Christmas Box Set

by Nella Tyler

  But, really, I didn’t want to hassle with flying home and, since things had gone sideways with Carter, I liked to stay out of Madison as much as possible. I knew that was stupid and childish, but that was how it was. The strategy had worked well for me for years. I didn’t see a reason to change it now, especially since I had no intention of ever moving back to Wisconsin. I’d considered it daily in college until the worst of my homesickness abated. And then things had gone the way they did with Carter — all my fault, I knew, but there was no changing it now — and that solidified my resolve not to return home. Landing the internship in the city had just been the icing on the cake.

  “I told you at Thanksgiving,” I said, but gently. We’d spent the holiday apart before. I’d studied abroad in Italy during my junior year, drowning in the artwork and architecture to the point that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming back to the States. I once thought I might end up in a line of work that didn’t directly involve art, but that trip ruined me for just about everything else. I really was married to it…though I wanted an actual relationship with a real live person too one day.

  “I wondered if you might have changed your mind. You never know what might be going on at home.” She sounded on the brink of letting loose a wild gale of laughter. She was a cheerful person by nature. I got my upbeat personality from her, though I also had a moody streak Mom swore came from her father — and I knew the signs of her glee barely contained and ready to burst out, splashing all over everyone around her. It was one of her best qualities, in my opinion. It was virtually impossible to stay in a bad mood whenever the woman was around. I didn’t think I was quite as much fun as she was, but I definitely had my moments.

  “Is something going on?” I asked, setting aside my tablet, which had turned itself off to conserve power. “You sound like you’re about ready to explode.”

  When she laughed heartily, I knew I was right on the money. “Something is definitely going on.” But she didn’t continue. She wanted me to play along.

  I made an annoyed noise, but was smiling, too. I just couldn’t help it. “Are you going to tell me, or what?”

  “I should make you guess…”

  “Oh my God, Mom!” I could barely sit still, my mind racing to figure out what this could be about.

  “I’m getting married!” she blurted out. “Surprise!”

  I was too stunned to speak. I sat back in my chair, blinking at the opposite wall in my tiny apartment as I tried to rework the words she’d spoken into a pattern that made sense. The silence seemed to spread out between us for a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds before Mom picked right up where she left off, not even acknowledging my shocked silence.

  “So, you see, you have to come home. I only want family and close friends at the ceremony, and so does he. Everyone we care about will already be in town anyway because we want the wedding to be on Christmas day.”

  That was only in a few weeks. I’d need to request time off work, and I hadn’t even been there a year. I didn’t even want to think about how difficult it was going to be to secure a ticket last minute…although, who was really trying to get to Madison, Wisconsin, in the dead of winter?

  I had to get over a seemingly insurmountable wall of shock in order to respond to her. My heart was ready to thump out of my chest. I was short of breath and my mind was reeling. I felt like I was on the brink of a panic attack. I took in a deep breath, forcing myself to calm down a little before I spoke.

  But even with all the careful preparation, I couldn’t come up with anything better than, “Mom, what the hell?”

  She laughed again, sounding more relaxed and less keyed up than she’d been when I first answered. At least that made one of us. I felt like I was a millisecond away from losing my mind.

  “I know it’s sudden, but I’m so happy, Soph. I just want you to be happy for me too.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear the leaden panic that was refusing to lift. I was less panicky at the thought of her getting married again — my dad had died years ago and Mom deserved every happiness in this world after raising my sister and me alone, never thinking of herself for a moment.

  The real cause for concern was that I’d have to return to Madison for this. There was no way around it. I’d just have to play it careful the way I had every time I went home over the last few years, avoiding any location I thought I might run the risk of coming face to face with Carter. Surely, he’d be home for Christmas, right? And, our damned houses were only a few blocks apart. The more I considered the possibilities, the heavier the block of dread got in my stomach, weighing me down to the chair I was reclining in.

  “I had no idea you were even dating,” I finally forced out, and she laughed again, so giddy I almost couldn’t stand it. I talked to her a few times a week. I couldn’t believe the fact that she was in a relationship that had gotten this serious never came up during any of our conversations with each other.

  She had been against dating after Dad was killed during a deployment with the rest of his National Guard unit in the Middle East, choosing instead to pour every ounce of her attention into my sister Lacey and me. I adored her for making sure we were okay and always putting us first, but I’d been sad for her, too, that she never thought about what she would do when we moved away. Lacey had hung around to go to the University of Madison, but she lived most of the time in the dorms, leaving Mom alone a lot, and I’d moved across the country.

  “When did you meet this guy?” I asked. “And who the hell is he?”

  She let loose her bubbly laugh again, the one that always brought a smile to my face. I’d never heard her this happy before. She sounded like a little kid. My amusement over that was doing a great job of soothing the panic trying its damnedest to expand from my stomach to my midsection, where it would circle my lungs and make breathing impossible.

  “We’ve only been dating about two months,” she said.

  I made a scandalized noise, the breath tearing into my lungs as I sat bolt upright, and she hurried to continue before I could exhale and jump into chastising her about jumping into such a serious relationship so quickly. She wasn’t even fifty yet. She was still a young, intelligent, attractive woman. There was no reason to rush like this. The last thing I wanted was for some jerk she’d barely gotten the change to know to hurt her. Had she run a criminal background check on this asshole? Or a credit check? Did he have an ex-wife that had died under mysterious circumstances? The possibilities were endless and terrifying.

  “I know that sounds bad, but it really isn’t.”

  “What does that even mean, Mom? If you’ve only known this person for two months, I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you to jump right into marriage.” I said all this firmly, but kindly, too. She just sounded so damned happy that I hated to open up and pour on her parade, but she would be telling me the exact same thing if I called to tell her I was marrying some guy I’d just met a few months ago.

  “I haven’t only known him for two months, Sophia,” she said, sounding a little annoyed. “Give me a little bit of credit.”

  “I’m trying,” I replied. She continued without acknowledging that I’d even spoken, like she did whenever I started getting salty.

  “I’ve only been formally dating him for that amount of time, but we’ve been friends for almost twenty years.”

  That shut me up like a slap to the face. I sat back again, my mind racing to think of all the men Mom had been friends with for most of my lifetime. But I was coming up completely empty, not even able to think of a single person that fit that basic description.

  “Why didn’t you say something about any of this?” I asked, frustrated by my lack of problem-solving skills on top of this unsettlingly surprising news. “We talk every week!”

  “I didn’t even tell your sister, and she still lives in town,” she replied, as though that made it any better. I knew for a fact that Lacey made a point to go home for dinner at least once or
twice a week. “We decided to keep things quiet until we knew if our relationship was going to amount to anything. I’ve never dated anyone but your father, Soph. He was my high school sweetheart. I’m new at this.”

  I pressed my lips together instead of answering. Now I was thinking about Dad and how perfect he seemed for Mom. I knew I was only seeing him through the rose-colored glasses most daughters wore when they looked at their fathers, but Mom had reinforced it all, telling Lacey and me all about how Dad was her soulmate and she couldn’t picture herself with anyone else. I felt a stab of something close to misery at the thought of Mom with someone else.

  But if Dad was really as great as she always said he was, he’d want her to be happy, wouldn’t he? He’d want her to move on and find someone that cared about her the way he had. Right? That meant I should want the same thing and keep the Debbie Downer thoughts to myself, I thought.

  “Mom, are you sure this is a good idea?” I said, sighing the words as I rubbed my temple with two fingers. I could feel a stress headache coming on. “It just seems so sudden.”

  “Do you want to know who your new stepfather is going to be or not?” she asked, the giddiness back in her voice full force. But instead of passing to me like the common cold, the sound of it just made me exhausted, despite the fact that it was still pretty early in the morning and my day was wide open.

  “Yeah,” I said. Cleary, this was happening. I might as well get with the program. “Who is it?”

  “John Mills!”

  My stomach, already uneasy, dropped to the floor underneath me, pulling my heart along with it. It took a long time for me to figure out how to speak again.

  “What?” I whispered. “You’re dating Carter’s father?”

  “It just happened. We ran into each other in the grocery store a few months ago and started chatting about what you kids were up to. I know you’ve drifted apart since high school, so it was good to hear how well Carter has been doing, and I gave John the full update on your life in the city. It almost felt like old times when you kids were home.”

  My stomach twisted at that, and I had to swallow back the groan that had traveled most of the way up my throat.

  “It was nice running into him,” she continued, without waiting for me to comment, though she’d given me a brief opportunity. “I hadn’t really seen him much for years. He must have felt the same way about our talk because he called me later that afternoon and asked me out to dinner that night. The rest is history.”

  I still couldn’t quite believe this was happening. Technically, nothing was stopping either of them from dating — Mr. Mills had divorced his wife more than five years earlier after she just up and left town, and Mom was a widow going on ten years. I just didn’t know why they had to be dating each other. Once the two of them married, it would be virtually impossible to avoid Carter unless I just refused to go back to Wisconsin at all, which would cause needless drama between Mom, Lacey, and me.

  “John is telling Carter about all this, too,” Mom said. “He didn’t know any more than you did.”

  That really didn’t make me feel any better about this.

  “Won’t it be nice to catch up with him?” she asked. “It’s a shame when good friends drift apart the way you two did. This wedding will be a great excuse for you to reconnect! Now we’ll all be one great big family!”

  I made a noncommittal noise, not finding the prospect as appealing as Mom did. Of course, she didn’t know what had happened with Carter. I hadn’t even told Lacey. I just put that part of my life behind me and kept my eyes forward, even though it tore me apart to do it. Now I was going to have to face Carter again after all these years. My leaden stomach, already squirming beneath my feet, fell through the floor and down to the one beneath mine, sending up a series of echoes.

  But I couldn’t let Mom know how dark my thoughts were as I considered all these new developments. She was too happy for the future. And after so much tragedy and sacrifice, she deserved to be happy. I had no right to bring her down with the horrible mess between Carter and me. I’d just have to figure it out.

  “That’s great, Mom. Congratulations.” It even sounded like I meant it, which I counted as a huge win, because my insides were a mess.

  “Do you mean it, Soph? I know it’s a lot to take in. Your father…” Her suddenly teary voice trailed off.

  That softened me all the way up. I blinked my burning eyes to keep the tears from falling at the sound of her voice.

  “Dad would be happy for you, too,” I assured her. “You deserve this, Mom. And I’ll be there with Lacey to give you away.”

  She sighed, happily and I closed my eyes, thinking of Daddy smiling before he left for his deployment, never to return. The tears came on their own, quiet at first, so Mom wouldn’t hear them. As soon as she hung up, telling me she had a thousand things to do in order to pull a wedding together in less than three weeks, I let the panic overwhelm me completely, dropping my head to weep over all I’d lost and could still lose, even now.

  Carter

  That Same Evening

  I stood outside of the entrance to the club, frozen on the sidewalk, willing myself to go in. Jason was in there somewhere, drinking and living it up most likely. After the double date the other night, I was wary to go out again so quickly. That night had been interesting, but not much had happened. Jason was meeting up with Andrea again tonight — they were already inside, according to his text message — but the cousin, Betty, had gone home yesterday, back to Iowa where she belonged.

  It was just as well. She was funny and smart, but I hadn’t felt much of anything during the evening we spent together, watching Jason and Andrea clicking the way you only saw couples do in the movies. I got to hear all about Andrea for the rest of the week, which was exhausting, but gave me hope for myself. I just needed to put myself out there more frequently the way Jason did. And that meant entering the club.

  I showed my driver’s license to the bouncer at the door who looked me up and down a few times before letting me pass. I walked through the darkened entryway to step into this alternate universe of pulsing music and the crush of bodies dancing in flashing lights.

  Looking around, I already knew I wasn’t going to enjoy myself here — I’d much rather set up at a table in a coffee shop or restaurant where I could have a conversation with whoever I was hanging out with — but getting outside my comfort zone was key in this new experiment I’d decided to undertake. I’d never done that in college and look where I was: exactly where I’d been right out of high school, pining for a girl who would end up not even wanting to take the time to explain to me why she’d shown me the door and locked me out in the cold.

  Speaking of that girl, I hadn’t been able to shake thoughts of her, despite my best efforts. I’d dreamed about her a few more times, too, just snippets from our childhood and adolescence together. I didn’t know why this was happening all of a sudden. Thoughts of Sophia were a daily occurrence, but never in this frequency, and I’d never dreamed about her this much. It was like my entire body was collapsing into a single focused yearning for her…or like I was finally going crazy.

  I didn’t understand it. I felt on edge whenever I was awake. The only enjoyable part of my day was when I found Sophia waiting for me in my dreams, where everything had returned to the way it used to be, the two of us running after each other and collapsing into a pile of companionable giggles. This silence between us was unbearable all over again. I felt ready to snap from the sudden upsurge of stress. I desperately needed to get my mind off of it.

  I went to the club, ready to do just that. I could see Jason out on the dancefloor with Andrea, the two of them laughing and gyrating along with everyone else. I could be out there, too, but I needed to loosen up first. When the bartender wandered over, I ordered a double shot of tequila. That would help. As soon as she put it down in front of me, I knocked it back in a single swallow, my face twisting as it burned all the way down. I didn’t really care for th
e taste of it, but I liked the result. I could feel myself loosening up already.

  Sophia was still there, stubbornly digging her heels into the middle of my mind where she was most comfortable stretching out and taking over. I couldn’t shake the fear of running into her the next time I went home.

  I hadn’t really planned to return to Madison for the holidays, but Dad sent me a text in the middle of the afternoon telling me he had something very important to tell me and that I needed to call him back as soon as I could. The panic washed over me in ice cold waves at the sight of that message. I still hadn’t called him and didn’t plan to do so until tomorrow morning. I had a feeling he was going to ask me to come home.

  I’d been out here for more than six months without a visit — he’d come out when I first moved in to help me get settled — so I knew I wouldn’t be able to say no if he asked. He didn’t have anyone else. I was an only child, and he and Mom had divorced years ago, though she’d left a couple years before that. He didn’t date or have many friends that he hung around with in Wisconsin.

  But going home meant risking a run in with Sophia. Every time I was there, I expected to slam into her around every corner. I kept away from all the places we’d loved in high school — the diner, the park by the lake, the football field, the trails we used to run together. There were so many places to avoid. I tried to stay out of town for holidays, but I couldn’t always manage it.

  I had a sinking suspicion that I’d be returning for Christmas…unless by some awesome twist of fate, I could convince him to come out to California for the holidays. It was nicer out here, anyway. We could see the sights and make some new traditions.

  I flagged the bartender and ordered a single shot this time. As soon as I had it, I did the same as before, finishing it in a single swallow, wincing as it burned all the way down in a good way. That was better. Now I felt like I could have some fun, despite the nerves constantly creeping up the back of my throat, sent up there from my constantly roiling stomach. Whatever Dad had to say could wait until the next morning. Right now, I was determined to have a good time.