"It's still Christmas Eve, Alex."
Chapter twenty
Ben
The truck's heater hummed its familiar drone, filling the cab with warmth that felt almost sacred after the cold of the hospital parking lot. My hands knew this steering wheel, these streets, and how the engine complained when I took the hill past Morgan's Antiques. Muscle memory should have carried us straight to my workshop.
I turned left instead of right.
Alex's fingers had been resting on the center console—loose and unguarded. At the unexpected turn, his hand rose.
"Uh... we just missed the turn."
"I know."
He sat up straighter—curiosity, not tension. The Santa coat rustled against his seat. His hand drifted to his chest, pressing briefly against the spot where I knew the cherry wood carving rested in his inner pocket—holding the belonging mark I'd carved without understanding what my hands were making.
I slowed the truck where Cedar Street curved toward the older part of town. The dashboard clock read 12:03. Christmas Day,technically, though it still felt like the long exhale of Christmas Eve.
Alex's grandmother's Victorian rose before us, porch light casting its patient glow across the steps I'd refinished last spring.
"This is where you should be tonight." I killed the ignition. "Where we should be."
Alex studied the house through the windshield. The windows were dark except for that single porch light.
"Okay," he said quietly.
We gathered ourselves from the truck's cab—me grabbing the last of the wrapped gifts we hadn't delivered, Alex moved like someone approaching a threshold he'd been circling for fifteen years—the cold bit at our exposed skin, sharp and clarifying.
At the bottom of the porch steps, Alex stopped. He reached for my hand.
"Thank you," he said. "For knowing."
I squeezed back. Some things didn't need more words than that.
The front door groaned—a sound I'd heard dozens of times during repair visits, when Alex's grandmother would usher me in with tea already steeping. The floorboards answered with their own chorus, each creak a note in a song the house had been singing for over a century.
Alex crossed the threshold and stopped.
I eased the door shut behind us, setting the remaining gifts on the hall table where they'd wait for tomorrow. The foyer's scents wrapped around us—lavender sachets tucked somewhere out of sight, mustiness of old paper and books, and underneath it all, furniture polish ingrained in wood that had been loved for generations. His grandmother's presence lingered in the atmosphere of welcome.
Alex touched the door frame with his thumb, tracing the chipped white paint where the wood had worn through tohoney-colored grain beneath. I'd offered to touch up that spot once. His grandmother had refused.
That's where three generations of hands have reached, she'd told me.Some wear tells a better story than fresh paint ever could.
I stepped closer and rested my palm against the small of his back. The Santa coat was warm from the truck's heater, the padding beneath soft against my fingers.
"Feels right, doesn't it?"
His breath caught. When he spoke, his voice had splintered at the edges.
"Yeah." He cleared his throat and tried again. "I didn't expect it to."
The house settled around us—a creak from upstairs and the tick of pipes adjusting to the cold. As if the walls themselves were exhaling, relieved that someone had finally come home to stay.
Alex's hand dropped from the doorframe. He turned to look at me, eyes bright in the dim foyer, the fake beard still hanging around his neck.
"I keep waiting for it to hurt," he said. "Being here without her."
