“Will?” Romeo asks, trepidation in his voice.
Will takes a shaky breath. “The car looks like Beth’s.”
The blood in my veins turns to ice, but my muscle memory kicks into hyperdrive, and I point the chopper toward the ravine.
Please, God, don’t let it be Baby Jones.
Three
Macbeth
Everyyear,myfamilymeets on Christmas Eve at my parents’ starter home—an ancient, but cozy, cabin high in the mountains. William and Romeo lived there for a short time when they were young, but by the time Hamlet was born, my parents moved the family to a larger house in a less remote part of Mercury Ridge.
My parents loved the cabin, though, so they never sold it. And after Mom died, Dad would escape to the old cabin whenever he needed to feel closer to her. And then he decided to make it part of a family holiday tradition.
So, every year, he’d pile all five kids, plus Levi, into the car and drive up the mountain. The cabin only has three bedrooms, but it is plenty of space for a holiday weekend. The group has gotten bigger over the years. All of my brothers now have wives, and Romeo and Theo are both dads now, too. And Will’s wife, Carly, is currently pregnant with twins.
Things are starting to get a bit cramped, to say the least. But everyone loves it.
Everyone, that is, butme.
I wind the car up the steep mountain road, heading to the old cabin. I always arrive first, and this year will be no exception.
When I reach the top of the mountain, I follow a small driveway to the house and park. Dad keeps the spare key beneath an empty flowerpot on the porch. I retrieve it, letting myself inside.
With a melancholy sigh, I step into the cabin. It’s not much warmer inside than it is outside. As I build a fire in the cabin’s living room, I glance out the window. The clouds look heavy with snow. A snowstorm is expected tomorrow, on Christmas Day, but I have a feeling it’ll arrive sooner. I say a silent prayer that everyone will arrive safely.
Then I begin my Christmas ritual that no one knows about.
Because this has become the Christmas cabin, we leave the tree up all year. But every year, I arrive early to remove all the ornaments. I go through them one by one, holding each in the palm of my hand as I weep for what I never had: a mother.
My brothers all have memories of Mom. Even Theo, the youngest of my brothers, was five years old when she passed. That’s too young for a child to lose his mother, but he has some memories.
And he has five ornaments.
“It’s not fair,” I shout. “I never knew her!”
I know she loved Shakespeare, naming each of her kids after a Shakespearean tragedy—except for William, whom she named after Shakespeare himself.
And from all the pictures I’ve seen, I know she had long, dark hair like mine. Unlike me, she was stylish. She loved clothes and makeup. And she always looked fantastic. Even in the eighties, with hair teased to the Heavens and neon blue eyeshadow.
And I know she loved Christmas. These ornaments are the proof of that.
Every year, Mom purchased an ornament for each of her children, writing their name and the year on the back in a black Sharpie marker.
I pick up one labeled with Romeo’s name, running my forefinger over her delicate scrawl and letting the tears fall freely. My mother held this ornament. She picked it out just for Romeo. It’s shaped like a baseball glove to commemorate his love of the sport. And she carefully, lovingly, wrote his name on the back.
William has the most ornaments, followed by Romeo, then Hamlet, then Othello, and finally, Levi. He has four, one for every year after meeting my brother in kindergarten until my mother’s death.
I have zero.
Because I was only a few months old when she was killed by an aneurism. One moment she was here, the loving and devoted mother of five. The next moment she was just… gone.
She didn’t have time to buy me an ornament. There’s no record of my name written in her handwriting. Would she have crossed the T with a flourish?
I see one of Levi’s ornaments and squeeze it in the palm of my hand. It’s a plane. Even as a child, Levi knew he wanted to fly someday. Mom wrote his name on the ornament as if he was just another of her boys. She even dotted the I with a tiny heart.
Levi.
