A/N: This is another one of my favorite chapters. It might be a bit too early for a Christmas chapter, but I wasn't going to wait until December to post this. So consider this an early Christmas gift...

As always, I'd like to thank my fearless beta reader and dear friend, blossom-of-snow for her excellent work and the insight she offers while reviewing and editing my chapter.

"You know I'm only agreeing to do this because I love you, right?"

Rainie loved her. Sharon let a content smile spread across her face. She didn't expect Rainie to say that to her, especially not right after Sharon blackmailed her into undergoing an evaluation by a therapist. But then Rainie said she loved her.

Since she was too distracted to work, Sharon opened her laptop and began looking for a therapist who would be suitable for Rainie's needs. The only demand Rainie made about the therapist was that he would know about art. Sharon assumed it might be a bit challenging to find such a specific criterion in a résumé, but not impossible.

The first two therapists she called were unavailable, the third did not have the required art knowledge, but the fourth, Dr. Joe Bowman, had a few openings, and assured Sharon that Rainie would not be disappointed by his proficiency in art. Sharon scheduled a meeting with him. Her confidence that he would be the right therapist for Rainie strengthened after she googled his name and read that he also specialized in counseling for LGBTQ teenagers. Sharon wasn't sure what Rainie's sexual orientation was, but thought that Rainie might benefit from seeing a therapist who was gay-friendly and capable of dealing with the subject, should it arise. She hoped that after the two evaluation meetings with Dr. Bowman, Rainie would see the benefits of counseling and would want to continue, but so far, the girl only agreed because she wanted the chance to go on a field operation that would hopefully help the LAPD capture the person who was sending her threatening letters. The source of all her problems.

One reaction Sharon did not expect to the meetings with Dr. Joe, as he insisted she call him, was Emma Rios's objection to the evaluation, and her attempt to manipulate Rainie into changing her mind about the field operation. Granted, Sharon was not too thrilled with that idea either, but she was happy to see the young DDA's insolent attempt backfiring at her. She had no qualms with pride when Rainie called Emma out on disguising her agenda under a cloak of concern. DDA Rios only cared about Rainie because she was the key to winning the Stroh trial, and Rainie knew it. Sharon tried not to gloat when Rainie stormed out, leaving Emma with a stunned expression on her face, but the corners of her mouth curved upwards reflexively. Emma deserved it, and Sharon was so glad to see her on the receiving end of a tantrum, rather than being the one throwing it.

Of course, even if Emma didn't succeed in making Rainie change her mind, discovering that "the entire world" was going to know she saw a therapist terrified her. She had spent the entire afternoon and the following morning venting out about how much the Philip Stroh trial had taken over her life, but eventually, Sharon had to leave for work which meant that Rainie had a few hours to spend on her own in the super cubicle. She later told Sharon that Emma stopped by to apologize for being insensitive, but it did little to improve the girl's opinion of her. Sharon deemed the apology was well-deserved but late, even though she didn't tell Rainie that. Still, it appeared that Rainie was going to follow through with undergoing the evaluation, and Sharon waited for Dr. Joe's final report in order to see how, or if to proceed with the field operation.

A few days before Christmas Eve Sharon began decorating the house for the holiday. Being busy with one draining case after another, Sharon struggled to find the time to decorate earlier. She had hoped to get Rainie involved, but she didn't seem interested. The more time Sharon spent around the girl, the more she noticed the dejectedness and irritability descended. In the course of two days, Rainie had refused eating dinners with her, closed down in her room, and appeared morose every time Sharon tried to talk about the holiday. Sharon wasn't sure what was happening, and she wondered if the girl was scared from what Sharon and several other people would have to read in Dr. Joe's final report, or if there was a different reason for the shift in Rainie's mood.

When Sharon tried to not-so-subtly extract some information from Dr. Joe about some of the content of his conversations with Rainie, she ran into a brick wall of ethics. He was not going to give her any idea what Rainie was discussing with him in their conversations and suggested that she approach the girl directly and ask her about it if she wanted to know more. The idea seemed preposterous, since Rainie's foul mood perpetuated all week, and the girl was on her mind as she stood in the living room and decorated the Christmas tree. She opened a box of small porcelain angel ornaments and examined its contents. When her children lived at home, she usually decorated the tree with their favorite ornaments, only hanging a few of her favorite angels. But since Rainie showed no interest whatsoever in the holiday, Sharon took the liberty of decorating the tree with dozens of angels in different sizes and from different materials, just like she loved it. From the corner of her eye, she saw Rainie zipping down the hall on her way to the kitchen. She moved like a ghost, quick and almost unnoticeable, and even though Sharon turned to see her foster daughter, she could only catch a glimpse of her wavy red hair as she walked into the kitchen. She heard the fridge door opening, and closing and water poured into a glass. Then she heard the clinking of the glass as the girl put it in the dishwasher. She turned around and walked towards a box that she placed earlier on the backrest of the couch and took a few elongated angels out of it when Rainie came out of the kitchen. The girl stopped in front of the box and looked at Sharon.

"You know, you don't have to go to all this trouble for me, Sharon," she spoke as she took one angel from the box and examined it curiously.

"Don't you like Christmas?" Sharon asked as she walked towards the tree.

"Until you, I haven't really thought about it much," the girl admitted with a shrug. Rainie's indifference to Christmas puzzled Sharon. Rainie has already spent one Christmas with her, and even though Sharon couldn't say Rainie seemed thrilled with the holiday, she also didn't seem as melancholic as she did this year.

"You do seem a little down." She hung a couple of praying glass angels with delicate wings on the tree as she spoke. "Is everything okay with Dr. Joe?" she turned to look at the girl who shuffled her weight from one foot to the other. "Of course, you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to." She added, hoping that Rainie would still decide to share her thoughts and feelings with her.

"I've been talking about my mom a lot," Rainie blurted the words as if they were a burden she wanted to unload. Sharon turned to look at her again, trying to find the girl's eyes. "I don't know; I feel guilty that she's out there somewhere and I'm here, in this nice place with a tree and…" the girl's voice trailed off. "Ornaments."

Now that Sharon's hands were empty, she wished she had something to do with them. She didn't want to seem insecure, but after having Rainie at her house for almost two years, she had begun to think of the girl as her own child. To hear that the girl still worried about her biological mother, despite her abandonment and abuse stung Sharon a little. She quickly shoved her hands into her pockets, to hide their gentle tremor.

"Don't get me wrong, Sharon. Because you're – you're really important to me. I just – I also love my mom." Sharon felt tears gathering in her eyes. How could Rainie's love for the person who has only been a part of her life for a year and a half even compare to the love she felt for her mother for the first fifteen years of her life? Sharon now realized that it was stupid of her to expect Rainie to forget about her mother and to favor her instead. It didn't work like that. Children couldn't just let go of their love for the people who raised them in a heartbeat and mentally adopt another parent. She looked downwards for a moment, trying to rein in the surge of disappointment that went through her. It took a few more seconds until Sharon was able to think clearly. She was never bad at sharing, and if Rainie didn't quite see her as her mother, she could settle for whatever the girl was willing to give.

"I understand," she rolled her eyes upwards and took a cleansing breath. She took her hands out of her pockets and grabbed two tree-top angels that were lying on the couch. "I have two kids, and I love them both equally. And if it turns out that I have part of a third, then I'll love her too." She held the angels in both her hands and for a moment it felt like she was holding her children, who for the second consecutive year didn't make it home for Christmas. Sharon missed them, but their absence was probably safer. With the threats on Rainie and her, it was better for Emily and Ricky to stay far from her during the holiday. She hoped that they would come home later in the year, or that the LAPD would catch the letter writer and she would be able to travel to see them with Rainie. "I'm really sorry that your mom isn't able to share in any of this with you." Sharon looked at her angels in her hands and turned around, trying to hide the tears that sprung in her eyes again when she thought of Emily and Ricky. She walked towards the tree and pretended to try to decide which angel would be a better fit for the tree-top.

"Yeah," Rainie looked into the box of angels again. "Well, I don't know how much she'd really appreciate it." She shrugged, and Sharon turned her head to see the shadow of a smile playing at her lips. She hummed noncommittedly. What else could she tell the girl anyway? It was the holiday season, and both of them were forced to spend it away from their families, each for her reasons. If anything, she could only identify with Rainie's confusion. "God, you've got a lot of angel ornaments."

"Oh, you can never have too many angels," Sharon declared with a soft smile, guiding them both towards a lighter topic.

"Either that or you have a really bad obsession," Rainie teased her.

Sharon snorted. Rainie may have had a point, but the sight of angels all around her condo made her feel protected. It was like having an ethereal security detail, one that took care not only of her physical safety, but also her soul, and that was a comforting thought; one that she needed desperately in order to go through this holiday season with her children away and a threat hanging over her and Rainie's heads.

Sharon couldn't remember quiet Christmas evenings before Rainie came to live with her. The previous holiday season, Emily was out of the country, and Ricky traveled to Chicago to spend the holidays with Jack's family. Even after Jack has walked out on his family, Sharon made sure to keep in touch with his brother and parents. She wanted her children to know their grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousins. Jack's family always liked her and invited her to visit and spend the holidays with them every year. In the first couple of years after the legal separation, she traveled with the kids to Chicago for Thanksgiving, but she always felt like she didn't truly belong there, not without Jack. These people may have become her family by marriage, but every time she was around them, they pried into her life, tried to check if she was dating anyone if she was taking good care of Ricky and Emily, and if she was considering going back to Jack. She wasn't sure if they were in denial about what Jack has done or if they really weren't aware of what Jack has put his family through. Even if she didn't feel comfortable around them, Sharon made sure that the kids spoke to their grandparents every week. Ricky and Emily spent several summer vacations with their cousins in Illinois and always returned with many stories about their 'adventures'.

Christmas was always spent with Sharon's parents. As an only child, she always made sure her parents were not alone during the holiday season, and it was a family tradition to travel to their timeshare in Park City and spend Christmas and New Year's Eve there with Emily and Ricky. Her mother passed away two years before Sharon took Rainie in, and her father passed away the following year. Her first Christmas with Rainie was hard. Emily was out of the country, and Ricky spent the holidays working on a freelance project. It was the first holiday season Sharon has spent without her family, and it may have not been an accident that she was so busy with work and with Rainie's issues that she almost forgot to decorate.

This year would have been different if she and Rainie didn't get threatening letters that prompted Sharon to ask her children not to come home. In some ways, it was worse than the first year, because once the need to celebrate finally came to Sharon, Rainie didn't get into the holiday spirit at all. And this year, Sharon was not busy enough to take her mind off the fact that she was spending another holiday season without her family.

On Christmas day, Sharon found the time to cook a holiday dinner, and while the turkey was in the oven, she decorated the dinner table. A batch of gingerbread cookies was waiting to be baked, and she hoped that after dinner, Rainie would want to frost them. However, as soon as they put away the dishes from dinner, Rainie disappeared in her room. Sharon had knocked on her door and offered her a cup of hot chocolate and cookies, but Rainie preferred to stay in her room. Sharon groaned in frustration as she returned to the kitchen. Even with Rainie around, she still had to spend Christmas alone. She couldn't blame the girl. She knew Rainie was going through a rough time with the ongoing isolation, Dr. Joe's evaluation, the field operation and the threats to her life. It was a lot for a seventeen years old girl to process, and despite of Sharon's disappointment, she felt that she needed to give Rainie more space before she pushed for information about what was going on.

Sharon sank into the couch, exhaling deeply. She grabbed a throw pillow and wrapped her arms around it, trying to draw as much comfort out of it as a pillow could provide. Even with her sullen mood, if Rainie had come out of her room and sat with her, Sharon wouldn't feel as lonely as she did now. Turning in might be the best choice, but it was still early, and Sharon didn't feel tired yet. She turned the television on, and snuggled on the couch, watching an old Christmas movie.

She was surprised to wake up several hours later and discover that she had fallen asleep on the couch. It was still dark outside, and only the lights from the tree sparkled in the living room. Sharon reached for her phone that she left on the coffee table, and checked the time. It was almost 5 a.m. She sighed and got up, noticing that she was covered with a fleece blanket. Rainie must have come out and covered her when she saw her sleeping on the couch. As she turned towards the kitchen, Sharon noticed Rainie standing in the balcony. She slid the door open and joined her.

"Rainie?" she asked gently as she came to stand by the girl's side.

"Santa Claus doesn't exist, you know?" Rainie's voice was hoarse.

"Of course not. Santa is only a concept, not a real man," Sharon replied. She was still a bit groggy from sleeping on the couch, but she tried to regain her lucidity so she could understand what Rainie was trying to tell her.

"When I was eight, my mom brought home a plastic tree. It looked really cheap and small, and she forgot to buy ornaments or lights. She had long earrings, so we hung that on the branches, and I cut out some paper dolls and we hung that too," Rainie said. "And she told me about Santa and said that if I'll be a good girl and go to sleep early, and not give her any trouble before bedtime, Santa will leave a gift for me."

Sharon hummed softly and looked at Rainie, whose bottom lip seemed to be quivering.

"I was on my best behavior that night. I didn't give her any trouble, and when I woke up in the morning, the tree was gone, and there were no gifts. My mom was high, and she started screaming that she threw it away because Santa only gives gifts to privileged kids, not to poor people like us. I spent the entire day crying in my room. It was the only time we ever tried to celebrate Christmas."

"I'm so sorry you had to experience that, Rainie," Sharon said softly. She couldn't imagine how scary it must have been to grow up with a mother who was that unstable. "I'm not gonna lie and tell you stories about Santa. You know where the gifts come from. I just want you to know that the gifts don't matter. Spending Christmas with the people that you love is what's important."

"I'm sorry I was an asshole to you earlier. I needed time to take in all of this," Rainie motioned towards the tree in the living room.

"Honey, please don't lock yourself in your room when you're upset. Come and talk to me. You know that I will always be here for you, no matter what bothers you," Sharon said.

Rainie nodded and stared into the grayish morning mist.

"It's almost morning. Do you wanna open your gifts?" Sharon offered.

Rainie nodded again, and they walked inside and sat in front of the tree.

Sharon pointed at a flat gift that was wrapped in blue paper and tied with a white ribbon. "This one is from everyone at work," she said. Andy approached her a couple of weeks earlier and said that the team wanted to buy Rainie a Christmas gift and wasn't sure what the girl might want.

Rainie untied the ribbon and removed the lid.

"Okay, this is funny," she said and took out a copy of 'Wreck This Journal' out of the box. "I looked at this on Amazon a few weeks ago."

"I'm glad it's what you wanted," Sharon replied, and pointed at another gift that was packaged in a long box. "That one is from me," she added.

Rainie unwrapped the gift and covered her mouth when she saw the new yoga mat Sharon had gotten her. Since her isolation started, Rainie has been following several yoga YouTube channels and practicing at home. A few weeks ago, Sharon had lent her an old yoga mat she used back when she still had time to take yoga classes. Now Rainie had a brand new mat of her own.

"Thank you, Sharon. This is amazing!" Rainie wrapped her arms around Sharon's neck.

"Ricky and Emily also sent you a little something. I know you haven't met, but they thought it would be nice to get you something small, so you know they're thinking of you," Sharon said and handed her a medium-sized gift bag.

Rainie pulled the tissue paper from inside and then took out a gray T-shirt that had 'You're never fully dressed without a smile' written on it.

"That's cute," Rainie said. "Now open yours," she smiled at Sharon, who nodded slowly.

She opened Emily's gift first. The box was big and heavy, and Sharon remembered Emily's warning about the content's fragility. She untied the lush silk ribbon and carefully unwrapped the green and gold wrapping paper. Her oldest daughter sent her a beautiful set of delicate porcelain cups and a matching kettle, accompanied by a bag of artisan tea blend. Sharon couldn't wait to use the cups and try the blend. Emily was certainly aware of Sharon's tea and teacup obsession. The next present Sharon picked from under the tree was from Ricky. She lifted the lid of the box and was surprised to find a Kindle Paperwhite. She gasped loudly, knowing that it was probably way out of Ricky's budget. Not that she worried about his finances, because he's always been very responsible with money, but she wondered just how horrible he felt about not coming home for Christmas for the second year in a row if he went so out of his way to send her such an expensive gift. Sharon read the Christmas card he attached. His wishes were laced with his familiar humor. Sharon could almost hear his voice as she read his card and it made a soft smile spread across her face. She wished that she could hug him and tell him he didn't need to feel guilty and that she loved him.

After she put the box and card aside, Sharon noticed one gift that wasn't there before she fell asleep on the couch. It was a medium-sized box that was wrapped in a shimmery red paper and tied with a gold ribbon. She turned her gaze to Rainie, who looked at her with anticipation; there was a sparkle in her eyes and a trace of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Sharon untied the ribbon and carefully peeled back the wrapping paper, revealing a shallow black box with a Neiman Marcus logo on the lid. Her jaw dropped open, and she looked her Rainie again.

"Rainie, what…?" She couldn't conjure the words to express herself. She removed the lid carefully and exposed a beautiful beige cashmere cardigan. Sharon often bought her clothes at Neiman Marcus and was familiar with their price range. Even if this cardigan was on discount, she knew that Rainie must have paid a lot of money for it. She must have used more than a year's worth of her allowance.

"Do you like it?" Rainie's eyes shone.

"It's beautiful, honey," Sharon's voice shook. "I love it. Thank you so much." She wrapped her arms around Rainie and kissed the crown of her head. "I'm so happy to have you in my life; you know that, right?"

Rainie shrugged shyly. "I'm glad to have you in mine, too," she said and looked at the tree. "I never imagined anyone would care about me the way that you do. Sometimes, I need to pinch myself to make sure it's real."

Sharon smiled at her and held her hands. "If you're not tired, we could make breakfast together, and skype with Ricky," she offered.

"That sounds like a great idea," Rainie replied and began gathering the wrapping papers from the floor. "Oh, I almost forgot!" she called out. "I have one more thing for you."

"Oh, God, Rainie, this is way too much," Sharon protested as she watched Rainie going to her bedroom and returning with a small gift box.

"It's something small, I promise," the girl said and handed the box to Sharon.

Sharon opened it to discover a crystal angel ornament. "You said that you can never have too many angels," Rainie said.

"It's so beautiful, sweetheart," Sharon said. She walked to the tree and hung the angel on one of the empty branches. The Christmas lights cast a warm glow through the crystal that engulfed the angel with a divine aura. Sharon felt Rainie's arms wrapping around her shoulders from behind, and she let herself lean against the girl.

"I love you, Sharon. You're my angel, for sure," she whispered.

Sharon was happy that Rainie was standing behind her because her words made tears spring from her eyes and roll down her face.

"I love you so much, too, my darling. Thank you for the lovely gifts. You made this Christmas so much happier than I thought it could be." She wiped her tears before she turned around and wrapped her arms around Rainie.

"You missed midnight mass, and your children couldn't visit either because of me. It's the least I could do," Rainie spoke into her shoulder.

"That Catholic guilt rubbed off on you after all," Sharon teased the girl as she pulled away. She heard Rainie giggle softly. "So, breakfast – what are we having?" She asked as she walked to the kitchen with Rainie on her heels.

They decided to make buttermilk pancakes, and as they worked side by side in the kitchen, Sharon let herself sneak glances at the girl who had already taken a corner of her heart. Her coppery waves bounced on her shoulders as she moved and she hummed a cheerful Christmas tune as she stirred the pancake mix. The threats they were receiving may have prevented Sharon from seeing Emily and Ricky this year, but she wasn't alone. Rainie was family, too, and Sharon couldn't have been happier to be able to spend the holiday with her. Hopefully, next year she'll have all her children with her during the holidays, but for now, she could settle for just one of them – the one that needed her the most.

-TBC-

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