Page 73 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas

I’m definitely sweating now. “I just meant … he’s, ah, a very clear communicator.”

Indi cackles and drums her feet against the rug.

Not helping. I’m definitely making it worse.

“Right.” Genny slaps her hands down on her thighs and starts to get up. “Ta-ta, then. I’m late for my flight to the far side of the moon.”

“Sit down, spoilsport. As if you’ve never had sex. You’ve got three kids,” Indi teases.

I can’t imagine this kind of connection with my own sisters. Being alone with these women makes me feel like I’m fully immersed in this world, independent of Jake. In this small way, they’re becoming my people as well.

“I think I’m in love with him.”

The words drop like a stone between us. Genny freezes, bent at the waist, mid-sit. She extends her arms out in front of her, palms down, as if she’s just stuck the landing of a gymnastics routine. Then she slowly lowers herself back down in the chair. Indi keeps her back straight as she sits up from her lounging posture like she’s a vampire in a vintage horror film rising out of a crypt. Cait rubs her hands together, grinning like a goblin. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” she says.

I love their silliness. What a privilege, to be a part of this candid little sanctuary. Unfortunately, now I have no idea where to go with this conversation. “I know it’s impossible.”

Cait softly clucks her tongue. “Is it, though? I think most things people call impossible are just the hard things they don’t want to try for.”

“Ouch,” I laugh.

“Honestly, I’ve never understood that phrase, anyway. Falling in love,” Genny says. “There’s no process, Evie. One moment, you aren’t in love, and then suddenly you are. There’s no checklist or invisible finish line you have to cross before you can say you’re in love. If you feel like you’re in love, you’re in love.”

* * *

I get a text from Maddie wishing me a belated happy birthday and a merry Christmas. She sends me a grinning selfie, and when she asks for one from me in return, I don’t hesitate to ask Genny, Cait, and Indi to join in. They crowd around, pressing their faces into the frame with me as the centerpiece.

Later, once the conversation shifts away from Jake and me, I excuse myself from the living room to rein in my thoughts. I wander down a hall I haven’t been in yet, and even though I’m exploring alone in a home that isn’t mine, I don’t feel like an intruder. Except for the nursery where Maeve naps with the babies, all the bedroom doors are open, giving me a glimpse inside.

The rooms look like teenage time capsules. Soft pastel carpets, floral bedspreads, and fairy lights draped over vanity mirrors with snapshots of smiling, youthful faces tucked into the edges. Crystal suncatchers in the windows, pennant garlands crisscrossing the ceilings. Posters on the walls of horses and Doctor Who, reproductions of Monet and Degas, pop icons like Kylie Minogue and Dido and a bunch of others I don’t recognize.

In the hall, the walls are packed with framed photos ranging from candid snapshots to formal portraits. Young Jake on a beach somewhere, his hair soaked and sandy, watching something intently just off-camera. A primary school portrait of him in a tiny suit jacket, a crooked tie, and a valiant attempt at looking serious. Another of all four siblings in festive pajamas on Christmas Day, surrounded by a sea of torn wrapping paper. Jake and Miles as teenagers, standing on the middle rung of a horse paddock’s gate, squinting into the sun.

I see this boy in the Jake I know now. The same set of his shoulders, the paradoxical warmth and reserve of his expressions. The occasional wide-open laugh. The photos are a vivid reminder of the nature of time. Of what fate really means. If any of the moments captured here had happened differently, our paths would have never crossed.

Choices made in parallel.

There’s a family portrait where Jake looks to be around ten or eleven. They’re on the terrace of a home even more stately than Marleigh. The Frost siblings stand like stairsteps in front of a vibrantly gorgeous Helena in an emerald-green ankle-length coat. The man who stands beside her holds baby Indi in one arm, and his other hand rests on Jake’s shoulder.

There’s a smiley sticker over the man’s face. This must be the senior Frost, then. In this photo, Jake is the only person not smiling. His father is the one little advent door he won’t let me peek behind. I have the unhinged urge to peel the sticker back with my fingernail, but I move on.

The room at the end of the hall is larger than the other bedrooms. A shared room. One side has a green plaid quilt on the bed, and bookshelves loaded with fantasy novels and nature field guides. On the walls, beautifully illustrated human and animal anatomy posters, a chart of the Milky Way. All three of the Lord of the Rings movie posters—bonus points for those.

The other side has to be Jake’s. It’s almost as shockingly sparse as his penthouse flat in London. The quilt is heather grey, and the wall is decorated only with a grid of amateur photography in individual frames. A mounted shelf above the headboard is lined with small trophies, and there’s a small bookcase filled with comic books still in their protective plastic sleeves. Obviously, it’s been more than a decade since he actually lived here, but it’s missing the inhabited vibe his siblings’ spaces seem to give off.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jake says behind me, and my whole body lights up. It’s the first time we’ve been alone together since we left the cottage this morning. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” He steps past me into the room, crosses to his bed and hands me the small plushie from his pillow. “This is Meatpie.”

It’s squat and stocky. A bear, I think? Its fur is entirely gone in some places, obviously from being well-loved by a child. I finally meet Jake’s eyes.

He sits on the bed, patting the space next to him for me to sit. “He’s the only toy from my childhood I still have. Cait hid it in her things when our father binned all of my other stuff. He said something about how young men rely on dignity, not teddies. I was thirteen, I think?”

The immediate sting of tears floods my eyes. My heart breaks for the little Jake I saw in the photos. But it’s not only that. This eruption of emotion is about the man Jake is now.

A man who could be mine for the taking.

The tears overflow when I blink, plopping onto Meatpie’s belly.

Handing the plushie back to Jake, I sniff hard and tilt my head back to contain the tears, but all it does is make them race down my cheekbones and into my ears. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know why—” I swipe the heels of my palms across my cheeks.