first
December 25th
The first day of Christmas
Christen knows from years of boarding school and lazy vacations that Tobin does not wake easily, but it makes sense that Christmas would be the exception.
The Heaths have more than enough spare rooms, but somehow it never occurred to anyone that Christen should use one. Instead, she and Tobin ended up in Tobin’s childhood bed, which is more than big enough for both of them, or would be if Tobin - Christen tells herself - wasn’t such a needy sleeper. Somehow they always end up curled around each other at the very edge of the mattress, or practically on top of each other in the middle. It’s habit, and Christen never used to think anything of it, but more recently she’s found it harder to ignore the way her stomach churns when Tobin’s hand finds its way around her waist, or how uncomplicatedly peaceful it is to wake up with her chin pressed into Tobin’s shoulder.
But she’s the only one in the bed now, and the space beside her is cold. She remembers what day it is, and the grief is just about to hit her when the door opens and Tobin pads in, barefoot, balancing a tray precariously in her free hand.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she whispers.
‘Don’t tell me Tobin night-owl Heath is the first person awake.’
‘No, but Tobin most-wonderful-time-of-the-year Heath is. Budge.’
Christen groans and grabs defensively at the comforter. ‘I was cozy. You’re letting in all the cold air.’
‘Oh shush. I’ve brought peppermint hot chocolate and toast with maple butter, and my feet are freezing.’ Tobin climbs in next to Christen, so close it can only be described as snuggling, beautifully warm and smelling of crumbs. She sticks her icy feet right on Christen’s bare calf to prove her point and Christen yelps so violently she almost upsets the tray. ‘We’ll eat proper breakfast when the others are up, this is just to tide us over.’
‘I will never understand how you can eat so much food,’ begins Christen absently, but then she breathes in a cloud of minty, chocolatey steam and leans back luxuriously against the headboard. For a moment, she is blissfully happy.
‘Um, Chris?’
‘Yeah?’
Tobin shifts against her, hip to hip, and straightens up a little bit. ‘You’d tell me, right? If there was anything you wanted?’
‘Anything I wanted?’ Christen feels her stomach bottom out. She can’t tell if that really is an invitation, an offer, or if it just maybe sounds like one, or if she just wants it to be. ‘Like what?’
‘I’ve told everyone to keep it chill, so we’ll probably just do breakfast and church and presents, and then we all help with the cooking, and we might watch a movie later before we go to Kelley’s. And maybe go for a walk after church if it’s sunny out. But I know everyone does Christmas differently, and I guess I’m trying to say that I don’t want you to feel like a guest.’ Tobin’s fingers are wrapped around her mug, one of her standard strategies when she’s trying to keep her hands still, but her knuckles are white. She visibly really wants to get this right. ‘If there’s anything that you would normally do today, or anything you’d make to eat or drink, or any, I don’t know, traditions, promise you’ll tell me? We’ll make it happen.’
Christen nods, heart full, and feels the corner of her mouth quiver. ‘I miss them.’
‘I know,’ says Tobin quietly. ‘And I get that today might be hard because of that, but I want you to have fun. So anything you want, you just ask. Promise?’
‘Promise.’
Tobin squeezes her hand, and they sit there in silence until Christen’s throat stops aching. She finally manages a smile as she steals the second-last bite of Tobin’s toast. ‘I have to say, this is a pretty good start.’
‘Heaths are excellent celebrators. You know that.’
‘True.’ Christen could barely remember a Christmas when they hadn’t spent part of the day in and out of each other’s houses. ‘Remember how I spent that one Christmas in Scotland because Dad had to go look at the North Sea rigs, and I woke you up at four a.m. phoning you from the hotel?’
‘I told you to.’
‘I know, but I still felt bad. You sounded so sleepy.’ To this day, Christen isn’t 100% sure that Tobin had actually been awake on that phone call, but it had meant a lot to hear her voice all the same. ‘I have such good memories of that year. I missed you a ton, but it was nice having my parents to myself. I still feel all warm and fuzzy whenever I hear bagpipes.’
‘Is that why you couldn’t stop laughing when we watched Braveheart?’
‘That was mostly because of the appalling historical inaccuracies, but it didn’t help.’
Tobin grins and leans across Christen - all the way across her, pretty much lying in her lap, and Christen’s heart possibly stops beating entirely. She’s just looking for a photo book from the little set of shelves on the far side of the bed, and navigates her way neatly to the correct page. ‘Here.’
Sixteen-year-old Christen in a giant coat and tartan scarf, her parents on either side, all three of them beaming in front of Edinburgh Castle. Christen laughs - can’t help it. ‘You kept it!’
‘Of course.’
Christen flips through the rest of the pages. ‘What year is this album? Have you got the one of you covered in mud after that girl tackled you off the pitch?’
‘This one isn’t any particular year. This one is just you.’
Sure enough, they’re all photos of her, or the two of them together, different years and occasions all mixed up together. She stops and runs a fingertip down a newspaper clipping tucked in beside one of the pictures: her and her mom, a few years ago now, all dressed up at some charity gala. ‘You know, this was the last thing I did with my mom. Not this exact event, but at this theater. We went to Swan Lake, just a couple days before the accident.’
She can’t bear to look at Tobin because she knows just how soft her eyes will be. ‘And did you have fun?’
‘So much. It was perfect.’
Tobin slings an arm around her and kisses her temple. ‘I’m so glad, Chris’
The house is starting to wake up around them. Christen knows this family well enough to identify the unmistakable sound of Tobin’s brother skidding down the stairs, or her elder sisters calling to each other through their shared wall. She’s excited to be part of a family day for the first time in months, but there’s sadness too, and it means the world that Tobin knows that. She can’t imagine doing this beside anyone else.
‘You can have first shower,’ offers Tobin, collecting the empty mugs and stacking them on the tray. ‘I’ll start the coffee.’
Christen does smile up at her then. ‘Sounds perfect.’
Breakfast is loud and chaotic, in the best way, and church is nice; Christen might not be formally religious but she appreciates spirituality, and it’s lovely to see everyone so joyful. The walk back to the house is cold. Christen finds herself thinking wistfully of more coffee, hot chocolate, warm socks, and has to suppress a whine when Tobin drags her aside as they approach the porch.
‘It won’t take a second. I just want to show you your present.’
‘Out here?’
‘Yes.’ Tobin holds out a hand and Christen takes it unhesitatingly.
There’s a bright bundle of wrapping paper on the ground. Christen is about to step forward when she hears the parcel very definitely rustle. ‘Is it...alive?’
‘Yeah. That’s why I didn’t wrap it too tight.’
Christen hesitatingly takes hold of a trailing piece of red ribbon, and pulls. The paper falls away to reveal a glossy-leaved green tree in a glazed red pot, and a fat brown bird perched on one of the branches.
‘Oh my goodness!’
Tobin steps forward tentatively. ‘Is that, a good oh my goodness?’
‘Yes! I’m just surprised. Um - what is it?’
‘It’s a partridge. And a miniature pear tree. I just thought, since you’re back for good and have so much space, and - and I just wanted to get you something you didn’t have. Something you’d remember. We used some tame partridges on a shoot a few months ago and they’re very friendly. A photoshoot, obviously. Not a shoot where they, er, kill birds.’ She looks so hesitant Christen wants to hug her. ‘If it’s stupid you can say so. You know you can. I know it’s kind of off the wall and I won’t be offended.’
Christen kneels beside the little tree. The partridge clucks at her gently, its eyes bright. She must have found herself unexpectedly on the verge of tears a thousand times over the last few months, but this doesn’t compare; not when she suddenly feels like she’s bubbling over instead of hollowing out.
‘Thank you, Tobin. I’ll never forget this.’
***
Only the O’Haras could get away with holding a Christmas party actually on Christmas Day. It’s some kind of combination of being the oldest family in Shallow Lake, with a location that’s pretty much equally convenient to drop into from anywhere in town, and the fact that the daughter of the house is a compulsive socializer.
‘Okay, ladies,’ says Kelley as soon as she deems the gang to all be here, ‘I made the punch myself and will be personally offended if there’s any left at the end of the night. Crystal, you’re on Tobin-and-Christen duty.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Making sure they actually separate long enough for the rest of us to talk to them.’
‘How is that my job??’
‘Because of all our friends you’re the most balanced combination of sensible and fun.’
‘Oh boy,’ deadpans Crystal as she takes a serving of punch, ‘what a compliment.’
In the end, no Tobin-and-Christen separation is necessary: they’re on good form, Christen happier and quicker to smile than they’d all secretly feared. Crystal helps herself to more punch, dances with her friends, shares in the gossip and memories that always flood out when they all get together these days.
‘Pressi said Tobin got her a bird? Like, a live one?’
‘She wasn’t going to give her a dead one, was she?’
But after a while, she notices that even when Tobin and Christen are on opposite sides of the room, separate isn’t exactly the right word. Tobin’s body is somehow always angled towards Christen, wherever she is, like she’s ready to spring to her side at any moment, and Christen’s eyes reliably dart across whenever she hears Tobin laugh. The two have been joined at the hip all the way through school and college and whenever they’re home, and this is almost more of the same, but not quite. It’s almost best-friend behavior, but not quite. It’s almost protecting-a-bereaved-loved-one behavior, but not quite. Crystal is so intrigued she forgets to drink her third cup of punch until Kelley yells at her.
She thinks she might get answers when Tobin sidles up to her, looking unusually sheepish. ‘Um. Do you have a minute?’
‘Anything for my girl. What’s up?’
Tobin slips her hand through the crook of Crystal’s arm and steers her into a corner, hidden from the others by an extravagant stack of profiteroles. ‘So, I may have made a tiny error with the partridge thing.’
‘Tobs, she loved it. I mean, I think you’re out of your mind, but Pressi thought it was adorable. She can’t stop talking about it.’
‘Right. And that’s awesome, honestly. It’s just, it turns out that when I was ordering it online, I actually didn’t just buy one partridge. Or one pear tree.’
Crystal closes her eyes, wondering if the sudden tension behind her eyes is a headache or a hangover. ‘How many did you buy, Tobin?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Twelve?’
‘I know, I know. I think I was entering the order quantity and I added a 2 by accident.’
‘Did it not strike you as odd that you were paying, like, fifteen hundred dollars for a bird and a really small tree?’ Tobin’s blush is visible even in the mood lighting. ‘Oh my god, the size of your trust fund is literally embarrassing. What are you gonna do?’
Tobin traces a pattern on the floor with her toe. ‘I thought I might just… give her the rest of them.’
Somewhere on the other side of the profiteroles, Kelley gives a drunken whoop and tries to establish a conga line. Crystal puts her hands on Tobin’s shoulders and looks her very seriously in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, perhaps I misheard you over Kelley doing her best to get thrown out of her own house. I thought you just said you were going to give Christen Press an additional eleven partridges and eleven pear trees. Like, deliberately.’
‘She liked the first one!’
‘Yes, Tobito. The first one. What’s she going to do with the others?!’
‘She could plant the trees in the walled garden. And the partridges can just live together in a coop, like your chickens. In fact, it’s probably better that way. I bet this one would get lonely if he was by himself.’ Tobin’s eyes have lit up dangerously. Crystal recognizes that look. ‘She probably won’t even notice, anyway. I got her a couple other things as well.’
Crystal is about to ask what exactly that’s supposed to mean, and then decides it may be better not to know.