, its diamond heart shaped, kind of pinkish, anchored in a filigreed frame, but none of that would help her here. Tracy hadn't asked about Quinn's ring. She'd try to remember, for Tracy's sake, but the image wouldn't form, only Ted's eyes, dark and earnest. The soft sound of his voice echoed in her memory, his sincerity as he assured her she'd never have to be alone ever again, and how much she'd needed to hear that at the time. He'd had the ring in his hand then. She saw, as clear as if Ted were before her now, the way his hand shook, but what his hand held, that was another matter. "Yellow gold," she said at last. "The diamond was square, I think."

"You're sure it was square?" Tracy's voice ended the question on a squeak.

Robin twirled the end of one braid around her finger. "Honestly? I'm not. I know an engagement ring should be special, and there was only the one stone, so I should be able to remember what shape it was. I know squareish doesn't help, but-"

She didn't get to finish. "Ohmigod. Ohmigod. Are you sure there was only one stone?"

That much, Robin did know. "Yes. Just the one."

"This one has three. It has a big diamond and two little ones and the box is from a local jeweler." Tracy's breath came faster now. The last word cut off into a hiccup.

"Tracy. Breathe. I know you're already in a hospital, but the staff is busy enough already. That ring you're describing is absolutely not the ring Ted gave me."

A garbled voice on loudspeaker summoned a doctor with a name Robin couldn't decipher. "I, um, have to know one more thing. Did you break up with Ted because of me? You guys were engaged when we met, and then you weren't. I have to know, before I, um, see this ring again." Dead silence reigned.

"No," Robin answered without hesitation. "Absolutely not. Sure, Ted and I broke up after we met you, but it was because seeing the way he was with you shone a light on the fact that he and I were never going to work out as a couple. I'd have figured that out anyway. Maybe five days later, maybe five years later. Maybe I would have had to give him two rings back instead of just one." It could have gone like that, a miserable marriage, a messy divorce, no friendship to be salvaged from it. Her throat tightened at the mere thought of how things might have gone. "You didn't end what I have with Ted. You saved it."

"So if this ring is what I think it is and I answer the question I think Ted is going to ask with the answer I want to give, you're going to be okay with that?"

One more miracle for the magic Christmas tree. "Best Christmas present you could give me."

"That's only because you haven't seen what we actually did buy you, and you're spending Christmas with Barney. I take it this means you're not in Canada."

"I am not. My flight got diverted to JFK, and I ran into Barney." She plucked the mistletoe from the duvet cover and twirled it between her fingers.

A disembodied voice on the other end of the line announced a code purple. "That's not for Ted," Tracy assured Robin, then waited only a moment before her question cut through the buzz in Robin's mind. "And he's not married? Are they divorced? Man, Ted didn't know any of that, I swear."

Ted didn't, Robin knew that. He'd have said something, tried to break it to her gently, or celebrate in the true spirit of schadenfreude, whichever she wanted. "They never got married in the first place."

"So, Barney's single?"

"Completely. He has a plant. He's learning how to cook. His couch folds out." He knows how to braid hair. He sucks at snowball fights. I am so, so sunk. She bit her lower lip to keep the words back.

Tracy didn't need them. "So, Barney's single, you're single, and you're alone with him on Christmas Eve. Do I really need to spell things out for you? Do the right thing."

Robin leapt from the bed, spurred by the memories of all the nights she'd spent there. Her shin connected, hard, with the bedframe. "What if there is no right thing? This is me and Barney."

"There's always a right thing. You go out there, you give him your phone back, and you get back to doing whatever it was you were doing before I called."

The mistletoe warmed between her fingers. Yeah, that might not be the best idea in the world. "And then what?"

"Then Christmas," Tracy said, as if the whole thing could be reduced to something that easy. "There's a bunch of medical students headed for Ted's room, so I have to go, but you call if you need me, okay?"

If she needed Tracy. "You're the one whose almost-fiancé is in the emergency room."

"And you're the one with a second chance at love." Tracy drew the single word out to two syllables. Lo-ove.

Robin pushed both sleeves up to her elbows. Warm air brushed against sensitive skin as she paced from bed to dresser. Barney's dresser looked like the men's section of Sephora. She brushed the leaves of the mistletoe over the selection of dark glass bottles, jars and tubes, then turned the biggest bottle label side out. Handwritten characters fit neatly within a red frame, no English words to give her half a clue as to what the bottle contained. "Whoa there. Nobody said anything about love."

"Medical students. Bye." Ted's caller ID vanished from the screen, replaced by a portrait of Eli and Sadie, dressed in miniature suit and frilly dress. The Barney Robin used to know probably would have used that picture to launch a play; single dad, stranded far from home, in need of comfort and human contact, could have roped in any bimbo he wanted. The Barney who bought her three Christmas trees, though, he probably just missed his nephew and niece.

She stared down at the mistletoe still pinched between her fingers. If this were one of those cheesy Christmas movies, the mistletoe would be magic, too.