Chapter 28
Tom
Tom shut the door with his shoulder after the last trip in. Snow still clung to his coat.
He opened the first box carefully.
Color bloomed against the cardboard: ribbons, baubles, angels. The smell of glue and cloves and that indefinable sweetness that was Lauren herself.
He lifted out a felt stocking, red and hand-sewn, his name stitched across it in bold white thread.
He pressed it to his face and exhaled.
Then came the garlands, the pinecones she’d spray-painted gold.
This was what he’d thought was tacky.
This was what he’d told her to tone down.
He reached for a mason jar, its lid crusted with glitter. Inside, a Polaroid floated—him and Lauren, bundled in scarves, cheeks pink from cold, standing in front of their house. Fake snow drifted slowly around their frozen smiles.
The photo had slipped sideways, caught against the glass. A tiny world slightly off balance. He shook it until the photo sat correctly.
The glitter swirled around the image, flickering across their faces.
He held the jar close, the flakes settling.
Tom leaned back against the wall, surrounded by the evidence of her.
He’d spent five years trying to provide for her—to be steady, respectable, the man who could buy the things she deserved.
But she hadn’t needed money or marble countertops or a husband who looked good on paper.
She’d needed warmth. Support. Someone to build a life with her instead of for her.
He’d mistaken his paycheck for proof of worth, traded his soul for stability.
He’d needed her. He still did. But she’d never needed him.
He looked around at the tangle of ribbon and glitter, the proof of her joy scattered at his feet.
Lauren had filled his world with Christmas magic, and he’d ruined it.
Tom sat on the couch and tried the TV. The sound was too loud. He turned it off. The stillness was unbearable.
He paced the living room like a man waiting for news that would never come. The house—Linda and Gerald’s house—was too warm, too quiet, full of family photos where everyone was smiling, loved, safe. A life that wasn’t his, not really.
He tried stretching out the quilt across his lap again, but the weight of it crushed him. Every crooked line. Every tiny, hopeful scene. He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum like he could force the ache back down.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Lauren’s face on Christmas night—hurt softening into something worse: realization.
Her voice shaking when she said get out.
Tom pushed a hand through his hair and stood again, restless. He walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge. He slammed it shut.
The overhead light buzzed.
He rubbed both palms over his face. “Jesus,” he whispered to no one. “What did I do?”
The truth pressed harder than the dark around him: he had hurt the woman he loved.
He walked back to the boxes. Sat on the floor again. Picked up a bit of gold ribbon. Ran it through his fingers.
What had he been thinking? What version of himself had believed “tone it down” was something you said to the woman who spent hours making everything beautiful?
He checked the time on his phone.
Almost dawn.
He lay down on the rug, arm over his eyes, the quiet humming like static in his ears.
He lasted all of thirty seconds.
The walls felt too close. His skin felt wrong. His thoughts kept circling, faster, darker—
She needed someone better than him.
She deserved someone better than him.
Tom sat up sharply, breath unsteady.
If she needed someone better, then that was who he would become.
Tom laced his running shoes in the dark entryway.
He needed to move. Needed to think. Needed to do something other than stare at that mason jar and feel his chest crack open.
The neighborhood was quiet, that suspended pre-dawn stillness where the world held its breath between night and morning.
The air burned his lungs as he started to run. His feet hit the pavement in a steady rhythm, his breath clouding in the icy chill.
Lauren’s childhood street wasn’t like the one he’d grown up on. The houses were smaller, closer together. Christmas still clung on in this neighborhood in early January—strings of colored bulbs, drooping wreaths, plastic snowmen half-buried in real snow.
He jogged past a house with inflatable candy canes, a reindeer that turned its head mechanically from side to side.
The kind of display that would make his parents cringe. The kind Lauren would love. She loved Christmas.
Tom's pace faltered.
He could see her face so clearly—eyes bright as she’d shown him each square of that quilt. She'd been glowing. Offering him her whole heart, every patchwork stitch of it.
The truth battered him, sharp and sudden as cold air in his lungs.
He was a coward. Every careful, neutral choice he’d made—every time he’d wished she would tone it down—hadn’t been about standards. It had been about shame. His shame.
He’d worried about what his parents were thinking. Worried about how it looked.
Her joy had been so open, so pure, that it had embarrassed him.
He’d wanted her to be appropriate.
He’d wanted her to hide her joy so he wouldn’t have to feel ashamed of it.
How could he have been such a bastard?
He was running fast now, feet pounding against the frozen pavement.
Past more houses, more lights. A rooftop covered in LEDs, Santa straddling a sleigh, a dozen candy canes stabbing through the snow.
Tacky. Excessive.
But someone had climbed up there in the freezing cold, fingers numb, cheeks burning, to make it happen.
Because it made them happy.
Because it made someone else smile.
Just like Lauren.
Tom stopped running and bent double, gasping. The air sliced through his chest. The sick feeling he’d been carrying for days twisted sharper.
He wanted to throw up. Not from the run, but from himself—from the smug, superior man who’d thought he was right.
How could he have ever looked at her joy and felt embarrassment?
He thought of his parents’ house—white on white. Perfect. Polite.
So different from Lauren’s parents’ home—messy, mismatched, full of handmade decorations.
“The man I married is ashamed of who I am.”
He straightened slowly, staring down the street as the first light of dawn began to creep across the snow. The world shifted from gray to gold.
He wasn’t going to merely tolerate her excess. He wanted to step into it—into her world of joy and mess and color. He wanted to learn the shape of her happiness the way he once learned blueprints and measurements. He wanted to build something with her, not box her in.
He wanted her Christmas—and all the chaotic, glitter-filled, handmade craft that came with it.
Tom started walking back, chest tight, breath still coming hard.
It didn’t matter if his parents disapproved or if the world thought she was too much.
What mattered was Lauren.
The snow globe rode to work in the cupholder.
Every turn in the road made the glitter stir; every bump sent another flurry of silver over the tiny, tilted photograph of them.
It shouldn’t have mattered this much—just a jar, just a bit of water and glue—but it felt alive. Like something breathing under glass.
At the office, the fluorescents hummed and the heater rattled in the vents. The air smelled faintly of burnt coffee and printer paper—orderly, colorless.
Tom paused in the doorway of his office.
He could already hear his father’s voice in his head.
Understated.
Safe.
Soulless.
He set the snow globe on the corner of his drafting table. It looked absurd—too personal, too handmade, too bright. Glitter against brushed steel. Love against logic.
The sunlight caught in the liquid, scattering tiny sparks across the papers on his table. The reflection trembled on the page—light in motion, breaking the perfect lines he’d drawn.
He watched the flakes settle.
Their faces—his and Lauren’s—came back into view, still smiling in that captured winter.
He touched the glass.