Chapter Eighteen
Edwina
Christmas morning began quietly. Pale winter light slipped through the windows and spread across the apartment, soft enough to make the whole place feel calmer than it was. The Christmas tree still glowed faintly in the corner, with a few gifts remaining beneath it.
My thoughts went back to Hayden.
I had promised him we would spend Christmas evening together. It had happened in that strange, quiet way things sometimes did with him, without force and without a demand, yet somehow carrying more weight than if he had argued for it.
Part of me wanted to believe him.
I wanted to look at the way he had been with Helena these last few days and think maybe he meant it when he said he was here to stay. Maybe this was not another version of Hayden rushing in with all the force of his feelings, only to leave ruin behind him later.
Another part of me stayed cautious.
Pain had taught me that. So had he. Loving Hayden had never been simple.
Being chosen by him had once felt impossible to survive without, and being hurt by him had taught me how quickly devotion could become damage.
Those truths did not cancel each other out.
They lived side by side inside me, and Christmas did not make them easier to carry.
Still, when I looked toward the living room and saw Helena kneeling on the rug in her pajamas, carefully showing Snowy how to sit properly for breakfast while humming to herself, tenderness came first.
Then she turned and saw me. “Mommy, you’re awake.”
“I am,” I said, pushing myself up with a smile. “And I see Snowy is awake too.”
“She was awake before me,” Helena informed me. “She likes Christmas.”
“That makes sense.”
By noon, the apartment was full in the best way. Coats hung over chairs, shopping bags sat near the door, pastries crowded the counter, and coffee warmed everyone’s hands. Aster and Gwen arrived earlier than expected and brought half the outside cold in with them.
Gwen came in first, already talking before she had finished taking off her scarf. “I’m warning everyone now. Any ugly photo of me between today and the wedding gets deleted. Immediately.”
Aster stepped in behind her and shut the door with her hip. “She says this as if she didn’t approve every angle of her own proposal photos. I quote, ‘My left side is happier today.’”
Gwen pointed at her. “And my left side was right.”
Aster looked at me. “She made me retake a picture of her holding coffee yesterday because the cup was ‘ruining the mood.’ Again, I quote.”
“It was the wrong cup,” Gwen said, offended.
I laughed and hugged them both. The familiarity of their noise in my apartment made something in me unclench before I could stop it.
Helena, who had been watching from the rug, sprang up at once. “Auntie Gwen!”
Gwen dropped to her knees with both arms open. “There’s my favorite little troublemaker.”
“I’m four now,” Helena announced proudly. “I’m not little anymore.”
Gwen pressed a hand to her chest. “Excuse me. Who approved this?”
“Me,” Helena said.
Aster bent to kiss Helena’s hair.
“I can still be flower girl,” Helena added, very serious.
Gwen gasped. “Then all is forgiven. You may continue growing, but only under supervision.”
Helena threw her arms around Gwen again, and Gwen hugged her with all the drama she brought to everything. Then she looked up at me over Helena’s shoulder and said, “She’s grown. This is unacceptable. Make her stop.”
I smiled despite the tightness still sitting somewhere under my ribs.
“I’ve tried,” I said. “She doesn’t listen.”
Helena pulled back and frowned at me. “I listen.”
Aster lifted a brow. “When?”
Helena thought about it for a second. “When I want.”
“That is not how children work,” Aster said, setting the coffee carrier on the table.
Gwen ignored her and looked at Helena with great seriousness. “Also, I need everyone here to remember that I am getting married in April. This is now the most important fact about me.”
Helena turned to me at once. “What’s April?”
“A month, sweetheart.”
“A wedding month,” Gwen added, pressing a hand to her chest. “My wedding month.”
Helena looked impressed. “Are you going to be a princess?”
Gwen’s face brightened. “Yes. Finally, someone understands.”
Aster snorted. “That is not what being a bride means.”
“It is if the bride has taste,” Gwen said.
That made Helena laugh, and before long Gwen had taken over the sofa, showing her pictures of flowers on her phone while explaining her wedding plans as if she were briefing the government. She was happy in a way that made even her dramatics softer.
“I know I keep saying it,” Gwen said at one point, looking up at me with a smile she could not hide, “but I still can’t believe it. April. A spring wedding. It sounds fake, doesn’t it? Like something I made up to annoy people.”
“It sounds very you,” I said.
She grinned. “I take it as a compliment.”
“You would take a parking fine as a compliment if it came in nice handwriting,” Aster muttered.
A little later, Giselle arrived, and the room shifted again. She came in wrapped in a dark coat, composed despite the cold, and for one second Gwen simply looked at her as if she were deciding whether to approve her.
“This is Giselle, you already know her,” I said.
Gwen’s eyes widened. “The Giselle? Finally, we’re meeting you face to face.”
Giselle blinked. “Should I be worried?”
“Yes,” Aster said from the sofa. “Just not enough to run.”
That broke the tension. Giselle laughed, and I relaxed more than I expected. I had wanted this to go well. I wanted these separate parts of my life to meet without awkwardness, without some invisible line forming between old friends and new ones.
Luckily, they found each other quickly. Gwen liked Giselle within minutes, which was hardly surprising.
Gwen liked anyone who could keep up with her and dress well while doing it.
Aster took a little longer, watching more than speaking at first, but once she and Giselle began talking, the rhythm came easily.
They were both dry, observant, and sharp in a way that did not need to announce itself.
I could tell from Aster’s face that she was impressed.
We ate slowly, drank coffee, and picked at sweets while Helena moved between us as if the room had been arranged for her personal entertainment. For a while, it was easy. Imperfect and full of everything waiting outside the moment, yet easy enough that I let myself breathe inside it.
Of course, Gwen found her way back to wedding talk.
“I still haven’t decided about flowers,” she said. “And if anyone says peonies are overrated, I’m ending this friendship immediately.”
“I’m not saying they’re overrated,” I said. “I’m saying you talk about them as if no other flower has ever existed.”
“Because no other flower has tried hard enough.”
Aster looked up from Helena’s coloring book, where she had somehow been assigned the role of official pencil sharpener. “This is why you need supervision.”
Gwen waved that away. “I am happy, and I intend to remain happy. Nobody here is allowed to ruin my mood.”
That was when Aster went quiet. She did not make a scene. She only looked down for a second too long, and I noticed because I had known her too many years not to.
“You’re thinking,” I said. “What happened?”
Aster glanced at me, then leaned back against the sofa. “My family has started again.”
Gwen’s expression changed at once. “About the marriage thing?”
Aster nodded once. The room softened around that.
“They found someone,” Aster said. “Or rather, they found a family, and apparently that was enough.”
Gwen sat forward. “You don’t even know him.”
“That has not been considered a flaw in the plan.”
Her voice was dry, but the exhaustion underneath it was harder to miss. I set my cup down and looked at her. “What do you want?”
Aster met my eyes, and for once, that usual composed mask of hers slipped. “I don’t want this,” she said. “I don’t want a husband picked for me because my family got impatient.”
Gwen swore under her breath. “That’s insane.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “I know.”
Giselle, who had gone still beside us, watched her carefully. “Have you told them no?”
Aster gave a small, humorless smile. “I’ve tried. They hear it as if I’m negotiating.”
Silence followed, heavy and familiar in the worst way.
I reached for her hand where it rested beside her knee and squeezed once. “You’re not wrong for wanting your own life.”
She looked down at our hands, then back at me. “They call it love when they’re really just trying to make decisions for me.”
Something in me tightened at that. I understood more than I wanted to. Before I could answer, Gwen reached over from the other side and caught Aster’s wrist. “You’re not saying yes.”
Aster looked between us and let out a tired breath. “I’m trying not to say anything until I know what the hell I’m doing.”
“That still means you don’t want this,” Gwen said.
“It means I’m tired.”
Giselle’s voice came calm. “Marrying a man you don’t know sounds like a very efficient way to spend the rest of your life resenting everyone involved.”
For one beat, no one spoke.
Then Gwen pointed at her. “See? I like her.”
That broke the tension enough for us to breathe again. Aster smiled despite herself, small but real.
The day moved that way, between laughter and heavier truths, between Gwen’s wedding excitement and the things none of us said unless we were sitting with people who knew how to hold them.
Giselle stayed through most of the afternoon and fit in more easily with every hour.
After a while, I noticed her checking her phone.
She was subtle about it, casual enough that no one else commented, yet every time the screen lit up, her face changed.
I remembered all the times she had mentioned her husband, and the stranger fact that I had still never seen him.
When she finally stood and reached for her coat, Gwen groaned at once. “No. Absolutely not. You can’t leave now.”
Giselle smiled, though some part of it stayed held back. “I know. I’m sorry.”