Page 25 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

That’s what scares me first. Her smile is too big. Too bright.

When Dad comes in covered in snow, he looks relieved to see her downstairs. Actually relieved. Like, maybe this is a Christmas miracle; I want to believe it too. I really do.

Then Mom laughs too loudly as she comes over and wraps me in a hug. “Merry Christmas, Cub.”

Cub.

She smells different, sharp, sweet, wrong… wine.

She takes my hand and pulls me into the living room, and immediately starts crying, hard and violently, but keeps smiling. “We didn’t buy enough.”

“Everything is perfect.” I force a smile, but my eyes burn.

“For the boys,” she drops to her knees. “I should’ve bought more for the boys.”

Dad kneels beside her immediately. “We knew today would be⁠—”

“They should be here!” She scurries away from him. “I killed them!”

Dad immediately says, “No.”

“I did.”

“No,” I snap louder than I mean to. “Stop saying that!”

Mom looks at me, startled.

“It wasn’t you,” I say, crying now, too. “It was an accident!”

Dad looks at me, like he’s disappointed. I run out of the room and upstairs, straight into the boys’ room.

I grab Jason’s pillow and crawl onto Jasper’s bed, pull his blanket around myself, and hug the pillow. The room still looks the same. Like they just left for school, as if they could still come home. But it barely smells like them anymore…

Downstairs, I can still hear Mom crying.

And somewhere outside, snow starts falling softly against the window.

It could have been an hour or ten of them, I don’t know, and I don’t care, but when the bed dips, I open my eyes and see Dad sitting there, eyes red. “Baby girl, I’m so sorry. I⁠—”

I sit up and hug him. “I’m okay, but she’s not, Dad.” I pull back. “She needs you⁠—”

“She’s asleep.”

My face tightens; I can visibly feel it.

“Gonna get her some help.” He says, pulling me back into a hug; this one is tight, so tight. “We’ll get through this.”

Song: What Child Is This

New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve is not sad exactly, just… quieter than it used to be when they were here.

When Mom fell asleep, ‘fell asleep,’ Dad brought me down to the farm, so I wouldn’t miss the ball drop.

We’re out in the barn; an old radio sits on a shelf beside the woodstove, and we drink soda and eat pizza while this year’s Top 100 countdown plays. The whole space smells like cedar smoke, gasoline from the snowmobiles, wet hay, and snow melting off our boots. I love how normal this feels.

Ry feeds another log into the stove while Alex leans against a stack of feed bags with his hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie. Tessa is stretched across a blanket, painting her nails black because apparently that is who she… we are now.