Chapter 29
“What about Christmas?”
Ethan looked up from his bowl of cereal to his mother sitting across from him at the worn oak table of his childhood kitchen.
He had been with them almost three weeks now, and despite his unexpected arrival—straight to their door from the cottage, where he had left Julia and her grandfather behind—they had avoided any serious topics of discussion.
Of course, they had been surprised to see him—even more surprised when he’d announced that he needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks, making the decision then and there to take a leave from work, consequences be damned, and try to get his head right before figuring out what the hell he wanted to do.
When he had first left the cottage—Donwell, he corrected himself—he hadn’t even anticipated where he’d been headed.
Pine needle branches had snapped against the windshield as he’d driven away, the rhythmic cacophony barely penetrating his haze.
The trees had hung lower than he remembered, enveloping the car as he took the dirt road farther into the brush, away from the town, away from the cottage, away from his boss, away from—
Gem.
He knew he shouldn’t be feeling any guilt or regret, particularly for his dramatic monologue before he’d left.
She’d wanted him to go! And everything he had said had been true—though he probably could have softened the delivery a bit.
Still, it had been a long time coming. For so long, she’d been the steady, serious one, and he’d been her foil, bringing levity to their interactions and allowing her the opportunity to let loose once in a while.
But this time—this time it had been too much.
All of it. The present moment, the memories of the past, and the destroyed possibility of a future.
He had lost too much of himself and all he’d known in that one day.
So he’d needed to do something, say something.
And in doing so, he had solidified the death of their friendship once and for all.
So he’d navigated out and around the familiar nature paths before reaching one of the main roads.
He’d thought he was going to go right, had planned to go right, to catch I-90 east and keep going, back to his sterile Manhattan apartment, where all the food had been emptied from the fridge in his anticipation of a week’s stay at Donwell, and back to the job that had put him through the wringer—a job he suddenly wasn’t sure he could return to as the same version of himself.
But inexplicably, he’d found himself missing the turn.
Continuing north. And then he’d grabbed I-90 west.
The drive had felt so familiar that he could have done it with his eyes closed.
It had been the drive of every summer ending, every finale of their time at the cottage.
In the early years, it had been his dad at the wheel, young Ethan leaning his head against the window and watching with a sort of melancholy as the end of the summer was highlighted by the familiar drive home.
As he’d gotten older, he’d taken over the burden of the drive, helping his dad out, or coming and going on his own—to accommodate work schedules or summer parties or whatever Gem’s timing was.
It had been years since he had traveled that route. Years since he had been back to his parents’ house.
And yet that was where he’d found himself headed. Back to his parents. Back home.
And that was where he still found himself all these days later. Leave it to his parents to accept him without question, greeting him at the door with equal parts happiness, bemusement, and worry. He knew they’d wondered: What is he doing here? Why did he come? And with no warning?
But they hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t offered.
He would’ve had no real response for those questions, no specific reason for his presence there anyway.
So he’d greeted them with a modicum of warmth, then brushed past them and gone straight to his childhood bedroom, still intact, the way he had left it before he’d gone to college, the sheets on the generous double bed—an improvement from the bed in the Cabin Room, though he still felt a pang at the thought of that bed—with a musty but familiar laundered smell, the room still tidy and kept clean by his mom, who, he knew, had an air of fastidiousness to her nature.
And he’d flopped face down on that bed and he’d slept—even though it had only been sometime in the midafternoon or early evening—in all his clothes until morning.
The rest of the days had blurred, one after another. He’d raked leaves with his dad, eaten dinner with his parents, watched football, grocery shopped, cleaned out the gutters—done all the things he’d once done as a good son home from college, back in his early twenties.
Except he wasn’t home from college. Or in his early twenties anymore. And this reprieve, this little sabbatical he’d taken from his life, couldn’t be sustained forever.
How typical of his parents, though, he’d think to himself sardonically in the nights when sleep wouldn’t come as easily as it had that first day, to simply allow his presence there without bothering to ask the hard questions.
It wasn’t fair, this ungenerous thought—he knew that.
He also knew he didn’t want to answer the questions they’d likely be asking.
But it irked him, in a way, that they didn’t even try.
Simply accepted his presence there and his decision to stay for an indeterminate period of time, the way they’d eventually accept his decision to leave again and possibly FaceTime once a month—twice if there was a celebration or anniversary to acknowledge.
Avoidance was a common occurrence between the walls of the small Amherst split-level, which had belonged to his family for as long as he could remember.
They had never moved, barely renovated it.
It had history in its bones, memories in every wall.
The driveway where Ethan had learned to ride his bike, the garage door that he’d shot endless pucks at.
Even that very kitchen table he was sitting at—round, solid oak, worn in from countless family dinners and nights of doing homework.
Which brought him back to his mother’s question, the echo of it still in his brain despite his musings between that moment and this one.
What about Christmas?
They couldn’t possibly think he’d still be there at Christmastime.
It was only, what—late October? The next big holiday coming up was Thanksgiving.
Why hadn’t his mom asked about that? Did she just assume his presence was a given this year, since he’d visited so close to the holiday?
Despite his proven track record of the last decade, when he’d made up a myriad of excuses to not come?
How typical, that assumption. Again, not asking for details, but just hoping things would work out.
“I don’t know about Christmas, Mom,” he muttered finally, dropping the spoon back into the bowl, appetite gone. “I don’t know about anything, to be honest.”
His dad had been at the counter, pouring his cup of coffee, and Ethan sensed rather than saw him turn and regard his son.
Both his parents were quiet for a long moment, and Ethan sighed heavily, head in his hands, as he watched the cereal float aimlessly in the bowl of milk.
“Ethan,” his mom eventually said quietly, and he looked up at her blearily, taking in the mom-shaped blob that appeared before his tired eyes. “What’s going on?”
He felt bogged down by emotions, didn’t even know how to begin to explain the turmoil in his brain and in his heart. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, though, his dad spoke up, having moved closer than Ethan realized, the cup of coffee forgotten on the counter:
“Is it about Julia?”
Ethan’s gaze shot to his dad, his eyes clearing at the mention of her name. Then they narrowed.
“Why would this be about Julia?” he asked, wondering what his parents knew. If they’d spoken to her or if she’d contacted them in any way.
“It seems to me,” his dad mused, voice thoughtful but direct, “that every time you get in one of these types of moods, it’s usually because of something to do with her. The last time I remember you being in this much of a funk was when we sold the cottage to her, what—ten years ago now?”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And it didn’t occur to you that maybe I was ‘in a funk’ because of the fact that you’d sold our family vacation spot out from underneath me—to my friend?”
“Oh, Ethan.” He looked at his mother as she sighed those words, eyes closing resignedly.
She still looked the same to him at first glance, the shoulder-length wheat-blonde hair with feathered bangs, a look that had followed her through each decade.
But on further inspection, he could see the lines in her face that he didn’t remember from his childhood.
The bags under her eyes. He could see the signs of aging that hadn’t even been there the last time he’d seen her—or had they?
And he just hadn’t noticed? He felt like a heel.
All those holidays he’d neglected to attend, all the years he’d forfeited his visits.
Still, her quiet sympathy—or was it disappointment?—ate at him, and despite his guilt, he wasn’t able to tamp down his anger enough to prevent the next words that came out of his mouth.
“What, Mom? What ‘Oh, Ethan’ now? What are the ways that I’ve disappointed you this time? Please tell me.” He threw his hands up, spoon clattering out of the cereal bowl, splashing milk across the table.
“Disappointed?” She looked aghast, and even his father sat down, his face set and tired. “How could you ever think I was disappointed in you?”
Ethan scoffed and shook his head, looking away.
“No,” his father spoke up, eyes not leaving Ethan’s face. “I’d like to hear this, too. Disappointed how?”