Chapter 10 - Christmas Morning, Reborn
*Thursday, December 25, 2025.*
The alarm on my bedside table didn't go off. I didn't need it.
I woke at 6:30 AM to the sound of soft, steady snow falling outside the bedroom window, whispering against the glass panes of our mountain home.
I stretched, feeling the complete absence of bone-deep hospital exhaustion. I hadn't worked an overnight shift in nine months. I had slept eight full hours in my own bed, beneath a heavy wool quilt, with the house quiet, warm, and entirely safe.
I pulled on a thick flannel shirt, slipped into my sheepskin moccasins, and walked down the wide oak hallway.
When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped.
Sitting on the bottom stair was Ivy.
She had grown three inches over the past year. Her legs were longer, her flannel pajama pants ending just above her wool socks. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, shining chestnut in the early morning light.
Beside her on the stair sat the two Taos ceramic mugs from Natalie’s collection, and between them, her own handmade sunflower mug.
Steam rose in sweet, fragrant spirals from all three.
The smell of dark chocolate, cinnamon, and whole milk filled the foyer.
She didn't hear me at first. She was leaning back against the banister, looking through the wide, open double doors into the living room.
There were no locks on the double doors anymore. Howard and I had removed the deadbolts back in February, replacing the heavy brass hardware with magnetic catches that clicked open with the touch of a single finger.
Inside the living room, the tree rose nine feet toward the vaulted ceiling, glowing with hundreds of soft, warm white lights. It was an unruly, chaotic masterpiece of memory. Natalie’s glass hummingbird hung proudly on the center branch, its repaired wing shining like a badge of survival. Felt snowmen, clay handprints, dried orange slices, and wooden ornaments from three generations covered every inch of green fir.
Beneath the tree sat a dozen presents—wrapped in brown butcher paper, tied with uneven string, decorated with handmade drawings and pinecones Ivy had collected from the woods.
"Morning, star," I said softly, walking down the steps.
Ivy turned her head. Her face broke into a wide, luminous grin—the kind of grin that had no fear behind it, no hesitation, no question of whether she was permitted to occupy the space she was standing in.
"You're late," she said, tapping her wrist where a pretend watch would be. "It's six-thirty-eight. The cocoa has been ready for four minutes."
"I apologize, Miss Vance," I said, sitting down beside her on the bottom stair, pulling my knees up just like she did. "I was detained by the beauty of the snowfall."
"Acceptable excuse," she declared, handing me one of the green mugs.
I took it. The ceramic was piping hot against my palms.
We sat together on the bottom stair, our shoulders touching, sipping our cocoa in the quiet house.
In the kitchen, the slow cooker was already humming, filled with the spiced cider my mother had prepared the night before. At eight o'clock, the gravel driveway would crunch with the tires of my father's F-350, followed by Andi, Mark, Blair, and the cousins. There would be loud laughter, spilled flour, wrapping paper torn into shredded piles, and a house overflowing with noise and belonging.
Marlene was gone.
The last I had heard from Diane, Marlene was living in an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment in Greeley, working as an intake receptionist at a dental office. The Steamboat development had collapsed when Evelyn’s LLC was audited, forcing her mother into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Coral and Forrest were thriving in Texas with Greg, spending their Christmases on a sunlit ranch outside Fort Worth, free from the suffocating vanity of their mother's games.
Marlene had tried to steal Christmas from a child, and in doing so, had written herself out of the story entirely.
Ivy took a long sip of her cocoa, leaving a tiny mustache of chocolate foam above her upper lip.
She looked over at me, her hazel eyes bright and clear, reflecting the twinkling lights of the living room tree.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"This is my favorite spot in the whole house."
I looked at the fourth stair, where she had once fallen asleep in the cold, clutching her handmade gift in the dark.
Then I looked at the bottom stair, where we sat now, surrounded by warmth, with the doors wide open, the lights shining, and every single broken piece restored.
May you like
"Mine too, star," I whispered, putting my arm around her shoulder and pulling her close. "Mine too."
And outside, the Colorado snow fell soft and deep, covering the old tracks, burying the winter that almost broke us, leaving nothing behind but clean, white, unblemished ground.
