12 Days 'til Christmas ✓

chapter eight

e i g h t

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I didn't tell Casper the truth. I didn't lie to him, necessarily, but I do have a plan for today. It's just one of those things that I don't know how to talk about very well with anyone except my family, especially not in a minute-long conversational break with a guy I, admittedly, don't know that well. Someone who didn't know me five years ago.

Of my three messy break-ups, the first was by far the messiest, and the hardest one to think about, and I know without a doubt that my life would have gone in a completely different direction without it. Even if we had broken up a day later, an hour later, nothing would be the same. I wouldn't be parked alongside Saint Wendelin's oldest church, for one, hands white around the wheel several minutes after I've turned the engine off.

My phone buzzes. It takes a moment to properly register, and a moment more to warm my fingers enough to unlock it, to see a text from my mum.

MUM: thinking of you baby. love you <3 i'm in all day if you want to pop over for a drink!

That sounds good. It doesn't matter that almost all I've done today is have a drink, from my two coffees this morning to my mocha at Java Tea. I always have time for a drink with my mum, especially on the fifteenth of December. It takes almost a full minute to type out my reply when autocorrect seems determined to misread every word I type and my hand is stiff from the cold after fifteen minutes of sitting here in chilly silence.

ME: im at st mary's now. can i come over in an hour or so?

Mum's quick on her phone, the only person her age I know who types with both thumbs rather than one awkward finger, and I still haven't moved an inch when I get her reply.

MUM: of course! i'd love to see you! xx

I send back a heart and throw open the door, pulling on a pair of gloves as I crunch through the snow in heavy duty boots that keep my feet warm even though the temperature has dropped down to five degrees. After a brief respite earlier, the snow is falling once more, adding to what must be four or five inches covering the graveyard and the tops of most graves. Some of the older ones are almost completely buried beneath undisturbed mounds of pure white; the most recent graves are invisible. It would be easy to walk across them, but I know my way around the cemetery.

The wind is painful, nipping at my cheeks as I head towards the northeast corner, trying to pull my scarf up over my mouth and nose without exposing my neck. It works, but it means fogging up my glasses with every breath until I can't see where I'm going, and I have to sacrifice heat for vision.

Not that I need to see to find my way to the right grave, the one with the most devastating engraving. It kills me every time I come here, to see the date of birth and the date of death. The 15th of December, 2014. They're identical. Just like my girls would have been.

They were. I couldn't tell them apart when I named them, names I had chosen months earlier when I'd learnt I was due to have twin daughters around Christmas, if I made it to thirty-seven weeks. Robin and Noelle. Their names are right here in front of me, carved into the stone that marks the grave they share. My ex, once he came around to the idea of being a dad, persuaded me away from Holly and Ivy. My parents took his side on that one.

That was the last time they took his side; it was the last time he had a strong opinion on anything relating to the girls for the next three months, until he decided he couldn't do it after all. Ten days before Christmas, five years ago, he broke up with me. Ten days before my nineteenth birthday. It came out of nowhere, a blow that knocked the breath out of me in the middle of a coffee shop. He bought drinks and we sat down, two weeks before the twins would be considered full-term, and he told me it was over. He didn't want to be a dad; he didn't want to be with me. He was going to go away for a while; he was sorry; he was so sorry.