Chapter 8
Lauren
Lauren stood at the sink, mechanically rinsing plates while the sounds of satisfied conversation drifted from the living room.
"Let me help with those," Mia said, appearing beside her with an armload of serving dishes. "You've done so much already."
The pendant caught the kitchen light as Mia moved, a tiny flash of silver at her throat.
"Thank you." Lauren's voice sounded normal to her own ears, which was something of a miracle.
"That quilt is incredible," Mia continued, setting down the dishes. The necklace swayed as she leaned forward. "The amount of work that must have taken. Tom's so lucky."
It was like trying not to look at a car accident. Every movement Mia made sent light dancing off the silver heart—the one Lauren had dreamed about, the one that was supposed to show the world he cherished her.
The envelope sat on the counter where she'd left it. Practical. Impersonal. Containing five hundred dollars and the death of whatever illusions she'd been clinging to.
"Are you okay?" Mia murmured. "Really?"
Lauren dried her hands on a tea towel she'd embellished with holly leaves.
She caught her reflection in the darkened window above the sink. Red sweater. Home-dyed highlights. Candy cane earrings.
A joke.
This was how Tom's family saw her, wasn't it? How Tom saw her.
"I'm fine," she said, and the lie felt as thin as tissue paper.
Her hands moved automatically, folding the tea towel with precise corners even though everything inside her felt disconnected and far away.
She was numb. Floating somewhere outside her body, watching herself go through the motions of cleaning up, of being a good hostess, of pretending that the last few hours hadn't just dismantled everything she thought she knew about her marriage.
The quilt folded and set aside. Tom's patronizing compliment. The necklace on Mia's throat. The envelope she'd opened with such hope.
Buy yourself something nice.
If she started thinking too hard about any of it, she might shatter right here on the kitchen floor, and there were still plates to wash and guests to smile at and a performance to maintain.
"Lauren," Mia said softly, and there was something in her voice—empathy, maybe, or just pity—that made Lauren's throat tight.
"I need to finish washing up,” Lauren said, turning back to the sink. The water ran hot over her hands, but even that felt distant.
She had to keep moving. Keep cleaning. Keep her face arranged in an expression of pleasant efficiency.
After everyone left. After she didn't have to perform anymore. She could fall apart then.
Lauren was stacking the last of the clean plates when she heard the soft click of heels on the tile.
“You really do know how to make a house… festive,” Judith said. Her voice was smooth as polished silver.
Judith’s gaze drifted past her to the counter, where the envelope still lay. “So thoughtful of him,” she said lightly.
Lauren’s throat tightened. “Yes. Very.”
Judith moved closer. “And so much more practical than that silly quilt.”
Lauren nodded mechanically, hands twisting the damp dish towel.
“How interesting,” Judith said, running her manicured nail along a garland of dried orange slices.
Lauren felt her smile strain at the corners.
“You’ve such a… hands-on spirit,”Judith said, voice soft as powdered sugar. “Perhaps next year you could use that money Tom gave you. Buy some nicer ornaments.”
Nicer ornaments.
Lauren could feel the heat rising in her face. She managed a small nod.
Judith smoothed an invisible wrinkle from her sleeve and turned away.
Lauren stared at the envelope on the counter.
She just needed to keep herself from breaking until everyone left.
She heard Tom close the front door, heard his footsteps coming back into the living room. Lauren kept her eyes down, focused on the torn ribbons and discarded bows scattered across the floor.
Her vision blurred for half a second. She blinked hard. She would not cry. Not now. Not in front of him.
She shoved wrapping paper into the garbage bag, her movements automatic. Crumple, stuff, repeat. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just clean up the mess.
The mess of her perfect Christmas. The mess of her stupid, foolish hope.
“Thank God that’s over for another year,” Tom said behind her.
A tiny, involuntary breath escaped her—thin and shaky. She kept her gaze on the trash bag so he wouldn’t see her eyes shining.
She couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him, the numbness might crack, and she needed it to hold just a little longer.
“Next year, let’s not host.”
She swallowed hard. Her throat felt tight, the pressure of a tear she refused to let fall.
The quilt sat folded on the side table. Set aside like it was nothing.
“Lauren. Mom and Dad are right. You go overboard every year and it’s not…it’s not…” He trailed off. “We need to tone things down for next Christmas.”
She focused on smoothing out a piece of crumpled tissue paper.
“The decorations, the whole... production of it all. It’s all just... it’s kind of cringe.”
The tissue paper tore in her hands.
Cringe?
She looked down at the ripped paper in her hands. A tear slipped out and landed on it before she could swipe it away.
Everything made a terrible kind of sense now.
The way his parents looked at her decorations every Christmas—very festive, how industrious—with barely concealed contempt. The way Tom had never once defended her, never once told them to stop, just sat there while they made their cutting remarks.
She lifted her head and looked at her husband, blinking through traitorous tears that refused to stay inside, stay hidden.
He agreed with them.
He'd always agreed with them.
She'd spent five years of marriage making him handmade gifts, decorating their home with love and care and devotion, pouring herself into every craft project and homemade gesture, and all this time—all this time—he'd thought it was “cringe”.
“Cringe,” she repeated, her voice flat. Distant. Like it belonged to someone else. Another tear slid hotly down her cheek.
She’d decorated and crafted and poured herself into making this day special, making their home warm, making his family comfortable. She’d smiled through Judith’s contempt and Richard’s weighted pauses and Tom’s silence—his damning, cowardly silence.
And now he wanted to tell her it was all embarrassing?
That she was embarrassing?
She thought under the numbness would be sadness. Grief. Shame.
But instead it was white-hot rage.
It burned away the numbness, the shock, every bit of careful control. Something inside her—something she’d been holding together all night—finally cracked.
She couldn’t stand it—couldn’t stand to be near him, not here, not in this house she’d tried so hard to make theirs. Not in the ruins of her perfect Christmas dreams.
The rage surged, wild and uncontrollable, filling every corner of her—too much to swallow, too much to keep inside.
“Get out.”
Tom blinked at her. “What?”
“Get out of my house.”
Tom took a step back, palms raised. “Okay, whoa. Calm down. You’re tired, you’re—”
“Get out!” Tears streaked freely now, hot and furious, spilling faster the angrier she became.
Lauren had never shouted at Tom before. Never been anything but sweet and accommodating.
The anger surprised her—how good it felt, how alive it made her.
“Lauren, you’re being—”
This was the man she’d married. The man she’d given her heart.
And tonight he’d taken that stupid heart of hers and crushed it under his foot. Right in front of her. Right in front of everyone.
Anger and anguish tangled together until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The crushing realization that she’d spent so many years loving someone who thought she was gauche and cringe and embarrassing.
“I made that for you. I poured myself into it.” She pointed at the folded quilt on the side table. Her hand was shaking. “And you wrote me a check. A fucking check, Tom.”
“Lauren—”
Fresh tears—sharp, unstoppable—blurred her vision until he became nothing but a smear of shape and color.
She was already moving. Up the stairs, her breath coming fast. She yanked open his dresser drawers, grabbed fistfuls of clothes, shoved them into a duffel.
A framed photo of them on their wedding day sat in damning judgment on the dresser. She’d been so naive, so stupid, so happy.
Tears dripped down her face as she lifted the duffel. She didn’t bother wiping them away.
She stomped back down the stairs. Tom was still standing in the living room.
“Lauren, this is insane. Let’s just calm down and talk about this like adults—”
She hurled the bag at him. “Go be sane somewhere else.”
All that love she’d poured into Christmas, into him—it curdled into something sharp and bitter. She looked at the quilt, still sitting where he’d left it. Folded, unwanted.
Her vision swam. “I feel so stupid,” she whispered.
She grabbed it, pressed it to her chest for one aching moment—its soft weight, its familiar scent, a physical reminder of every bit of love she’d wasted.
Then she shoved it into his arms. “Get out and take this with you.”
All her careful joy, all her magic—it had turned to ashes in her hands.
“I can’t—” Her voice cracked so violently she almost choked on it. “I can’t bear to look at it.”
She put her hands on his chest and pushed. He stumbled backward, the duffel over one shoulder, the quilt clutched awkwardly in his arms.
"Sleep somewhere else tonight. Anywhere else. Just not here."
She could feel his body under her palms, steady and strong, and she hated that some part of her still registered it, still wanted to curl into that chest and pretend everything was okay.
Nothing was okay.
She needed him gone—just for tonight, just long enough that she could breathe without feeling like she was drowning.
“Out,” she said, still pushing him toward the door, tears streaking down her face, breath breaking in painful, uneven gasps. “Out, out, out.”
She shoved him over the threshold onto the porch. His mouth opened to say something—
Lauren slammed the door in his face.
For a long moment, she just stood there, chest heaving.
Then she sank to the floor.
The tears were coming harder now, great gasping sobs that tore from her chest.
The house was full of Christmas. Snowflakes, garlands, the elaborate centerpiece still on the dining room table.
All of it felt unbearable. It was proof of how hard she’d tried.
How much she’d loved him.
How little it had mattered.
The lights from the tree blinked softly, casting color over the wreck of wrapping paper and ribbon, over the remnants of her perfect Christmas.
Lauren pulled her knees to her chest and felt herself break.