Chapter One
It was a startling seventeen degrees when Elena Vasquez left her studio apartment in Queens and discovered it was Thanksgiving Day. She stood on the corner, meek and fatigued, her hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, as she gazed through the window of the apartment across the street from her own. The enthralling sight filled her with disbelief: a handsome husband carved a turkey while his beautiful wife smoothed a child's hair behind his ears. An older woman who might have been the child’s grandmother appeared with a gorgeous pumpkin pie and set it at the center of the table before removing her apron and sitting down. It was a perfect scene, a perfect reminder of everything Elena didn’t have.
Elena’s eyes filled with tears, and she burst from the corner and hobbled down the block. Five minutes away was her local bodega, where she found the owner’s twenty-something son, Butros, wearing a Santa hat. She knew Butros wasn’t Christian, but he’d been born in the United States and loved the art of dressing up. Justin Timberlake fuzzed from the radio in the corner.
“Elena!” Butros cried, extending his arms on either side. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere, face-first in a pile of stuffing?”
Elena tried to laugh, but it came out false. “What about you? Shouldn’t you be inhaling a turkey leg?”
Butros swatted his hand around the air between them. “You know how my dad is. ‘We came to America to make a living, not to sit around and eat.’ Of course, I’m the one to take the brunt of it these days. And I’ve always lived in America. Shouldn’t I celebrate American traditions? Shouldn’t I have an entire apple pie to myself?”
Elena wrinkled her nose. “Families, right? I think it’s better that I’m not with mine today.” She said it as though she had much more than a mother, whom she hadn’t spoken to in three years or seen in five.
Butros’s eyes glinted with curiosity. It was clear he was incredibly bored at the bodega all day, selling last-minute grocery items to people who’d forgotten whipped cream for their pie or wine for their Thanksgiving party. He lived in the periphery of so many happy family parties.
“Elena, you’ve been coming in here for what? A year? And I don’t ever see you with anyone! No friends. No boyfriend?” Butros spread his hands out on the counter and gave her a look that was somewhere between pity and helpfulness.
Elena felt a sharp pain in her chest and turned toward the fridge. She’d just turned in a last-minute clickbait assignment to the sad online magazine that still took on freelance writers in the age of artificial intelligence, and she’d decided to celebrate with a bit of midafternoon wine. Now that she knew it was Thanksgiving, should she splurge a little? Buy a chocolate bar? Ice cream? Oh, it felt crummy that Butros had been watching her and taking note of how lonely she was, but she supposed she couldn’t blame him. The neighborhood was a little like histelevision set, and the characters who came and went from the bodega created a story all their own.
It was sort of nice that someone was paying attention to her.
“Sorry,” Butros said as she returned to the counter with a bottle of wine, a sleeve of Oreos, and a six-pack of microwave popcorn. “That was nosy of me, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Elena waved him off. “I’m nosy, too. I’m a journalist. Or I used to be.”
Butros raised his chin, seeming to think,now here’s a story I can sink my teeth into!As he scanned her items, he asked, “Used to be a reporter! That’s something. Did you write for anyone I know?”
Elena flinched. But she felt honest today. “CNN,” she answered.
Butros clapped his hands. “That’s certainly a name I recognize! Even my father knows CNN. What did you cover? What was your—what do you call it? —beat?”
Elena was quiet. She wasn’t sure she could go that far.
“You’re right,” Butros said. “I should guess what it was. It’s more fun that way. Um. Something to do with entertainment? Or politics?”
“Closer to politics than entertainment,” Elena said, paying in cash and gathering her plastic bag of things. “Although I guess you could argue that most journalism is just entertainment. Something to keep people preoccupied as time goes by.”
“No, no, no!” Butros said. “Not to me. Journalists impart essential facts, you know? We, the people, need to hear what they have to say. Especially when it comes to politics. You know, back where my mom and dad come from—Syria—free media isn’t exactly allowed.” His eyes stirred with questions. “Oh, but you’re a journalist. You probably know all about that.”
“Used to be a journalist,” Elena corrected him, rushing for the door, her cheeks filling with heat. “Thanks, Butros. Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you get out of here soon.”
Before Butros could respond, Elena was halfway down the block, gasping for breath. Although she’d known since she’d moved to Queens and begun frequenting the bodega that Butros and his family were Syrian, and although she’d actually chosen to continue going to that bodega for that very reason (maybe out of guilt, although she wasn’t sure), she’d never actively spoken about Syria with Butros or his father. They didn’t know how much time she’d spent there. A part of her, a silly part, had thought that maybe they’d heard about her, that they’d learned of everything that had happened and why she’d had to leave Syria and come back to the States. But that was silly. Butros and his family lived here. There was no way they knew the names of any of the American citizens working as journalists in Syria. There was no way they understood the intricacies of the world Elena had left behind.
Yet another world left behind. But, she reasoned, if she never built another world with anyone else, if she never made connections again, she’d never have to leave anything behind again. You couldn’t leave something that didn’t exist. It couldn’t hurt you, either.
Elena returned to her studio apartment, popped a bag of popcorn, and put onWhen Harry Met Sally. She’d once loved that movie desperately but had to turn it off after only fifteen minutes, because she’d forgotten that Sally worked as a journalist. It was too painful to remember her years in journalism school and her fight to become an award-winningwar correspondent. It had been her dream, and she’d realized it, but now it was over and done.
Now, the clickbait-filled magazine she freelanced for barely paid her enough for the rent in a place that frequently had the water cut and always smelled of mold.
On her sofa, Elena pulled a blanket over her head and counted to one hundred. When she reemerged, she realized it was dark outside and that it was going on seven at night. She poured herself a glass of wine and wondered if it was too early to go to bed.
It was often hard to admit it to herself, but Elena was forty-two years old and had nothing to show for it.
She flicked through various streaming platforms before putting on a dating show filled with people who seemed vapid and angry. Not for the first time this week, she wondered if she should go on another date with that guy Andy she’d met at the grocery store, the guy who’d used a toothpick after dinner with such force that he’d made his gums bleed. Elena had wondered if it was something about her that had made him so violent toward himself, as though he could tell that she was broken and bad. He’d texted her to try to set up another date, but Elena had ignored it.
But should she text him back now? What was Andy up to today, anyway? He’d said he had a family back in Connecticut. If she dated him, would he take her there for Thanksgiving? Would she find herself at a table similar to the one across the street, stuffing herself with cranberry sauce and drinking white wine?
When something overwhelmingly stupid happened on the dating show, Elena turned it off and went to search for her cell phone. Maybe she would text Andy. Perhaps she was really that desperate. After a long search, she found her phone in her coat pocket, filled with notifications from an unknown number.The area code was from Elena’s coastal hometown of Millbrook. Elena’s heartbeat quickened.
