Month 1: December

The Thomas family Christmas party had achieved what Justin could only describe as “aggressively festive.” His mother had outdone herself this year—every surface in the house sparkled with tinsel, garland wrapped around banisters like constrictor snakes, and a seven-foot Douglas fir dominated the living room, its branches sagging under the weight of three generations’ worth of ornaments. The air smelled of cinnamon, pine, and the particular brand of desperation that came from people trying too hard to make everything feel normal.

Justin stood in the kitchen, nursing his second beer of the evening, watching his Aunt Carol arrange sugar cookies on a platter with the precision of a surgeon. He’d learned to position himself near the food—it gave him something to do with his hands and provided a convenient excuse to keep his mouth full when people asked questions he didn’t want to answer.

“Justin, honey, you remember Melissa, don’t you?” His mother materialized at his elbow with a woman he vaguely recognized from somewhere. Church, maybe? Or one of his mother’s book clubs? “She just moved back to town. Works in pharmaceutical sales.”

Melissa had the look of someone who’d been briefed. Her smile was warm but careful, her eyes doing that thing people’s eyes did now when they looked at him—a flash of pity quickly masked by determined cheerfulness.

“Hi, Justin. It’s nice to see you again.” She extended her hand, and he shook it, feeling the familiar weight of expectation settle over the interaction.

“You too,” he said, because what else was there to say?

His mother beamed like she’d just brokered a peace treaty. “Melissa was just telling me about her new condo downtown. Justin’s practice is right near there, isn’t it, honey?”

“Few blocks over,” he confirmed, taking a long pull from his beer.

“Oh, wonderful! Maybe we could grab coffee sometime? I’m still learning my way around the neighborhood.”

She seemed nice enough. They all seemed nice enough. That was the problem. His mother had been producing an endless parade of nice, age-appropriate women for the past six months, each one presented with the subtle insistence of someone who believed that the solution to grief was simply finding a replacement part.

“Sure, yeah. Maybe.” Justin felt his phone buzz in his pocket and seized the opportunity like a drowning man grabbing a life preserver. “Sorry, excuse me—I need to take this.”

He didn’t need to take it. It was a notification from his gym app reminding him about tomorrow’s leg day. But he stepped out onto the back porch anyway, into the sharp December cold, and stood there breathing fog into the darkness.

Through the window, he could see his family moving around the living room. His father was showing his uncle something on his phone. His younger sister Emma was trying to wrangle her two kids away from the presents under the tree. His mother was probably already apologizing to Melissa, explaining that he was “still processing” and “not quite ready,” as if grief operated on some kind of predictable timeline that he was simply running behind on.

The thing was, Justin did think of himself as a good person. He went to the gym five days a week, kept up with his continuing education credits, remembered his nieces’ birthdays. He’d been a good husband to Sarah. He’d held her hand in the emergency room, made the decision to turn off the machines when the doctors said there was no brain activity left, planned a funeral that he barely remembered attending. He’d done everything right, followed all the steps, and yet here he was, twenty-eight years old and feeling like he was a hundred.

Everyone wanted him to “move on.” His mother said it with her endless setups. His father said it by clapping him on the shoulder and suggesting they go to a basketball game, just the guys. Emma said it by inviting him to family dinners and game nights, filling his calendar so he wouldn’t have to sit alone in the house he’d bought with Sarah, surrounded by her things that he couldn’t bring himself to pack away.

They meant well. He knew they meant well. That was what made it so exhausting.

The door opened behind him, and he tensed, preparing for another well-meaning ambush.

“Hiding?” Emma stepped out, wrapping her cardigan tighter against the cold.

“Strategically retreating.”

She laughed, a short, sympathetic sound. “Mom’s in rare form tonight.”

“Melissa seems nice.”

“They all seem nice, Justin. That’s not the point.”

He looked at his sister, grateful for her, for the fact that she at least seemed to understand that he wasn’t a problem to be solved. “What is the point?”

“I don’t know. That you get to figure out what you need on your own timeline, maybe? That grief doesn’t have an expiration date?” She bumped her shoulder against his. “But I’m not going to pretend I understand what you’re going through. I can’t imagine losing David.”

“Don’t try to imagine it,” Justin said quietly. “It doesn’t help.”

They stood in silence for a moment, and then Emma’s youngest started crying inside, that particular pitch that meant someone had stolen someone else’s toy.

“Duty calls,” she sighed. “You coming back in?”

“In a minute.”

She squeezed his arm and went back inside, leaving him alone with the cold and the distant sound of Christmas music filtering through the walls. Inside, his family was laughing, drinking, celebrating. Inside, his mother was probably already planning the next introduction, the next coffee date, the next attempt to push him back into the land of the living.

Justin finished his beer and checked his reflection in the dark window. He’d gotten a haircut yesterday—not quite the style he’d wanted, but close. He was wearing the sweater Emma had given him last year, the one she’d said made him look “approachable.” He was trying. He was always trying. He just couldn’t figure out what he was trying for anymore.

He went back inside because that’s what you did. You went back inside, you smiled, you made small talk, you pretended that the hole in your chest wasn’t visible to everyone in the room.

Three hundred miles south, Gwen Turner was also pretending.

She stood in her parents’ living room in Savannah, wearing a cream-colored dress that her mother had bought her, her natural hair pressed straight and pulled back in a neat bun, her makeup subtle and church-appropriate. She was the picture of a respectable young woman, the kind of daughter that made parents proud at family gatherings.

It was absolutely suffocating.

“Gwen, baby, come here!” Her mother’s voice carried across the room, that particular tone that meant she was about to be shown off to someone. Gwen fixed her smile—the polite one, the one that didn’t show too much teeth—and made her way through the crowd of relatives and church friends that packed the house.

Her mother stood next to a woman Gwen vaguely recognized from the congregation, both of them beaming with that conspiratorial look that women got when they were about to meddle in someone’s love life.

“Gwen, you remember Sister Patricia? Her nephew Marcus is visiting from Atlanta. He’s a financial advisor.” Her mother said “financial advisor” the way some people said “doctor” or “lawyer”—like it was a magic word that should make Gwen’s ovaries sit up and take notice.

“How lovely,” Gwen said, her voice smooth and sweet as honey. “It’s nice to meet family from out of town during the holidays.”

“Oh, he’s just inside getting some punch. Let me go grab him.” Sister Patricia bustled off with the determination of a woman on a mission from God himself.

Gwen’s mother leaned in close. “He’s very handsome, baby. And he’s got his own condo in Buckhead. Sister Patricia says he’s been looking to settle down, start a family.”

“Mama, I’m only twenty-six.”

“I was married at twenty-three,” her mother said, as she had said approximately eight thousand times before. “Your grandmother was married at twenty. You don’t want to wait too long, baby. The good ones get snapped up.”

Gwen bit back the response that wanted to come out—that maybe she didn’t want to get “snapped up” at all, that maybe the idea of marriage to a man made her skin crawl, that maybe she’d spent the last three years in grad school in Chicago discovering exactly who she was when she wasn’t performing this exhausting charade of southern Christian femininity.

But she couldn’t say any of that. Not here. Not to her mother, who had pictures of Gwen’s future wedding already planned in her head. Not to her father, the deacon, who gave sermons about traditional family values. Not to her grandmother, who still clutched her pearls at the mention of “those people” on TV.

So instead, she said, “Yes, Mama,” and prepared herself to meet Marcus.

He was handsome, she’d give Sister Patricia that. Tall, well-dressed, with the kind of confident smile that probably worked on a lot of women. He had a firm handshake and made good eye contact, and when he talked about his work, he managed to make municipal bonds sound almost interesting.

“So what do you do, Gwen?” he asked, and she could feel her mother hovering nearby, listening.

“I just finished my master’s in social work. I’m looking at PhD programs now.”

“Smart and beautiful,” he said, and something about the way he said it made her skin prickle. “That’s a dangerous combination.”

She laughed the way she was supposed to laugh, light and flattered. “I just like helping people.”

“That’s wonderful. We need more people like you in the world.” He touched her elbow, a brief contact that probably seemed casual to anyone watching but felt presumptuous to her. “Hey, it’s kind of loud in here. Want to step out onto the porch? Get some air?”

Every instinct in her body said no. But her mother was watching, and Sister Patricia was watching, and half the church was watching, and what possible reason could she give for refusing? That she didn’t want to be alone with him? That would require explaining why, and that explanation would detonate her entire life.

“Sure,” she heard herself say.

The porch was decorated with white lights and garland, picture-perfect and private. The sounds of the party faded to a murmur behind them. Marcus leaned against the railing, and Gwen positioned herself near the door, maintaining distance.

“So,” he said, “your mom tells me you’re single.”

Of course she did. “I’ve been focused on school.”

“That’s admirable. But you can’t study all the time, right? You’ve got to have some fun.” He moved closer, and Gwen felt her muscles tense. “I’m in town through New Year’s. Maybe we could get dinner? I know a great place in the historic district.”

“That’s sweet of you, but I’m actually pretty busy with family stuff while I’m home.”

“Come on, one dinner. I promise I’m good company.” Another step closer. He was in her space now, too close, and she could smell his cologne, something expensive and overwhelming.

“Marcus, I really—”

“You know, your mom was telling Sister Patricia how worried she is about you. How you’re always making excuses, never giving guys a chance.” His hand came up to her arm, fingers wrapping around her elbow. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right guy yet.”

“Please let go of me.” Her voice was still polite, still controlled, but there was steel underneath it.

“I’m just talking to you, beautiful. No need to be so uptight.” His other hand came up to her waist, pulling her closer, and Gwen felt rage flood through her system, hot and clarifying.

“I said let go.” She shoved him, hard, and he stumbled back, surprise flashing across his face.

“What the hell? I was just—”

“You were just putting your hands on me after I told you I wasn’t interested. That’s what you were just doing.”

His expression shifted, surprise giving way to anger. “You know what? Your mom was right. You do have a problem. Maybe if you weren’t so stuck up, you wouldn’t be single at your age.”

“Get away from me.”

“Gladly. Good luck finding someone who’ll put up with your attitude.” He pushed past her, back into the house, and Gwen stood there shaking, her hands clenched into fists.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to go inside and tell everyone what had just happened, wanted to watch Marcus get thrown out, wanted her family to take her side for once.

But she knew how it would go. She’d be too sensitive. She’d misunderstood. He was just being friendly. Why was she so resistant to a nice young man? What was wrong with her?

The answer to that question would destroy everything.

So instead, she stayed on the porch, breathing deeply, trying to calm the shaking in her hands. Through the window, she could see Marcus talking to Sister Patricia, probably spinning some story about how she’d overreacted. She could see her mother looking around, probably wondering where she’d gone.

Gwen pulled out her phone and texted her roommate from Chicago, the only person who knew the truth about her.

I can’t do this anymore.

The response came quickly: Two more days. You can survive two more days. Then you’re back here and you can be yourself again.

Two more days of performing. Two more days of being the daughter her family wanted instead of the person she actually was. Two more days of smiling and nodding while they tried to marry her off to men who made her skin crawl.

She could do two more days. She’d been doing it her whole life.

Gwen straightened her dress, checked her reflection in the window, and put her polite smile back on. Then she went back inside, back into the warm glow of the party, back into the performance.

Her mother caught her immediately. “Baby, what happened? Marcus said you weren’t feeling well?”

“Just needed some air, Mama. I’m fine.”

“He seems like such a nice young man. Maybe you could—”

“Mama, please. Not tonight.”

Something in her voice must have gotten through, because her mother’s expression softened slightly. “Alright, baby. But we’re going to talk about this. You can’t keep pushing people away.”

“Yes, Mama.”

She made it through the rest of the party on autopilot, smiling and hugging and accepting well-wishes for the new year. She helped clean up, washed dishes, packed leftovers into Tupperware containers. She was the perfect daughter, helpful and sweet and uncomplaining.

And when she finally made it back to her childhood bedroom at midnight, she locked the door, peeled off the cream-colored dress, and lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, feeling like she’d run a marathon.