This.
Miss bickering about ornament placement and why the big ones go on the bottom of the tree, never the top.
I miss telling you that the star’s still crooked so that I can smack you on the butt when you climb the ladder to fix it.
I caught myself, forcing a smile. “I missed out on tree decorating this year.”
I. Miss. You.
Teddy stared at me for a long moment before pulling a snarl of lights from the box. “You wanna help?” he asked, his voice low but edged. “Friendlything to do would be to sort out the rest of these.”
I accepted the tangled mess of lights, grateful for something to do that didn’t involve touching him. The silence stretched between us, broken only by the rustle of tissue paper.
“Did the girls just stuff everything into a box and hope for the best?” I grumbled as I worked on a particularly stubborn knot.
“Not everything.”
I glanced up to find him holding a silver bell engraved with “Our First Christmas 1995.”
“Haven’t seen this since…” He trailed off, running his thumb over the letters.
Since we were a family. Since Christmas meant something.
Our eyes met over the boxes of memories, and for a moment, the weight of everything we’d lost threatened to crush me. Not just our marriage or our life together, but the future we’d planned, the family we’d built, the son we’d buried before ever getting to see him grow up.
“We don’t have to put it up,” I said, my voice thick as I worked another section of lights free.
He was quiet for a long moment, turning the ornament over in his hands. “It goes on the tree.”
I looked at him in surprise. The man I’d known toward the end of our marriage would have taken any excuse to avoid painful reminders. Would have shoved the ornament back in the box and pretended it didn’t exist.
“Teddy—”
“It goes on the tree, Kels.” His voice was firm, but there was something fragile underneath it. “All of it goes on. That’s what you do with ornaments.”
I managed to nod while fighting against the sudden urge to cry. He was right. That was what you did with ornaments. You put them on the tree, even when they carried memories that felt too heavy to hold.
“Hey,” he said thickly, catching a rogue tear that managed to slip past my lashes with his finger. “It’s part of our story. Good or bad, it’s ours.”
And just like that, the walls I’d built around my heart toppled completely.
I nodded again before returning my attention to the tangled light strands, shoving my emotions back down.
We worked in companionable quiet after that, falling into the familiar ritual of decorating. I settled cross-legged on the floor, the lights spread across my lap like some kind of holiday puzzle. This was something I knew how to do. Something that made sense, unlike everything else happening between us.
I was aware of his gaze on me as I climbed onto the stepladder to wrap lights around the higher branches, his hand automatically moving to steady it.
The transformation was nothing short of miraculous, considering what we’d started with. The tree glowed with properly arranged lights, and the ornaments we’d placed so far brought much-needed splashes of color to the previously depressing display.
The almost-smile on my lips faded as Teddy passed me another ornament—a clay foot mold painted bright red with “Christmas 2000” scrawled in my careful handwriting.
Addie’s first Christmas.
My chest squeezed tight. I’d made one for each kid. Sure enough, the next one he unwrapped was Skylar’s from 2003, slightly larger and painted a forest green.
The third bundle contained Levi’s footprint from 2010, painted a cornflower blue to match his nursery. It was the smallest of the three, because he’d been our smallest baby, barely six pounds at birth.
After taking Teddy’s advice and placing it just above his sisters’ ornaments, I paused to adjust the pipe cleaners on a Styrofoam snowman head before stepping back. He was watching me again—this time with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher.
