Page 13 of Meet Me at Christmas
He exhaled audibly. “Nothing good has happened today.” His gaze fluttered to Stella’s face, and the interest in his eyes made her question his statement.
“Ok. Let’s see… Did you set an alarm to get up this morning?”
He turned his attention back to the therapist. “Yeah, why?”
“Did you oversleep?”
“No.”
“Then you can say that a positive for today was that you woke up on time. And you got where you needed to go.”
Henry shook his head. “That’s not a positive.”
“Oh?” Ms. Weixel leaned against the counter lining the side of the room, the skin on her forehead creasing. “Why not?”
“We all have to get up. It’s expected that I won’t sleep in. If I do, it’s unfortunate, but if I don’t, it’s just part of the day.”
Stella added another note:Unwilling to participate in therapy sessions.
“It’s fair to decide that getting up on time isn’t necessarily positive or negative for you, so perhaps we can move on to another example,” Ms. Weixel said.
As Stella typed, Henry ran his fingers through his hair. The defeat in his expression took her back to the memory of the day she left him, and she had to look down at her keyboard to avoid the pain of it overwhelming her.
“I’m done.” He stood.
“We still have a few more minutes,” the therapist said.
“I don’t care. I’m finished for the day. My positive is that I’m leaving.” He strode past Stella and walked out the door.
She typed:Therapy session was a total failure. Try again tomorrow.
Stella packed up her laptop in a daze, still stunned that Henry was the patient she’d been assigned to.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get much today,” Ms. Weixel said.
“It’s okay,” she lied. Then she gathered her things as quickly as she could and rushed out of the hospital, unsure if this project was going to work at all.
Six
On the way home, needing a minute to herself, Stella stopped at the coffee shop on the edge of town. It was a little walk-up booth with outdoor seating, and in summer, the tables were full of people, but today, with gray skies and snowy grounds, the place was empty. She parked her car and got out, her winter attire doing nothing to ward off the cold temperature, but she was so lost in thought that she didn’t really mind.
She ordered a latte, noticing the red Christmas baubles hanging in the trees around the booth. Once she had her coffee, she surveyed the wet benches.
“Stella?”
She turned around to find Mary Jo standing opposite her. Only five years her senior, Henry’s sister looked a lot older. The years had certainly taken their toll, but she still seemed to possess the rugged vibrance she’d had in her youth. Her dark curls were piled into a messy ponytail that could almost pass as a new beauty trend, but her worn, mud-stained boots and tattered dirty jeans from her daily farm work said otherwise.
“It’s good to see you,” Mary Jo said with a hesitancy Stella understood. They had once been close, but when Stella left her brother in ruins, she’d abandoned Mary Jo as well.
Stella went over to her. “You too.” Her coffee steamed into the air between them as she leaned in for a hug. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom.”
Grief flooded Mary Jo’s expression as if it had been hiding under the surface the whole time, waiting for its welcome. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t know, or I would’ve come back.”
“I was so overcome that it didn’t occur to me to reach out. We kept it to just me and Henry and a few locals.”
“I’ve seen Henry,” Stella said, the weight in her words letting Mary Jo know she was aware of Henry’s struggles. “How did he handle the funeral? Did he… remember?”
