Chapter 22 Connor
Connor
Today had been a nightmare, the culmination of four days of disasters at Blackstone & Clarke.
First I tried to make sense of Alex’s “organizational system”—and that term was generous, considering what I’d actually found was a business held together by charm, desperation, and an alarming number of sticky notes.
Then I'd met with his new admin team, who hadn't been briefed on any of the Standard Operating Procedures I'd left in place so I'd had to undo all their half-assed duct-taped solutions.
Then I'd given them a crash course in not just operations but specifically in Alex-ology—all the quirks I'd recognized and accounted for so he could keep his head in the legal work and client relationships instead of managing his calendar or fixing the printer.
My head was still spinning with mismatched information, urgent deadlines I’d uncovered, and the growing realization that Victoria had drastically undersold how much work it would be to "cover for Alex" during his honeymoon.
All I wanted was a quiet apartment to decompress.
I’d make homemade pizza dough to punch and knead out my frustration.
While it baked, I’d drink a cold beer, Netflix on in the background for white noise.
Or maybe bring some pizza to Donnelly’s and keep Hannah company while tipping her for the beer.
Either way, an easy night in sounded heavenly.
But those plans evaporated the moment I stepped into the apartment building’s hallway, thanks to Teresa’s off-key warbling of “Bells on Bobtails ring …”
Hannah joined in, even more off key. “Making spirits bright…”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob, seriously considering returning to Alex’s office to color-sort his pencils. After the day I’d just had, anything would be better than dealing with more chaos.
But I couldn’t hide in the hallway forever. I braced myself and stepped inside.
My apartment had been ground zero for a Christmas explosion.
The living room had sprouted garland—twined like ivy across the curtain rods, draped around the TV, looped along the bookshelf.
Strings of multicolored lights blinked chaotically from every possible surface.
And standing proudly in front of the bay window was a four-foot fake pine tree covered in the most aggressively mismatched ornaments I’d ever seen.
Teresa appeared from the kitchen, wearing an old hoodie and a lopsided Santa hat. She held a mug of what smelled like hot cocoa, and there was a smudge of glitter across her left cheek.
“Oh good, you’re back!” she chirped. “I made hot cocoa, and please ignore the glitter—I swear it only attacked me once, but I think it’s breeding.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The words lodged in my throat as I stared at the explosion of chaotic, aggressive joy that had taken over my minimalist space.
After the day I’d had—the spreadsheets that didn’t spread, the files that weren’t filed, the clients who’d been calling Alex’s cell because they didn’t trust the office line—this should have been the last straw. The thing that made me snap.
“Connor?” she asked, her smile dimming.
But I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. Instead, I just stood there, frozen.
Hannah came in, wearing a headband with reindeer ears, arms loaded with plastic bags from the Dollar Store loaded with cheap ornaments, and stopped in her tracks when she saw my face. Her antlers drooped. “Too much?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Swallowed hard. “It’s a lot.”
“I can take some down,” She gestured vaguely at the chaos. “I know it’s loud. And tacky. And totally ridiculous.”
I kept staring at the tree’s lopsided star, admiring the sheer, unabashed happiness of it all. Teresa turned down the volume on her phone, the music shifting from “Jingle Bells” to something quieter.
“It’s not ridiculous,” I said quietly.
“Teresa and I just realized this might be our last Christmas together,” Hannah said, her voice catching slightly. She’d do next Christmas with Eddie… and Hannah didn’t know where she’d be.
Teresa squeezed her sister's arm. “We used to go overboard at home with homemade decorations. Advent rings and paper snowflakes on every surface. We thought maybe…”
The confession hung between us, and I understood what they weren't saying. They were homesick for a version of their family that didn’t exist anymore. For a time when her parents looked at her with pride instead of disappointment. When coming home for Christmas meant warmth instead of judgment.
That surrounding themselves with brightness was a way of conjuring the ‘before.'
"But we can take it down, if it's too much," Hannah said, setting down her mug. They were both watching me carefully now, and I realized they were waiting for me to tell them it was too much, that I'd make them put my apartment back to its sterile, controlled state.
“No, it’s just…” I said, organizing the words in my mind before I could speak them aloud. My hands made shapes at my sides, almost like they could stretch the memories out of my head so I wouldn’t have to speak them.
“My mom loved Christmas,” I finally got out, the words scraping past the sudden tightness in my chest.
Hannah went very still. “Loved?”
And for just a second, I remembered Christmas three years ago: Our tiny condo in Mill Valley, all of her medical equipment stacked away to make room for decorations and space for Victoria and Alex to join us for dinner.
Spending the day in the kitchen instructing me in how to cook the sous vide and make the lattice top for the pie.
“She went overboard every year.” I forced myself to look at the tree instead of at Hannah’s face. “Candy canes, tinsel, those terrible light-up lawn ornaments that the neighbors complained about. The whole house would look like Santa’s workshop had exploded.”
I looked out the window, to where the snow was just visible on the treetops. God, she would have loved Saratoga in winter, with wreaths on every streetlight and ribbons on storefront doors.
“She tried to keep parts of Christmas alive year-round. String lights on her ficus tree in July, peppermint mocha creamer in her coffee every single morning—even in summer.” I smiled despite myself. “She said life was too short to skip peppermint eleven months a year.”
Hannah inhaled sharply.
“She died three years ago.” The words came out flat and factual. Like if I didn’t put any emotion behind them, they wouldn’t hurt as much.
I clenched the back of the kitchen chair, knuckles white, just like I’d gripped the pew at her funeral with Victoria and Alex flanking me. My vision blurred at the edges.
“I haven’t decorated since.”
Hannah stepped closer—not touching, just close enough to feel her warmth. After a moment, she slowly interlaced her fingers between mine.
I took a breath, then looked at her finally—at the glitter on her cheek, the reindeer headband listing slightly, the worry in her eyes.
“The last Christmas,” I heard myself say, “she directed me on where to put every ornament from her wheelchair. Specific instructions: ‘No, three inches to the left. The angel needs to be higher.’ She could see it perfectly in her mind, but she couldn’t do it.”
“God, Connor.” Teresa’s voice was soft from where she stood beside the tree.
I stared at the gap in the branches just above Hannah’s height where the ornaments thinned out. Mom would have hated that gap. Would have made me fix it with directions about which ornament should go where.
“She had MS—Multiple sclerosis,” I continued, because now that I’d started, I couldn’t seem to stop.
I stared down at my hands, my fingers trembling—just like her hand tremors when the nerve damage got bad—then shoved them in my pockets.
“She was sharp until the very end, but her body just… gave out. That was almost worse, you know? She knew exactly what she was losing. Could name every dream she had to give up, every milestone she’d miss. ”
The music shifted, a voice crooning, “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining." The reverent melody filled the silence I’d left.
“We can scale it back,” Hannah offered after a moment. “Make it less—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended. I softened my voice. “No, just… give me a minute.”
I walked down the hall to my bedroom and sat down on my bed, dropping my head in my hands. From the living room, I heard Hannah murmur something to Teresa, then the soft click of Teresa’s bedroom door closing, giving me space.
After I felt like my lungs had recovered, I knelt in front of my closet to find the dusty cardboard box behind my coats and place it on my bed. I’d moved it three times without ever opening it, unable to unpack it but equally unable to throw it away.
You’re supposed to be packing to leave, I thought. Not unpacking.
But my hands were already lifting the lid, folding back the tissue paper Mom had instructed me to wrap around everything, careful even at the end.
The angel lay nestled in white tissue, exactly where I’d placed her three years ago.
Porcelain face with delicate painted features.
Cream-colored robes embroidered with mistletoe, revealing wings that had once been white but had yellowed with age.
She was elegant and a little old-fashioned, the kind of decoration that belonged in a fancy department store window, not on a four-foot drugstore tree covered in cheap baubles.
Mom had loved her, putting her on top of every tree, every year, for as long as I could remember.
I carried the angel back to the living room. Hannah tried to look like she was straightening garland in the kitchen, but I could tell she was just fidgeting, waiting to see what I would do.
Neither of us spoke.
I grabbed the step stool and positioned it by the tree. The cheap star came off easily. I set it aside and unwrapped the tissue paper from the angel’s base.
Mom’s angel fit perfectly on the treetop. I adjusted her wings, made sure she was secure, then stepped down and back.
She looked out of place—too serious and fancy amid all of Hannah’s dollar-store cheer.
Tears sprang to my eyes at how perfect she looked, how much she belonged in the midst of the chaos.
“Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices," swelled the singer's voice… and for just a second, one impossible, irrational second, I could feel Mom’s approval in my bones that the angel was placed just right.
“Was that your mom’s?” Hannah’s voice was barely a whisper. “She put it on the tree?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Tried anyway. “Every year.”
The words came out rough, scraped raw.
Hannah’s fingers thread through mine. We stood there together, looking at the tree—at the chaotic joy of Hannah’s decorating crowned by my mom’s angel, elegant and serene above it all.
Hannah’s hand squeezed. “I wish I could have met her.”
“Me too.” I said finally, when I could speak past the lump in my throat. “She would have loved all of this. The chaos. The color.”
We stood like that for a long moment, the music fading into “Silent Night,” the tree lights blinking their chaotic pattern, the angel watching over us with her serene painted smile.
I pulled Hannah closer, tucking her against my side where fit perfectly, and thought the words that caught in my throat: She would have loved you.