Hannah inhaled sharply.
“She died three years ago.” The words came out flat and factual. Like if I didn’t put any emotion behind them, they wouldn’t hurt as much.
I clenched the back of the kitchen chair, knuckles white, just like I’d gripped the pew at her funeral with Victoria and Alex flanking me. My vision blurred at the edges.
“I haven’t decorated since.”
Hannah stepped closer—not touching, just close enough to feel her warmth. After a moment, she slowly interlaced her fingers between mine.
I took a breath, then looked at her finally—at the glitter on her cheek, the reindeer headband listing slightly, the worry in her eyes.
“The last Christmas,” I heard myself say, “she directed me on where to put every ornament from her wheelchair. Specific instructions: ‘No, three inches to the left. The angel needs to be higher.’ She couldseeit perfectly in her mind, but she couldn’t do it.”
“God, Connor.” Teresa’s voice was soft from where she stood beside the tree.
I stared at the gap in the branches just above Hannah’s height where the ornaments thinned out. Mom would have hated that gap. Would have made me fix it with directions about which ornament should go where.
“She had MS—Multiple sclerosis,” I continued, because now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop. I stared down at my hands, my fingers trembling—just like her hand tremors when the nerve damage got bad—then shoved them in my pockets. “She was sharp until the very end, but her body just… gave out. That was almost worse, you know? She knew exactly what she was losing. Could name every dream she had to give up, every milestone she’d miss.”
The music shifted, a voice crooning, “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining." The reverent melody filled the silence I’d left.
“We can scale it back,” Hannah offered after a moment. “Make it less—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended. I softened my voice. “No, just… give me a minute.”
I walked down the hall to my bedroom and sat down on my bed, dropping my head in my hands. From the living room, I heard Hannah murmur something to Teresa, then the soft click of Teresa’s bedroom door closing, giving me space.
After I felt like my lungs had recovered, I knelt in front of my closet to find the dusty cardboard box behind my coats and place it on my bed. I’d moved it three times without ever opening it, unable to unpack it but equally unable to throw it away.
You’re supposed to be packing to leave,I thought.Not unpacking.
But my hands were already lifting the lid, folding back the tissue paper Mom had instructed me to wrap around everything, careful even at the end.
The angel lay nestled in white tissue, exactly where I’d placed her three years ago. Porcelain face with delicate painted features. Cream-colored robes embroidered with mistletoe, revealing wings that had once been white but had yellowed with age. She was elegant and a little old-fashioned, the kind of decoration that belonged in a fancy department store window, not on a four-foot drugstore tree covered in cheap baubles.
Mom had loved her, putting her on top of every tree, every year, for as long as I could remember.
I carried the angel back to the living room. Hannah tried to look like she was straightening garland in the kitchen, but I could tell she was just fidgeting, waiting to see what I would do.
Neither of us spoke.
I grabbed the step stool and positioned it by the tree. The cheap star came off easily. I set it aside and unwrapped the tissue paper from the angel’s base.
Mom’s angel fit perfectly on the treetop. I adjusted her wings, made sure she was secure, then stepped down and back.
She looked out of place—too serious and fancy amid all of Hannah’s dollar-store cheer.
Tears sprang to my eyes at how perfect she looked, how much she belonged in the midst of the chaos.
“Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices,"swelled the singer's voice… and for just a second, one impossible, irrational second, I could feel Mom’s approval in my bones that the angel was placed just right.
“Was that your mom’s?” Hannah’s voice was barely a whisper. “She put it on the tree?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Tried anyway. “Every year.”
The words came out rough, scraped raw.
Hannah’s fingers thread through mine. We stood there together, looking at the tree—at the chaotic joy of Hannah’s decorating crowned by my mom’s angel, elegant and serene above it all.
