We drove to Ten Chimneys the next afternoon. “I can’t believe we’re doing this again tonight,” I said. “I’m still full from yesterday.” We were reconvening later at Annabelle’s for leftovers. I’d suggested we have everyone at Erik’s to give Annabelle a break, but he’d just rolled his eyes and said, “Good luck with that.”
“Why? The kids love being at your house.”
“Which she probably hates.”
“You don’t think that.” He didn’t, but I understood his frustration. He thought Annabelle was a great mom—everything in her life was secondary to the kids’ needs and schedules, and she was a pit bull when it came to advocating for Spencer—but it was almost like she forgot sometimes that Erik was also their parent, that he was perfectly capable of taking care of his son when he had a cold or getting the twins ready for a birthday party. “I can put cute barrettes in their hair too,” he would gripe. “I’m not a moron.”
He glanced at me as we made the turn into Ten Chimneys. “It’d just be nice to have one damn holiday in my house, you know? And not even the holiday. Leftovers.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’m being selfish. It probably is easier for Spencer this way.”
“You’re not selfish at all,” I told him. “It’s just the kids are her whole life.”
We’d woken to another day that couldn’t have been more beautiful: frost silvering the grass, the sky such a clear blue it looked shellacked. Erik had on sunglasses and a heavy red-and-gray flannel shirt over his turtleneck and jeans. Work boots; a down vest. He looked sexy and rugged. “Like the Playgirl version of Wisconsin,” I laughed. “Studly lumberjack.”
He lifted his sunglasses, shot me an amused glance, then lowered them again. “I like when you laugh. I’ve missed it.”
I’ve missed it too, I wanted to tell him. I’ve missed you. I miss us.
“What? You’ve got a look on your face.” Erik pulled into the lot and turned off the car.
“Do I?” I put my hands to my cheeks. “It’s not a bad look, is it?” It couldn’t have been. I was happy. I loved this man.
“Actually, it’s rather fetching.”
“Fetching.” I laughed again. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been called fetching.” I stepped out into the biting cold.
Erik came around the front of the car and crooked his arm at the elbow. “Shall we?”
“We shall.” I looped my arm through his. In the distance, a pair of hawks circled over the trees. “So, what does fetching even mean?” I asked. “I always thought of it as connected to milkmaids. Or shepherdesses.”
“Excuse me?” Erik said. “Have you ever seen a milkmaid? Or a shepherdess? Do they have shepherdesses in Delaware? Do they even have sheep?”
“Of course they have sheep in Delaware!”
We walked for nearly two hours, holding hands, the sun warm despite the below-freezing temperature. The land dipped and curved, then lifted into rolling hills covered with leaves that we scuffled through like kids. Shadows stretched out from the trees surrounding the buildings: the Swedish-style main house, the barn and creamery, the guest cottage, where, on the eve of the Second World War, Robert Sherwood, who had been FDR’s speechwriter, wrote the Pulitzer Prize–winning There Shall Be No Night.
By the time we headed back to his car, the shadows were taking on a purple tint, the trees black silhouettes. Our breath plumed in the metallic-scented air, our mouths so frozen, our words slurred. “We sound like we’re drunk,” Erik laughed. We were debriefing about Thanksgiving again: We loved Scott, and Spencer had been amazing, despite his routines being obliterated.
“The T-shirts helped,” Erik said. “Everyone in the same color, and the right color.” He squeezed my hand, though my fingers were so cold, I could barely feel them.
I glanced at him, though I couldn’t see his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses. I was holding my free hand over my mouth, trying to warm myself. “I was worried you thought I was being pushy.” I had been. I knew this. I’d been trying too hard.
“Gabe’s toast threw me a little, and I’m sorry, because the shirts really were sweet.” He paused. “I just need more time.”
More time for what? I wanted to ask, and took a deep breath, my lungs aching with the cold, sadness creeping in with the falling light. Overhead a line of geese flew by, black marks against the gold sky, and I turned to watch as they disappeared over the trees. Why wasn’t this enough? I wondered. It had been such a perfect afternoon, a nearly perfect two days. But I did what we’d both become so adept at doing and changed the subject. “So, tell me about tonight.” I swung his hand in mine as we resumed walking. “Is this part of the tradition?”
“Leftovers? Of course. Annabelle turns everything into a tradition.”
“Is it because she didn’t have a lot of traditions growing up?” She’d never known her dad, and her grandparents had died before she was born.
“I guess that’s part of it. If you call something a tradition, it ensures that whatever it is stays the same.” His voice softened. “She’s had a ton of loss, so I get it, the need to hold on.”
I’d done the opposite, held on to nothing, so there’d be nothing for me to ever lose again. Except that hadn’t worked either. I glanced at Erik, the last of the light draining from the afternoon. This should be our tradition, I wanted to say, walking at Ten Chimneys the day after Thanksgiving. And going to Kopp’s for frozen custard and eating brats at the state fair. I wanted my whole life with him to be a tradition. How could he not want to hold on to this?
But he is, another part of me whispered. He’s trying.
We were quiet driving home, the heater on high, a Lucinda Williams CD playing. My feet felt like blocks of wood, they were so frozen. Many of the houses we passed—squat 1940s bungalows—already had Christmas lights up.
“What’s Christmas like for you?” I laid my head against the seat back. “Do you put up lights? Do you hang stockings?” How could I not know this?
“Yikes! I haven’t even thought about Christmas.” Light from an oncoming car washed over his face, and I saw the tightness around his mouth.
“You realize it’s less than a month away? Do you get a real tree?” Nick and I had had a Christmas tree in our living room and bedroom. “We should get one with the kids next weekend. We’ll bake cookies, watch a Christmas movie.” The last remnant of light lingered at the horizon.
“That sounds nice.”
“Nice? What kind of word is that?” I pretended to glare. “Don’t tell me. You hate Christmas trees, don’t you?” I wanted to make him smile, wanted to cajole us back on track, but my voice sounded as fake as I felt. I hated it, and hated myself for trying to joke around the fact that Erik clearly didn’t want to talk about Christmas. And the only reason was that he wasn’t sure we’d be together. I closed my eyes against the sting of that truth.
Lucinda was singing “Sweet Old World,” and listening to her croon, “See what you lost when you left this world,” I felt broken suddenly. I thought about Lucy and the world I’d wanted with her and never had, and I thought of the world I’d left six years before and still missed with a sharpness I felt in my spine, and mostly, I was thinking of this sweet world I had found with Erik and his kids and his friends and how much I wanted to stay in it and what lengths I’d gone to to try. It was all there then, the tremendous hurt of the past month: All the times Erik left after dinner with that cheery “I think I’ll head on home,” as if it were no big deal, even though he used to always stay the night. And all the times I asked about the kids, and he gave me those terse answers; all the times I mentioned something—anything—about the future, and he brushed it aside: “You’ll like my dad,” I’d commented the week before, and instead of “I bet I will,” or “I’m looking forward to meeting him,” Erik had said, “He sounds like a nice man,” as if we’d been talking about some clerk in a store. Every time, I’d push the hurt down. Even that day, driving home from Ten Chimneys, I wanted to make it okay, but I was emptied out. I can’t do this anymore, I thought. I don’t want to.
I stared out the window, the song lyrics hitting too close to home: “Didn’t you think you were worth anything?” The sky was black, empty fields in either direction. When the song ended, I leaned forward and turned off the CD. “You’re not sure we’re spending Christmas together, are you?”
Erik glanced at me. “I don’t know that we’re not spending it together.”
“But you can’t say we are.”
He paused a beat too long. “How about just one holiday at a time?” And then, “Didn’t we have a moratorium in here somewhere?”
We did. Of course. Tears burned my eyes, and I turned to stare outside so he wouldn’t see.
“Hey.” He touched my shoulder. “You okay?”
There was a cemetery to our left, and in another mile we’d pass Kopp’s, boarded up for the winter. “I think I want to go home,” I said. “To my house.”
“Okay…Are you…What’s going on? I thought we were having a good afternoon.”
I leaned my forehead against the passenger window. Our relationship had become a fun house hall of mirrors where every time I thought I was getting close to Erik again, every time I thought we were finding our way back to one another, I bumped against the cold glass of my own reflection. I was tired: of the wrong turns, the surprises, the way light glinted off surfaces.
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” he said softly, hand on my knee.
“Am I?”
“You’re assuming I’ve decided things that I haven’t.”
“I think you have, Erik. You just haven’t said it out loud.”
“That’s not fair. Do you want me to pretend I know how I’ll feel in a month? Because I don’t. I wish I did.” He retracted his hand. “Jesus. You really think I’ve decided anything? You dropped a huge fucking bomb, and I’m sorry if I can’t absorb it as quickly as you need me to.”
“I know you’re trying.” I shifted in my seat to face him. “And I’m grateful—”
“I’m not asking you to be grateful. I’m asking for time—”
“Time for what?” I cried. “What do you think’s going to happen, Erik? The facts aren’t going to change! And I wish everything else you knew about me was enough, but I don’t think it is.” That’s what it came down to, didn’t it? A simple equation: All that he knew about me, maybe even loved about me, wasn’t enough. And the big disconnect was that I’d assumed it would be. I felt myself crumble. I made him laugh. I loved his children. I loved him.
But it wasn’t enough.
He was staring straight ahead, the lines of his face set and hard, though when he finally spoke, there was only bewilderment. “So, what are you saying? We’re done? That’s it?”
“I think we have been.” I paused. “This probably sounds ridiculous to you, but I deserve better.” I’d said those words to myself, but I’d never spoken them out loud. I wasn’t even sure I believed them, though I wanted to.
“I know you deserve better.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
“I would really really love for you to stop telling me what I think.”
“I’m not judging you, Erik. Most people probably don’t think I deserve a second chance.” Kelly certainly didn’t. Oh, sure, maybe I got credit for “doing the right thing” and giving Lucy up, but to fall in love again? To be happy? No way.
The last time I saw Kelly was the summer after I’d terminated my rights. Nick and Andrea had moved away. I’d heard Andrea was pregnant. I’d been on the boardwalk eating ice cream while my mom ducked into one of the shops. Eyes closed, head tilted up to the sun. And then Kelly was in front of me, screaming. Are you freaking serious? How dare you? The guy she was with was strong-arming her away as she kept shouting, How dare you! How dare you! Over and over. It shattered me. I wasn’t allowed to enjoy a beautiful day? Treat myself to an indulgence? Why, why, would she begrudge me? Hadn’t I lost more than any of them?
I thought of that now and wondered if some part of me still believed, as Kelly clearly had, that there was something shameful or wrong about a mother who’d done what I had enjoying anything—even a stupid ice cream cone. Was that why I was ending things with Erik? Because deep down, I didn’t think I deserved happiness? Or was I ending it because he didn’t? I wanted to backtrack, wanted to go back to coffee in bed and shepherdesses and talking about traditions. But before I could say anything, Erik said quietly, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I did decide.” He let out a ragged breath and clicked on the turn signal, taking me to my house instead of his.