Page 5

Brooke

Are we going to die, Mummy?”

“Die?” Brooke shifted her gaze from the endless swirling white and the treacherous road ahead and swivelled so that she could see her daughter in the backseat of the car. “No, we’re not going to die. Of course we’re not going to die. Why would you say a thing like that?”

“Because a moment ago you said to Daddy slow down or we’re going to die.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t mean—” Brooke cursed herself for forgetting that Elsie listened to everything they said. You couldn’t lower your guard for a moment once you were a parent, particularly if you had a child like Elsie, who saw everything and felt everything and had a boundless imagination. Brooke had already decided that when her daughter grew up, she was either going to be a fortune teller or a writer. “It was a figure of speech, honey. Of course we’re not going to die. But there’s snow on the road, so we have to drive carefully.”

“Better still, don’t drive at all,” Matt said under his breath. “It’s snowmageddon out there. We should have found a hotel near the airport and waited it out. As I suggested. Many times.”

“We are not spending Christmas in an airport hotel.” Brooke’s tension mounted. “What would that even look like? No tree, no presents, no food—and don’t mention room service. I’m not doing that to the children or my mother.”

Her mother.

Brooke could picture her staring out the window at the snow, brows pulled together in a worried frown. She’d check the weather forecast and then she’d look at Brooke’s father. Do you think they’ll be okay? What if they have an accident, Herb?

And her father would say, Of course they’ll be fine and no, they won’t have an accident, because his role in the marriage was to be the voice of calm and reassure his wife even if there was a strong chance things weren’t going to be fine at all. He played the lottery of reassurance and hoped he was going to be a winner every time.

Brooke shifted in her seat. She wished she were more like her father and less like her mother. And she wished there were boxes you could tick to choose the traits you passed on to your children. She would have ticked “calm.” She would not have ticked “overthinker.” And she probably wouldn’t have ticked “people-pleaser.”

Occasionally, she thought that life might be easier if she loved her family a little less. Caring deeply was exhausting.

Why did the storm have to happen now? Why not in twenty-four hours, by which time she’d be safely with her parents and able to stop worrying? Although doubtless something else would have taken its place as her worry focus?

It felt as if nature was intentionally thwarting her. The disruption and uncertainty felt like a test that she was failing. Brooke secretly aspired to be the type of person who “went with the flow.” She wanted to be that person who smiled and shrugged as she navigated life’s bumps and curves. Because she wasn’t that type of person, she’d instead taught herself to act as if she was in the hope that her girls wouldn’t copy the worst parts of her (were traits wholly inherited or were they learned?). She’d taught herself to act as if she was relaxed. She’d say “no problem” and smile, while inwardly hyperventilating. No matter how hard she tried to shrug things off, the truth was that she was jarred by those bumps and curves and stubbornly resentful of anything that disrupted her plans.

Disrupted plans reminded her in a sharp and uncomfortable way that she was not in control, and Brooke very much needed to be in control. She hated uncertainty.

Take now, for instance.

Preparing for this trip had entailed weeks of exhausting preparation. She’d made list after list, sometimes waking in the night to email herself a reminder about something she’d forgotten. There had been moments when she was holding so much in her head that she thought it might explode.

And Matt didn’t understand any of it, of course, because he wasn’t a detail person. He’d picked up the girls’ suitcase without thinking how much planning had gone into filling it so that they were prepared for every eventuality. He’d picked up the bag full of carefully wrapped and labelled gifts, the contents of which were unknown to him. She started her Christmas shopping in the summer because that left time to accommodate the unpredictable—and Brooke always made room for the unpredictable. What if she left the shopping until December and then she caught the flu? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Occasionally, Matt would see how stressed she was and offer to take responsibility for packing, but she knew that if she said yes to that, they’d arrive at her parents’ and discover that the girls had no underwear or warm clothing and they’d spend the first day of their vacation shopping to replace all the items Matt had forgotten to pack. It seemed safer and quicker to do it herself, but occasionally resentment bubbled because she would have loved to hand over a few of the things in her head simply because it was full to bursting. A million tiny things contributed to a smooth life, but holding those million tiny things in her head was crushing her.

Everything she read these days seemed to emphasise that stress was bad for you, which meant that as well as being stressed generally, she was stressed about being stressed.

The car skidded slightly, and Brooke gasped and gripped her seat, fear making her heart swoop.

For the first time since they’d left the airport, she registered the seriousness of their situation.

Matt was right. They shouldn’t be driving in this storm. In her desperation to be there for her parents as she’d promised, she’d taken a terrible risk.

Please let us arrive safely. Please.

And on time. Brooke always arrived when she said she would. Her mother had been expecting them to arrive mid-afternoon. The table would be laid in the cosy living room. A fire would blaze in the hearth. Her mother would have put out the best china along with freshly baked cookies and cakes.

They’d been delayed leaving Manhattan because Brooke had detoured to collect an order of Christmas food that was an additional gift for her mother.

Matt had taken one look at the size of the box and rolled his eyes. How are we going to fit that in? It needs its own transport.

Secretly, she’d agreed (she’d had no idea the box would be that big!), but she’d managed to somehow squash it into the car even though doing so meant there wasn’t a single millimetre of space left.

At least if they had an accident, they wouldn’t be short of food. But she didn’t want to have an accident. An accident would seriously mess with her timetable, and Brooke lived her life by her timetables and lists.

“Be careful, Matt.”