Chapter 31
Zoltán
Home didn’t feel like home. The dogs didn’t even act the same.
And it had been months. I’d tried to spend Christmas alone. I’d been denied my solitude, even after Derek moved back home.
Mum wanted to spend Christmas together.
Which meant my brother and I had to make up. Or pretend to.
With the dogs, I refused to leave the house. They weren’t about to spend the holidays alone. Not on my watch.
So on Christmas Eve, Benedek arrived at midday, in joggers and a Christmas jumper.
I didn’t care for tradition. I didn’t want to decorate the tree with him.
I could hardly look at his fucking face.
Mum tried to beat joy into the room with festive music, and I turned it up until I couldn’t hear him updating her on his life. He spoke to her fluently in Kriolu — showing off — and, for once, I found comfort in ignorance.
Whatever he had to say, he could do it away from me.
Whatever had happened to him since my demise could happen elsewhere.
Imre sang along, a few gins deep, and his mother fell asleep on the sofa before lunch.
No one mentioned Fia.
Her name popped into my thoughts as consistently as breathing. And when I saw her nagyi, I had to literally bite my tongue to stop myself from blurting her name.
I wondered if she knew what had happened. Did they avoid anything to do with her because of me, or because of her?
Imre brought a sack of presents in from his car and placed them under the tree beside mine. Well, the gifts people would receive from me. Anna, my housekeeper, had put together a list, forced me to check it over, then bought and wrapped them before she left to spend the holiday with her family.
There was only one present I had bought and wrapped with my clumsy fingers.
The present itself would be a Christmas miracle.
Imre was kneeling at the tree, unloading his bag, humming along like a good little elf — he was permanently on my bad list — when he suddenly stopped, lifting a box, tied with a drooping bow. His head was bent, staring down at the label.
I was lying on the floor, resting back on the sofa that Fia’s nagyi slept on.
He threw a glare over his shoulder, and it answered the question I didn’t have the energy to ask.
He hadn’t bought her a present in case she came.
“She’s not coming, is she?” he asked, panic rising in his voice.
I could only wish.
“Who?” Benedek asked, took a swig of his drink, and looked down at the gift. “Oh.”
“Is she coming?” Imre pressed.
I only gestured to his mother and pressed a finger to my lips. That was enough from him.
His nostrils flared. “Zoltán. Is Fia coming?”
A utensil made a clattering noise, splattering the fish soup Mum was making. “Is she?” Mum asked.
The slow rustle of the blanket behind me made me lower my voice and shuffle away. “I doubt it.”
Imre sighed with relief, and he was lucky I didn’t stab him with a candy-cane. That was his daughter.
Not that he should have the privilege of being her father.
I hauled myself up and tried to casually leave the room out into the garden, shutting them all into the house.
Bodri had followed me. When he sat beside me, I tried to usher him inside. “Come on, wigglebutt, it’s too cold for you.”
But like a true best friend, he refused to budge.
My garden was always a place of comfort, but it hardly cut it these days. Not when she’d put her stamp on every corner of the place.
Even the fresh, crisp air felt more like a brittle, painful cut to my sinuses than the relief it used to bring.
I needed her. Her voice. Her words. Her.
My phone trembled in my hand as I went onto my call list. It had been at least two weeks since I’d last called in a moment of weakness.
This was a moment of need.
It didn’t even ring. I was still blocked. But it gave me the option to leave a voicemail as always.
I always stumbled, wanting to talk in English to show her my progress and how much I was trying. But I wasn’t good enough just yet.
“Hey, I’m sorry to call. Again. I… I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.
And… and I wanted to tell you I miss you and I’m so sorry.
I don’t know if that’s fair to say. I don’t know what to say anymore.
I just… I only want the best for you, Fia.
And I understand that the best for you means— it means…
” I tried to take a shaky breath, leaning against the pillar.
Once, from this exact angle, I’d watched her flirt with me as she planted her vegetables.
“It means that’s probably a life without me.
” My voice broke, but I coughed to cover it as the door briefly rolled open behind me.
“And that’s understandable. I just… I’m here.
I’m always here if you’d like.” I lowered my voice so that Mum wouldn’t hear. “Merry Christmas, Fia.”
Before turning to her and letting her smile at me with pity, I got up my texts to Everly.
ZOLTáN: Please give Fia good holiday.
A voice cut through the cold air and stopped me from pressing send.
“Was that Zsófia?” her nagyi asked. She had the blanket she’d curled up in around her. “How is her Christmas?”
“I… um, I don’t know.” I tapped the phone with the palm of one hand, then passed it to the other to do the same, building an anxious rhythm. “It went to voicemail.”
“She’s probably busy,” she said and nodded. She inhaled deeply, eyes closed, her exhale visible in the winter air. “She always liked to fill her time when she didn’t want to think.”
“You don’t have to wait outside with me,” I said, gesturing her back inside. “Let’s go in. It’s cold—”
“I love the outdoors,” she said, eyes still closed, smiling. “And if I have to listen to Benedek talk about my granddaughter again, I’ll dirty his boots and fill them with virgács. Presents be damned.”
I laughed at her threat and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, stroking her arm to warm her up. “He’s a dick.”
“He’s a piece of shit.”
I choked on my laughter. Maybe Fia’s sass wasn’t all from Everly.
“I’m waiting for you to give him what he deserves. I’m ready to cheer you on.”
“You’re a bad influence, Nagyi. I’ve got to keep the peace for Christmas.”
She shook her head. “No. He broke the peace months ago.”
We stood in the bitter breeze, watching Bodri chase a rogue fly, barking at it.
Her petite frame suddenly jolted, and she pointed to Fia’s vegetable patch. “The sprouts will be lovely and sweet after this frost.”
Mum had asked if she could use some of the vegetables Fia had planted. Originally, I had told her no and let whatever grew rot.
But I couldn’t watch her hard work go to waste.
Even if I hesitated, I didn’t want to trespass on her garden.
But her nagyi smiled at them, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening.
“You want to pick some?”
“Harvest, Zoltán,” she corrected with that soft smile. “You’re the one who’s been looking after them while she’s gone. Use the correct terms.”
I laughed again, and we got to work breaking them off the stems until our fingers were numb.
They wouldn’t go well with the soup, but we could use them for dinner tomorrow. Imre was big on tradition.
Nagyi was having none of it. She got straight to work, trimming the ends, peeling the leaves, and washing them.
Mum watched her with a slight frown, more confused than anything, and when Imre went to protest, she threw them down in the sink.
“We are having them with our soup. If you all refuse to go and pick up my granddaughter, if you all refuse to grow up, I will have her here in whatever form I can.” She lifted a spatula.
“You don’t have to have them, but you will let an old lady do whatever she wants. ”
She had truly woken from her nap and chosen violence.
Everyone returned to silently decorating the tree, and my brother and I went back to ignoring each other, though I couldn’t stop my top lip from curling on the odd occasion I saw him through the branches of the tree. So nonchalant. So at peace.
So innocent.
Then it slipped, and he looked haggard, his expression one of pure misery. Mum called us for dinner, and his expression shifted, a bright, overcompensated smile on his face as he turned to her. He was better at faking medical results than Christmas cheer.
Nagyi placed the steaming dish of sprouts in the middle of the table, and the same spatula she’d threatened us all with scooped a healthy amount onto her plate. She loaded it again and stared at us all in turn until everyone hesitantly agreed.
I offered her my plate before she even looked at me.
We ate mostly in silence, just the horrible slurping sound of my family drinking their soup.
Benedek wolfed his down and then rolled his sprouts around the plate, right into the bowl that sat there, like he was playing some fork football.
“You not going to eat those?” I asked.
The room stilled. Mum placed down her spoon. It was the first thing I’d said to him.
I was already reaching over, but Nagyi put her hand on mine, stopping me from stealing them.
“The polite thing to do would be to eat them,” Nagyi said. She gestured to the three empty seats we reserved every Christmas. “I’m sure it’s what your grandfather and father would have done. My husband would.”
My head dived to stare at my plate, to hide my bulging eyes.
She hadn’t chosen violence — it was war.
But she was right. Simon Farkas would never have refused a little old lady’s sprouts on Christmas Eve.
“You should be grateful you have the food on your plate and the family around your table.”
“Mother,” Imre warned.
My mum waved him off, but it was my words that halted our evening. “You should be grateful there isn’t another empty chair.”
“Is that a threat?” Benedek snarled, pushing his chair back from the table and gripping his fork so tight his knuckles paled.
“No.” It could be.
I pointed at myself. “You put me in a dangerous position.”
“And I’ve apologised!” he roared.
“Through Mum.” I shoved another sprout in my mouth. “An apology through another person doesn’t really count when you gambled with my health and Fia’s name.”