Page 2 of Meet Me at Christmas
Stella gripped her red Christmas mug in both hands to warm her fingers and leaned against the window frame of her childhood bedroom. The colored Christmas lights blinked merrily along the backyard fence in the dusk of evening. They’d been hung lower this season, with her mother taking on all the holiday duties after Pop died in January.
Ever the family man, her father had worked tirelessly to restore their farmhouse throughout her childhood, never taking vacations or spending his money on extras; he’d given every moment to his family. She’d asked him once if he ever wanted to leave their little town and see the world. He’d told her,“My familyismy world.”
“So you were in London this time, right?” her mother asked absentmindedly as she came in and out of Stella’s peripheral vision, straightening the blankets on the bed and fluffing the pillows. The atmosphere in her bedroom was starkly different from the places she’d held a coffee yesterday, her mother having been twitchy since the minute she met Stella at the airport.
“Yep.” Stella pulled her gaze from the window to face her mother.
“What were you working on?”
“I was writing an article about the effects of diet on long-term brain health.” She didn’t dare divulge that all eyes at work were on her for the coveted President’s Award given by the one-and-only Steven Rotrosen, pioneer in brain research and president ofBrain Borders Magazine. She had enough pressure without adding her mom’s hopefulness on top. Mama had been let down enough with Pop dying last year and both her daughters barely visiting. But if Stella could pull it off, she stood to get a major promotion.
Her mother stopped, wrinkling her nose. “Oof. I don’t know how you write that stuff.”
Stella smiled. “The subjects can bore me to tears too, sometimes.”
Even so, thirteen years after leaving this town, she was swimming in work for the magazine. So much so that she didn’t really have time to return to her hometown for an extended stay, but here she was. She’d had to make it happen; she and her little sister, Lily, were all her mother had.
But she still needed to get the last bit of her work finished. The offices were shutting down to only essential personnel for the holidays, and her articles were due to her editor right before Christmas. She had to get them done if she wanted to be considered for the promotion. The London medical team had taken a bit longer to pull together their research than she’d have liked, so the magazine had pushed her deadline back as far as they could.
Originally, she’d planned to stay in London up until the holiday and finish both articles, but now she had to start over midway through. When her mother called and asked her to come home early, it had taken a bit of finagling, but Stella had shifted her writing plans. After a few discussions with her editor, she managed to get approval to do her secondary article on traumatic brain injuries at Vanderbilt in Nashville, which was only about a forty-minute drive from Leiper’s Fork.
“I also don’t know how you can stomach all that travel,” her mother said as she continued fussing around the room. “All that back and forth between time zones—Europe to New York and then back again… It has to be hard on your system.”
“I manage,” Stella said. “And I enjoy it.”
As lead researcher and traveling writer for the magazine, she was used to moving around. She’d been to four cities in the last sixty days. The pace of the life fueled her, and she thrived in new environments. She’d also found that it was easier to push the sadness out of her mind when she wasn’t near home—sadness for the unfinished moments with her father and other painful memories no one understood but her—which was why she’d buried herself in her coursework, run to the ends of the earth, and only come back for short visits over the years.
She glanced at the simple white satin gown in her closet and then closed the doors, the memory of it too much to bear. Here in the home where she’d spent her entire childhood, she would be forced to face her past head on, but she’d start with her mother’s obvious distress.
Stella went back to the view of the starless sky. A droplet of wet snow slid down the outside of the window as if the house were still crying for the absence of its owner, almost a year later. The space was so empty without Pop’s jovial laughter and quick wit.
She set her mug on the dresser and fiddled with the gold hairbrush set her grandmother gave her when she was ten. “Have you been able to get a hold of Lily?”
Lily had been working in Chattanooga, a couple hours’ drive away, so Stella was surprised she’d made it home before her sister.
Her mother took in a tight breath. “That’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
Stella’s hands stilled, and she turned her attention to her mother.
“I don’t think she’s coming home for Christmas this year.”
This was the first Christmas without Pop. After hearing her mother’s obvious need for support over the phone, Stella had assumed Lily would come right away too.
“She’s in Costa Rica. And I think she got married.”
Stella’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.” A swell of guilt took hold at the thought of her baby sister getting married without her—even though she’d done the same…
“I’m as serious as can be.” Her mother’s focus dropped to an indiscriminate spot on the bed before she resumed straightening a blanket that was already in place.
Stella, Lily, and Pop had been inseparable when the sisters were small; the little girls were like his shadow. They ran errands together, played baseball in the park, and went to football games. He’d even taught them both how to tune up the engine in the old farm truck, although Stella was the only one who’d actually participated on that occasion. Lily was just there, handing them tools and chatting away.
They’d always dreamed of having their weddings on the steps of the old farmhouse, one wearing white while the other stood by her side. “I’ll spare no expense,” Pop had said when they’d climbed onto his lap at the ages of ten and eight with their bouncing blonde curls and wide brown eyes and told him their plans. They’d agreed that the minute one of them decided to get married, they’d have a big party on the porch at the farmhouse. It would be incredible with the lush green grass against rolling hills and the old oak trees.
Stella was the first to ruin that dream. By the time she was nearly eighteen, the memory of her pact with Lily had settled to the bottom of her life like a lone feather. In a rush of spontaneity clouded by young love, she and her first and only sweetheart, Henry, had gotten married with just the two of them and the officiant, Waylon Evans, an old bootlegger-turned-pastor of the country church down the road, at Jackson Falls, the massive waterfall a few minutes from town. She’d spent all her money on that white satin dress that hung in the closet.
If she closed her eyes, she could still see the tiny hesitation in her father’s smile when she came home to tell him she’d gotten hitched. She’d never expected him to remember her childish wishes when she certainly hadn’t. Despite the fact that her wedding day wasn’t what he’d expected, he loved that she was settling down early and staying in their little town, just as he had with her mother. Now she felt the loss of that opportunity for her father. She hadn’t given him the chance to walk her down the aisle. And for different reasons he hadn’t had the chance with Lily either.
Over the years she’d been gone, Stella hadn’t had to face why her young marriage hadn’t worked, and she didn’t want to think about it now. If only she could’ve told her father everything when he was alive. She’d always imagined she’d get far enough in life that at some magical point the guilt and shame wouldn’t hurt so badly, and then she could sit him down and explain. She had no idea she’d never get the chance.
