She couldn’t remember. The days had blurred together in grief and work and sheer emotional exhaustion.
A hollow dropped through her chest, unexpected and brutal.
So that was that, then.
Five years of married Christmases—of crafting late into the night, of cutting and gluing and painting, of traditions she’d poured herself into—hauled off like they weighed nothing at all. Vanished before she even had the chance to second-guess herself.
It shouldn’t have hurt.
It did.
Lauren wrapped her coat tighter around her, breath fogging the air. She’d made the right choice. Those decorations were remnants of a woman who had loved too hard, too foolishly. A woman who had believed in the magic of Christmas when the man she married didn’t.
She had put the boxes out. She had made the decision to let go.
But God. She thought she’d have… something. A moment.
A last glance. A goodbye.
She swallowed hard, forcing the ache down. She lifted her chin.
She had a commission now. Something for strangers to admire and pay for, not roll their eyes at. She was proud. Triumphant. The universe had finally opened its hands and offered her a future.
But it was small comfort standing here with the past gone to landfill.
She wouldn’t crumble. She wouldn’t regret what needed to be done.
Those boxes were relics of a marriage she’d mistaken for safe.
Lauren squared her shoulders, drew a steady breath, and headed inside.
She had work to do.
Lauren satcross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by her sketches. Her decorations were gone—taken before she could look back. This commission felt like the opposite of that loss: someone wanting what she created instead of discarding it.
The realization hit her every few minutes, this strange mix of terror and exhilaration. Someone was willing to pay her for something she made with her own hands.
This felt too big. Too presumptuous. Who was she to call herself an artist and expect people to pay actual money for her work?
She looked down at her hands. The hands that had hot-glued five years’ worth of ornaments. The hands that had boxed them up and put them out with the rest of the trash.
It was too late now. She couldn’t undo that decision.
She had a commission.
An actual commission. From an actual person. Who wanted to pay her actual money.
Lauren took a breath, attached her concept sketches and typed in the banking info for the deposit that Mrs. Kent was going to send.
She hit send before she could second-guess herself.
Then she sat there, staring at her inbox, her heart hammering in her chest like she'd done something reckless and irreversible.
This feeling was familiar.
Not the business part—that was new and terrifying—but the vulnerability of it. The offering-yourself-up-for-judgment of it.
That awful moment when she'd stood in front of Tom, glowing with pride, presenting him with that damn quilt like a child showing off.
