“Right. I just meant... Well, I’m glad you guys are happy.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” She kissed me as she took Daisy from me to load her into her car seat. “You want to come over for dinner? You can meet the dog.”
Without my niece, my arms felt empty. I thought of the cheerful chaos of my sister’s house, full of twins and food and noise, and wanted desperately to say yes. But Meg and John had already spent half their Christmas at the hospital. They deserved some family time together, without me hanging around.
“Maybe later,” I said. “I’ll see what Dad wants to do.”
“Okay. I’ll call you.”
More hugs, more waves, and she was gone. Leaving me standing in the parking lot with nowhere to go, except home.
No word from Eric since I’d told him to go away. Not a call, not a text, nothing. Nada. Squat. Not that I expected him to... Okay, fine. Maybe I hoped he would wish me Merry Christmas or something.
I could call him. We lived in the modern world, after all. I didn’thave to wait for him to message me. But what good would that do? He wanted me to take down my blog. And I wouldn’t. Anyway, I wasn’t intruding on his Christmas with his sons. His ex-wife.
“I am with you now.”An image of Eric smiling at me across my alcove desk crashed over me like a wave. Eric, naked in my shower. Eric, bounding up the stairs with a bag of Chinese takeout in his hands. For a second it was hard to breathe.
I dug in my pocket for my keys, feeling tired. The drive to the farmhouse seemed suddenly long and lonely.
“Shades of middle school,” Amy said as we got in the pickup.
Right. Not lonely. Amy was with me.Yay.
I flicked on the wipers. It was raining again. “What are you talking about?”
“You driving me home in Mom’s truck.”
“Gotcha.” I glanced across at the passenger seat. In the spangled light through the windshield, her face was pale. Her eyes looked bruised, as if she hadn’t slept. Concern pricked me. I wasn’t Mom or Meg. Amy and I had never been close. But I was still her big sister. “Listen, I’m the last person to tell you how to live your life,” I began.
“Then don’t,” Amy said.
“But maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”
Amy sighed. “I don’t, usually. Last night, I was just dealing with some stuff, all right?”
I nodded understandingly. “Mom.”
“Mom and Dad, and you and Trey, and... stuff,” she said.
I flushed with guilt. “We should have taken you with us.”
“No. No, I should have let you two go. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Gee, maybe that you didn’t want to be alone on Christmas Eve?”
“Something like that.” She smiled crookedly. “At least I didn’t drown this time.”
A joke.
Amy had changed, I thought. Or maybe I was finally learning to seeher, the grown-up Amy, not the image of her I carried in my head. I’d always seen her bids for attention, her focus on appearances, as an irritating character flaw. Spoiled, shallow Amy. But now I saw how hard she really tried to please. Those Christmas gifts, for example. She wasn’t showing off her talent. She’d put real thought and work into our presents, taking the time to create the perfect, practical, individual gift, something each of us could actually use. She was more perceptive than I was. The thought was humbling.
“You really did learn a lot in Paris,” I said.
Amy looked away. “You have no idea.”
We drove past bare trees and brown fields and ditches that never drained. “I was wrong,” I announced.
“Well, duh,” Amy said. A pause. “About what?”
