Chapter 4 - Under the Glow of Christmas Lights
The warmth of the house hit me like a physical wave, carrying scents that knocked the breath out of me: cinnamon, roasted pine, melted butter, and the faint, citrusy vanilla perfume that had always been Lauren’s signature.
I bent down with trembling fingers, unlacing my leather boots and setting them carefully on the rubber mat by the entryway. My hands felt clumsy, foreign, like they belonged to a ghost who had suddenly been forced back into a physical body.
I hung my heavy wool coat on the brass coat rack, leaving the faded yellow letter safely tucked in my breast pocket, pressed right against my ribs where my heart was hammering at an unnatural rhythm.
The home was modest, nothing like the four-thousand-square-foot architectural display I inhabited back in Chicago. The ceilings were standard height, the walls painted a warm, creamy butterscotch. Framed watercolors of the Beartooth Mountains hung along the hallway.
And then there were the photographs.
I stopped dead at the entrance to the living room, my breath catching in my throat.
On the small console table sat a row of wooden picture frames.
A baby with a tuft of blonde fuzz, wrapped in a hospital blanket.
A toddler with messy cheeks sitting in a high chair covered in chocolate cake, holding up one tiny finger.
A little boy in rain boots holding up a yellow plastic shovel in a muddy garden.
A kindergarten portrait: Leo wearing a blue polo shirt, missing his two front teeth, smiling with an open, radiant joy that made my knees ache with longing.
In every single photograph, Lauren was either beside him or behind the lens. And in every single photograph, the space where a father should have stood was completely, utterly empty.
“Mom?”
Leo’s voice pulled me out of the trance.
He was sitting on a braided rag rug in the center of the living room, surrounded by a sprawl of green and red wrapping paper scraps, a tube of clear tape, and a wooden model kit of an old biplane. The Christmas tree in the corner was a real Douglas fir, thick and slightly asymmetrical, decorated with mismatched ornaments—handmade paper snowflakes, salt-dough handprints, and twinkling multicolored bulbs.
Leo looked up at me. His blue-gray eyes narrowed slightly, studying me with that same unnerving focus.
“Did you come from an airplane?” Leo asked.
I swallowed hard, my chest tightening so severely I could barely pull in oxygen. I looked toward the kitchen archway, where Lauren was standing beside the stove, a ceramic mug in each hand. She gave me a tiny, imperceptible nod. A warning. A leash.
*Be careful.*
I took two slow steps into the room, keeping my hands visible, lowering myself slowly until I was kneeling on the carpet a few feet away from him, bringing myself down to his eye level.
“I did,” I said, my voice rougher than I intended. I cleared my throat quickly. “I flew in from Chicago this morning. And then I drove a long way through the snow.”
“Chicago is windy,” Leo stated matter-of-factly, picking up a piece of balsa wood from the model kit. “My teacher, Mrs. Gable, said they have buildings that go up into the clouds.”
“They do,” I said, a faint, fragile smile breaking through the numbness on my face. “Some of them are so tall that on foggy days, you can’t even see the street from the top floor.”
Leo’s eyes widened slightly. “Do you live in a cloud building?”
“Near them,” I replied.
I looked at his small hands. His fingers were long and slender, deftly manipulating the tiny wooden struts of the model airplane. Then I noticed something that made my heart leap into my throat: he was holding the tiny tube of glue with his left hand.
I was left-handed. My father had been left-handed.
“Are you Mom’s friend?” he asked, pressing the wing into the fuselage with surprising patience.
The question hung in the air like a razor. I looked over my shoulder. Lauren had come out of the kitchen, carrying two mugs of steaming cider. Her knuckles were white against the ceramic. She watched me with an expression that was impossible to decipher—a mixture of dread, sorrow, and fierce maternal scrutiny.
“I knew your mom a long time ago,” I said carefully, looking back at the boy. “A very long time ago. Before you were born.”
“Before I was even a thought?” Leo asked. It was clearly a phrase he had heard before.
“No,” I whispered, the word escaping before I could filter it. “You were definitely a thought.”
Leo frowned slightly, trying to piece together the meaning, but the attention span of a seven-year-old mercifully intervened. He held up the half-assembled wooden plane toward me.
“The wing won’t stay,” he said, frustration edging into his tone. “The wood is too thin and the glue takes too long to dry. Mom said we have to wait, but Santa is coming tonight and I wanted it to hang on the tree before he gets here.”
My hands moved before my brain could process the fear. “Can I see it?”
Leo hesitated for a second, then handed the fragile piece of balsa wood across the rug.
His small, warm fingers brushed against mine.
The contact sent an electric shock straight through my nervous system. It was like touching a live wire. That tiny, warm hand had my bone structure. The shape of his fingernails was identical to mine.
I took the plane, holding it with extreme care. “You know what the trick is with these?” I asked, keeping my voice low and steady, terrified that if I spoke too loud, the moment would dissolve into smoke.
“What?”
“You have to score the wood just a tiny bit where the glue goes,” I explained, pulling a clean brass ballpoint pen from my shirt pocket. I used the dull edge of the metal clip to gently cross-hatch the microscopic groove where the wing met the body. “If the surface is too smooth, the glue just slides around. But if you give it little grooves, the glue has something to grab onto.”
Leo crawled closer on his knees, his shoulder almost touching my knee. He smelled of laundry detergent and cinnamon sugar. He watched my hands with rapt attention, his slate eyes reflecting the multicolored lights of the Christmas tree.
“Like tires on the snow,” Leo murmured.
“Exactly like tires on the snow,” I said, handing the piece back to him. “Now put a tiny drop of glue right there, hold it for twenty seconds, and count slowly.”
Leo followed the instruction perfectly. He pressed the wing down, his lips moving as he counted silently: *one, two, three…*
Behind me, I heard the faint clinking of mugs on the side table.
I turned my head. Lauren was standing near the fireplace, watching us. Her arms were folded across her chest again, but her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. She looked at me, then looked at Leo’s small hands mirroring mine, and for the first time since she opened the door, the icy armor around her began to crack.
She looked away, stepping toward the hallway.
“Leo,” she called softly, her voice wavering just enough that only I could hear it. “It’s past eight. Go brush your teeth and put your slippers away. Santa doesn’t land on roofs where boys are still awake.”
“Aw, Mom, ten more seconds!” Leo protested, still holding the balsa wing.
“Leo. Now, please.”
Leo sighed, a heavy, dramatic seven-year-old sigh, but he released the wing. Miraculously, the glue held. The wing stayed straight and true.
His face lit up with pure triumph. He looked at me, a dazzling, gap-toothed grin splitting his cheeks. “It worked!”
“It sure did,” I said, my voice catching in my throat.
“Thanks, mister…” He paused, realizing he didn’t know what to call me.
The silence in the room stretched until it felt ready to snap.
“Liam,” I whispered. “My name is Liam.”
“Thanks, Liam,” Leo said brightly. He scrambled to his feet, leaving the plane carefully perched on the coffee table, and sprinted down the hallway toward the bathroom, the sound of his stockinged feet drumming against the floorboards.
A door clicked shut. The rush of running water began.
And just like that, the air in the living room turned back to ice.
Lauren stood by the entryway to the kitchen, her eyes fixed on me.
May you like
“He has your hands,” she said, her voice barely a breath. “I’ve spent seven years trying not to see it. But he has your hands, Liam. And every time he fixes something, every time he builds a tower out of blocks, I’ve had to look at you.”
***
