Darcy was first alerted to her eldest's return when she heard the children shouting.
“It's a tree! Look!”
“Let me see, let me see! Oh, Santa really did come!”
“It's not Santa, it's Allison, you idiot.”
“Ouch,” came Sally's voice, accompanied by a thud like someone jumping to the floor from a perch in the window. “Not the real North pole Santa, you know what I mean.”
Darcy followed the voices to the back door, which Woody had now flung open. Sally, Sam, and Jimmy and Margaret, who had followed her from the living room, crowded around what was indeed a real pine tree, snow melting on its boughs. Allison was pushing it through the door, and the boys and Sally had grabbed onto its other end, helping to drag it in. There was a lot of excited talk about finding a stand and getting the decorations, and Jimmy ran to get a runner to put on the carpet before anyone was allowed to pull the tree any further and get needles on the floor.
Darcy smiled briefly as Sam and Woody glanced over at her, but when Allison met her eyes, she couldn't quite keep her face from betraying the feelings that had been coursing through her the past few hours.
“Ali, will you help me reach the star on top this year?” Sally was asking.
Allison had noted her mother's expression, and nodded distractedly at Sally. “Yeah, let me put my hat and stuff by the fire.” Glancing briefly at Darcy, she pulled off her boots and walked down the hallway.
As she was sure her daughter had expected, Darcy followed. She waited while Allison removed her coat, hat, scarf and mittens, folding her arms carefully in front of her, breathing in. Finally, she asked, “Where did you go?”
Allison stared back, that hard to read look on her face. “I started out just wanting to go for a walk, but then I figured I could get a tree, maybe just a small one, and the kids would be jazzed no matter what else happened.”
“Just like that?” asked Darcy, her voice in a quiet, even tone. “You just go out in this, just like that?”
“It wasn't that bad, when I went out,” said Allison, her eyes now searching her mother's for understanding. “I figured the storm was dying down. I stayed close to town, places I knew I could find shelter if something started again.”
“Did you go past Fletcher's?” asked Darcy.
Allison glanced down, and glanced back at her, with an expression Darcy recognized all too well. The same she'd worn her whole life, when she'd wanted to assert herself. “It's the kids who aren't supposed to go there.”
“It's everyone.” Curiously, Darcy felt her voice breaking over this syllable. The things she had been thinking, wondering, worrying over and convincing herself weren't true all morning had sprung suddenly full formed into her mind. This wasn't the first time. Watching her sixteen-year-old daughter hold her face steady and call herself fine after shooting a woman. Watching her girl walk off to fight a small town's war, a gun over her shoulder like a drafted soldier. Listening to her seventeen-year-old describe training and patrolling like they were a summer babysitting job. At eighteen, trying to convince her to leave town when farmers got arrested and food supplies looted. Why, she wondered suddenly, feeling her throat catch, did she have a daughter who had to be separate from everyone? Why did they always have to? She could imagine the next words out of Allison's mouth, could nearly speak them with her.
“I can take care of myself.”
“I wish you would have told me,” Darcy said. “I don't like wondering where you've gone.”
“I'm sorry,” said Allison. They stared. It was like being on two sides of a canyon, close together, each wondering if the other was about to step forward, or step back as they always did, and preserve the fragile landscape.
Allison's eyes were remorseful and Darcy knew she was sorry for causing her worry. Her expression was stoic too, resigned, and somehow this made Darcy feel worse. “I know you can handle yourself,” she said. She felt the words rising. A voice shouted in a canyon, that could make an avalanche start. “But you are not your father.”
Allison's eyes flashed, and for a moment, Darcy was glad to have shattered her firm resolve. “I don't think I am him,” she said. “But I can do things myself. Things most of my friends couldn't. Most of the people here. How am I ever going to be as good as he is, at surviving, if I can't learn?”
Darcy wanted to grab onto her, to tell her that she was way too young to be following him. She'd wanted to many times before. But she remembered, with a visceral kind of clarity, a young Robert, only a few years older than Allison, already so confident, already so sharp, so risking and cautious. His had been a different time. She sometimes comforted herself with this thought. Until these moments where the Robert she had known, and the Allison she had known, and the Darcy she had known, were all gone and she wanted to step back and look properly but she never could fully see the people they were becoming now. “You need to stay safe so you can go on and do the things you're meant to do,” said Darcy, choosing her words slowly. “Be who you are meant to be.”
“Who?” asked Allison, her voice rising, her eyes a rare shining. “You are the one,” she said, taking a step, gesturing with her arms. “You're the one who said it was safe here!”
“I didn't say that,” said Darcy.
“You wanted to stay,” said Allison.
Darcy felt a kind of accusation in Allison's stare, but it was her turn to stare back, asserting herself. “I don't know what safe is anymore,” she said, feeling her voice stiffen. “But I know this is a good place for us.”
“I could keep us safe,” said Allison. “You, me and Sam. You know we could stay safe.”
“I know,” said Darcy. “We can. But there are other things too.” Allison's look dared her. Dared her like she had at eleven, at an impasse over a permission form. At fourteen, over a family reunion invitation. At sixteen, over a party in the Pines. “Not just that this is our home. Not just that your father will find us here,” Darcy said. “This is where our family lives, right now. It's not all safe, but it's enough for now.”
“Then why won't you trust me?” asked Allison. She looked less angry, more weary. Darcy could see her, in this expression, suddenly stretching out into a long hazy future, like a row of mirrors reflecting off each other. Defiant, at eighty, at eighteen. Her young body sank slowly into a chair, her posture closing.
“Why don't you trust me?” asked Darcy, her voice softening. Allison glanced at her, her face on the verge of crumbling. Darcy knew it was a rare window. She would have to say it. “To know you are capable of so much. That you aren't your father,” she tentatively sat beside Allison. “And that you're not me.”
Allison's look was surprised. “I don't know who I am,” she said. “I know I'm me, not you guys. I just don't know.”
For the first time, Darcy nearly smiled, but caught herself. “I wish you didn't have to worry so much.” She paused and glanced at the window. The storm was gone, for now. “And I wish I didn't have to worry so much. Why don't we both give ourselves a bit of room?”
Allison seemed to understand. She gave her a quick nod. The mighty mountain taking a small bow. Darcy reached for her hand. She smiled for real. “It really is nice. The tree.”
Allison looked serious again. Darcy lightly bumped her shoulder. “We can decorate it and have a nice Christmas.”
Allison half smiled, half smirked, but nodded. “Okay.”
The tree wasn't as big as last year's. The branches were much scragglier than any of the trees the Hawkins family had ever picked from the market. But it was pronounced “a beauty” by Jimmy, Sally, and Sam. After decorating it, the kids had insisted on putting their stockings, with the wood carvings, new scarves, and random household treasures replaced inside them, under the tree.
“It smells more like Christmas, doesn't it?” asked Darcy, sitting on the couch once more beside her daughter.
Allison nodded, wincing as Sally unceremoniously bounded over and flung herself into Allison's lap. “You're going to be way too big for that soon, little elf,” said Allison, teasingly chucking Sally's chin.
Darcy looked down at the wood carving she'd been holding since she'd sat down again. The tiger's silhouette, so carefully carved in tentative but purposeful lines, was unmistakeably from her daughter's hand.
“Could we go see the other Santa?” asked Sally, glancing back and forth between the adults.
Jimmy and Margaret shared a nervous look. Allison laughed. “She means the one at the Bailey's Christmas party.”
“I don't know if that's still on, honey,” said Margaret. “The Greens might've gotten snowed in too.”
“But the snow is stopping,” said Sam, chiming in from the window. “Maybe they went anyway.” He looked over at his mother. Darcy looked from him to Allison, who gave her a small smile.
Darcy glanced at Jimmy and Margaret, her eyebrows raised. Jimmy shrugged and Margaret gave a small nod. “Maybe we could go for a walk,” said Darcy. “We could go by the place and see if anyone's home.”
“What if no one's home?” asked Woody.
Darcy shrugged. “We'll come home and have a fine evening ourselves.”
Allison shrugged and gave her another smile. “Worth a shot.”
The sun seemed to have been out for a flicker of a moment before it began getting dark again. Eric allowed himself one sigh at the huge grey expanse overhead before opening the door and going back inside with his armful of firewood.
“I can't believe I'm missing his first Christmas,” Mary was saying. He glanced over at her. She was sitting in her favourite booth, leaning over the radio, a small smile on her face.
“You'll be here for his first New Year's,” came Mimi's slightly distorted voice on the other side of the line. “Please be here. I can't take another gathering of just the good old boys. I've heard enough stories from their glory days to write an encyclopedia on Jericho high school sports history.” From somewhere in the background, Stanley's muffled protest could be heard. “Well, I could. With multiple volumes,” countered Mimi.
Mary laughed and Eric chuckled as he caught her eye before going to put the firewood next to the stove.
“You know, I could give you some anecdotes,” said Mary. “Want to hear about the field hockey team's snowy death match with North Glade in '89? Or the time the track team got lost when we went to Ferris?”
Now Stanley could be heard laughing at Mimi's dramatic sound of exasperation.
“I can't stay on much longer,” Mary said, leaning back in her seat, her laughing smile turned to a quieter one. “But give him a hug and kiss from me. And hug everyone else.”
Eric opened the stove door to stick one of the logs into the flames. The place was starting to warm up, but he still felt a chill as he stood. He glanced around. “Mom?” he mouthed in Mary's direction. Mary smiled at him and pointed up.
He climbed the stairs, the creaks of certain steps making a familiar rhythm. He found his mother in the living room, pulling on an extra sweater. “I knew I'd left this here,” she said, with a kind of cheery tone to her voice he recognized.
“Are you cold? Can I get you anything else?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I'm alright.”
He smiled. It was her mantra. Then again, it was his. A few times this year, they'd been forced to admit otherwise. It had been excruciating, in the moments. The day they'd heard of the executions in Fort Collins, months after they'd happened, she'd shouted at him and then sobbed on his shoulder. The night they'd come home covered in soot, unable to get the image of the burning warehouse out of their heads, they'd sat wide eyed into the early morning. She'd held him in a vice grip the night they couldn't find Mary, Stanley, Skylar and the others. He didn't know what would have happened if anyone else had been there to see him fall apart. They'd had a screaming match once or twice, sudden like a rare lightning, leaving an impression in the sky after it was gone. They went back to alright sooner or later. He quickly went to get a sweater of his own. The bedroom seemed the same as they'd left it, though he supposed they'd been through here a few times since they'd been staying at his mother's. It was oddly still, and comforting in a similar but different way from how he'd felt being back in the house he'd grown up in.
He came back to find her studying the wall by the north window, where the picture they'd given her had once hung.
“I told you kids not to give me anything,” she said softly.
He shrugged. “Mary said you like it more than she ever did.” She had really said that Gail liked it, and might like to have it, and it wouldn't make a difference to them since they'd see it wherever it was. They had decided impulsively, when they'd stolen away upstairs last week. It had been the only time they'd mentioned Christmas ahead of the day, and he'd been partially afraid his mother would be upset. She herself hadn't mentioned it once. She had seemed so tired, so defeated after the fire, and lately he'd felt her gaze on him was cautious, like she was looking at something fragile. And he knew it, because it was the way he looked at her at times, the way he looked at Mary, the way he looked at everyone he loved. It would never go away, a voice deep inside him told him lately. There would always be a big gaping wound in him that could open anytime any of them went outside. Whether things got better or worse, he wouldn't be able to change that.
He looked at his mother again. She was peering at him, but not with the fragile appraising look. She seemed more energized, more resigned. “We just wanted to give you something,” he murmured.
“I appreciate it,” she said.
After everything she'd given him, he thought, but didn't say out loud.
“It was very nice,” she said.
Everything this day wasn't, if he thought much about it. But he wasn't going to. He offered his arm. “Walk you downstairs?” he asked.
She chuckled and rolled her eyes. “I think I can manage.”
He smiled and followed her.
Downstairs, Mary had disappeared. They found her in the kitchen.
“I found some corn,” she said, from up on the stepladder. “We can pop it. You know, in case people come.”
The idea that people would come seemed to have caught on among the three of them, and soon they were working towards this end, with Gail offering to help in the kitchen and Eric agreeing to shovel out the front door. He chuckled to himself that it was mostly a ritual at this point, since if anyone braved the snow to get here a little bit on the front stoop wouldn't be much of an obstacle, but it felt nice to have his muscles accomplishing something familiar.
On the front stoop, he worked steadily. He waved at Art and Lucy Robson as they approached. “Go on in if you like. We've got a fire going,” he said. He realized, remembering what Mary had mentioned earlier, that both former refugees had been here the past two years, though the first time they hadn't been sitting together.
“Merry Christmas!” called Marcy Nichols, Karl's roommate, as she approached with a few of her friends. “Karl said he's on his way, just seeing if he could get some rice cooked to bring.”
“Sounds great. We'll appreciate it,” said Eric, holding the door open for them. He shovelled some more, looking up at the sky again. He usually didn't imagine Jake doing the same anymore, but he thought about his brother for a moment. There had been a lot of Christmases where he hadn't known where Jake was. He had tried not to spare much of a thought for it then. There had been gifts to buy, parties to attend, people to visit and call and email. He had been certain, whenever the thought had crossed his mind, that Jake was fine anyway, and just a tiny bit satisfied that he could say he was the one helping his parents carry on traditions, put up their tree, make their toasts. Tonight, he stared at the violent blue, and thought a silent goodnight.
“Eric, working hard!” He glanced ahead of him. Jimmy was approaching, his arms held out in a gesture of goodwill, grinning and sporting a hat with huge ear flaps. Margaret, Woody, and Sally trailed behind him, and with them walked Darcy Hawkins and her kids. Allison was clutching a basket. “Hey, I thought it was your year for Santa,” said Jimmy. “Didn't you make a deal with Stanley?”
“Yeah, my turn,” said Eric slowly. “But he has the suit.”
“Ah well,” said Jimmy, waving a hand. “Let's get out of the cold, huh?”
Darcy and Margaret wished him a Merry Christmas as they went through the door. Sam and Woody followed quickly, smiles on their rosy faces. Sally eyed Eric for a moment, an appraising look on her face. With a shrug, she followed Allison inside. As the place was getting more crowded and the walkway mostly cleared, Eric decided to join them inside.
Somehow, without lights, food on the tables, and the jukebox merrily cranking away, the room seemed more subdued than it had last year, or even the year of the bombs, but the small group of people gathering seemed to be doing their best. They didn't have a lot of new stories to tell each other, and they all involved snow, but they were being as enthusiastic as they could.
He pulled off his hat and hung it on the hook by the back door. Gail came from the kitchen, carrying a big bowl of popcorn, and stopped to say, “We put a bit of salt on this batch. Mary found a bit of sugar and she's making a syrup to pour on the other batch. We'll call this the appetizer and that one dessert.”
He chuckled. After some of the things they'd eaten, it didn't sound so bad. His mother continued into the crowd, offering her bowl to Art and then talking to Darcy for a while as the Taylors clustered around the popcorn.
“Here, Eric,” said Gary Walcott, who had just arrived with his wife and another group battling the snow, including Emily, who gave Eric a quick hug as she passed by. Gary pressed a bottle into his hands. “Saved this for a gift for Chloe, but she thought it'd be nice to share. Don't know how much'll go around. Maybe you could add something to it.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I'll see what Mary thinks.” He glanced around the room once more, and stepped back into the kitchen.
By the dim light, Mary was stirring something vigorously. “How's it going?” he asked. She glanced up, a bemused smile threatening to break over her face. “It's a mess,” she said with a laugh.
“I think it looks good,” he said, eying the bowl of partly coated popcorn. A trail of sticky goo had spilled and a few pieces of popcorn had escaped the bowl and hit the steel counter. He popped one into his mouth and grinned at her. “Gary brought this, and I think he might have been suggesting you water it down.”
Mary made a face of exaggerated shock and indignation, and laughed. “Maybe we can do shots.” She glanced down and back up ruefully. “Maybe you can do shots.” She glanced around. “We might have a bit more apple juice in the back.” She went over to the store cupboard. They'd saved a few things in the raid, though mostly they'd rationed whatever they'd had already in their cupboards and things were looking sparse by now. Mary's voice echoed out of the cupboard as he heard her pushing boxes around. “So Gary's here?”
“Chloe too, and Emily, and the Taylors, Darcy and the kids, Marcy and Ian, and they said Karl's coming, probably others from their house,” he said. “They know we don't have much, but I guess they're staying.”
“We have grape drink mix!” she said, emerging triumphantly. She held an aged looking packet over her head. “I think it might actually be from the food drop.”
“Seriously?” he asked, reaching to turn it in her fingers so he could read the label.
“It was under the old coffee tin,” she said.
“Don't see any expiry date,” he said. “Think we could poison ourselves?”
She shrugged. “It's not irradiated.” She chuckled at this, for some reason, and he did too, in spite of himself, and they both laughed, hard, reaching for each other's arms, steadying themselves. She let out a deep breath and leaned closer to his chest. “You having an okay day?” she asked.
He nodded against her hair.
“Do you miss it all?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Don't miss the stuff, not that much.”
She sighed against him. “Yeah,” she said. He ran his hand over her stomach for a moment before pulling her closer, his hands resting on her back.
“It won't always be like this,” she said. Half a question. Half a reassurance. “Next year will be different. We won't be able to believe how excited we were.” She shook the drink crystals, smiling. “We'll have other food, and different snow storms. Probably other problems. But we'll have them back.” She glanced up at him, with a flash of fear on her face at the bold statement neither of them usually made. She leaned her head against his shoulder again. “We'll have music again too.”
He chuckled softly, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet. He wanted to make her laugh again. “Hey,” he said. “Don't wish it away. Don't look at it like it's forever.”
Her laugh was clear in the flickering darkness. He sang the next few lines, stepping back and extending his arm, holding up her hand. “Between you and me, I can honestly say that things can only get better.” She laughed some more and slowly danced with him as he sang the next few lines. He twirled her under his arm as he broke into the chorus, flourishing his other hand on “I guess that's why they call it the blues...”
She hummed along through “time on my hands could be time spent with you,” joining some of the words, and going halfway into a dip. They laughed and ambled their way through the parts, until he stepped back and kicked the counter's leg with a resounding metal clang. “You alright?” she asked, the laughter in her voice not without concern.
“Yeah,” he said with a gruff smile. “I'm alright.”
When they came out into the main room of the bar, the guests were moving the chairs and tables, forming a circle in the middle of the room. Mary began pouring people drinks, mostly consisting of grape punch but there were a few mixed with homemade vodka. Eric went to put another log into the stove. Most people had taken off their coats but were still wearing scarves, hats, and thick sweaters.
Darcy smiled as she watched Allison, talking with Gary Walcott and Sal Logan while getting handfuls of popcorn. Her daughter's colleagues. How strange it might have been.
Gail came over and grabbed Mary's hand. “I want to show you something,” she said, motioning towards the circle of chairs. On one of the chairs sat a stack of duotang folders. She handed one to Mary.
“The song books from last year?” said Mary, flipping through one of them.
Gail nodded. “I sent Gary back to grab his guitar.”
Mary was still looking over the familiar lyrics. “He can play?”
Gail chuckled. “Not really, but Karl can.” She motioned over her shoulder.
Mary glanced up from the books and grinned at her.
Allison reached out a hand to stop Sam and Woody as they went barrelling by. “Easy guys, there's a really hot stove right over there.”
“We're going to be in a radio play!” exclaimed Woody.
“Since when?” she asked.
“We're going to be the children with sugar plums nesting in our heads,” said Woody.
“He's my brother from another mother!” added Sam.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked, rolling her eyes but feeling herself melt a tiny bit at her brother's wide smile.
They took off again, going just slow enough not to earn another warning. She glanced across the room. Her mother was sitting, sipping something from a glass. Chatting with Jimmy, Margaret, Emily, and the Robsons. Her friends. She went over and sat down beside Darcy, suddenly eager to be near her mom.
“It's snowing again!” Gary exclaimed as he came through the door a little while later, shaking the stuff off his coat and boots. “Not as bad as before though.”
“Come on in,” said Eric, handing him a mug of a hot concoction with a distinctly grape scent. “Have a seat.”
Most of the others had taken seats in the chairs, or on old blankets he and Mary had folded on the floor. Everyone had some kind of drink, though some had just asked for hot water, and they all held them raised in front of them. “Thanks everyone for coming out tonight,” Mary was saying. “I know we don't have much but I'm glad we can share it.” She clinked her glass with Gail's and with Eric's as others around them did cheers. Gail stood and cleared her throat. “In a little while we'll patch through to the crowd at the Richmonds' and say a quick 'Merry Christmas' and I hear we might get to hear a bit of a dramatic reading.”
“Stanley's going to be Mama in her kerchief,” supplied Mary “I'm his pregnant husband.” Eric chuckled.
“But for now,” said Gail. “Page three.” She sat down, turning the pages on her own folder, and reaching to give Mary's hand a squeeze. She looked across the circle. “Hit it, Karl.”
Karl strummed the opening chords. Not everyone began on the first line, but the uncertain voices got louder as they moved further into the verse. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay...”
In the low lights of the room, Allison laid her head on Darcy's shoulder. Darcy smiled.
Eric leaned back in his chair, keeping the rhythm with his foot.
Sam and Woody shared a book between them, shifting the pages back and forth as they tried to keep up with the old fashioned words.
Mary sang enthusiastically, losing her own voice in the circle as they reached higher and higher.
Gail looked across the circle of faces, facing her. The rest of the room was dark, the corners cold, but in their circle she could see them all, and the air was warm.
Karl strummed valiantly towards the second verse as they took breaths, chuckling in small waves at their earnest efforts. They turned pages, breathed in, and began the next verse.
Eric and Mary make up for their missing jukebox with Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues," originally released in 1983.
The Bailey's Christmas partygoers sing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," the traditional English Christmas carol first published by William B. Sandys in 1833.
The dramatic reading Stanley and Mary allude to performing (with guest stars Sam and Woody) is A Visit From Saint Nicolas, better known to us as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, a poem attributed to Clement C. Moore and originally published anonymously in 1823.