Page 1 of Maybe This Christmas
Chapter One
“You have approximately thirty seconds before I call the biddies.”
Caleb groaned.His younger sister had taken up a vigil on the other side of his apartment door.
“I’m fine.Just give me a day or so, and I’ll emerge, like a bear after hibernation.”
His attempt at a joke went straight over Sabrina’s head.“Where should I start?With Mom, or maybe Babs?”
Why couldn’t he wallow for a few days?He loved his family, but they could be suffocating.He’d get rid of Sabrina sooner if he put on a happy face.
He hefted himself off the couch.He ran a hand through his hair—in desperate need of a cut—and his face, with his three-day beard quickly turning into something his mother would consider ‘unkempt’.
He groaned as he stood up and took the short walk to the front door.A few seconds after he unlocked it, Sabrina pushed her way inside.Immediately, she scrunched up her nose and covered her mouth.
“When was the last time you cleaned this place?”She leaned in for a second sniff.“Or yourself, for that matter?”
He turned away from his little sister.“Since before the kids left.”
Olivia, his ex-wife, had requested an extra week with the kids at Christmas this year.They would spend the holidays with her partner’s family in Utah.He could hardly refuse her—after all, they were divorced but still co-parented like close friends—but he wasn’t prepared for how deeply the loss of his kids over the holidays would affect him.
Last Christmas, they’d been separated, but not divorced yet.They’d still felt like a family.They’d had Christmas at his parents, just like every year since he’d left home for college.There was a finality of it that this would be his experience now.
He was already not quite used to being a parent only some of the time.But knowing the holidays would also be a lonely experience only made it worse.
How many Christmases did he have left when they were this small?Emerson was five, and Poppy was two and a half.Sure, there would be Christmas morning video chats.But it wasn’t the same.His kids were his world.
Compounded with the fact that he’d been feeling adrift since returning to Falling Leaves last year, an episode of seasonal depression was hardly unexpected.
“You’ve gone downhill this fast?”
He sighed and slumped back onto the couch.“The apartment is just so empty.”He and Olivia split custody.If he missed his kids, they were never far away, and Olivia and her partner, Ashley, had no problems with him visiting their house about an hour away.But now, he couldn’t just hop on a plane.He already felt like a third wheel in their relationship.He said nothing when they left, even though it felt like a piece of his heart was being carved out.Olivia and Ashley would have insisted he come along, and he had to find a life of his own someday.
Sabrina flitted around the apartment, straightening things up.“It’s been three days.We’re worried about you, Caleb.”
He ran a hand down his face.“Who’s we?You and the biddies?”
“All of us.”Her phone began to chime with text alerts.She pulled it out of her coat pocket and looked at it.“Mom and the biddies are around the corner, waiting for my signal.”
He tilted his head back and groaned.“This is not a bank heist.”
“No, but it’s kind of an intervention.”She crossed the room and sat next to him.“You shouldn’t stay holed up in this pigsty in the meantime.”
Since Sabrina had moved up to the mountain to run Sky House Lodge with her husband, Brandon, Caleb had taken a larger role at the family company, Ellis & Daughter.Winter was the slowest time of the year.They had no jobs lined up until January, so all he wanted to do was hide from the world.
“So, what, I’m supposed to move in with you and Brandon?”
They were the better choice.His older brother Sebastian, his family, and their parents lived in town.It was funny how he and his older brother had fled Falling Leaves, Virginia, as soon as they could, but they’d both ended up back here.As if the mountains had called them both home after they’d had their fun.
In his former life, he’d been an environmental engineer.Yet, while environmentalism was still important to him, it no longer filled him with the passion to make it a career.Construction, on the other hand, did.Perhaps it had been in his veins all along.
“I never said that.You’re a grown man missing out on his first Christmas with his kids.You’re right to be sad.But you know what Dad says about wallowing.”
Caleb couldn’t remember the exact phrase but grunted in agreement.Something about lying down to wallow was akin to lying in the mud.Once you got down, you couldn’t get up without being caked in crud.Their father was full of half-baked colloquialisms.
“So, what’s your point, Sab?To make me feel worse than I already do?Because mission accomplished.”
Sabrina paused to reply to her text messages.“I didn’t mean to.But me making you face what’s bugging you would inevitably bring up some of those pesky emotions Ellis men like to push under the rug.”
