Chapter 10
A few needles from the Christmas tree crunched under Tara’s boots as she stepped back to survey their progress.
Six days until Christmas, and the living room looked like a craft store explosion with boxes scattered everywhere, Angus wearing a red bow that kept sliding over his eyes, Bella wearing a green bow, and Ryan balanced precariously on a chair trying to hang garland.
“Ryan, that’s crooked,” Christina called from where she knelt sorting ornaments. “Unless we’re going for the ‘earthquake hit during decorating’ look.”
“It’s rustic,” he protested, adjusting the garland. “Mountain charm.”
Sam looked up from the strand of lights she’d been methodically untangling. “More like a mountain disaster,” she said dryly. “But hey, at least it’s consistent with everything else around here.”
Despite the sarcasm, Tara caught the ghost of a smile tugging at Sam’s lips. The girl had been here three days now, sleeping on the pullout sofa in Christina and Ryan’s apartment, and she wielded wit like armor, deflecting kindness before it could get too close.
“Christina, would you grab the box of silver ornaments from the garage?” Tara asked, noting how her daughter had been moving slowly all afternoon, attributing it to the long week they’d all had.
As Christina headed toward the garage, Tara heard voices, Emily and Evan in the kitchen, their conversation carrying the particular tension of a couple trying not to fight during the holidays.
“—realistic about what opportunities actually exist here,” Emily was saying, one hand unconsciously resting on her rounded belly.
“I’m trying,” Evan’s voice was strained. “But I can’t manufacture jobs that don’t exist.”
Will appeared at Tara’s elbow, carrying a stepladder. “Want me to handle the high spots?” he asked quietly, his presence instantly grounding her. This was what partnership looked like, showing up without being asked, anticipating needs.
“Please,” she said, catching the scent of his aftershave mixed with pine. “Before Ryan falls and ruins Christmas.”
From the kitchen came the sound of cabinet doors closing a bit too hard, and Tara saw Emily emerge alone, forcing a bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“How’s it coming along?” Emily asked, settling carefully into the armchair.
“Like herding cats,” Sam said, holding up a particularly tangled section of lights. “But cats with Christmas spirit, so that’s something.”
Ryan laughed, the sound warm, so different from the quiet boy who’d arrived in November. “Sam’s got a point. Angus keeps trying to help by stealing ornament hooks.”
The brown mutt in question wagged his tail enthusiastically, completely unaware that the red bow had slipped over one eye, giving him a distinctly lopsided appearance.
“He looks ridiculous,” Sam observed, but Tara heard affection underneath the mock criticism.
“We should get you a stocking,” Christina said suddenly, returning with the ornament box. “And one for Bella too.”
Sam’s hands stilled on the lights. For a moment, vulnerability flickered across her face before the walls went back up. “Don’t go to any trouble. We might not even be here for Christmas.”
The casual words hit Tara like a punch. Of course, Sam was already planning her exit strategy. The girl had probably never spent more than a week anywhere without someone deciding she was too much trouble.
“Where would you go?” Her daughter asked, with genuine confusion in her voice.
Sam shrugged, with a careful nonchalance that came from years of practice. “Somewhere warmer, probably. Bella’s not really built for snow, and neither am I.”
“But—” Ryan started.
“It’s fine,” Sam cut him off, her tone suggesting the subject was closed. “I’m used to moving around.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room. Even Angus seemed to sense the shift, padding over to Sam and resting his head on her knee.
“Sam,” Tara said gently, “could you help me bring in more firewood? I could use an extra pair of hands.”
Sam looked suspicious but nodded, setting down the lights. They bundled into their coats and stepped onto the porch, where the temperature had dropped as the sun went down.
“You didn’t really need help, not with the guys around,” Sam said, hefting a piece of split oak. “That was an excuse to get me alone.”
She smiled despite herself. “You’re perceptive.”
“Have to be.” Sam’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Survival skill.”
They worked in silence for a moment, the only sounds were the creak of their boots on the porch boards and the distant call of a hawk somewhere up the mountain.
“You’re sixteen,” Tara said finally.
“So?”
“So that’s too young to be on your own. Too young to be living in a car, making decisions about where to spend Christmas like you’re some kind of drifter. Not finishing school.”
Sam’s jaw tightened. “I’ve been taking care of myself just fine.”
“I’m sure you have. But you shouldn’t have to.”
“Look,” Sam said, turning to face her, “I appreciate what you’re doing here. The food, the couch, whatever this is. But I’m not some charity case you can fix.”
“I don’t think you’re a charity case.”
“Then what am I?”
Tara studied the girl’s face, too thin, too wary, but with an intelligence that blazed behind the defensive walls. “You’re a kid who’s been dealt a crappy hand. And you’re smart enough to know that doesn’t mean you have to keep playing it alone.”
Sam was quiet for a long moment. “People always want something,” she said finally. “Even when they pretend they don’t.”
“What do you think I want?”
“I don’t know yet.” Sam picked up another piece of wood, avoiding Tara’s eyes. “But everyone wants something. And when I can’t give it to them, they move on.”
The simple honesty broke her heart. “What if I told you the only thing I want is for you to be safe?”
“I’d say you don’t know me well enough to want that.”
“Maybe not. But I know what it’s like to have your world fall apart when you’re not ready to handle it.”
Sam glanced at her sharply. “Your world fell apart when you were sixteen?”
“Later than that. I thought I had everything figured out. Marriage, kids, the whole picture. Then one day I found out my husband had been having an affair, and not just with Ryan’s mom but with lots of other women.
” Tara’s voice caught slightly. “Turns out my husband had a child with not one, but two women.”
“That sucks,” Sam said quietly.
“What sucked was realizing how blind I’d been.
How I’d built my whole life around someone who was already gone.
” She picked up another piece of wood, the rough bark scratching against her gloves as the old memories flooded in.
“Not the same as what you’ve been through, but I know what it feels like when everything you thought you could count on just.. . disappears.”
They finished stacking the wood on the porch in comfortable silence. As they headed back inside, Sam paused at the door.
“The stocking thing,” she said quietly. “Maybe just a temporary one. In case we’re still here.”
Her chest tightened with something that felt dangerously close to hope. “Temporary works.”
* * *
Christina’s stomach lurched as she bent to pick up a fallen ornament, the nausea hitting her in waves that seemed to come out of nowhere. She pressed a hand to her mouth, breathing carefully through her nose until the feeling passed.
“You okay?” Ryan asked from where he was wrestling with tree lights.
“Just moved too fast,” she lied, straightening slowly. The cottage felt stuffy suddenly, the scent of pine and cinnamon overwhelming rather than festive.
Through the window, she could see her mother and Sam on the porch, their conversation too quiet to hear but intense enough that Sam’s usual defensive posture had shifted into something more uncertain.
From the kitchen came the murmur of Emily and Evan’s voices, still carrying that undercurrent of stress that had followed them since they’d arrived.
Christina caught fragments, something about job interviews and realistic expectations, before Evan’s footsteps crossed the kitchen floor with more force than necessary.
“Everything okay in there?” Will called toward the kitchen.
“Fine,” Evan appeared in the doorway, his smile too tight. “Just discussing logistics.”
Emily emerged behind him, her face carefully neutral except for the slight tightness around her eyes. “The joys of adulting,” she said lightly, but Christina heard the strain underneath.
“Tell me about it,” Christina muttered, then flushed when everyone looked at her. “I mean, you know. Work stuff.”
But watching Emily and Evan, she saw what tension looked like in a marriage. The careful politeness that meant they were holding back words that might cut too deep. It made her think of her parents before the divorce, the way they’d smiled at dinner parties while barely speaking at home.
Her mother and Sam came back inside, stamping snow off their boots, and Christina noticed a subtle shift in Sam’s posture. Still guarded, but maybe fractionally less ready to bolt.
“Firewood’s stocked,” her mother announced, unwinding her scarf. “Should last us through the week.”
“Good,” Will said, climbing down from the ladder. “Because according to the weather report, we’re getting another storm tomorrow night.”
“Perfect timing,” Emily said dryly. “Nothing like being snowed in with family drama.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them, and an uncomfortable silence fell over the room. Evan’s jaw tightened, and Christina saw him start to say something before thinking better of it.
“Drama makes the holidays more interesting,” Sam said finally, her tone deliberately light. “Otherwise, it’s just food and forced cheer.”
The tension broke with surprised laughter, and Christina felt a rush of gratitude toward the girl who’d just deflected a potential family explosion with perfectly timed sarcasm.
Will adjusted the fishing line so that Mandy wouldn’t topple the tree.
The cat was asleep over at her sister’s tiny cottage, with Colton’s dog Daisy.
But her mom was convinced that if the cat was inside, the little monster would have a field day with all the ornaments.
Will moved to the stepladder without being asked, reaching for the high spots on the tree while her mother directed from below.
There was an ease between them that felt genuine, the kind of partnership she’d always imagined but never quite believed in or found.
“Hand me that star?” Will asked, and Tara passed it up without hesitation, their fingers brushing in a moment so natural it might have been choreographed.
“Show-offs,” Christina said, but she was smiling. This was what love looked like when it worked. A kind of quiet support instead of dramatic gestures, presence instead of promises.
Her phone buzzed with a text from her friend Jackie.
Missing Miami yet? Heard there’s actual snow up there—gross!
Christina stared at the message, remembering the girl she’d been just months ago before Ryan had shown up and turned her life upside down.
That version of herself seemed like a stranger now, someone who’d made decisions without thinking about consequences, who’d lived for the moment without considering what came next.
The memory of that last night in Miami surfaced before she could stop it.
The party, the drop-dead gorgeous stranger with the easy smile, the reckless need to feel free just one last time before everything changed.
She’d been so determined to prove she could make her own choices, so desperate to escape the suffocating safety of her old life.
Now, watching her family work together to create something beautiful, she felt the weight of secrets pressing against her chest. Something was wrong with her body, something that made her exhausted and nauseous and terrified in equal measure.
Her friend Maria’s face flashed through her mind, as it had too often lately. Maria, who’d complained about stomach problems for months before finally seeing a doctor. “It’s probably just stress,” she’d kept saying, the same words Christina had been repeating to herself like a prayer.
Three weeks. That’s all the time Maria had between diagnosis and the funeral. Pancreatic and liver cancer.
“Christina?” Sam’s voice broke through her spiraling thoughts. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Just tired,” she said automatically, then caught the knowing look in Sam’s eyes. The girl was too perceptive, too used to reading people’s pain.
“Long week,” Sam agreed, but there was something almost gentle in her tone, as if she recognized the weight of carrying secrets.
“We should start thinking about dinner? I was planning to make that chicken and dumplings recipe.” Her mom looked so happy with all of them there. Who would have ever thought she’d be back, basically living with her mom as an adult? Life was funny.
“I can help,” Emily offered, pushing herself up from the chair. “If you don’t mind a sous chef who moves like a penguin.”
As the late afternoon wore on, Christina found herself watching the dynamics around her with new eyes.
The way Will anticipated her mother’s needs without hovering.
How Ryan included Sam in every conversation while giving her space to retreat.
The careful dance Emily and Evan performed around each other, all politeness and unspoken tension.
And underneath it all, her own secret pressed against her ribs like something alive and demanding. Six days until Christmas. Maybe by then she’d have the courage to find out what was wrong with her. Maybe by then she’d stop being afraid of doctors and tests and answers that might change everything.