Holidays in Blue by Eve Morton

Author:Eve Morton [Morton, Eve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2020-12-06T18:30:00+00:00

* * *

At around midnight, according to his still barely charged phone, Cosmin came into the guest room with another kettle filled with green tea. The heat was never on long enough to keep the house up to standard levels of warmth, and without the sunlight, it was far colder than Eric ever anticipated. He wore all his clothing again, though he still yearned for the touch of Cosmin’s skin. The tea also helped, even if he was getting sick of it. Cosmin sipped his mug and produced a book he’d taken from his father’s bedroom.

“What’s that?” Eric asked.

“Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Have you heard of it?”

“I think I’ve seen it come up on Audible. I get free credits because of the work I do. Should I get it?”

Cosmin nodded, just barely. It didn’t seem like a shining endorsement, but he opened to a passage near the front. He read aloud a line that was nice, but a bit jargon-heavy for Eric. “My father had this highlighted,” Cosmin said.

“Oh.”

“Yes. I think he was trying to tell himself something.”

“And you something?”

“Perhaps.” Cosmin deliberated a moment, glancing at the book’s cover, before continuing. “This book is awful. I’ve always hated it, because why would I want to read about the camps? Other than basic historical knowledge, I know what happened and I know how bad it was. I also lived through my own. Those orphanages in Romania were bad. But I was a kid, a baby, and didn’t even know words to qualify my suffering.”

“I’m so sorry,” Eric said, biting his lip. A silent beat passed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s fine. You don’t have to say anything. I don’t want a pity party, or even a sadness fest in spite of what we’ve been doing the past few hours. Or days.” Cosmin cracked a small smile and placed the book down. It was clear, though, that he was not done processing whatever he’d found in his father’s notebooks. “I think, I suppose—no—I wonder if rather than focusing so much on the suffering, and overcoming it, my father could have just focused on love. I’m not talking about being a Pollyanna at all times, blindingly positive and head buried in the sand to the ills of the world—but maybe something in between these two extremes.”

“Like instead of focusing on what he lost,” Eric suggested, “he could see what he still had?”

“Yes.” Cosmin met Eric’s gaze. A frisson of desire passed between them before he turned away. “That’s exactly it. We lost half our family in the car crash. But there was still half right here. And so,” Cosmin said, his voice becoming more professorial and less emotional than previous statements, “we shut ourselves off from others who may still bring love and then we fail to ascribe meaning to those moments, and the love all but disappears.”

“I get that, I really do.”

Cosmin nodded. There was more strained but contemplative silence. Eric wondered what Cosmin thought of people who

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