Chapter 1

Chapter 1STELLA“No drama, Stella.”I put my hands up. “I know. I know.”Mom folded her arms. She looked like she’d aged twenty years since I’d last seen her. “Seriously, Stella. Just… promise me this. A nice, quiet Christmas. Not like your father and I wanted this either.”I wasn’t a high-drama person. I mean, there was the one year, but… we were all thirteen once. Still, Mom was just stressed sick. I was mature enough to see this wasn’t about me. I relaxed. “I promise, okay? I’ll be nice and quiet. No messiness. Just happy family portraits with Grandpa.”Mom winced. I’d been here for ten minutes and I was already stepping in it.Luckily, that was when the living room door swung open and Clarissa came barreling through, all smiles and rosy cheeks, and Dad behind her, rolling a suitcase with him at a steady thump-thump over the wood flooring. Clarissa, my six-year-old sister, was the little ray of sunshine that had kept my parents together for—well, another six years. Even Clarissa had her limits, though, but she still took the sting out of the situation, hugging me around the waist.“You’re back!” she said, burying her face in my stomach. I laughed, ruffling her loose ginger curls.“Not standing up the family for Christmas,” I said.“You’re always gone. It’s not fair. I have to play with Faith instead…”“Faith ain’t that bad, kid.” I knelt to give her a proper hug instead of a headbutt to the gut. “College is kinda far, okay? Not easy to come back and visit.”She made a noncommittal noise in my ear. Sounded like she wasn’t buying what I was selling. I gave her a squeeze, knowing the trick up my sleeve would work.“Just to say I’m sorry for taking so long to visit… I got you a special present.”She gasped—outright gasped like a cartoon character, stepping back, eyes sparkling. “Really? Can I see?”I grinned. “That mean I’m off the hook?”“What did you get me?”Mom put a hand on her shoulder. “Clarissa, your sister is tired.”“Let a kid be excited,” I said, before I turned back to Clarissa. “I’ll give it to you when we get there, okay, Clari?”Clarissa looked like I’d proposed stabbing her in the stomach. “What? But I want to see now!”I winked. “A little suspense makes it more exciting. You’ll see. I’ll give you a hint… it starts with an L.”She lit up, like she’d been waiting all her little life to hear that exact promise. “A Little Mermaid doll?”Guess we knew what she wanted. “I’m not giving you any more hints,” I said, standing up. Dad gave me an awkward smile, pausing as he walked past me, looking at me like he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, his body.“Nice to see you back, Stella. Help me load up the car?”Mom sighed. “No one cares that my daughter just drove three hours. She’s tired, Philip.”I put a hand on Mom’s arm. “I’m good. Honestly. Just going to crash hard tonight, okay?”Mom gave me that soft little look she always used to give me when she tucked me into bed for the night, and it made my heart ache like it was pulled in two. I’d known for years they needed a divorce, but now that it was actually happening, I wished I could just squeeze things back together, make it all okay again. “If you say so, sweetie,” she said. “But don’t get frostbite. I made coffee, so come share some once you’re done, okay?”“Okay, okay. We’ll be right back.”I grabbed the duffel bag from by the door, hauling out what felt like way too many clothes, and I followed Dad out the door and into where the morning light was still crisp on the snow, falling in gentle flurries over the thick layer around the front yard. Dad—I could see the way he was suffering right now, drawn tight into himself, moving too rigidly, and he didn’t say anything, just led me down to the SUV and opened the back, hoisting two suitcases in. I got my bag in and we went back for seconds, making another trip before he finally broke the silence.“You talk to Abigail yet?”“No?” I turned to him, frowning. “Is she okay?”“Didn’t your mom tell you?” He furrowed his brow. “She’s coming with.”“Coming with—to the lodge?” I got that dropping exhilaration like missing the top step of the stairs in the dark, my heart skipping a beat. “Since when? Ron said it was a family thing.”He smiled, and it hurt my heart a little to see the way it looked so unnatural on his face, the way his skin folded weirdly around it. He hadn’t been doing it much lately. “Your mom and I thought it would be nice for you. Besides, she’s basically family.”I laughed nervously. I felt like now wasn’t the time to mention that Abigail and I had sort of been… drifting out of contact ever since we went to separate universities. Once my best friend in the universe and the person whose house I was at more often than my own, now she was someone I’d exchange a few texts with, a few times a week. It wasn’t like I liked it that way—I missed the way we used to be inseparable, but between momentum pushing us further apart and my weird guilt around that, not knowing how to fix it, it felt like an inevitable thing.Maybe Mom and Dad were right, though. Having two weeks for Christmas with her around might have been exactly what we needed.Or maybe she hated me now, and this was going to be the most painfully awkward two weeks of my life. Only one way to find out.I looked back at the car, busying myself with adjusting bags. “Well, I’m excited to see her again… really had no idea this was happening.”“Well, your mom was the one who’d been talking to you. I figured she’d have told you.”He had my number. He could well have made an effort if he wanted to reach out and talk to me more. But he’d always been… weak-willed. I felt lousy thinking that about my own dad, especially when he was this sad, but he’d always been the type to roll over. Mom had been trying to imply they needed a divorce for years now, and Dad had just been meekly waiting for it to happen. Even my sixteen-year-old sister Faith figured it out before Dad did, and I wasn’t convinced she noticed anything outside of her phone.Still—no drama. Mom had made a strict rule, and I wasn’t about to break it, not when we had our entire extended family in one place and none of us could afford the lot of them finding out about the divorce at Christmas. So I was putting up and shutting up, at least for now.“Well, I know now,” I said, dropping my arms. “God, it’s been ages since I saw her in person. She isn’t busy with work, school… life? Didn’t she only just get back to the US?”He scratched his head. “You’ll have to talk to your mom. She’s the one who sorted out the logistics.”Guy had less life in him than the flickering Christmas candle in the upstairs window. I tried not to look like I was sagging too much. “Guess I’ll be seeing her soon enough and I can just ask her directly…”Dad went through a series of emotions, clearly struggling figuring out if he should say what he wanted to, but finally, he swallowed it, turning back to the house. “Well, let’s finish loading this bad boy up and we can head out. Christmas magic awaits!”“Christmas magic, my ass,” Faith said from behind me, and I jumped, turning with boots crunching on the snow to where she came out from behind the corner of the house, hardly dressed for the weather in a t-shirt and jeans. Faith looked almost uncomfortably like me, more or less an exact copy of me when I’d been sixteen, with a strong jawline and dark eyes, the same hump in the bridge of her nose that I had, but she kept her deep brown hair shorter than mine—a choppy shoulder bob, the shortest she could convince Mom to let her go.“What are you doing, creeping around corners?” I said, and she looked away.“Ugh. Dunno. Wondering if I can steal your car and get out of here so I don’t get dragged to fucking Christmas hell.”I sighed, rolling my eyes so hard they ached. “You’ll be fine, Faith. You’ll be perfectly happy to be there once we’ve arrived.”She snorted. “And listen to Mom and Dad caterwauling about how shit the other one is all the time? Freezing my ass off in a lodge with shitty indoor plumbing, get forced to go play with Clarissa in the snow, and smiling for family portraits?”“You’re sixteen. Nobody’s expecting you to smile in the portraits.”She sighed. “I just don’t want to go. I don’t know why that’s such a big ask.”“Faith, you’re going to freeze to death out here dressed like that.”“Oh, great. Now I have two moms.”I put my hands up. “Suit yourself if you want to get hypothermia, just don’t come crying to me when your nose falls off. It’s just two weeks. Mom and Dad really don’t need anybody kicking up problems right now.”She shoved her hands in her pockets, looking away. She had such a skinny, waifish figure, pale as a ghost, and now with her starting to get goosebumps, she looked like she should have been playing a freezing orphan girl in a Dickens adaptation. Just with a band shirt. “I don’t owe Mom and Dad anything. I’m tired of everyone acting like I do.”I was glad I hadn’t had the same teenage rebellion at her age. I would have been so embarrassed looking back on it. “Okay, okay, okay. Maybe think of it this way. It’s supposed to be a cozy place where you can get everywhere by foot, so you can get away anytime without asking to borrow the car. And you can tell Mom you’re just off exploring the town if she tries to grill you on where you’ve been.”She snorted again. “You think they’re going to let me off that easy?”“Hey, no drama works both ways. Means they can’t afford to call you out.”That got a smile out of her. “They’re teaching you to be scheming at college, huh?”I shoved my hands in my pockets, shrugging. “Ah, something like that.”She sighed with all the drama only a teenager could. “Okay, I get it. I’ll stop complaining and go along for the ride. Merry fucking Christmas.”I sank against the side of the car once she disappeared back into the house through the side door, pulling my beanie down to shield my eyes as I glanced up at the tops of the snow-capped evergreens around the house.Looked like Christmas this year was going to be me holding the family together at the edges with Scotch tape. At least for long enough that it could fall apart in private in January.Merry fucking Christmas indeed.