7
THE WEEK BEFORE my dad’s version of Thanksgiving passes quickly. Luka spends it in New York handling some mysterious work project that he explains using only vague adjectives, and I fill my time by getting things organized for the farm’s holiday switchover.
After he’s gone back to the city, I find a pine tree air freshener hung neatly in the middle of the doorway of my house like a sprig of mistletoe. I pull it down with a smile and put it with the others, wondering if he stops at the little gas station on the edge of town every time.
Beckett, Layla, and I clean up the damaged pumpkin patch, and I install a couple of cameras along the property line. I had to drive nearly twenty minutes to find an electronics store with any sort of stock. Barry of Barry’s Electronics informed me that while the cameras aren’t as high-tech as some of the other things on the market, they will let me know if anyone is coming onto the farm without my knowledge.
Or if the raccoons have developed a thirst for pumpkin destruction.
In a stroke of absolute genius, Beckett turns the twisted trees in the south pasture into a haunted forest on Halloween night. The best part is he needs to do absolutely nothing to make it look like something from Pan’s Labyrinth.
Susie Brighthouse takes one look at it while picking up catering from Layla with her mom, declares it totally twisted, and the next thing I know, the entire sophomore class is running through the grounds like a horde of drunken zombies.
It’s the most guests we’ve had since last holiday season, and despite it being a group of hormone-addled teenagers, it’s enough to give me a buoy of hope. Beckett, Layla, and I celebrate accordingly and sit at the edge of the
fields with a thermos of spiked cider, listening as they shriek back and forth at one another.
“What did you put in there to scare them?” I ask Beckett.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Beckett takes another swig from the cider. “Maybe they’re afraid of their own stupidity.”
All in all, it’s a good week. I wake up the morning of forced fake Thanksgiving and expect the worst, but I’m pleasantly surprised. Nothing on the farm is destroyed, all shipments arrive on time, and no one appears in my office to tell me something is on fire. Half of me expects a sinkhole to open up and swallow me to the depths of hell as I wander across the fields to the big red barn. But I see nothing but the well-tended garden boxes by the road and trees in the distance, a couple of empty baskets by the trail that some produce collectors must have forgotten.
I gather the empty baskets and loop them over my arm, piling them by the door as I duck inside the barn and begin to pull down the boxes with holiday decorations. It’s my favorite part of the year, the transition between fall and winter. When I unbox all of the things that make this place magical.
Hank did his best to make this place festive, but he was more focused on the trees than the experience. He had left behind a few sad-looking wooden reindeer, a sled made out of old shipping crates, and a moth-eaten Santa suit.
All of the lights strung along the buildings had burnt out years ago, and the signpost for the North Pole was faded and weathered. Layla called it Nuclear Wasteland Christmas our first week on the farm.
Most of my budget last year had gone into rehab. I wanted people to drive down the narrow dirt road and be greeted with a tunnel of big bulb lights, just like the ones their grandparents had. I wanted them to pull through the front gates marked with two extra-large cherry red bows, guideposts painted with spirals of red and white. I wanted families to climb out of their cars and look up at rows and rows of trees on the foothills, kids running ahead to snag a spot in line for the ice-skating rink.
I wanted it to feel like stepping inside a Dolly Parton Christmas special.
I grab the ladder and start to haul boxes down, pulling back lids and poking through carefully wrapped packing paper. I run my hands over the North Pole sign I spent hours stenciling, red paint on my fingertips for weeks.
Some of the tension in my shoulders releases by the fifth box. It looks like everything is here and accounted for. Even the tiny tin reindeer made out of beer cans by Beckett, his white elephant gift to me last year.
I hold up one of the giant red bows and run my finger along the bottom edge. It’s silly to get emotional about a ribbon of all things, but here I am.
With everything that’s happened, I had figured the ribbons would be in tatters or stolen or stained or something else ridiculous. But they’re here, perfect and pristine and ready to sit pretty on our wrought iron gates. I’m grateful. I send up a wish to the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. I just need this little bit of magic to continue through the end of the month.
“Please,” I whisper, wishing I had a sprig of mistletoe to wave around.
Maybe some peppermint incense.
“Is that what you’re wearing tonight?” When I turn, Luka is propped up against the open barn door, donut in hand. He is loose angles and relaxed shoulders, eyes traveling in the same one-two-three pattern his hands always press into my skin. I have an excuse ready on the tip of my tongue, anxious to backtrack, to explain, but he doesn’t make any indication that he heard my begging to the barn rafters. He takes a bite and nods at the very large bow in my hands, obscuring half my body from view. “Bold yet festive. It should leave an impression.”
Feeling silly, I hold it close to my chest and drape it over me, sticking my leg out from underneath and arching my neck back. I am Jessica Rabbit in a pretty red bow. There’s a choking sound, and I straighten to find Luka bent in half, struggling to swallow his donut.
Concerned, I toss the bow on top of the boxes of decorations and rush over, smacking the heel of my hand in between his shoulder blades repeatedly. I try to remember what they taught us in our high school CPR class. Strike to the beat of a song? I hum under my breath before Luka swats me away, his chuckle a little bit raspy.
“Why are you humming Earth, Wind and Fire as I almost choke to death?”
Ah, that was . . . not the correct song.
Luka coughs once more and straightens, a devastating smile pulling his mouth wide. It’s easy like this to think of him as mine. This Luka, with this smile, in this place. Brown laced boots and a sweater over plaid. The surge of possessiveness is so fierce it takes my breath away, and I rub at my sternum in an effort to rid myself of the feeling. I feel like our display in town has cracked open the tiny steel box I keep all my Luka feelings buried in.
I need to remember that Luka isn’t mine. Not even when playing pretend.
He cocks his head at me and considers, something tightening in the lines by his eyes. What I wouldn’t give to know what’s going through his mind.
The moment passes, and I struggle to find my footing.
“You ready to go?”
No, I’m not. I want to stay here in this barn with him and my pretty red bows for the rest of time. I want to forget everything else exists. I want Layla to drop off apple cider donuts at the door for sustenance. Maybe a pizza or two.
Instead, I sigh and glance behind him to where his car is parked on the gravel lot just outside the barn. I indulge in a passing fantasy of slashing all the tires so we have to stay here instead.
“I guess I have to be.”
“IS IT DIFFICULT for you? This weird Thanksgiving thing?”
I rest my forehead on the window and watch as the farmlands and pastures outside my window slowly change into strip malls. A bustling suburbia with drive-through Starbucks and Burlington Coat Factories. Houses that look like they’ve been stamped by a cookie cutter with their pristine white fences and a single towering oak tree in the front yard. Perfect for a tire swing. I dreamed of houses like that when I was a kid.
It is difficult for me to go to my father’s house, but not for the reasons Luka thinks. He probably thinks it’s hard for me to see the house and the yard and the wine cellar and the four-car garage when, more often than not, my mom and I shared a one-bedroom apartment. He probably thinks it’s difficult for me to see the home he made with Elle and Charlie that he chose not to make with me and my mom. That’s true, sort of, but it’s harder for me to sit at that table on a day meant for family and realize just how much my dad and I look alike.
We have the same round face, the same wide blue eyes. We both have dark curly hair. The first time I met Charlie, it was jarring. It was like looking in a mirror. My mom used to joke and say the only thing I inherited from her was her whimsical inclinations and killer right hook. She liked to pretend that she was okay, that being alone was a choice she wanted. But as I grew older, I saw how lonely she was. She never dated, as far as I can remember. My dad ruined her when he left.
That’s why it’s hard for me. I sit at that table, and the whole time I wonder if every time she looked at me, she saw him. I wonder if it made her sad.
I draw a smiley face with my pinky in the condensation on the window.
“Yes,” I reply simply, and leave it at that. I can see Luka shooting me concerned glances out of the corner of his eye, but I ignore it. Tonight will be . . . fine. It will be fine. It always is.
Any hesitancy I had about Luka coming with me has faded in the face of a deep appreciation that in the worst-case scenario, I can get blindingly drunk on my dad’s absurdly expensive wine, and Luka can cart me home and pour me into bed.
I wipe the smiley face away with my thumb and lean back in the seat, tilting my head against the headrest to look over at Luka. There are two mediocre pies on my lap. I didn’t ask Layla to bake anything. My dad doesn’t deserve a Layla pie.
“We’ve passed at least three Wendy’s drive-throughs. Want to skip dinner and I’ll get you a frosty?”
“No,” I sigh. Though the offer is tempting. Maybe on the way back. “It will be good to see Charlie.”
Luka hums. “It will be good to see Charlie. I haven’t seen him since”—he considers, his mouth moving soundlessly as he thinks back—“Fourth of July?
I think?”
Of all the strange, isolating things that happened after my mother died, Charlie is the one bright spot. I had looked up my father and reached out in a misguided attempt at offering closure. I had figured he might want to know— well, I thought he might want to know that the woman he had a child with had passed away. I still remember the dress I was wearing when I pulled up in his driveway on that warm spring day. How angry I was at all the flowers blooming in the garden. How could flowers still bloom when my mom was dead? How could the sun still shine so bright? Why were people laughing on their porches, drinking lemonade like nothing was wrong?
A pale blue dress and bright red flats. I wanted to look nice. I knocked on the door and waited, my heart in my throat, a stack of letters my mom had written him clutched in my hand. Charlie had answered the door, his greeting hastily aborted the second his gaze landed on me. His wide blue eyes—my eyes—blinking in shock.
Charlie was born exactly eight months after me. A lot of things became clear after that.
And despite the inherent awkwardness of your father’s love child showing up on your front porch on a random spring day, Charlie and I had become fast friends. I guess both of us wanted a sibling.
“Was it the Fourth of July when he insisted on doing a keg stand and projectile vomited on the side of Beckett’s house?”
Luka snickers under his breath. “It was, yeah. I told him not to.”
“You did not. In fact, I think you encouraged him. You were chanting.”
“Ah, hell. Yeah, I was. Layla’s Jell-O shots had me feeling some type of way. She makes them sneaky tasty. You don’t even know you’re half a bottle down until you’re wearing an Uncle Sam hat, demanding that a grown man do a keg stand.”
“We’re too old for Jell-O shots and keg stands.”
“Clearly,” he laughs. “I think it’s a fine time to transition to boxed wine
and an early bedtime.”
“I would agree.”
I’m grateful for the distraction. I don’t even realize we’ve arrived until Luka parks the car on the street at the edge of the driveway. He tells me it’s for a quick getaway with a cheeky little wink that has me laughing all the way to the front door. It’s a nice change from the slow, defeated march I usually do.
I knock and stare at the perfect navy blue paint on the door. Not a single nick. I straighten my shoulders inch by inch until I am fortified, unmovable. I almost jump when I feel fingers thread through my own. Luka squeezes my hand.
“Frosty,” he mouths and shoots me a wink.
