Teddy followed my gaze to the tree before huffing out a soft laugh. “Wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if he pulled a few strings with the man upstairs, making sure we got the full parent trap experience.”
“That totally sounds like something Levi would do,” Addie said quietly, her voice thick.
Sky swiped at her eyes. “And you know he would have been so smug about it, too.”
I laughed despite the tears threatening to spill. “He never could resist taking credit for a good scheme.”
We were talking about him. Not tiptoeing around his memory or changing the subject when his name came up—just talking about our boy, making him a part of this moment.
Because he was.
The irony, of course, was that this had always been Levi’s superpower—to make his presence known in every room, even after he was gone.
Because he had been so much more than the illness that took him from us. Levi loved conducting science experiments, from the glitter volcano he made in the bathroom sink to the elaborate Rube Goldberg machine he constructed on the staircase. It felt right that even now, he’d managed to orchestrate the most mortifying homecoming possible.
Sky nudged me with her hip. “I can’t believe you’re moving to Colorado. You are moving, right? This isn’t like a retaliation prank, is it?” she asked, her eyes wide and earnest.
I looked at Teddy and caught the faintest twitch of nerves in his jaw. President of the club, leader of men, unbreakable force—and still so goddamn hungry for reassurance that I was staying.
“I am,” I said, surprised by how easy it was. No jolt of anxiety. No second thoughts. Just a feeling of rightness in every fiber of my being.
I looked at my daughters—one wild and messy, the other wound tight as piano wire—and realized that, for the first time since Levi died, we were all right. Resilient, if not entirely functional. The world hadn’t ended when our lives blew up; it just took a blizzard and some daughterly sabotage for us to discover that we could build something new from the shrapnel.
“I’m really glad you’re happy,” Addie said, coloring a little. “Y’all deserve it.”
I thought of all the years I’d spent trying to be a perfect wife, mother, Christmas automaton. The years I’d spent thinking that happiness was something you finished earning, like a degree. The years after Levi, when it seemed impossible that any of us could ever be happy again, let alone together.
“Me too, kiddo,” I whispered, blinking back sudden tears. “Me too.”
epilogue
Christmas Morning
kelsey
The kitchen clockread 12:26 AM, officially making it Christmas morning, though it certainly didn’t resemble any that I’d experienced most of my fifty-one years of life.
The counters were littered with dirty dinner dishes and a healthy dusting of cocoa powder and sugar. Before, I would have been elbow deep in suds or wiping down every sticky surface. I would have tuned out the conversations happening around me, occasionally asking someone to repeat a question when it was directed at me, but mostly stuck checking items off my mental to-do list.
Now, I sat with my feet tucked up under me, wearing one of Teddy’s Metallica shirts from the nineties and a pair of his sweatpants I’d had to roll three times at the waist, feeling more content than I had in years.
No frantic last-minute wrapping
No matching Christmas pajamas.
No staging the living room for a Martha Stewart-worthy photoshoot as if a bunch of strangers on the internet really cared what my tree looked like.
Just three women gathered around a kitchen table, drinking spiked hot chocolate that Sky had topped with an ungodly amount of whipped cream and marshmallows.
“So then Cali asks Addie if she wants to see the sunrise from the summit,” Sky said, pushing up the sleeves of an oversized bright orange hoodie with the phrase “Send Noods” above a cartoon cat eating a bowl of ramen that she’d paired with camo joggers. “And she’s all, ‘Oh, I don’t do mornings.’”
“Um, because I don’t?” Addie retorted, making a show of rubbing her nose with her middle finger. Unlike her sister, she’d chosen a thermal-pajama set in all black, her signature color.
“I’m just saying, if a hot mountain man with opinions about Russian literature wanted to show me a sunrise?—”
“Please!” Addie interjected with a snort. “He’s a trust fund kid who owns a ski resort and cosplays as a biker to seem edgy.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug, letting the warmth seep into my palms while listening to the girls playfully bicker back and forth.
