All I wanted was a quiet apartment to decompress. I’d make homemade pizza dough to punch and knead out my frustration. While it baked, I’d drink a cold beer, Netflix on in the background for white noise. Or maybe bring some pizza to Donnelly’s and keep Hannah company while tipping her for the beer. Either way, an easy night in sounded heavenly.
But those plans evaporated the moment I stepped into the apartment building’s hallway, thanks to Teresa’s off-key warbling of“Bells on Bobtails ring …”
Hannah joined in, even more off key.“Making spirits bright…”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, seriously considering returning to Alex’s office to color-sort his pencils. After the day I’d just had, anything would be better than dealing with more chaos.
But I couldn’t hide in the hallway forever. I braced myself and stepped inside.
My apartment had been ground zero for a Christmas explosion.
The living room had sprouted garland—twined like ivy across the curtain rods, draped around the TV, looped along the bookshelf. Strings of multicolored lights blinked chaotically from every possible surface. And standing proudly in front of the bay window was a four-foot fake pine tree covered in the most aggressively mismatched ornaments I’d ever seen.
Teresa appeared from the kitchen, wearing an old hoodie and a lopsided Santa hat. She held a mug of what smelled like hot cocoa, and there was a smudge of glitter across her left cheek.
“Oh good, you’re back!” she chirped. “I made hot cocoa, and please ignore the glitter—I swear it only attacked me once, but I think it’s breeding.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The words lodged in my throat as I stared at the explosion of chaotic, aggressivejoythat had taken over my minimalist space.
After the day I’d had—the spreadsheets that didn’t spread, the files that weren’t filed, the clients who’d been calling Alex’s cell because they didn’t trust the office line—this should have been the last straw. The thing that made me snap.
“Connor?” she asked, her smile dimming.
But I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Instead, I just stood there, frozen.
Hannah came in, wearing a headband with reindeer ears, arms loaded with plastic bags from the Dollar Store loaded with cheap ornaments, and stopped in her tracks when she saw my face. Her antlers drooped. “Too much?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Swallowed hard. “It’s a lot.”
“I can take some down,” She gestured vaguely at the chaos. “I know it’s loud. And tacky. And totally ridiculous.”
I kept staring at the tree’s lopsided star, admiring the sheer, unabashedhappinessof it all. Teresa turned down the volume on her phone, the music shifting from “Jingle Bells” to something quieter.
“It’s not ridiculous,” I said quietly.
“Teresa and I just realized this might be our last Christmas together,” Hannah said, her voice catching slightly. She’d do next Christmas with Eddie… and Hannah didn’t know where she’d be.
Teresa squeezed her sister's arm. “We used to go overboard at home with homemade decorations. Advent rings and paper snowflakes on every surface. We thought maybe…”
The confession hung between us, and I understood what they weren't saying. They were homesick for a version of their family that didn’t exist anymore. For a time when her parents looked at her with pride instead of disappointment. When coming home for Christmas meant warmth instead of judgment.
That surrounding themselves with brightness was a way of conjuring the ‘before.'
"But we can take it down, if it's too much," Hannah said, setting down her mug. They were both watching me carefully now, and I realized they were waiting for me to tell them it was too much, that I'd make them put my apartment back to its sterile, controlled state.
“No, it’s just…” I said, organizing the words in my mind before I could speak them aloud. My hands made shapes at my sides, almost like they could stretch the memories out of my head so I wouldn’t have to speak them.
“My mom loved Christmas,” I finally got out, the words scraping past the sudden tightness in my chest.
Hannah went very still. “Loved?”
And for just a second, I remembered Christmas three years ago: Our tiny condo in Mill Valley, all of her medical equipment stacked away to make room for decorations and space for Victoria and Alex to join us for dinner. Spending the day in the kitchen instructing me in how to cook the sous vide and make the lattice top for the pie.
“She went overboard every year.” I forced myself to look at the tree instead of at Hannah’s face. “Candy canes, tinsel, those terrible light-up lawn ornaments that the neighbors complained about. The whole house would look like Santa’s workshop had exploded.”
I looked out the window, to where the snow was just visible on the treetops. God, she would have loved Saratoga in winter, with wreaths on every streetlight and ribbons on storefront doors.
“She tried to keep parts of Christmas alive year-round. String lights on her ficus tree in July, peppermint mocha creamer in her coffee every single morning—even in summer.” I smiled despite myself. “She said life was too short to skip peppermint eleven months a year.”
