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Chapter One
Holly
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“So, I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask with a smile as I wrap my big wooly scarf around my neck.
“You know what, Holly?” Mike says as he tosses a dirty pot into the huge sink. “Jeff and Karl are bringing their extended families in tomorrow to help out, so we’ll be more than enough.”
I feel my stomach drop.
“Why don’t you stay home with your family?”
My eyes drop to the tiled floor as my cheeks heat up.
“Oh,” I say as I force my eyes to look at him. I wrench out a smile. “Okay! Yeah. Great. I’ll do that. You guys don’t need me.”
He must see the quiver in my chin or the brokenness in my eyes because he backtracks hard. “Unless you don’t have any… place to go?”
I swallow hard as I struggle to force out a smile. “I have a family.”
He looks at me skeptically, waiting with a look of pity in his eyes.
My fist presses against my thigh as we stare at each other awkwardly.
I could come clean. I could tell him that my father died unexpectedly three years ago, that I never knew my mother, and that my asshole brother Matthew is somewhere in Asia—Singapore I think. He doesn’t answer my emails and he’s never given me his phone number. I could tell him, pathetic though it is, that this soup kitchen is the closest thing to family I have. And if I’m not volunteering here on Christmas day, then I’ll be all alone, watching Christmas movies in tears, which it looks like I’ll now be doing.
I could say all that. But I don’t.
“Okay, bye!” I quickly say before spinning on my heels and rushing out before the tears do.
“Holly, wait!” Mike calls out when I’m at the door.
“Yes?” I turn around, hope blooming inside me.
“Merry Christmas.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my shoulders drop. “Thanks.”
I turn and press the big heavy doors open with two hands. Cold air blasts me in the face.
It’s freezing out and the snow is coming down hard. I fix my hat and trudge through the snow in the parking lot with my head hanging low. This hurts.
The holidays used to be so fun. Decorating the gingerbread house that my dad baked, but could never stick together properly. Chris sneaking Smarties that was supposed to be the lights on the roof. All three of us giving up and eating the broken pieces for dinner while laughing our butts off to Elf. Now? Now it’s all different.
The holidays aren’t a time of love. My heart aches throughout them. I’m lucky if I don’t spend the whole day crying.
My feet are already soaked when I get to my old beater car with the foot of snow on it. I grunt as I struggle to pull open the frozen door. I finally get it open and climb in. The frozen seats are rock hard.
Starting this old piece of junk is its own adventure, but I eventually get the sad engine groaning. I’ll be lucky if the heat comes on by the time I get home.
I grab the scraper off the passenger seat and get to work on the snow as my car unsuccessfully tries to heat up. A Christmas song plays on the radio and I try not to cry. I’d rather not have frozen eyelids while scraping the ice off my windshield.
Bing Crosby is singing about how great it is to be surrounded by family throughout the holidays. Geez, Bing. Stab me in the heart why don’t you?
This is so depressing. I thought I could start a new tradition of volunteering on Christmas day after the drunken lonely fiasco that was last Christmas, but even they don’t want me.
Maybe I’ll just stay in bed and hide under the sheets, pretending that it’s a normal Tuesday.
Being out here in the frigid cold, a day in a warm bed doesn’t sound too bad right about now.
I get my car as clean as I can and then head back in covered in snow.
Mariah is belting out high notes about how great Christmas is and I just can’t. I change it to the rock station. They proudly refuse to play any Christmas songs and that’s just what I need right now. The guitar is loud and grating in my ears, but at least they’re not making me feel like the most pathetic person on the planet.
My car reluctantly gets going and I pull out of the parking lot onto the road.
Wow, there’s a lot of snow. It’s really coming down.
I perk up in my seat and put both my hands on the wheel, ten and two. I didn’t think the roads were this bad. My winter tires should have been changed a few years ago, but they’re always tumbling down the list of things I need to pay for. I’m kind of regretting that decision now as I swerve a little bit on the snow-filled icy road.
