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would happen to them. To us.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“We were meant to be the ones who had it all under control. We’re supposed to be helping Beth, right? And yet she was the one cleaning our kitchen. It’s all… humbled me. To the dust.”
I nod, unable to speak. I feel exactly the same.
“I’m sorry, Ally,” Nick says. “For letting you down.”
“You haven’t…”
“I have. With Dylan. And maybe with Emma and Josh. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, except that I feel like a failure.”
“So do I.” I hate to admit it so starkly, but it’s a truth that radiates from my deepest self. I’m a failure. I must have failed as a parent, as a mother, for my children to do the things they have. For my son to turn to drugs, my daughter to suicide. I must be a complete and abysmal failure, and the worst thing is, I thought I was okay. I was actually smug.
Nick takes his hands out of his parka and reaches for mine. “At least we’re failing together,” he says with a wobbly smile, and I nod, my throat still too tight to manage words, as we walk hand in hand up the mountain. For the first time in a long while I feel a sense of possibility, of hope.
By the time the two of us reach the summit, with the elegant Heublein Tower shuttered up for winter, Emma, Josh, and Dylan have all been there for a few minutes. Dylan runs towards me as I crest the mountain, and I hold my arms out to him. He doesn’t run into them, but he stops right before me and gives me a lovely, shy smile. I smile back.
“Hey, Dylan. You’ve done such a good job on this walk. I bet you’re tired.”
“Hot chocolate,” Emma sings out, brandishing the thermos, and I marvel at the change in her. Gone is the silent, morose patient from the four days in the hospital. She still seems fragile, her skin almost translucent, but there is a lightness to her that wasn’t there before. And Josh… I’m so happy to see him outside, interacting, without his phone or his laptop or the endless sulky silence. I feel as if I’ve stepped from a stuffy, stale existence into fresh air; I feel as if I can finally breathe.
We find a flat rock to sit on while we drink our hot chocolate from tin mugs; the vista of the Farmington River Valley is a muted yet breathtaking patchwork of browns on this wintry day, the Hartford skyline visible in the other direction, hazy in the distance.
We sip our hot chocolate, quiet and content, when Emma suddenly speaks.
“I’m not going back to Harvard.”
Nick jolts, nearly spilling his hot chocolate, and I feel myself tense right back up. “You don’t need to make any decisions right now.”
“I sort of do,” Emma responds. Her tone is matter-of-fact. “Finals start next week.”
So soon? It hasn’t even been a full week since Thanksgiving. “Even so,” I say, a bit feebly, because Emma is already shaking her head.
“I don’t want to take my finals.”
“That’s fine, Em,” Nick jumps in quickly. “Of course it is. There’s no rush. Harvard will hold your place, and repeating the semester isn’t such a big deal.”
It kind of is, I think, especially for an overachiever like Emma. She’ll be behind all her friends, and I know she’ll hate that.
Emma stares out at the view for a moment, her lips set, before she replies. “I don’t want to repeat the semester.”
Nick and I exchange uneasy glances. “This is too soon to be talking about this,” he says in his firm, fatherly voice. “Or making decisions. Let’s just take it easy for the next few days, all right?”
Emma shakes her head, but she drops the subject, and Nick attempts a change of conversation that is so glaringly obvious, Josh actually winces.
“I was thinking we should get our Christmas tree soon. Head out to the farm.”
Every year we have cut our own tree at a farm in the northwest corner of the state. It is a bit of a trek, but it’s truly magical—snowy fields of fir and spruce, clean pine-scented air, and a barn with a Christmas shop and café. It’s one tradition we’ve never broken; the kids have always been up for it.
Emma presses her lips together, seeming to resent the change in subject, but then she nods. Josh shrugs his agreement, but even that feels like a win, considering what life has been like lately.
“And I thought we could invite Beth,” Nick continues, surprising me. He glances at Dylan. “Would that be fun, buddy? If your mom came with us?”
Slowly, warily, Dylan nods. And then he smiles, and Nick nods back, pleased. We’d talked last night about having Beth over more as we head towards reunification, but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about her accompanying us on a sacred family tradition.
But then, as I look at my children finishing their hot chocolate, and then the view of fields and farms that stretch on forever, I realize that nothing is sacred. All the rules, all the promises, have already been broken, for Beth—and for me.
