This past Christmas, all of that quiet drift finally became something impossible to explain away.
Daniel had to work a half-day on Christmas Eve, so it was just Emma and me who drove over to Birchwood Lane first, planning to meet him there once he got off. Emma had spent nearly two weeks preparing for that night. She’d picked out gifts for everyone with her own saved allowance money, wrapped them herself in paper she’d chosen specifically because it had little gold stars on it, and made, with what had to have been enormous patience for an eleven-year-old, a hand-painted ornament for Grandma Ruth, her name spelled out in careful gold letters across a wooden star Emma had sanded smooth herself in art class.
I remember her in the car on the drive over, practically vibrating with excitement, going over in her head who she’d give what to first, worrying out loud that maybe she should have wrapped Christine’s youngest daughter’s gift in different paper since he was a boy and might not like stars. That’s the kind of kid she is. Worrying whether a nine-year-old boy would mind star-patterned wrapping paper.
We pulled up to the house a little after five. Every window was lit up gold, and I could see, even from the driveway, the shapes of people moving around inside, hear faint music drifting out. Emma practically bounced up the front walk ahead of me, gift bag in one hand, the little wooden ornament carefully wrapped in tissue paper in the other, cradled against her chest like something fragile.
My mother opened the door. Not all the way. Just enough to stand in the gap, one hand still on the frame, her body angled in a way that, looking back, I understand now was deliberate, a physical barrier disguised as a casual stance.
