12 Days 'til Christmas ✓

chapter twenty-one

t w e n t y - o n e

*

There's no more snow overnight. After two days of confinement, I wake up on Monday morning to see that the roads have been cleared and while I might need to shovel snow off my car to get out of the driveway, there's a way out. It feels like a burden has been lifted – the sky agrees, the faintest hint of blue peeping through the sheet of white where the cloud cover is weak – and I know that today will be the day.

It makes me feel a bit sick. Anxious and hopeful and sick and excited, all mixed into one bubbling broth of emotion that propels me to put on my dressing gown and shuffle downstairs, yawning all the way. Casper and I went to bed early last night, but I ended up having a long bath and reading until after two in the morning, and I'm more of a ten-hours-a-night person than seven.

I've got used to Casper always being awake before me, to the point that I expect to see him either trying to make a fire or tucked up on the sofa, or fixing something to eat in the kitchen. Today's no different: I spy him sitting at the kitchen table when I make it downstairs, but it takes a moment for me to realise he's not eating breakfast. He's on the phone, his forehead resting in his palm.

He doesn't look happy, and I feel like a voyeur being there, so I head back upstairs and add a smidge of concern to my cesspit of feelings. I like that one the least, I decide, the way it pairs up with anxiety to create an endless stream of questions and worries and hypotheticals. Busying myself in the bathroom, I end up having a shower and blow-drying my hair for something to do and a way to keep warm, and more than half an hour passes before I end up downstairs again.

I don't have a dressing gown on this time – I've made the effort to get properly dressed, in anticipation of getting out of the house, wearing a red woollen dress and a pair of black fur-lined leggings with a thick cardigan to match. Fluffy red socks will poke out of the top of my boots and keep my toes warm, and I haven't bothered with make-up but I have found a festive red hairband to keep my hair off my face. It's the most effort I've made in a while, ostensibly to give Casper time to finish his phone call, but a small voice at the back of my mind says yeah, right, that's the only reason.

He has finished his phone call when I get downstairs, but he's still sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. My concern multiplies, breeding into some toxic beast that fills me with things I don't want to think – that he knows I like him, that he wants to leave, that I've fucked this up.

"Hey," I say quietly, edging into the kitchen. He snaps his head up, his expression shifting through a few cycles, transforming from despair to confusion to ... relief?

"Morning. Hey. You look really nice," he says, looking me up and down until his eyes land on mine and he gives me a tired smile.

"Thanks," I mumble awkwardly as I pull out a chair even more awkwardly, too aware that his eyes are on me. "Are you okay? I heard you on the phone and you look a bit upset. Has something happened?"

He pushes both hands through his hair and drops one to his mug, a couple of inches of dark coffee inside. "Yeah, kind of. Well, yes."

My stomach clenches into a tight knot, an uncomfortable tension that rises up my throat to my gritted teeth. "What's up?"

"My brother-in-law was in an accident," he says, and when I gasp, he keeps talking. "He'll be okay, but he's in hospital and my sister's shaken; she's flown up with her kids to see our parents, and I, uh, I'm sorry I didn't ask you first but I told her to come here. I hope that's all right."

"Of course it's all right," I say, my brain scrambling to process everything he's saying. "Is she okay? Is her husband all right?"

"He'll be fine, I think. Nothing too major. She said she went into panic mode and had to come up to be with family, so she booked a flight, but I wanted to see her and the kids before she goes to our parents so, yeah." He drinks his coffee, his hand shaking, and scrunches up his nose. It must be as cold as it looks. "But I can meet her in town if you'd rather, if you don't want her coming here."