4. Bastian

BASTIAN

I drank too much wine.

It didn’t take much these days. Two glasses of anything was enough to make me forget all my troubles, then make me feel lousy the next morning. But Sterling was in celebration mode after two rounds of caviar and three minutes on his cell phone, in which time he booked himself into a five-star day spa and resort in Belize.

“Kim Kardashian went there last winter. She posted all about it on TikTok. The miso and magnesium detox wrap looks slay.”

He was still in bed when my taxi arrived the next morning to take me to the airport. I tried to wake him, but there was no response. I knew better than to try too hard, having been on the receiving end of more Sterling hysterics than I cared to remember.

And so I left a note that read Merry Christmas, Sterling. Enjoy Belize!

Then I quietly carried my old suitcase out the door.

At O’Hare I phoned Lonnie. “Hi. I’m at the airport and all checked in.” With a deep, nervous breath I added, “Mulligan’s Mill, here I come.”

“Oh Bastian, sweetie. We can’t wait to see you. Hold on while I get Ronnie and put you on speaker.” Lonnie’s voice echoed through their house. “Ronnie! It’s Bastian. How do I put this thing on speaker? Is it this button?”

Ronnie joined the conversation. “Mmmm, let me see. Where are my glasses?”

“They’re on your head, dear.”

“Ah yes. Which button were you pointing at?”

“This one.”

“No, that’s mute. I think it’s this one.”

“No, that’s my contacts list. What about this one here?”

“I don’t even know what that symbol means.”

“Don’t touch it, dear. It might be something hackers have put on my phone.”

“Wait, what about this one? The button with the speaker on it.”

“That’s it. Bastian, can you hear us now,” Lonnie shouted into the phone. “I think you’re on speaker now.”

I winced, holding the phone a little farther away from my ear. “Yeah, I can hear you, loud and clear.”

“Oh good! We’re so excited to see you!” said Lonnie.

“Maggie will be picking you up from the airport,” added Ronnie. “You remember Maggie?”

“Nobody could ever forget Maggie,” I said. Then pensively asked, “Does Benji know I’m coming yet?”

There was a telltale pause before they both overcompensated rather dramatically.

“Oh no!”

“Of course not!”

“He has no idea!”

“Benji who?”

I sighed. “Oh God, he knows, doesn’t he.”

“Well… yes,” admitted Lonnie. “The cat slipped out of the bag. Actually, it kinda tore its way out, scratched up all the furniture, broke a few lamps, and fled up the chimney.” She laughed. Again, trying to overcompensate.

“He’s pissed, isn’t he? Breaking the news was a disaster, wasn’t it?”

“Well,” said Ronnie, his voice calm and positive. “That depends on the scale of the disaster. I mean, there are some disasters that are barely a blip on the radar, like Y2K. And then there’s the Titanic.”

“Oh God, it was a Titanic, wasn’t it?”

“Oh sweetie, don’t you fret,” said Lonnie. “We may have hit an iceberg, but the band is still playing. Everything’s going to be just fine. We’ve made up the new guestroom for you. It’s Benji’s old bedroom, the one you two shared while you were renovating the BnB, so you should feel right at home in there.”

“I’ll be sleeping in Benji’s old room? How does he feel about that?”

“To be honest I don’t think he’s put two and two together yet,” answered Ronnie. “But he’ll come around soon enough. He’ll be fine with everything—you being here, you sleeping in his room, you… in general—just wait and see. Pretty soon it’ll be like you never even left.”

I cradled my head in one hand while I held the phone near my ear with the other. “Oh geez, have we done the wrong thing? Should I even be getting on this plane? I don’t wanna make him angry at me all over again. Or sad. I couldn’t bear to break his heart all over again.”

“Oh sweetheart. You’re not going to break anyone’s heart. It’s Christmas. It’s the perfect time for you two to see each other again… to say all the things you want to say. This will be a Christmas none of us will ever forget.”

I inhaled, sucking in a deep breath of trepidation. “That’s exactly what scares me.”