The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves

Author:Tracey Garvis Graves [Garvis Graves, Tracey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250200358
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2019-04-01T18:30:00+00:00

* * *

“What is that?” my mother asked when I came back inside the house.

“It’s a Christmas present from Jonathan. He said I have to wait until Christmas to open it.”

“Oh, Annika. That was so sweet of him. He seems like such a nice young man.”

“He has never been mean to me, Mom. Not even once.”

My mom didn’t say anything right away. But she blinked several times as if there was something in her eye, and then hugged me again. I wriggled away as soon as I could, because this one was so tight I could barely breathe.

I had my parents to myself for almost two weeks before my brother flew in from New York to join us. Will worked on Wall Street and was always trying to regale my parents and me with his accounts of living and working in the big city as if we couldn’t possibly fathom it on our own. I found it hard to pay attention, because I barely knew my brother. For most of my life, Will had ignored me. He left home for good as soon as he graduated from college, and I overheard my mother complaining that the only way she could get him back here at all was by playing the holiday card, which had something to do with guilt and nothing to do with the actual cards she sent out to our family and friends.

Now that I was home, I fell into old, familiar patterns of staying up late and sleeping until noon. I puttered around the house and played with Mr. Bojangles. My dad and I spent hours in the den reading our books in companionable silence while my mom baked and wrapped gifts. My dad and I trimmed the tree and we decided to place the lights vertically instead of wrapping them around it, and we grouped the ornaments by category, with all the balls on the top half of the tree, and anything that wasn’t a ball on the bottom. When Will walked into the living room two days before Christmas, the first thing he said was, “What the hell happened to the tree?”

My mom answered him. “I think it looks very unique and if you don’t like it, you can come home earlier next year and help Dad and Annika trim it.” Then she offered him a frosted sugar cookie and a beer, and he stopped complaining. I nearly gagged thinking about what that combination would taste like.

On Christmas Eve, after our extended family members had gathered up their gifts, said their good-byes, and gone home, I sat down next to the tree to open Jonathan’s gift. My mom joined me. “I think I’m more excited than you are, Annika.”

I was more curious than excited, because I’d been playing a game with myself where I had to come up with a different guess every night before I went to sleep for what was inside the box. I wrote them all down in an old notebook I found in my room.

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