Notifications explode. A flood of replies pours in—some panicked, some dismissive, some grossly excited. I mute the worst offenders and start sorting the rest into folders. It’s chaos, but chaos has patterns if you know how to look.
And patterns have always been my thing.
I make a few notes, set a couple of scraping bots to pull relevant keywords overnight, and finally close the laptop.
Rising, I stretch and crack my knuckles, the sound loud and obnoxious in the quiet apartment. I pick up the TV remote and then toss it down again, taking a few restless steps toward the kitchen before pausing and turning toward the hall closet, where I keep my winter gear and holiday decorations.
It’s late, but my brain is buzzing too hard to even think about sleep.
I can’t just sit here. I need todosomething.
Decorating it is.
My apartment is small—one bedroom, one bath, a living space the size of a generous walk-in closet—but it’s mine. White walls I can’t paint, ancient carpet, a heater that sounds like it’s dying every time it kicks on.
I’ve hacked the thermostat twice to get more consistent heat out of it. My landlord sends me passive aggressive texts about “unauthorized modifications” every few months, and I pretend not to know what he’s talking about.
I have just enough space for the scrawny pre-lit twig of a tree I picked up on clearance at Walmart. It stands in the corner by the window, a pathetic little skeleton, branches too spindly for any ornament heavier than a cotton ball.
“Okay, little guy,” I murmur. “Let’s make you less tragic.”
I pull the single box of ornaments I brought from my parents’ house before I sold it out of the closet and begin hanging the multi-colored glass balls. The colors bounce weakly off the white walls. Red, gold, blue, silver. The effect is…better. Not great.
The tree is still mostly empty. Mostly bare.
It’s like a metaphor for your life, my traitor brain whispers.
My mother’s special ornaments are wrapped in tissue paper that’s turning brittle with age. I peel it back carefully, heart squeezing when I see her handwriting on a torn piece of notebook paper:Tally’s box.
I trace the loops of the T with my thumb. She always called me Tallulah when she was mad or proud, Tally when she was everything else. Nobody calls me either, anymore, not really. A part of me misses it.
The other part of me doesn't want the reminder.
I lift out a tiny blown-glass hummingbird, wings outstretched, body swirled with greens and blues. When I was little, Mom would hold it up to the window and tilt it so the light caught the colors, making the whole living room glow.
She had a thing for hummingbirds and treated this ornament like a crown jewel. It only came out at Christmas. Only went on the tree when I was the one to hang it.
I haven’t been able to look at it for two years, not since metastatic breast cancer took her.
My throat tightens.
“You’re being ridiculous,” I tell myself softly. “It’s a glass bird, not a bomb.”
Even so, my hands shake as I carry it to the tree.
I pick a branch near the bottom where it won’t weigh too much on the fake twigs and hook the little wire over the plastic. The bird swings for a moment, catching the white lights, casting soft color over the wall.
It hurts, in that weird way good memories and grief sometimes fuse. A little slice of my mother’s magic in a room that’s never seen her, or my father, or anyone like them.
“This will be the perfect reminder,” I whisper. “Of her. Not of…”
Not of the way both of them left in winter. Not of the hospital. Not of the hollow space in the pew at the funeral.
I step back and squint at the tree, adjusting the angle of the hummingbird by a millimeter.
There. Almost right.
Thethunkfrom my front door is so unexpected it slices clean through my thoughts.
