She just kept looking at the uncle who shared Eddie’s face but, to Kat, was almost a stranger. “It must have been hard to get down the mountain this time of year,” she told him. “Thank you for coming, Uncle Charlie. It’s good to see you.”
She knew what it cost him to leave his home, to give up his isolation.
“Your father told me about the egg, Katarina,” he said, his accent thicker than his brother’s. “I’m sorry to hear it shattered.”
Kat couldn’t help but glance briefly at Hale, then at the case that held the egg that she had loved and lost and found again.
“It’s okay, Uncle Charlie. It was…” She found Hale’s eyes, shared his smile.
But Uncle Charlie filled in.
“It was one of the most beautiful forgeries I ever made.”
It seemed to take a moment for Kat to process the words, for her to remember the virtual mountain of eggs that the earl had acquired through the years.
“No, Uncle Charlie,” Kat said with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry. The earl has a ton of forgeries, but it was the real egg. It…shattered.”
Kat’s voice cracked, and a moment of silence seemed to fill the kitchen as they all mourned the fact that one of the most beautiful things in the world could never be stolen again.
Only Charlie dared to break it. “No, Katarina.” His eyes twinkled. He walked to an ancient, old fashioned suitcase. Not a soul spoke as Charlie clicked it open and pulled from it an egg nearly identical to the one she’d loved her whole life.
“This is the real egg.”
“But…how?” Kat couldn’t keep the wonder from her voice as she inched toward it, but Charlie merely shrugged.
“It must have been twenty years ago now…before I went up the mountain. The earl found me somehow, asked me to make some duplicates.” Charlie shrugged but looked like a little boy who’d just been caught waiting up and spying on Santa. “I might have made a few extras. And I might have forgotten to send the original back with the fakes.”
“Charlie had it the whole time,” Hale said, and Kat might have doubted the story except that the egg in Charlie’s hands could never be confused with a fake, not when sharing the same space with one of its mates.
Hale took Kat’s Frankincense egg from Marcus’s case and set it on Uncle Eddie’s kitchen table. A moment later, Charlie placed the original Gold beside it. They stood, glistening, together for the first time in decades, and not for the first time in her life, Kat believed in miracles.
As, somewhere, a clock struck midnight, Kat looked at the eggs and thought about the Magi. They followed a star and brought presents to a king, but never before had Kat felt less like having a normal Christmas with normal presents.
Eddie began setting the table and ladling out soup as Hale’s hand slipped into hers. Bobby’s arm went around her shoulders. It was Christmas Eve, and all was right in Kat’s world.
Right up until the point when Bobby said, “You know, the Myrrh egg is in a not-very-secure private residence in Budapest…”
The End