Otherwise Engaged by Lindsey Palmer

Author:Lindsey Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2019-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

I’M BACK IN my hometown, pedaling the familiar streets, the frigid air whipping at my ears and numbing my fingertips. I find it refreshing. The snow is like fairy dust, the lightest blanket settling on my hair and the sidewalks. It’s just my mom and me for these two days, since Leo and Lana aren’t scheduled to arrive until Christmas Eve. I came home to her doing the dishes and botching up the lyrics to “Little Drummer Boy,” and it took just fifteen minutes for me to grow antsy and claustrophobic, and to go fetch my old bike from the garage. I can’t tell if I’m breathing especially hard or if seeing my breath in the air just makes it seem that way. Muscle memory leads me on the familiar path across town.

And then I’m on the street, and then I’m in front of the house. I’m not even sure his parents still live there, until I spot the green Subaru in the driveway. My stomach seizes. I run my fingers across the “Save the Dolphins!” sticker peeling off the back windshield, the same one I used to touch as a good-luck charm. I walk to the backyard, stand below his bedroom window, and look up—even this particular angle of neck crane is a potent memory. The lamplight is a beacon. I stay very still, steeling myself for movement above, hoping. And then it happens: I catch a glimpse of the back of Charlie’s head. My heart leaps. I find a pebble on the frozen ground and wind up to lob it. I’m trembling, my fingers like icicles. It’s a perfect shot, pinging against the glass. Charlie turns to look outside, and I dart out of his sight.

I bike home so fast my heart feels like it’ll pounce free of my chest, but my legs are spinning so ferociously they wouldn’t even notice.

• • •

Christmas was my father’s holiday, and for a long time my mother did her best to keep up the celebration in his memory. But we’ve slacked off in recent years, half-heartedly stringing up tinsel, then ordering Chinese food with the rest of the Jews.

My mom and I are many pours into the eggnog, weepily pitying Charlie Brown and his tree, when the doorbell rings. Leo stands alone in the doorframe, shouldering a small duffel and a take-out bag that steams with smells of sesame oil and soy sauce.

“Where’s Lana?” my mother asks.

“Greetings to you, too, Mom,” Leo says. “With her recovery, it was too much to travel here and then to her parents’ place.” So, it’s just us, the original three.

I spend the meal drinking wine and pushing broccoli around on my plate, then the three of us move to the couch and I open a new bottle of wine. My mom turns to me: “Molly, since you’re now affianced”—she uses an exaggerated French accent—“I wanted to share something your father and I did on our wedding night, in case you and Gabe want to steal it.

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