The Christmas Trip They Didn’t Know I Canceled

This Christmas was supposed to be the reward for all of it. Freda had found a lodge outside Gatlinburg, a big cedar place with a stone fireplace and a hot tub on the deck, the kind of picture that looks perfect on a phone screen. She showed it to me in October, tears in her eyes, saying the kids had never had a real family Christmas trip, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all went together. I paid the deposit before she finished the sentence. By December, the total came to eighteen thousand, five hundred dollars. Lodging. A private chef for two nights. Spa passes for the adults. A rented van to get everyone there. I paid every bill straight out of my savings account, the one Otho and I built over thirty-one years of careful living, because I wanted, more than almost anything, to give my grandchildren one perfect Christmas memory.

We were supposed to leave together at seven that morning.

I found the tablet on the kitchen island, half hidden behind a stack of unwashed mugs. It was Freda’s old one, the one she keeps for the kids’ shows, and it had slid to the bottom of somebody’s bag the night before and gotten left behind in the rush. The screen was lit with a notification, one of those little previews that shows you the last line of a message without you meaning to look. I only meant to move it out of the way of a spill.

But I read Garnet’s name, and I could not make myself put it down.