“Business is fine,” Ricky reassures us, looking at each of our faces. “And no one is sick. So it isn’t that, don’t worry.”
We exhale collectively, but then I see Dad instinctively place his hand over Mom’s, and that’s when I know. There’s only one thing we value as much as we value each other’s health.
“But this cabin, see, it’s old,” Ricky says. “It’s old and seems to need something new each month.”
A hot tangle forms in my chest.
“We wanted to let you know that we sure do hope we can continue spending the holidays together, just like we have for the last thirty years or so.” He takes the full bacon platter as it comes back to him and gently sets it down, untouched. We all remain still, even Aaron and Kyle’s five-year-old twins—Kennedy with her legs tucked to her chest, a dirty Care Bears Band-Aid still clinging valiantly to her scabbed knee, and Zachary clutching his sister’s arm—dreading what we all know is coming next: “But we’ll have to figure out a new plan. Lisa and I have decided that we’re selling the cabin.”
chapter three
Cue the most depressing music ever. I’d prefer that, actually, to the morbid silence in the rental car as Mom, Dad, Miles, and I make our way down the snow-dusted gravel driveway to the main road.
Mom cries quietly in the passenger seat. Dad’s hands fidget on the steering wheel like he’s not sure where to put them. I think he wants to comfort her, but he looks like he could use some comfort of his own. If it feels like the cabin means everything to me, it’s nothing compared to the memories they must have. They came here as newlyweds, brought me and Miles as babies.
“Mom.” I lean forward, putting my hand on her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll still see everyone next year.”
Her quiet sobs turn into a wail, and Dad grinds the steering wheel in his grip. They divorced after nearly a quarter century of marriage; the cabin is the only place they get along anymore. It’s the only place they’ve ever gotten along, really. Lisa is Mom’s closest friend; Ricky, Aaron, and Benny are Dad’s only friends outside of the hospital. Dad was willing to forfeit the house, primary custody of Miles, and a chunk of his income every month, but he was unwilling to give up Christmas at the cabin. Mom held her ground, too. Victor’s daughters were thrilled to be able to keep their time with their dad, and we’ve somehow managed to maintain a fragile peace. Is that going to last if we have to go somewhere new, without any happy memories or nostalgic anchors?
I glance at my brother and wonder what it must be like to float through life so happily oblivious. He’s got his headphones on and is mildly bopping along to something perky and optimistic.
“I didn’t want to fall apart in front of Lisa,” Mom hiccups, digging in her purse for a Kleenex. “She was so devastated, couldn’t you see it, Dan?”
“I—well, yes,” he hedges, “but she was probably also relieved to have made the hard decision.”
“No, no. This is awful.” Mom blows her nose. “Oh, my poor friend.”
I reach over and flick Miles’s ear.
He flinches away from me. “What the hell?”
I tilt my head toward our mother, as in, Give her some support, you idiot.
“Hey, Mom. It’s okay.” He blandly pats her shoulder once but doesn’t even turn down his music. He barely looks up from his phone screen to give me a look in return that says, Happy now?
I turn back to the window and let out a controlled breath, working to keep it from being audible.
Before we left, Lisa took what will probably be our last group photo on the porch—somehow managing to cut the tops off the back row of heads—and then there were tears and hugs, promises that nothing would change. But we all know that’s a lie. Even though we’ve pledged to still spend the holiday together, where will we go? To Aaron and Kyle’s two-bedroom Manhattan apartment? To Andrew’s Denver condo? To Mom and Victor’s house, which used to be Mom and Dad’s house? Awkward! Or maybe we’ll all squeeze into Benny’s camper in Portland?
My brain takes off on a hysterical tear.
So we’ll rent a house somewhere, and we’ll all arrive with suitcases and smiles but everything will feel different. There won’t be enough snow, or the yard won’t be big enough, or there won’t even be a yard. Will we decorate a tree? Will we go sledding? Will we even all sleep in the same house? I imagined my childhood would end gradually, not with this full sprint into a brick wall starkly labeled End of an Era.
Mom sucks in a breath and quickly swivels to face us, interrupting my mental spiral. She places a hand on Miles’s leg, gives him an affectionate pat. “Thank you, baby.” And then mine. Her nails are painted fuchsia; her wedding ring glints in the midmorning light. “Mae, I’m sorry. I’m fine. You don’t have to take care of me.”
I know she’s trying to be more conscious of how much of her emotional burden I tend to take on, but her vulnerability lances my chest. “I know, Mom, but it’s okay to be sad.”
“I know you’re sad, too.”
“I’m sad as well,” Dad mumbles, “in case anyone was wondering.”
The silence that follows this statement is the size of a crater on the moon.
Mom’s eyes spring fresh tears. “So many years we spent there.”
Dad echoes hollowly, “So many years.”
“To think we’ll never be back.” Mom presses a hand to her heart and looks over her shoulder at me. “Whatever happens, happens.” She reaches for my hand, and I feel like a traitor to Dad if I take it, and a traitor to Mom if I don’t. So I take it, but briefly meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Mae, I see the wheels turning up there, and I want you to know it’s not your job to make sure that we are all happy next year and the transition is smooth.”
I know she believes that, but it’s easier said than done. I’ve lived my entire life trying to keep every tenuous peace we can find.
I squeeze her hand and release it so she can turn back around.
“Life is good,” Mom reassures herself aloud. “Victor is well, his girls are grown, with kids of their own. Look at our friends.” She spreads her hands. “Thriving. My two children—thriving.” Is that what I’m doing? Thriving? Wow, a mother’s love really is blind. “And you’re doing fine, right, Dan?”
Dad shrugs, but she isn’t looking at him.
Beside me, Miles nods in time to the music.
“Maybe it’s time to try something new,” Dad says carefully. I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror again. “Change can be good.”
What? Change is never good. Change is Dad switching medical practices when I was five and never being home again during daylight. Change is my best friend moving away in eighth grade. Change is a terribly advised pixie cut sophomore year. Change is relocating to LA, realizing I couldn’t afford it, and having to move back home. Change is kissing one of my oldest friends when I was drunk.
“It’s all about perspective, right?” he says. “Yes, the holidays may look different, but the important parts will stay the same.”
The cabin is the important part, I think, and then take a deep breath.
Perspective. Right. We have our health. We have each other. We are comfortable financially. Perspective is a good thing.
But perspective is slippery and wiggles out of my grip. The cabin! It’s being sold! I made out with Theo but I want Andrew! I hate my job! I’m twenty-six and had to move home! Miles applied to schools all over the country, and will probably be a homeowner before I’ve moved out of my childhood bedroom!
If I died today, what would be written about me? That I’m an obsessive peacekeeper? That I put together a serviceable spreadsheet? That I also loved art? That I couldn’t ever figure out what it was that I truly wanted?
Tuning out the sounds of Judy Garland on the radio, I close my eyes and make a silent plea: Universe. What am I doing with my life? Please. I want…
I’m not even sure how to finish the sentence. I want to be happy, and I’m petrified that the path I’m on now is g
oing to leave me bored and alone.
So I ask the universe, simply: Can you show me what will make me happy?
I lean my head against the window, my breath fogging up the glass. When I reach up to clear it away with my sleeve, I’m startled to see a grimy Christmas wreath decorated with an equally grimy bow. A blaring horn, a blur of shaggy green hurtling toward our car.
“Dad!” I shriek.
It’s too late. My seat belt locks, and we’re hit from the side. Metal screams and glass shatters in a sickening crunch. Whatever was loose in the car is airborne, and I somehow watch the contents of my purse escape and float with surreal slowness as we roll. The radio is still playing: Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow…
Everything goes black.
chapter four
Shooting an arm out to the side to brace against the impact of the collision, I come to with a gasp. But there’s no car door there, no window; I smack my brother directly in the face.
He lets out a rough oof and catches my arm. “Dude. What the hell, Mae?”
I bolt upright against a lap belt, clutching my head and expecting to find blood. It’s dry. I suck in another deep, jagged breath. My heart feels like it’s going to jackhammer its way up my throat and out of my body.
Wait. Miles is on my right. He was on my left in the car. I reach for him, holding his face in my hands, and jerk him closer.
“What are you doing?” he mumbles into my shoulder.
I don’t even mind his heavy-handed Axe body spray right now, I am so intensely relieved that he’s not dead. That I’m not dead. That we’re all…
“Not in the car,” I say, releasing him abruptly.
I whip my head left to right, wildly searching. Confusion is a startling, bright light. It’s the white noise of an engine, of a vent overhead. It’s the dry, overheated recycled air. It’s rows and rows of heads in front of me, some of them turning to look at the commotion behind them.
I’m the commotion behind them.
We aren’t in the car, we’re on an airplane. I’m in the middle seat, Miles in the aisle, and the stranger in the window seat is trying to pretend like I didn’t just wake up and flip out.
Disorientation makes my temples throb.
“Where are we?” I turn to Miles. I have never in my life been so off-kilter. “We were just in the car. There was a wreck. Have I been unconscious? Was I in a coma?”
And if I was, who put me here? I’m trying to picture my parents carting me, unconscious, through the airport and loading me into this seat. I just cannot imagine it. My dad, the meticulous physician; my mom, the overprotective worrier.
Miles looks at me and slowly pulls his headphones off one ear. “What?”
With a growl, I give up on him and lean toward where Dad is unfastening his seat belt across the aisle. “Dad, what happened?”
He stands and crouches next to Miles’s seat. “What happened when?”
“The car accident?”
He glances at my brother, and then back at me. His hair and beard are white, but his brows are still dark, and they slowly rise on his forehead. He looks fine, not a scratch anywhere. “What car accident, Noodle?”
What car accident?
I lean back and close my eyes, taking a deep breath. What is going on?
Trying again, I pull Miles’s headphones all the way off. “Miles. Don’t you remember the car accident? When we left the cabin?”
He rears back, giving my barely restrained hysteria a semidisgusted look. “We’re on a plane, on our way to Salt Lake. What do you mean ‘when we left the cabin’? We haven’t gone yet.” He turns to Dad, hands up. “I swear she’s only had ginger ale.”
We’re on our way to Salt Lake?
“There was a truck,” I say, straining to remember. “I think the back was filled with… Christmas trees.”
“Probably just a weird dream,” Dad says to Miles, like I’m not sitting right here, and returns to his seat.
* * *
A dream. I nod, like that makes sense, even though it doesn’t. It does not. I did not dream an entire vacation. But Miles isn’t going to be a font of information even under normal circumstances, and Dad has gone back to his crossword puzzle. Mom is asleep in the aisle seat in front of Dad, and from where I’m sitting I can see that her mouth is softly open, her neck at an odd angle.
What had I been thinking about just before the crash? It was about Christmas, I think. Or my job? I was looking out the car window.
The car.
Which we apparently aren’t in anymore.
Or weren’t in ever, maybe?
I dig in my bag under the seat in front of me, pulling out my phone and waking up the screen.
The display says that today is December 20. But this morning was December 26.
“Wow.” I lean back, looking around. Panic presses in at the edges of my vision, turning the world black and fuzzy.
Breathe, Mae.
You have a level head. You’ve dealt with crises before. You manage the finances for a struggling nonprofit, for crying out loud. Crisis IS your job. THINK. What are some possible explanations for this?
One: I died, and this is purgatory. A possibility lights up in my mind: Maybe we’re all like the characters on Lost, a show Dad and Benny drunkenly complained about for at least two hours a few years ago. If this plane never lands, then I guess I’ll know why. Or if it lands on an island, I guess that’s also an answer. Or if it explodes midair…
Not helping calm me down. Next theory.
Two, Dad is right, and I’ve had some monster nap and somehow dreamed up everything that happened last week at the cabin. Upside: I never kissed Theo. Downside:… Is there a downside? Not having to return to work on Monday, getting to repeat my favorite week of vacation, minus the mistakes? And maybe the Hollises aren’t selling the cabin! But the thing is, it doesn’t feel like a dream. Dreams are fuzzy and oblong, and the faces aren’t quite right, or the details don’t track in any linear way. This feels like six days of actual memories, crammed with complete clarity into my head. And besides, if I were going to dream-make-out with anyone, wouldn’t it be Andrew? I guess not even Dream Mae is that lucky.
Miles looks over when I snort out a laugh, and his frown deepens. “What’s with you?”
“I have no idea how to answer that.”
He looks back at his phone, already over it.
“Just to confirm,” I say, “we’re headed to Salt Lake, right?”
My brother offers up a skeptical smile. “You are so weird.”
“I’m serious. We’re headed to Salt Lake City?”
He frowns. “Yeah.”
“And then to Park City?”
“Yes.”
“For Christmas?”
He nods slowly, as if interacting with a very impaired creature. “Yes. For Christmas. Was there something in that cup besides ginger ale?”
“Wow,” I say again, and laugh. “Maybe?”
chapter five
I lag behind my family from the Jetway to baggage claim. It earns me more than one impatient look, but everything seems to grab my attention. A crying baby at the adjacent gate. A middle-aged businessman speaking too loudly on his phone. A couple bickering in line for coffee. A young boy wrestling to get out of his heavy blue coat.
I can’t shake the feeling of déjà vu, like I’ve been here before. Not just here in the airport, but here—in this exact same moment. At the base of the escalator to baggage claim, a man drops his soda in front of me, and I stop just in time, almost like I knew it was going to happen. A family with a WELCOME HOME banner passes by, and I turn to watch them for several paces.
“I swear I’ve seen that before,” I say to Miles. “The family back there with the sign?”
His attention moves past me briefly and disinterestedly back ahead. “This is Utah. Every family down here has a ‘Welcome Home’ sign. Missionaries, remember?”
“Right,” I say to his retreating for
m. Right.
Because I’ve been so slow on our trek from the arrival gate to baggage claim, our suitcases are the only ones left, patiently circling around and around the carousel. Dad collects them, stacking them onto a cart while Mom cups my face.
Her dark hair is curled into waves and pulled back on one side. Her eyes are tight with worry. “What’s with you, honey?”
“I don’t know.”
“You hungry?” She searches my eyes. “Need an Advil?”
I don’t know what to tell her. I’m not hungry. I’m not anything. I half feel like I’m floating through the terminal, staring at things I swear are already memories inside my head.
* * *
My stomach drops when I see everyone already on the porch at the cabin, waving us down the driveway. I’m sure I saw this same view only six days ago, on December 20. I remember being the last to arrive. Flight schedules had been tricky, so Kyle, Aaron, and their twins came in on Friday night. Theo and Andrew, I remember, drove up earlier than usual, too.
Our tires come to a crunching stop beside Theo’s giant orange truck, and we clamber out of the same Toyota RAV4 that was most certainly totaled in the Car Crash That Didn’t Happen. We are immediately engulfed by hugs from all sides. Kyle and Aaron make a sandwich out of me. Their twins, Kennedy and Zachary, gently wind themselves around my legs. Lisa finds a window of space and wiggles in close. In the distance, Benny waits patiently for his hug, and I send him a nonverbal cry for help.
My brain can’t seem to process what’s going on. Have I lost a year somehow? Honestly, what are the odds that I’m actually dead? My version of heaven would be at the cabin, so how would I know? If I was in a coma, would I feel the frigid winter air on my bare face?
I peek past Lisa into the trees, searching for a hidden camera crew. Surprise! they’ll shout in unison. Everyone will laugh at the elaborate prank. We totally had you fooled, didn’t we, Mae?
All this mental fracas means that I’ve barely considered what it will be like to see Theo before I’m lifted off my feet in a bear hug. I experience this like I’m watching from a few paces away.