The chalet was smaller than what I had originally booked, but it was exactly right. Three bedrooms, a long farmhouse table in the kitchen, and a fireplace with stone running all the way to the ceiling. From the back deck, you could see the ski runs lit up through the spruce trees at night, strung with light like a paper lantern. The sauna was tucked off the side entrance and smelled of cedar and woodsmoke and decades of winter.
We arrived in the early afternoon, and there was the particular flurry of unloading a car that always happens at the start of any holiday, bags carried in, beds claimed, the teenagers racing each other up the stairs to see who’d get the room with the window seat. I stood in the main room for a long moment after the chaos settled, looking at the fire James had already started, at Cordelia unpacking groceries in the kitchen, at the snow falling steadily past the big windows, and I felt the particular ache of missing my husband that arrives at unexpected moments, usually when things are good rather than when they’re hard. He would have loved this chalet. He would have been the first one to suggest a card game, the first one up the next morning to shovel the deck before anyone else was awake, just so he could watch the sunrise alone with his coffee before the house woke up around him.
I let myself feel that for a few minutes, standing by the fire, and then I went to help Cordelia with the groceries, because that is what you do with grief after a few years, you let it visit, and then you get up and put the milk in the refrigerator.
On Christmas Eve, we cooked together, a leg of lamb I had been marinating since that morning, roasted potatoes, green beans, and a tarte au pomme from a bakery in the village that James had driven into town to collect. We ate at the farmhouse table with the fire going and a playlist of old carols playing softly from a speaker on the counter. Cordelia’s teenagers, who I had fully expected to stare at their phones all evening, instead insisted on teaching James and me a card game they had learned at school and laughed loudly when I won three hands in a row.
“Grandma’s a shark,” Lila announced to the table, and I felt absurdly pleased by the title.
I checked my phone once during dinner, briefly. Yvette had posted a photo of their living room back home. The kids on the couch watching television. Paulette settled in the armchair with the new iPad propped on her lap. Nobody looking at anybody else. The caption read, “Quiet Christmas at home this year, making the best of it.” The comments were full of sympathetic responses from her friends. I looked at the photo for about four seconds. Then I placed the phone face down on the table and passed the potato dish to James.
Later that night, after the teenagers had gone up to bed and Cordelia and James had retreated to the sauna with a bottle of wine between them, I sat alone by the dying fire for a while, the house quiet around me, the snow still falling steadily past the windows. I thought about the version of this Christmas I had originally planned, the full chalet, the ski passes, the private dinner in the village, everyone gathered around this same fireplace. I thought about whether I had done the right thing, and I found, sitting there in the quiet, that I believed I had, not because it had been easy, but because it had been honest, and I had spent enough years mistaking exhaustion for peace to finally recognize the difference.
Christmas morning brought the sound of Cordelia’s teenagers on the stairs before it was fully light, and Cordelia’s laughter from the kitchen, and the smell of coffee and the orange buns she had brought from Hamilton and reheated in the oven. We opened presents around the fire. I had found Cordelia a pair of wool-lined gloves she had admired months ago in a shop window, and a framed photograph of her father taken the last summer he was well, standing at a lake with a fish he had just caught and a smile that took up his whole face. She cried a little, the good kind of crying, and held the frame in both hands for a long time without speaking.
For Lila and Benji, I had found a telescope, something their father had mentioned they’d been curious about, and we spent part of the afternoon out on the deck in the cold, all of us bundled in coats, trying to find a clear patch of sky between the clouds, Benji insisting he could see Saturn’s rings even though I suspected, privately, that what he was actually looking at was a slightly blurry smudge of cloud cover. It didn’t matter. The joy on his face was entirely real, and that was enough.
Carter called at noon. I stepped out onto the back deck with my coat pulled around my shoulders and answered. The air was sharp enough to sting the inside of my nose and turn my breath to white cloud.
“Merry Christmas, Mom,” he said. His voice was quieter than usual.
“Merry Christmas, Carter.”
“How’s the chalet?”
“Beautiful,” I said honestly. “We had a wonderful evening last night. Cordelia’s kids are excellent company.”
“Good. I’m glad.” He paused. “It’s been a strange Christmas here,” he said after a moment. “Yvette’s been thinking about the text she sent, about a lot of things.” He paused again. “Paulette hasn’t put the iPad down since she unwrapped it. She didn’t really sit with the kids for the movie last night.”
I didn’t offer any response to that. It wasn’t my place to comment on Paulette’s priorities, and I suspected Carter already knew that observation carried more weight coming from him than it ever would from me.
“Can we come for dinner in January?” he asked. “The four of us, with the kids. I think Yvette wants to have a proper conversation. I think we both do.”
I breathed in the cold air and looked at the spruce trees heavy with snow against a sky the color of pale iron. “Yes,” I said. “Call me after New Year’s and we’ll find a date.”
“Okay.” He sounded relieved, though I had promised nothing beyond a dinner. “Mom, I’m sorry. I should have said that a lot sooner than this.”
“I know,” I said. “We’ll talk in January. Tell Cordelia Merry Christmas from us.”
“I will. Give Maisie a hug from me.”
“I will. We’ll see you soon, sweetheart.”
I went back inside to the warmth and the noise and the smell of the fire, and I stood for a moment in the doorway watching my daughter and her family, Lila and Benji arguing cheerfully over the last orange bun, James laughing at something Cordelia had said, the fire crackling steadily in the hearth, and I thought, this is what it looks like when love doesn’t require an invoice.
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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