don’t be sad
tomorrow will be AMAZING!
Me
Love you more. Let me know if you get on an earlier flight.
The cabin settled around me with little creaks and sighs, like it was trying to fill the silence.
A bottle of wine on top of the altitude-induced headache I already had sounded like a great way to spend the remainder of the trip with my head in a toilet.
Tea it was.
In the kitchen, I went through the motions as if it were just another day. Locate kettle. Fill with water. Set on burner. Turn knob. Each movement deliberate, controlled, betraying no hint of the absolute chaos churning beneath my ribs.
I thumbed through a selection of teas in a wooden box near the coffee maker before selecting chamomile—the obvious choice for people who wanted to appear calm—and waited for the water to boil, idly drumming my fingers against the counter to a Christmas tune.
Mug in hand, I grabbed the romance novel I picked up in the airport bookstore and settled into the armchair by the window.
The heroine stood in an empty parking lot, chest caving as sherealized the man she trusted wasn’t showing up. My heart ached in sympathy—the storyline too familiar, too sharp.
She wanted to run, to put miles between herself and that hollow, humiliating moment. I remembered that same restlessness settling into my bones once Teddy started spending more time at the clubhouse than at home, when the glowing red taillight of his bike disappearing into the darkness became a more familiar sight than his face. Holidays and birthdays turned into performances. Carefully choreographed for the girls’ sake. Hollow. Both of us playing our parts to perfection. Until we could no longer remember our lines.
I snapped the book shut and pressed my fingertips to my eyes, brushing away the moisture. Some wounds didn’t need prodding, especially not when I was already raw from the day’s revelations.
The girls thought splitting Christmas would make things easier. It wouldn’t, not really, not since?—
I shook my head hard enough to make my vision blur, but the memories were already seeping in through the cracks I hadn’t managed to mortar shut.
The way we’d all frozen when Sky found Levi’s stocking in a box in the attic and hung it beside the others the first Christmas after. The pained sound Teddy had made when he saw it—not quite a word, not quite a sob. How Addie had jumped in with frantic cheer, changing the subject to favorite cookies and which Christmas movie we should watch next—anything that wasn’t a reminder of the gaping void we all carried in our chests.
I’d done everything right after it happened. Hadn’t I? Given Teddy space when he needed it, kept the house running while he disappeared into himself. But grief wasn’t something you could fix with comfort food or clean clothes. It was a living, breathing thing that moved into your home, unscrewing light bulbs and rearranging all the furniture every time you turned your back. We’d both stumbled around lost in the dark, crashing into each other until we were too bruised to try anymore.
I abandoned the book and the chair, needing to move. The cabin wasn’t large—a circuit from the living room to the kitchen to the small hallway took maybe thirty seconds—but I walked it anyway.Straightened the already-straight blankets. Aligned the mismatched mugs so all the handles faced the same direction. Wiped down the spotless counter.
The girls should have been here with me, arguing over which toppings to put on the pizza. Instead, I had a whole night of waiting ahead, trapped with the same silence that had driven me to ask for the divorce in the first place.
The Christmas music I’d turned on while cleaning suddenly felt oppressive. Bing Crosby dreaming of white Christmases he’d never have to spend alone. I shut it off and stood in the quiet, watching as sleet continued to fall past the window in lazy, drifting patterns.
Darkness came early in the mountains. By five-thirty, the world outside had been reduced to what the porch light could reach—a small circle of illuminated snow, everything beyond it lost to black. I brewed another cup of tea I wouldn’t drink. Picked up my book again. Put it down. Checked my phone for messages that weren’t there.
When headlights swept across the front window, I bolted upright so fast I caught the small side table with my knee, nearly tipping my mostly full mug.
They’d made it. Somehow, my brilliant, stubborn girls had found another flight or driven through the storm or—God, I didn’t care how they’d done it. They were here.
I didn’t bother with my coat. Didn’t even slip on shoes. I yanked open the door and launched myself down the porch steps, only to stumble to a stop as soon as the Ford Bronco came into view.
A baby blue 1972 Ford Bronco, to be exact. One I’d ridden in a thousand times, my hand on the driver’s thigh as we flew down dirt country roads with the music cranked up. I’d lost my virginity on the long tan bench seat after the homecoming dance.
The engine cut. The door opened. And Teddy stepped out. Sleet immediately started collecting on his broad shoulders as he stopped to retrieve something from the passenger seat.
Our eyes met across the snowy driveway, and the expectant smile slid off his lips. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled at me. A real, genuine smile—not the cruel smirk he’d pasted on anytime we disagreed.Which had been often.
The silence stretched between us, filled with years of unspoken everything, while flakes of ice fell around us like the world’s most picturesque disaster.
“Kels?” His voice was rougher, maybe, like he’d taken up smoking again, but underneath it was exactly as I remembered it. The sound hit me somewhere between my chest and my stomach, a punch I should have seen coming, but like everything else, had missed entirely.
Unable to find the words, I opened and closed my mouth like an idiot, while our daughters’ brilliant plan crystallized into perfect, terrible clarity.
