A/N: Oh well. Merry Christmas :D
...
NORTH POLE
"Daddy?"
Turning away from the sizzling pan he had been focused on, Peter looked at his four-year-old daughter, who had been silently drawing at the kitchen table for the last fifteen minutes, while he got dinner ready. A bit too silently, he realized then. His daughter was a lot of things, and chatty was definitely one of them.
He noticed the serious look on her face, that small crease between her eyes, and the familiar way she pursed her lips.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
"Can we send my Christmas card to the North Pole?"
He smiled at her, dropping his spoon to join her at the table. "Absolutely. I thought we'd mailed your list to Santa already, though?"
She shook her head. "No, this one's for grandpa." Then, as always somewhat unaware of the meaning behind her father's sudden silence, she added: "I just think he's there with Santa. He told me once that's where candies came from, from the North Pole I mean. So, he's probably there."
Swallowing past the lump in his throat, a reaction he still couldn't quite control, he looked at the drawing Etta had sketched. He recognized the figures she had drawn without difficulty. There he was, holding Etta's "hands", Olivia on the other side of her. She had even attempted to draw her bump, which turned out to be a massive circle that would make her mother cringe, with a tiny stick figure in it. On the other part of the card, she had drawn Gene, Walter, and another man who was unmistakably Santa Claus, all surrounded with candy canes and what he recognized as red vines.
"Can you help me spell 'I miss you'?"