6. Broken Hearts and Break-Ins

6

brOKEN HEARTS AND brEAK-INS

PATRICK

1 DAY 'TIL CHRISTMAS

I stand outside in the cold waiting for Quinn. The only thought in my mind is: Quinn knows I'm keeping something from him.

I overheard him say so to Veronica.

It's been five days, and I haven't had the heart to tell him I got fired yet. It's not that I usually keep big news from my husband. Just this.

Oh, and Kacey's workshop.

But that's it, I swear.

It's just that things have been rocky between us for a while now. Getting fired for taking on a moonlighting gig isn't just rocky. It's an avalanche headed straight for our relationship.

Veronica said the word divorce . Quinn couldn't possibly be considering that. Could he?

Especially after hearing that, I figure it's best to save the news of my unemployment for after Christmas. Give us one perfect holiday, then bring on the wrecking ball. That seems like the kinder option. In the meantime, I've dedicated my work time to googling how to open my own firm. Scouring the net for freelance jobs. Putting the finishing touches on Kacey's plans.

Kacey is the lifeline I need. While the money is sparse, it's not nothing. Also, I'm getting a little bit of severance from Carver & Associates, which will float us. Quinn will know when he needs to know. He'll be understanding about it. That's the hope I'm clinging to.

Before I left the Carver & Associates parking lot after getting let go, Jason leaned into my open window and said, "Remember when we were kids and we believed in Santa sight unseen? Just know there's the right opportunity around the corner for you if you believe hard enough." As I drove off, "Believe" by Josh Groban came on the radio. There was a little comfort to be found in that glorious man's soothing baritone.

Right now I choose to focus on the joy of turning on the Christmas lights beside my handsome husband. Because everything else is too upsetting and uncertain.

Quinn steps outside. He hasn't bundled up properly, so I slip off my red-and-green scarf and hand it to him. His neck gets cold quickly. He thanks me, wrapping it around himself.

He looks up at our two-story house with a hint of hopefulness in his expression. Twinkle lights always get a dazzling smile out of him. If I were to draw that smile, it would be a lighthouse on a dark shore.

I sorely need that guiding light tonight.

I grab the extension cord and the nearest plug. "Let's do it together." I keep the receptive end.

"Since when do you choose that position?" he half-heartedly jokes.

I blush. But he can't tell because it's dark. And my cheeks are probably already pink from the cold. "Don't spoil your Christmas gift now."

He snorts loudly. Rolls his eyes at me. "Santa must've gotten my letter this year."

"He's known to make the wishes of good boys come true." Our banter always makes me feel better.

"Oh, I've been good, have I?"

"Very, very good." To wipe away everything I overheard and to ease Quinn's doubts about us, I lean in and kiss him.

Quinn's lips always taste the slightest bit like the peppermint ChapStick he's loved as long as I've known him. The kiss is quick. It's cold. But his lips remind me how uncontainable our love is. Is it interminable, too?

God, I hope so.

"I love you," I whisper to him. Say it with my whole heart. I won't let that go. Not without a fight. "Now let's see this sucker shine."

The plugs come together.

Our home glows. Yellow and bright and lovely. It gives me hope. Warms my heart.

For about a minute.

And then everything flickers, dulls, sparks, and stops working.

"Huh?" I don't know why, but I jiggle the cords. That's when I notice the lights in our windows are out, too. "Shit. I think I tripped a breaker."

"Well." Quinn follows the line of the extension cord. To another extension cord. To a string of lights. On and on like that all the way to the outlet. "I don't think you're supposed to do this."

"I feel like my dad did it all the time."

Quinn sports a crestfallen frown. "Maybe call him? See if he can come and help?"

"It's"—I check my watch—"almost ten P.M . He's probably getting ready for bed." I don't know that for certain. But I avoid calling him when I can. He raised his boys to be self-sufficient. Letting him down the night before Christmas is the last thing I need.

"Shit," Quinn mutters to himself.

"What?"

"The ham," he says. "Can't cook it now unless I want to figure out how to light the stove and do everything by candlelight like I'm a Dickens character. Guess it's going in the fridge until tomorrow. Hopefully it keeps. I'll just have to be a bad host on Christmas."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I ask. I'm genuinely confused. Quinn is so good with my family. Especially since his isn't around much anymore.

"Never mind." He starts walking up the steps toward the door. Before he disappears back inside to deal with the uncooked ham, he asks directly, "Are we happy?"

I'm taken aback by this massive question. He just told Veronica that he probably wouldn't pry. "Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't we be?" Every muscle in my body constricts. Even my toes in my boots curl up and go rigid.

"Because…" His sentence disappears like the cloud of his breath.

"Because?" I ask promptingly. Even though I don't want to hear the answer. The answer is only going to destroy me.

"Because we don't feel like us these days." His arms flap at his sides. It's apparent that a lot of frustrations are coming out all at once. "We feel… old. Settled? Bored?"

"What are you even—"

"I don't know! I'm just asking…" He takes a long, loud inhale. "What is all this? What are we even doing? I don't like to cook. You don't like to decorate. We don't like to host things. We could barely afford this house, but we bought it anyway and now we're miserable. We hate it!"

"I don't hate it. You hate it?" I ask. Then, I realize how silly that was. That's clearly not the most important part of what he was saying. "It's Christmas Eve, Quinn. What is this all about? Where is this coming from?"

He shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know what page you're on right now, but it's clear we're on different ones." Somehow, his words ring in my head like he thinks the page he's on is better.

"Well, I'm sorry I can't flip through the book of life faster for you." I fold my arms across my chest. I'm angry and hungry and tired and speaking too fast for my brain to catch up. "I'm sorry I didn't read your mind to know you hated this house. I'm sorry I didn't know movie night meant so much to you. And while I'm at it, I'm sorry I got fired from my job. Maybe you should divorce me." I kick at the icy, dead grass. The toe of my boot creates a divot. Only a million more kicks and maybe it'll be a hole big enough to bury myself in.

Quinn's face falls and his hands drop to his sides. He takes an almost fearful-looking step forward. "What are you talking about?"

"I overheard what you and Veronica said."

His head shakes. Almost imperceptibly. "No. Not that. The part about you getting fired from your job. When?"

My eyes refuse to meet his out of shame. "Five days ago."

"Five days ago?" I expect loud anger for withholding this from him. All I get is barely audible disappointment. It's far worse in my book. My whole body goes numb in a way that has nothing to do with the cold.

"Say something?" I ask pitifully.

Quinn clears his throat, looking away. The sound of us cracking apart is embedded in the words he says next. "I'm exhausted. We can—We can talk about all of this after Christmas but right now, I'm going to bundle up and sleep in the guest room so I can get up early and finish cooking."

"Quinn—"

"Don't, Pat," he says shakily. It breaks my heart. Him sounding this way. "Just don't. Not tonight."

Quinn shuts the front door slightly too hard and the 43 that denotes our house number pops off. It hits the cement landing with a clatter. Dammit. One more thing to add to the never-ending list of fixes.

Two, if you count Quinn and me.

After unplugging the cords, I go down to the basement and fiddle with the fuse box to the best of my ability. I need to keep moving so I don't fall apart over all this. We're still hosting Christmas. Can't do that without power.

It takes me an hour and a YouTube video, but I get it done. I'm sure Quinn is happy the heat kicked back on. He hates being cold while he sleeps. Even when he cutely hogs every blanket we own no matter the temperature.

What if this is it? What if we never sleep in the same bed again?

To rid myself of those questions, I head into the garage. I'm on the hunt for outdoor-friendly power strips since, from what Quinn said, it seems we're going ahead with pretending our marriage isn't falling apart for the next twenty-four hours.

I've barely been in the garage since we moved in. It's a veritable minefield of things we didn't know what to do with. At the time, instead of labeling the boxes, we assumed we'd remember where we put everything. Now I'm beyond upset with myself as I dig through stuff we probably could've gotten rid of in a yard sale.

In my hunt, my hand lands upon a shiny, weathered piece of paper. It's the Christmas card we made and got printed at CVS the year we moved in to our first apartment together. Quinn was student teaching, and I had just gotten hired at Carver & Associates.

There's a romantic optimism in our expressions.

The next year, we got engaged a month prior, so our holiday season was consumed with wedding planning.

This is our fifth Christmas together, first as a married couple, and I don't feel the Christmas spirit at all. I feel nothing but dread, actually.

I got fired. I lied to my husband. He's talking about divorce with his best friend. I put us up to the impossible task of hosting a perfect Christmas dinner at the last minute.

Maybe we aren't happy after all.

Looking at my watch, I realize it's already past midnight. The lights are a bust. I need at least a wink of sleep to regroup. Figure out how I'm going to make it up a million times over to Quinn. Prove to him that we are worth fighting for after he sounded so defeated.

Irritated with myself, I abandon the hunt for extension cords and head back inside where somebody is fumbling around in the kitchen. I'm about to call out Quinn's name when a low grumble that sounds nothing like Quinn thunders through the house.

In the hallway, the front door is unlocked. Could someone have broken in? My heart starts to race.

As I inch into the kitchen, the shadowy form of a tall, round man looms on the periphery. He's munching on something. Squinting, I see that Quinn appears to have left out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa—something silly and cute he's always done since we've lived together, even when our apartment didn't have a chimney. Even sillier and cuter is that he'd get up earlier than me, race downstairs, sip the milk and bite the cookies, so that when I got up, I'd think Santa had been there. Quinn would even go so far as to sign some of his gifts to me as FROM SANTA in a loopy scrawl.

In front of me, the intruder struggles to lift the glass with his mitten-covered hand to wash down his snack. But when he finally does, the milk goes flying into the air. "Ew, fuck. What is that? Oat milk? Disgusting."

I grab for the nearest object. Adrenaline and fear mix and surge through me. Someone has broken in—someone rude, at that—and I won't let him ruin our Christmas or get to Quinn.

Though, he's dressed all in red. So perhaps he wanted to get caught. It's not exactly an all-black catsuit that I might not have seen at this hour in this darkness.

With vigilante-mode activated, I heave a frying pan from the drying rack as the burglar samples the third cookie on the plate. I stand up to my full height and command with ferocity, "Put the cookie down and nobody gets hurt."

The man turns and steps forward.

Frightened, I let out a scream that's bordering on a squeal.

I close my eyes.

And then I swing.

Clang.

Thud.

"Crap!"