Page 4 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
She had the perfect fire starter—the last bunch of pictures she’d found of her and Wyatt. She’d scrubbed her phone and laptop clean of them, but some still remained in a box that had been waiting for when she got around to scrapbooking. Now she was glad she hadn’t had time for scrapbooking. What a waste that would have been.
Out came the shoebox, half-full of memory triggers.
She plucked out one of him and her at the beach on their honeymoon in Hawaii. She was in a string bikini, showing off a body she’d never get back. Maybe she’d cut him out and keep it. It would be nice to have proof someday if her daughter ever asked, “Mommy, were you ever skinny?”
“I’m not fat now,” she told herself. “I’m curvy.” There was nothing wrong with curves. Every woman should celebrate her body, no matter what its shape.
Whose body was Wyatt helping celebrate this holiday season? She knew he’d broken up with Office Barbie because he’d come crawling back in the summer, hoping Arianna would be willing to hit restart. In his dreams. He’d probably gotten a new girlfriend for Christmas. She fetched scissors and cut him out of the picture with one clean snip.
There were so many pictures, so many memories that should have been happy but were now painful. Them on his motorcycleHit the road, Wyatt. Them out to dinner for their anniversary.Barf!She’d lost the man but kept that dress. Maybe she should burn it, too. Then there was one of them after they’d brought Sophie home from the hospital. She had Sophie in her arms and he was sitting next to her, looking on and grinning like a proper family man. Looks were deceiving. She ground her teeth and crushed it.
She crumpled a bunch of newspapers, then scattered the pictures on top. Next came a tent of kindling, lots of it, and more pictures, and a couple of small pieces of wood, enough to get a good flame going but not enough to smother the fire. Once that all caught, she’d add a nice fat log.
Her mother returned with the eggnog. “The New Year will be better,” she said.
“Yeah, because there’ll be no man in it,” replied Arianna. “I should roast marshmallows over these.”
Mia handed her daughter a glass. “Sorry, we don’t have any. And roasting them over burning photos would probably make them toxic, anyway.”
“Oh, well. Eggnog is better.” Arianna took a sip. It had a satisfying amount of rum in it.
“Just the way your dad liked it,” Mia said.
Her dad. Now there was a good man. He’d adored her mother and claimed there was no sense in looking at another woman since none could compare with his wife. They’d had twenty-five years together before he died, far too young.
We loved more in twenty-five years than some people do in fifty, Mia liked to say.
Twenty-five years. Arianna and Wyatt hadn’t even made it to ten.
“You’ll find someone,” her mother said softly.
“Not holding my breath,” said Arianna. She turned on the TV and started streaming Christmas songs. On came the Jackson 5 singing, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.”
“Oh, that’s a fun one,” said her mother.
Yes, it was. Arianna turned up the volume. Then she grabbed a long match from the can where Mia kept them and struck it against the hearth. It came to life with a hiss and she smiled as she touched it to the papers under those pictures. They burst into flame, curling the pictures to black swirls, chewing on the wood and producing smoke. One failed relationship up in smoke.
Good thing Santa had already come. This would have toasted his toes. Ha ha.
The pictures vanished as the flames grew and produced more smoke.
More smoke, and it was coming out of the fireplace instead of going up the chimney. Oh, no. The damper!
“The damper, hon,” her mom said, her voice almost calm.
“I can’t remember where it is,” Arianna cried. “What side is it on?”
“On the right,” said Mia as Arianna felt around for it. Chimneys weren’t that big. How hard was it to find a damper? She stuck her head into the smoky cloud and tried to see up the chimney but all she saw was inky smoke. She came out coughing, her eyes burning.
She squeezed them tight and reached in again, feeling around for the stupid thing. Where was it? Ow! It was hot in there.
Meanwhile, the smoke was wafting out into the living room, like a gray ghost, and the heat was trying to melt off her hand. There was only one thing to do. “Let’s get out of here!”
2
Arianna opened the living room window in the hopes the smoke would scram once the fire ran out of fuel, grabbed coats for them from the coat closet, then raced her mother and herself out the front door.
“I’m sorry about this, Mom,” she said as they stood on the front walk, pulling on their coats, “It’ll die down, then we can go back in.”
