Page 42 of Mistletoe Sky
When her father had told her and Pascal this story earlier tonight, she hadn’t been able to sleep, despite Pascal’s urgings that she needed rest. She’d returned to the fudge shop, prepared to work herself to the bone. She hadn’t known about the blizzard, but it felt fitting, almost as though their mother was trying to remind them of that day so long ago, one of the last during which they’d all been happy together.
Amelie wanted to ask Willa,Doesn’t it feel like she’s here with us now? But she didn’t want to upset Willa all the more, not now, as Willa waited for Amelie to explain herself.
Amelie put her mug of cocoa on the side table and pulled her hair into a loose ponytail. Willa sniffed and stared into her swirling chocolate.
“You remember the night it happened, I guess. You remember our side of the story,” Amelie said now, her voice low.
“I can’t ever forget it,” Willa said, although Amelie remembered how Willa had expressed her idea to try to forget, to get as far away from Mackinac as she could, to bleach her mind of its memories.
It was a week and a half after the blizzard that had brought the Caraway family to the ice in celebration, and the second night of the Christmas Festival. After a hard day of working at the fudge shop, selling to tourists and delivering boxes of fudge to the fudge stall on the street, eighteen-year-old Willa and Amelie had escaped to their friend’s place to eat candy, play computer games, and paint each other’s nails. There was expectation in the air, a joyousness that only came during the time of the Christmas season.
“I remember we were angry because she hadn’t moved her things back in yet,” Willa said now, her eyes darkening. “She told us she was moving back into our place, and we thought she was lying, or faking it to make us happy. Or we thought she was going to change her mind.”
Amelie nodded, remembering how sour she’d felt. She and Willa had offered to help their mother pack, even getting out her suitcases and pressing sweaters into the bases. But Georgia had said, “Honeys, let’s get through the festival first. There’s so much to deal with and so much to think about.” Quietly, she’d added, “Your father and I are always stressed during the ChristmasFestival. I don’t want us to fight the minute I move back in. I want it to feel fresh and new and good.”
The goal was to get through the festival, and then Mom would move back in. Although they were miffed, Willa and Amelie had decided to make their peace with it.
“I still remember getting the call late that night,” Willa said, flaring her nostrils. “We’d just gotten home, and we couldn’t believe Mom and Dad weren’t back yet. We thought maybe they were making fudge or something, or cleaning up. Or maybe, we hoped, they were together, working on their relationship, or whatever. But then the phone rang and everything fell apart.”
Amelie had been the one to answer the phone. It had been Dr. Albert, the doctor who’d taken over three summers before that. He’d said, “Someone is coming over to take care of you and explain everything. Stay where you are.” And then, he’d hung up.
Willa and Amelie had sat, crying and staring at the front door, until their next-door neighbor, Veronica, had knocked and come in. There had been fear and sorrow in her eyes, enough for them to understand that something awful had happened.
She’d said, “Your mother. There was an accident.” And then, she’d burst into tears, clearly unable to collect herself enough to deliver the news.
Amelie and Willa had packed their things and gone back to their friend’s place, where they stationed themselves in the guest room and refused to come out to talk to anyone. They’d fallen into a sort of fugue state, losing massive amounts of time, sometimes sleeping, and hardly eating. Somehow, they’d learned that their father had survived the accident—something to do with the weather, with the cold, with the ice, but that he couldn’t talk to either of them.
Their friend’s mom had said of their father, “He’s all out of sorts. He’s in the hospital.”
One of the twins, either Willa or Amelie, they couldn’t remember, had said, “Maybe it’s because it’s his fault.” And from there, they’d developed a theory that their mother had moved out of the house because their father was a bad man, or that she was frightened of him, or that he was negligent, or something. Nothing of what they said made actual sense, but they didn’t really mind. They wanted to blame anyone for their pain. Their father felt like an accurate target—especially because they still hadn’t seen him.
He was in the hospital. Because he was guilty? Because he couldn’t face them?
At the time, they couldn’t fully fathom it.
The afternoon of their mother’s funeral, Willa and Amelie sat in the front row of the church, holding hands, unable to cry because everything felt so surreal. Their father hadn’t attended. They’d heard that someone was hosting a wake at a house near theirs, but they had no interest in attending, in talking to anyone, in hearing their pity. After the funeral, they were taken to their mother’s sister’s place in Detroit, where they finished out their senior years, keeping to themselves. They had applied to separate colleges, eager to move away from one another and into their new lives.
That was the story from their perspective during their teenage years.
But now, so many years later, Amelie shook her head, saying, “Dad was too sick to come see us and explain himself. He spent a month in the hospital due to grief.”
Willa flared her nostrils, clearly unable to speak.
“He told me that on the second night of the Christmas Festival, both he and Mom had really sore feet,” Amelie said, breathless. “They locked up the shop, took off their shoes, and warmed them by the fire, talking about their past, about their future. They drank cocoa and held hands. Dad says it was reallyromantic, really beautiful. They were looking forward to when Mom was going to move back in. They had a plan in place for two days after the festival was over. They knew we were impatient, but they also knew we were teenagers who needed to learn how to wait.
“Eventually, they realized it was really late, and they needed to get to bed soon if they were going to wake up and make more fudge in the morning. But by chance, Dad noticed that there was a big yellow moon over the island. Mom suggested they go for a brief walk before bed. They bundled up and headed into the night. Dad said it was one of those crisp, gorgeous, starry nights, and they couldn’t stop walking and talking. Eventually, they found themselves back at the lake, which was still frozen, just as it had been the day they went ice-skating. They were wearing snowsuits and sat down, gazing at the stars. Dad says he doesn’t know whose idea it was, his or Mom’s, but one of them wanted a hot toddy, so Dad volunteered to walk the five minutes back to the shop and make two. He didn’t want the night to end.
“Dad says that before he left, he kissed Mom and told her he’d be right back. He hurried to the kitchen, fixed their drinks, and returned as quickly as he could. But Mom wasn’t at the beach anymore. At first, he called out her name, thinking that she was hiding or playing a game. But that was when he realized that there was a crack in the ice—and a hole where someone had fallen through.”
Amelie couldn’t talk any longer. She wrapped her hand around her throat and lay back on their mother’s old bed. Willa was quietly crying, gazing out the dark window, where they could make out the shutters of Pascal’s bed-and-breakfast.
It surprised Amelie sometimes how much Willa looked like their mother, Georgia. She assumed that Willa thought the same about her.
Willa let out a big, exhausted sigh.
Finally, she asked, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
Amelie shook her head. “I don’t think we wanted to listen. We were so bruised from Mom leaving, and so angry because we thought Dad was the one to make her leave. We couldn’t go back home, nor could we come back to the fudge shop. I recall thinking about how Mom wanted us to go out and make something of ourselves, so I began to think about the future in a new way. I wanted to make Mom proud of me.”
