The Holiday Club (A Merry Novella)

October 30th

Hollis

“Repeat after me.” Kat’s tone is as sharp as the lines of her angled bob and pressed black pantsuit as she pauses outside of the familiar conference room, her manicured fingers on the handle of the door. “I, Hollis Hartwell, will not walk out of this room again without being a free woman.”

I roll my eyes—this is the fourth litigation meeting where she’s tried this psychological pep talk. Yet here I am, still legally married to my bastard of a not-quite ex-husband after a year of these ridiculous meetings.

Not a free woman.

“Does this kind of bullshit mantra recitation ever work?” I ask, tugging at the collar of my pumpkin-covered sweater, perfectly on theme with the season and all the glorious festivities that await me if I survive the next hour.

My stomach churns when I catch a glimpse of Ryan through the window of the door to the conference room, smugly relaxed as he talks to his attorney.

“It would if you repeat it,” Kat snips, not waiting for me to respond before jerking the door open and giving the room a cool, “Gentlemen.”

Reluctantly, I follow her; Ryan has the nerve to smile as I take the seat across from him.

It’s hard to believe once upon a time I thought that smile was charming, but it must be; we wouldn’t be in this room if it wasn’t.

I would venture a guess that married men without charming smiles can’t usually convince the nurses they work with to abandon their scrubs and bend over a vacant hospital bed otherwise.

Easy on the eyes, says all the right things, and enough ambition to make any woman feel like they’ve been chosen.

It’s this lethal combination which makes Doctor Ryan Hartwell who he is: an asshole wrapped up as something pretty.

It’s not like I can blame them for falling for him. Twenty years ago, I did too.

“Let’s get to it, shall we?” Ryan’s attorney slides a paper across a table that probably costs as much as Kat does for two billable hours. It only takes a glance at the words yearly holiday rotation schedule before deciding I want to light everyone on fire and watch them burn.

“Is this a joke?” I ask through gritted teeth, glaring from the ridiculous document in front of me back to Ryan’s arrogant face. “You want to rotate holidays by the year?”

Kat puts her hand on my arm—like I don’t know I’m supposed to be playing it cool like she’s coached me.

Like I didn’t hire her with all her sharp lines, bold shades of lipstick, and expensive pantsuits to take care of this.

Like she believes I’m really going to walk out of here a free woman if this is the game he’s playing.

I yank my arm away from her, blood boiling.

To hell with playing it cool. To hell with him.

I didn’t want an ugly divorce. Despite my husband’s multiple affairs, I didn’t even know if I wanted a divorce—I thought we could work through it.

Thought I could forgive and forget, and he would be the same Ryan I married.

But as much as I tried to force us back together for a year, there was no coming back from what he did.

The first five years of our marriage played out like a honeymoon on repeat. Ryan built his career as a doctor, I had a column for a local newspaper, and we used every vacation day we earned in the quietest nooks and crannies we could find. Together.

Then came the kids, and as much as I loved being a wife, I loved motherhood more.

I embraced it all. The sleepless nights, the potty training, the hard transitions.

It was as if being a mom was who I was always meant to be.

I left my job at the newspaper to focus solely on the four perfect children we created and started a blog called Home with Hollis to document every recipe, holiday tradition, and scary step of the motherhood journey.

Women loved it—I loved it—so much so, a few years ago it led to a full-time opportunity at a magazine writing about those very same things.

Everything was perfect. I wrote us perfect. But now I know, perfection was the lie of the screen and keyboard.

Behind the scenes, I now see Ryan was drifting.

His hours got longer and later, but I always chalked it up to doctor life.

Being so busy with the kids, I never cared or worried.

But the day I showed up at the hospital to surprise him with lunch and found his pants around his ankles and a nurse on her knees eating a little lunch of her own, there wasn’t enough bleach in the world to erase that image from my memories.

After that, the truth came out about the others—nearly a dozen.

A train wreck with cars that just kept piling up one on top of the other. There was no coming back from it.

After a year of trying to put us back together, we separated. Now here we are, paying an exorbitant amount of money for a year of litigation that has gotten us absolutely nowhere. Two years since we shattered, and it still seems impossible to escape the shards of him.

Ryan interlaces his hands behind his head, cradling it as he leans back easily in his chair. It squeaks with the movement. I wish it would collapse, reassemble as an evil robot, and impale him.

He says nothing.

“Ms. Hartwell,” his round-faced attorney says in his stead, four strands of his combover slicked to his forehead.

Years of marriage only to have it end without Ryan even being the one to say the words.

Pussy. “My client feels that with your terms of getting the house, more than he wanted to give of his retirement and savings—”

“He’s made more money than me,” I snap, clenching my fists on the table. “I only went back to work full-time four years ago, Ryan. Half of the retirement we saved isn’t outrageous.”

“Hollis,” Kat hisses.

“After I spent years taking care of our kids and him so he could build his career,” I argue. “Or did you forget that part, Ryan?” I cut my eyes to him. “Too busy screwing your way around the hospital to remember the wife at home washing the shit stains out of your underwear?”

“Hollis,” Kat snaps, more firm.

“No.” I keep my eyes glued to him. “Fuck you, Ryan. We’ve been rotating the holidays since we separated a year ago and you’ve never complained.

What the hell do you want them for anyway?

You’re always working.” With a flick of my wrist, I slide the ridiculous custody schedule across the too-big table toward them. “Over my dead body.”

I grind my teeth; Ryan looks smugly bored.

Asshole.

“Because of your financial terms,” his attorney continues, adjusting the wire-rimmed glasses on his nose before shuffling through papers, “Mr. Hartwell has adjusted his schedule and feels this arrangement of holidays—all spent with one parent for the entirety of the year—will allow more easily for plans to be executed. Traditions, vacations, etcetera.”

I give Kat a wide-eyed look; I’m a lion trapped in a cage. I know myself well enough to know if I speak again, I’ll never stop.

“My client,” Kat says, much more calmly than I could have pulled off, “has requested a fair split of assets. After being a housewife for years and focusing on their four children, none of her financial requests were outlandish. As Mr. Hartwell knows, Ms. Hartwell has always enjoyed the holidays. A yearly rotation would cause emotional turmoil for all involved. Ms. Hartwell, yes, but also their four children.”

She continues to talk—to plead our case for not wanting a yearly holiday rotation schedule—but I’m down a mental spiral.

Who does this? Ryan doesn’t care about holidays.

I’m not sure he’s ever planned a single event for any of them.

Christmas trees annoy him. Parades are too crowded.

He can’t even pronounce poinsettia correctly, for God’s sake. I’ve always done it all. Loved it all.

“It’s unnecessary,” Kat says with finality. “If we set a normal rotating schedule of holidays now, there will be plenty of time to plan whatever vacations and traditions your client has in mind.”

Ryan leans toward his attorney and whispers behind a cupped hand.

“If your client is unwilling to accept these terms,” his attorney says, clearing his throat, “Mr. Hartwell wants to sell the house.”

My spine goes ramrod straight as my jaw drops.

Sell the house? The room starts to spin. The kids love the house. I love the house.

Kat looks at me. I must shake my head because Ryan’s attorney slides the proposed schedule back across the table.

Ryan smirks. He’s got me, and he knows it.

“All holidays for a year,” his attorney fills in as I once again read the paper—every holiday, festival, and date listed out with Ryan’s name in bold next to them.

“Should the holiday fall on a Monday, the long weekend before is included. Same with Friday holidays. And, as we live in Springer, North Carolina, the town dubbed Christmas Village USA, this will include all festival days in the town’s peak Christmas season—which kicks off tomorrow with Halloween and ends with New Year’s Eve.

It includes every weekend for November and December as well as the entire week leading up to Christmas. ”

Dread takes a physical form in my throat.

My favorite time of year. My favorite traditions.

We live in a magical land where Christmas doesn’t come for a day, it comes for two full months.

A national newspaper dubbed Springer with the title Christmas Village USA just over a decade ago due to the prevalence of lights, cheer, and over-the-top schedule of traditions that make our town more magical than the North Pole.

We don’t just celebrate Christmas in December; festivities kick off with Halloween and last for two solid months.

And he’s taking them.

The whole damn season.

I read the final lines. The proposed schedule will go into effect immediately, with Mr. Hartwell getting the remaining holidays and festivities for the rest of the current calendar year.

The blood rushes from my face. I’m going to vomit.

“You want this year?” I can barely breathe. Barely get the words out of my mouth. “Starting with Halloween? That’s tomorrow, Ryan.”

“That’s correct.” His attorney clears his throat. “Per the terms, Mr. Hartwell will pick the kids up from school today and have them through the entirety of the weekend and every weekend for the remainder of the year, as noted, to celebrate the holidays with his children.”

I reread said dates, none of them fully registering.

The pumpkin sweater against my skin suddenly feels like it’s burning my flesh off.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Tomorrow. The kids and I all have animal costumes.

I was going to be a cat. Jack a bear. Millie a pig.

Ava a kangaroo. Owen a snake. They would trick-or-treat around our neighborhood; I would pass out candy—the full-sized bars our house has been hailed for—and then we would all go to the town’s kickoff Christmas event to greet Santa, watch the costume contest, and light the town tree.

But this means none of that.

My eyes go to Ryan, desperate for him to show mercy. His face stays savagely stoic.

Not having the kids for the holidays—for the traditions that have become part of who we are for the last ten years—might as well be a dagger straight through my chest. But if I say no, mediation will continue, as will the drain on my bank account due to Kat’s insane hourly rate.

I make enough money at the magazine to pay the bills, but I couldn’t afford to buy the house on my own.

If I don’t do this, I could lose it, along with my mind.

I look at Kat.

“You should take it,” she says, in a low, yet firm, voice.

“But—”

“No ‘buts,’ Hollis. He’s going to keep dragging this out. I know how you are with the holidays, but figure something out. Celebrate on different days with your kids. Take the extra alone time and do something for you. It’s not worth it.”

Celebrate on different days? Do something for you?

Every word feels like it’s drowning me. That defeats the whole purpose and strangles every ounce of magic out of the season. Not to mention my job, especially this time of year, is focused on writing about kids and family. How the hell do I do that without kids or a family?

I open my mouth, but Kat talks over me.

“Leave this room a free woman, Hollis.”

I don’t have a choice. I feel it in my bones and see it all over her face. I need to let this end. Let him have the win so we can all move on with our lives.

I grab a pen and hover it over the line, forcing myself to sign. Life drains out of me with every looped letter of my name.

Ryan and his attorney shake hands. Make small talk.

Laugh. We all stand—like a marriage of fifteen years didn’t just end and life as I know it get obliterated with my name on the dotted line—and shuffle toward the door.

I want to cry but hold it in. I’ll wait until I’m in the parking lot and the safety of my minivan to have a proper come apart.

Yet I can’t stay quiet. I can’t let it go.

I grab Ryan’s arm—the arm I thought would hold me up until one of us died.

“Why are you doing this?” My eyes search his face for a glimmer of someone I used to know. “You don’t even care about the holidays.”

He looks at me and pulls his arm away, tugging at the crisp cuffs of his white dress shirt.

“But you do,” he says easily, the brown eyes I once thought were so warm now replaced with ice. “You went after the money, Hollis.” He shrugs, adjusting the knot of his tie. “You hit me where I hurt, I hit you where you hurt.”

Not only has time revealed Ryan as a piece of shit husband, it has also shown that he cares much more about money than I ever imagined possible. When I open my mouth to explain how wrong he has it, he strolls away, clapping his attorney on the back as they make their victory march down the hall.

Kat starts talking, but I can’t hear a word of it because the tears don’t wait for the minivan; they fall early. Not for the man I once loved—those shed and dried long ago—but for a season he’s stealing out of spite. The memories I won’t get. The joy. The traditions.

And once the tears start, they don’t stop.

Not on the drive home or through the entire bottle of wine I drink that night before I go to bed.

Not the next day when I put on my black bodysuit cat costume and full face of makeup.

Not as I sit on the front porch with our bucket of full-sized candy bars, which I eat most of as I scare costumed kids off with my chocolate-mouthed sobs.

Not as I try to figure out how I’ll ever survive this season without the four people I love most in this world, nor how I’ll ever deliver my annual series of articles dubbed Holidays with Hollis when not one piece of me knows how to celebrate without them.