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The girls hung around the hospital all throughout the day. As Mila’s parents had arrived that morning from Europe already, having taken an immediate flight back, they rushed to her side the moment they could— bringing with them a host of their own worries and anxiety. Mila took a much-needed nap after her parents departed, calling their visit, “Just another car crash.” Isabelle was released from her hospital room around lunchtime, which allowed her to rush into her mother’s room to declare that she would finish out “at least this school year” before she headed off to model in New York City. To this, Mila just laughed and said, “Honey, you should follow your dreams. Life’s too short for anything else.”
Jennifer was in a text conversation with her loved ones, who wanted constant updates about both Mila’s health and Jennifer’s mental health. Jennifer wanted to scold them about their worry for her. She wasn’t the one in the hospital bed. She wasn’t the one who’d nearly lost her life. Even still, their care was a necessary boost.
Back in the waiting room, Amelia drew out her computer, which she seemed to always have on hand, and began to craft a schedule to ensure Mila was never left alone.
“We should work that out later,” Olivia tried. “It’s too soon to know how it should go.”
“Just let her make a spreadsheet,” Jennifer returned with a wry laugh. “It’s her happy place.”
Amelia cast them a sharp glance. “I just want Mila to know she’ll be taken care of. Especially since Liam seems to be, well, not the most reliable.”
“I saw him running around the halls earlier. Still no sign that he stepped in to say hi,” Jennifer said softly.
But when they returned after Mila’s nap, they found Liam seated beside her, holding her hand loosely as he spoke to her in tender tones. Mila’s smile had fallen from her face completely, as though Liam’s anxiety-riddled behavior had echoed back through her.
“I’ve seen it time and again. Angry drivers at the wheel. Unsure of their surroundings,” Liam continued.
“I understand, but the accident already happened. You can’t talk me out of it at this point,” Mila countered, almost angrily.
The other girls froze in the doorway. Mila sensed their presence, turned, and greeted them with a lukewarm smile.
“Hi, Liam,” Jennifer greeted. “Good to see you.” She implied her anger with the adverb, “finally.”
Liam glanced toward the ground. He shuffled to his feet as the girls gathered on the opposite side of the bed. “Guess I’ll go grab myself another cup of coffee. You girls need anything?”
“No, thank you. We’re good,” Amelia replied darkly as Liam rose and headed for the door.
They listened as he took off down the hallway. Mila blew the air out of her lips.
“Men are sometimes so fragile, aren’t they?” she finally offered. “Peter was like that sometimes if the kids got injured. It was like the world ended. I just grabbed a band-aide and sent them back outside.”
“You know women are heartier than men,” Camilla countered. “I mean, we give birth for crying out loud. Blood doesn’t scare us, either. We have to live with all of it. The messy bits of life.”
“Don’t talk about giving birth,” Amelia touted. “I’m in the denial stage.”
“He’ll come around,” Olivia affirmed regarding Liam. “He’s just freaked after his years on the force. I’m sure he never imagined something like this could happen to someone he loves.”
Mila shifted slightly beneath her overly thin white blankets. “Our relationship is still so new. It could even still be called a fling, you know? I’m sure he didn’t reckon for something like this. It’s a lot of pressure. We went from wine nights and silly dates to... a wheelchair?”
The other girls exchanged worried glances. Mila spoke a truth they couldn’t dispute. Even still, they wanted to expect more from a man who supposedly “loved” or at least “really liked” Mila. She deserved the world.
“I guess it’ll take getting used to for everyone,” Mila tried then. “And we’ll just see where the chips fall.”
When visiting hours finished for the day, Amelia drove them all back to where they belonged. Jennifer hopped into her car outside the Frosted Delights Bakery and stared into space for a full five minutes before she started the engine. Her mind had hit its top bandwidth. Thoughts had lost their meaning.
When she reached the home she now shared with Derek, she discovered another three vehicles parked outside: Nick’s, her parents, and Emma’s. Jennifer hadn’t envisioned anything but Derek alone in front of the television.
Inside, Derek stepped out from the living room with a, “Welcome home, honey!” He kissed her gently on the lips and swept a hand across the small of her back as he guided her into a Christmas-Wonderland of a brand-new, freshly-cut Christmas tree, a platter of Christmas cookies, Christmas music spilling from the speaker, and some of the people she loved the most— Nick, Stacy, Emma, Emma’s husband, Will, along with her parents, John and Ariane Conrad. Jennifer found herself tossed from hug to hug as everyone gave her their condolences.
“I had no idea you two were coming in,” she said to one set of newlyweds, Emma and Will.
“Dad begged us to,” Emma teased. “So sentimental.”
Jennifer knew that Derek and Emma had lost Emma’s mother around Christmas, which made them extra-nostalgic around this time of year. All she could do was offer love and support for their memories. Sometimes, memories were all you had.
Emma and Stacy had put together a beautifully roasted chicken with savory vegetables and freshly-baked rolls. Someone poured Jennifer a glass of wine while Ariane had a general freak-out about Stacy’s pregnancy.
“A great-grandmother! Jennifer, did you hear that?”
“I sure did, Mom,” Jennifer offered, making eye contact with Nick, who gave her a funny face.
“And we hardly had to wait after the wedding!” Ariane continued.
“That’s what my mom said,” Stacy affirmed. “She keeps thanking us. I’m like, well, it was an accident. But you’re welcome?” She giggled and placed her head tenderly on Nick’s chest. They were the perfect portrait of a newly married couple.
“Don’t get any ideas about us, Dad,” Emma warned as they sat around the dining room table. “We’ve got a lot of plans before all that.”
“She wants to drag me around the world,” Will admitted, feigning annoyance. “Japan. Vietnam. Hawaii. Can you believe it? All I want to do is sit on the couch and watch my life go by.”
Emma rolled her eyes playfully as she tore open her freshly-baked roll. Ariane commented that Emma had a real knack for baking, to which Emma returned, “My mother taught me the recipe. I always bring it around this time of year. It helps me remember her better.”
Jennifer’s eyes met Derek’s over the table. His eyes shimmered for a split second before he returned his attention to his food. How strange that they sat at the table, surrounded by ghosts. Perhaps that’s what Christmas was all about.
Ariane pestered Jennifer for more information regarding Mila’s health. Jennifer confessed that it would be a “very long road” and that Amelia already had a spreadsheet cooked up for how the girls would help out.
“That’s no surprise,” Ariane affirmed. “Whenever you girls got into any kind of trouble, the other five of you were there to pick up the pieces.” Her face grew clouded as she added, “Well, the other five of you when Michelle was around. Such a funny bunch, the six of you, were. I still love that old photograph that hangs in the bakery.” She then glanced toward Emma, who was a relatively new audience for her old stories and added, “They went everywhere together— they were attached at the hip. I couldn’t have imagined at the time that any of them would actually grow up.” She then turned to catch Stacy’s eyes to add, “You’re about to encounter all that emotion and more. Motherhood! What a gift it was and still is. Goodness, I should really give Mila’s mother a call.”
Jennifer explained that Mila’s parents had taken a direct flight back from Europe and arrived just in time to exhaust Mila into a nap.
“What do you mean?” Ariane demanded. “Why would they exhaust her?”
Jennifer had to suppress a smile. It was typical of parents not to understand the little, intricate ways they drove their children nuts. She assumed she, too, had her little ways with Nick. Stacy and Nick’s baby would find their nuanced annoyances with their parents, too. It was just the generational divide.
After dinner, everyone gathered around a selection of boxes of Christmas ornaments in the living room. Stacy put on Michael Buble’s Christmas CD and hummed in time to the music as she twirled into Nick. Jennifer straddled herself between several boxes, many of which she’d moved over from her and Joel’s old house. Emma had brought several boxes herself, ornaments she hadn’t chosen for her and Will’s tree, but ones that had previously hung on her childhood trees.
With Jennifer and Derek’s boxes together, it was like looking at a hodgepodge of decades of Christmas memories from alternate timelines. Somehow, they’d made their way here together and would soon hang on a brand-new Christmas tree to mark time through another holiday.
“This was your grandmother’s gift to your mom and me after you were born,” Derek said to Emma as he lifted a little pair of silver shoes from their Christmas ornament box and dangled them upon a branch. “You were such a tiny thing! The shoes could have fit you back then.”
Emma’s cheeks flushed crimson as she gazed at the bobbing pair of shoes on the tree, which had the year 1998 engraved across the base. The year Emma had been born.
“Hard to believe we’re around adults born in the late nineties,” Ariane offered from the comfort of the corner chair. “They were just little babies at the turn of the century.”
This led to a funny conversation about Derek’s fears around Y2K when everyone thought the country would darken and all data would be lost.
“After many years of hard work, my business was finally growing. I had a young toddler at home. We’d just gotten a new apartment. I was seriously freaked out, to say the least,” he explained as he stretched tinsel across the tree. “My wife teased me to no end about it and, of course, had a field day when the clock struck midnight and nothing happened.”
Emma giggled. “I can just imagine Mom teasing you. She was always like that.”
“Yeah, yeah. I was a little high-strung,” Derek offered as he rolled his eyes.
“Joel and I didn’t have many pennies to rub together at the time,” Jennifer said with a laugh, grateful to swap stories from this singular time. “We had baby Nick, a tiny house, and our dreams. I guess if the world had gone dark, we’d have started a farm and lived off the land.”
“Jen, honey, you’ve killed every plant I’ve given you,” Ariane returned.
Jennifer giggled. She grabbed the half-drunk bottle of wine from the coffee table and walked around to deliver refills. She remembered what Beth Leopold had said earlier that day about the comfort of family and how she’d only just discovered it with her fiancé’s. How remarkable that Jennifer had that in spades.
With the Christmas tree decorated and the stockings hung, the Thatcher and Conrad families nibbled Christmas cookies, sipped wine, swapped stories, and watched as the fire roared in the fireplace. Jennifer grew quiet as her father explained a rather complicated story that involved people nobody in the room had ever met nor heard of. She lifted her phone to find a single text from Mila— not to the group, but only to Jennifer.
MILA: I’m trying my darnedest to be grateful for what I have.
MILA: But damn. I had some nice legs.
MILA: It will be sad to see them go.
Jennifer’s eyes filled with tears. She closed them briefly as she drummed up some kind of response. Derek’s hand cupped her knee tenderly as he noticed her swirling.
JENNIFER: No offense, but as your best friend, I always loved your smile more than your legs. Let’s keep your smile going. Love you forever.