A little boy in a plaid shirt holding a fire truck.
A teenage girl in a red choir robe.
All three kids together on a couch, buried in wrapping paper.
A family photo in front of a Christmas tree. A man with kind eyes. Marlene. Three kids. Smiling like nothing bad would ever happen.
Under the photos hung three small stockings.
BEN.
LUCY.
TOMMY.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“Twenty years,” Marlene said beside me, arms wrapped tight around herself. “December 23.” Her voice sounded thin. “My husband was driving the kids to my sister’s. I had to work late. I told them I’d meet them there.”
She stared at the pictures.
Silence hummed around us.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
It felt small, but it was all I had.
She gave a short, broken laugh. “Everybody says that. Then they go home and complain about tangled lights.”
I shifted, feeling like I’d wandered into sacred ground wearing muddy boots.
“That’s why you…” I gestured back toward my yard. “My lights?”
She nodded a little. “Every year. The songs, the commercials, the neighbors. The blow-up Santa down the street. People talking about ‘magic’ and ‘joy.’”
She swallowed. “It feels like the whole world is having a party and I’m stuck at a funeral.”
“I get that it hurts. really do. But you don’t get to destroy my kid’s Christmas. I have a five-year-old. Her name is Ella. This year has already sucked for her.”
Marlene’s eyes squeezed shut.
“I know,” she whispered.
Something cold settled in my chest.
She looked at me, finally. “Your girl talks.”
My heart thumped harder. “Ella?”
“She sits on your front steps after school sometimes. She sings. She talks to that penguin on her backpack.”
I pictured Ella on the porch, swinging her legs, humming.
“She told me she misses her dad,” Marlene went on. “She said she’s trying to help you be happy. She said your lights make the house look like a ‘birthday castle.’”
My eyes burned. “And you still cut them down?”
“I tried not to. I closed the curtains. Turned the TV up. Put in earplugs. Didn’t matter.”
She nodded toward a worn recliner.
“Last night I fell asleep in that chair. I dreamed about my youngest. Tommy. He was five again. Reindeer pajamas. He was calling for me from the back seat.”
Her voice cracked.
“I woke up, and your lights were flickering through the curtains, and some Christmas song was playing, and people were laughing outside, and I just… snapped.”
She opened her hands, empty.
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