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I can’t bring back two people I’ve never met.
So I sit beside her and just be there. Offer her my presence, which seems like a piss-poor substitute to people she loved.
“Christmas was Grandma’s favorite,” she says after a minute. “She started decorating the day after Thanksgiving. Grandpa complained about it every year, but he was always the one who dragged all the boxes out of the attic.”
I look at the tree. Suddenly I understand a few things. The colored lights and the paper chains. The ridiculous village. The cookies and the stockings. She wasn’t just decorating my house. She was bringing them with her.
“She made Christmas really big,” Noelle says. “Even when it was just the three of us.”
Her thumb moves over the chipped edge of the ornament.
“This is my first one without either of them.”
I don’t know what to do with the pain in her voice. I know what I want to do… I want to pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her. I want to hold her as long as it takes for her to stop hurting. Which is fucking ridiculous because I know that grief takes time.
“I knew it would be hard,” she continues. “I just thought—”
She stops.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been so busy.”
“With Shiloh.”
She nods.
“And you came home, and then there was the preschool program and shopping and wrapping presents and making cookies and trying to convince Shiloh that Santa does not need twelve cookies because he has to visit other houses.”
“He was concerned Santa might be hungry?”
“He was hopeful he’d get to eat the leftovers.”
“Also reasonable.”
Her mouth twitches. Then falls again. “I’ve been happy.”
There’s guilt in the words. I hear it immediately.
“So happy,” she whispers. “And then tonight I came down here to put that stupid dinosaur ornament back on the tree because Shiloh moved it again, and I saw this one, and all I could think was that Grandma will never see any of this.”
She gestures vaguely around us. The house. The tree. Maybe me.
“She’ll never know I came here. She’ll never meet Shiloh. She’ll never—”
Her voice breaks.
I want to fix it. There is nothing to fix. So I do the only thing I can think of.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Noelle looks at me. For a second, she doesn’t answer. Then she looks down at the ornament.
“This is going to sound stupid.”
“Maybe so.”
Her head jerks up.
