Page 32 of Under the Mistletoe

“Merry Christmas, sweetie. Wish you were here.”

“Me too. Be sure to save me some pie.” She makes the best cherry pie with a cute lattice top, all handmade. The creative gene must have skipped a generation because I can’t make a pretty anything to save my life.

“You bet. I already have a slice in the freezer so your dad doesn’t eat it all. You know how he is.”

I laugh. “Did Grandma and Grandpa make it before the snow hit?” They live in Reno, while my parents are in Minnesota, and here I am all the way out on the East Coast. Sometimes, the miles between us feel insurmountable, like today.

“They sure did. It’s too bad you missed your flight. It’s not Christmas without you.”

“Thanks, I know. But as soon as they clear the snow and open the roads and the airport back up, I’ll book a new flight and be there before you know it. At least we should be able to spend the new year together.”

“The airport? What do you mean?”

I frown at her question. “I told you, we got a lot of snow. The airports closed down because of the storms.”

“Are you sure? Because Uncle Tom made his flight with no problem, and you know how crazy JFK is, and they had over a foot of snowfall this week. He said the crews were working overtime to get and keep the main roads clear.”

My frown deepens. My uncle lives a few miles from me, which means we use the same roads much of the time, not to mention we would have flown out of the same airport. How could he have made it and I didn’t?

A thought occurs to me that I push away. Surely, the guys wouldn’t have lied to me…

“Huh, I don’t know, Mom. Maybe he got lucky.” Maybe the crews had cleared the roads nearer to him first and he had an earlier flight, before they closed. It could happen, right?

“Yeah, you’re probably right. He did win five hundred dollars on a scratch-off last week.”

We carry on talking for a bit longer, but I don’t listen as closely as I normally would. My head is too busy trying to make sense of what she told me. The more I think about it, the more things feel off. I never checked the reports myself. I just took the guys’ word for granted.

Could they—would they—have misled me? And if so, to what end? To keep me around longer? I don’t like where my thoughts are going or the way it’s making me feel.

“Mom? Can I call you back later? I have something I need to do that can’t wait.”

“Of course, sweetie.” She sounds curious and a touch worried, but I don’t offer any explanation to alleviate her worries because there’s nothing available to resolve my own yet.

We say our good-byes, and then I pull up the search engine on my phone and look up the local weather report. There should be an emergency notice for the area if it’s as bad as they said it was out there, but as I scroll through the page, I don’t find anything.

In fact, it seems that, while considerable amounts of snow did fall, making it a winter wonderland out there, the city’s crews had been working overtime to clear the roads and lay salt enough that they never became impassible, as they’d speculated early on.

So it only looks bad in a snapshot out the window. It’s not actually bad out there beyond the driveway. Still, I want to give the guys the benefit of the doubt. It never makes sense to convict someone before having all of the facts.

I put my clothes back on, ignoring the discomfort of having no clean panties still, and then return the borrowed clothing to Niles’ room before making my way back downstairs to confront him and his roommates.

---