"You're not leaving," he said automatically, like saying it out loud could hold the world together. "You're upset. You'll calm down."
"I'm perfectly calm." And she was. He watched her turn toward the stairs.
"Lo?" He followed her up.
When he reached the bedroom doorway, he stopped.
The room was stripped bare of Christmas. No garland on the headboard. No fairy lights looped around the curtain rods. No festive throw pillows. No saccharine Christmas card collage.
The rest of the house was still bursting with her usual gauche DIY decorations—but here, there was none of her Christmas excess.
It should have felt better. This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Why did the sight make something twist in his gut?
Lauren was pulling clothes from her dresser, folding them with precise, mechanical movements.
“Lo, what is this?”
Lauren looked at him. For a heartbeat he saw something vast and wounded in her eyes—then it was gone, replaced by that terrible empty calm. “This is what you want.”
It didn’t make sense. Couldn’t. A laugh escaped him, sharp and disbelieving. They were having a fight, a stupid fight about Christmas.
People didn’t end marriages over tinsel and misunderstanding.
"You're not leaving." He said it again, firmer this time, like stating it could make it true. "You're just upset. You need time to calm down."
But she was calm—eerily calm. Tom was the one who wasn’t calm. He rubbed his chest; it felt painful, almost like he was drowning.
Tom needed to make her stop, stop packing, stop being so calm. “Christmas isn’t this important. It’s not this big of a deal.”
This was spiraling. Everything was spiraling. The floor felt almost like it was tilting. He couldn’t keep his footing.
"Is this about the check? That was just a number. I can write another one?—”
"It's not about the money!" Lauren’s voice cracked, sharp, before she zipped the bag closed.
He wanted to grab the bag, tear it open, dump out the neatly folded clothes. Anything to make herstop.
If he could just make her stop, make hersee reason, everything would be fine.
“Grow up, Lauren!” The words came out harsher than he meant. “My parents are right about you.”
He saw it—saw the way she recoiled—and something tightened in his face. But he didn’t stop. Fear drove him on. “Do you know how embarrassing it is that a grown woman spends all her time on DIY knick-knacks?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve been quite stupid, I think.”
Something twisted in his gut. She just didn’t understand how things had to be. There were rules to how you had to keep a house. Restraint. Simplicity. “I shouldn’t have to pretend to like all this tacky handmade stuff just to keep the peace.”
Lauren turned everything she touched into chaos.
She picked up the bag. "I'll stay at my parents’ house. Housesit while they’re away.”
She couldn’tleave. She couldn’t.
"You're not going to your parents’ house.”
She belonged here. Here inherhouse. In the house he’d designed.
He pushed his hands through his hair. There was the window seat. The nook he’d incorporated into the design. It was where she sat on winter mornings with her coffee, sketching ideas for her crafts. She loved it.
