18. Chapter 18 Alex
They went into the kitchen for the pie, and I was alone in the living room for the first time.
The stocking stuff was spread out on the couch beside me. A toothbrush. Peanut M&Ms. Wool socks. ChapStick. A dollar-store sock with ALEX in Sharpie. I ran my thumb over the letters. Her handwriting. Steady, slanted slightly left.
My phone was on the cushion. Face-down. I hadn't looked at it all morning. I'd felt it buzz twice during the stocking and I'd ignored it because this was Christmas morning in Liam's house and I wasn't going to let anything outside this room touch it.
I picked it up.
Three notifications.
The first was from my bank. Account alert. I opened it and the number on the screen was zero. Not low. Zero. The checking account my parents had set up when I was sixteen, the one where my monthly allowance was deposited, the one I'd used for gas and food and everything. Zeroed out. Frozen.
A line at the bottom: Contact your account administrator for details.
My account administrator was my father.
The second was an email from Kingswell's bursar's office.
Subject line: SPRING REGISTRATION — HOLD.
I opened it. Dear Alexander Harrington: Your spring semester registration has been placed on administrative hold due to an outstanding balance.
Tuition payment for the spring term has not been received.
Please contact the bursar's office to discuss payment options before January 15.
Not received. Because nobody was sending it. Because the man who'd been sending it had decided his son wasn't worth the invoice.
The third was from a name I didn't recognize. An attorney. Re: Harrington Family Trust — Notice of Beneficiary Status Change. I didn't open it. I didn't need to. I knew what it said. The same thing my father had said in the study two days ago in his termination-letter voice.
You are no longer a part of this family in any way that is relevant to me.
I'd known it was coming. I'd known since I walked out the door.
But knowing it was coming and seeing the numbers on a screen were different things.
The disowning in the study had been emotional.
Loud. Two men shouting across a desk. This was quiet.
My father hadn't shouted at the bank. He'd just made a phone call, and my life had a zero in it.
I put the phone face-down on the cushion.
I couldn't afford to go back to school. The thought arrived flat. No drama. Just arithmetic. Tuition, room, board. Tens of thousands of dollars I didn't have and couldn't earn at a marina in December. My father had cut the floor out, and I was standing on nothing.
In the kitchen, I could hear Liam and his mom talking. Low voices. The sound of a knife on a plate. A cabinet opening and closing.
I pressed my palms into my eyes for three seconds. Breathed.
Not today. Not with the stocking next to you and her coffee in your hands.
I wiped my face. Sat up straight. Put the phone in my pocket where I couldn't see the screen.
They came back in. Linda carrying the pie dish on a folded towel, Liam behind her with three plates and forks balanced in his hands. He set them on the coffee table, and his mom cut a slice and handed it to me.
"Gas-station pie," she said.
I took it. Looked at it. "This looks incredible."
"It is," she said, settling into her armchair and tucking her feet under her.
I took a bite. It was absurdly good. Too sweet, too much filling, not enough crust. Perfect. I closed my eyes at the first bite.
"Oh my god," I said.
"Told you," Linda said.
Liam sat beside me on the couch. His knee against mine. He was eating his pie and looking at the tree, and something in his face was soft and private, like he was having a thought he wasn't ready to share.
We ate in silence for a few minutes. The morning light through the front window and the smell of bacon still in the air from earlier.
Liam's mom set her plate on the side table. Stood up. Walked to the kitchen. I heard a drawer open. She came back holding something small in her hand.
"Alex."
"Yes?"
She was standing in front of me. She held out her hand and opened it. A single house key on a plain metal ring.
"There's a home here for you," she said.
The zero on my phone. The hold on my registration. The attorney's email in my pocket. And this woman standing in front of me in her robe and slippers, holding out a key to a house that was worth less than my father's watch, and it was the most valuable thing anyone had ever given me.
My jaw locked. My eyes burned. I took the key from her palm and held it, and I could barely speak.
"Really?"
"Yes, you have a home here."
"Thank you," I said. My voice broke on it. "Thank you so much."
She smiled. Stepped toward me. I stood up, and she wrapped her arms around me, and I was taller than her by almost a foot and my face went into her shoulder and she held me the way mothers are supposed to hold their children, without conditions, without a folder on the desk, without a deadline.
"You're welcome, honey," she said. "It's going to be okay. We're here for you."
I held on. Longer than I meant to. When I pulled back, my face was wet, and I wiped it with my sleeve, and she squeezed my arm once and went back to her armchair like it was nothing. Like giving someone a home was just what you did on Christmas morning.
Liam was watching from the couch. His eyes were glassy. I went and sat next to him and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and I leaned into him.
"So," Alex said. "I have to say something."
Liam looked at me.
"I don't have a gift. For either of you." I looked at Liam's mom in her chair. "I didn't have time, and I don't have money, and you got me all this and I have nothing to give you back."
Liam's mom looked at me over her coffee.
"I'll pay you back," I said. "For everything. The food, the room, all of it. I don't know how yet, but I will. When I figure out the school stuff and the money stuff I'll—"
"Alex," Linda said.
I stopped.
"Never." She said it once. Firm. Not angry. Just final. "This is family. You don't pay back family."
"But—"
"There's no but. You're here. You eat. You sleep. You have a key." She picked up her pie. "That's the end of it."
Liam was looking at me with the expression of a person who wanted me to hear what his mom had just said and actually believe it.
"Okay," I said.
"Good," Linda said.
"I do have something coming, though," Liam said. He said it casually. "For you. It just hasn't gotten here yet."
"You ordered something?" I said.
"Yeah. Takes a while. You'll get it before New Year's." He turned a page. "Don't worry about it."
I looked at him. He was lying. I could tell because his ears were slightly red. He didn't have anything ordered. He was going to figure it out between now and then, and he didn't want me to know he hadn't figured it out yet.
I loved him for it. For the lie, and the red ears, and the cute smile.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay," he said.
Linda looked between us from her armchair. She knew too. She didn't say anything. She ate her pie.
The morning went on. More coffee. Linda started cleaning up the wrapping paper. Liam helped. I offered and she said "Sit" so I sat.
I held the key in my pocket. The metal was warm now from my hand. I rubbed my thumb across the teeth of it, back and forth, feeling each notch.
My phone sat in my other pocket like a stone. Tomorrow all of that would be real. Tomorrow the math would start and the questions would come, and I'd have to figure out how to go to school with no money and no family and no plan.
But right now, on this couch, in this house, with this key in my pocket and this pie on my plate, I was home.