I don’t know what I expect when I go to my mother’s house on Christmas night.

An elf running around the mansion, at least.

A hug, at most.

What I get is an empty house and a note on the front door that reads: Have gone out with Steven. Help yourself to leftovers.

No signature, no flourish or a heart or even a smiley face.

“Why are you even surprised?” I mutter to myself as I stare at the note. The longer I stand there, the angrier I become. Ripping the damn thing off the door, I crumple the pink Post-It note into a ball and hurl it into my mother’s dead Chrysanthemum bushes.

All around me, the houses along my mother’s street are lit with Christmas lights and blow-up lawn decorations and so much holiday cheer that I feel like the Grinch in a pair of knee-high boots.

You miss Marshall.

I push away the thought, the self-pity and, more importantly, the self-disgust. With quick steps back to my car, I slide into the driver’s seat and bring up my contact list on my phone. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a bad idea, but I do it anyway.

Clearly, I’m on a roll with bad decisions lately so I might as well keep them going.

Pressing CALL, I lean back and stare at my childhood home. And then I wait and I wait and I—

“I’m with my friends, Gwen,” my mother says in greeting. “Did you need something?”

No Merry Christmas from Adaline, of course. No I’m sorry I ditched you for dinner or Oops, I’m so sorry I fucked up your head so you can’t even function like a normal adult in love.

When my silence stretches too long, Adaline presses, “Gwen, I don’t have all day. What do you need?”

“A mother.”

I can almost picture her gripping the pearls around her neck. “Excuse me?”

“I’d rather not. I’ve let you get away with enough excuses over the years.”

“Gwen Adaline James, if you have nothing nice to say to me then I will hang up this phone right now.”

I haven’t bothered to turn the car on, and the icy temperature permeates the car so that I see little puffs of air when I exhale. My body, on the other hand, is so heated with anger that I could light up this half of Weston and the other side of town would only see gulfs of flames reaching up above the treetops.

“I need a mother,” I finally say after I’ve worked up the patience to not immediately spit fire into the phone. “I’ve always needed a mother and instead I had you.”

“Well, I—”

I cut Adaline off without a second thought. “You who taught me at a young age that women were spiteful and untrustworthy, that men would only ever want me for what’s between my legs—and that I should give it to them. Whoever wanted it, whenever they wanted it.”

“It’s called marrying up,” she says stiffly, her nose no doubt brushing the ceiling it’s tipped so far back with indignity.

“No, it’s called not having any self-worth.”

“Watch your tone, Gwen.”

“I will not watch my tone.” The silence in the car thunders in my ears like the greatest deafening stampede there ever was. I have waited years for this moment, for the chance to speak my mind and, Christmas Day or not, I refuse to squander it. “You made sure that I didn’t have a relationship with my dad,” I add, thinking of the forty-two letters I opened this morning and read three times through. “You sent back his letters and let me believe he wanted nothing to do with me. How could you do that? How could you do that to your own daughter?”

If she’s wondering how I discovered my dad’s letters, she doesn’t say so. Instead, with a decided chill in her voice, she murmurs, “Is that all?”

My ears pop, I’m grinding my teeth so furiously. “What do you mean, is that all?”

There’s the sound of fingers tapping on something hard, and then: “It’s a special night for me, Gwen, and I won’t let you ruin it with your negativity. Now, as I said, is that all?”

I’d like to pretend that I answer with some modicum of civility. But Civilized Gwen took a hike around the time I broke both my heart and Marshall’s, and all I say is, “Screw you, Adaline.”

And then I hang up on her spluttering voice.

Dignified? Not one bit, but it sure does feel good.

For a moment, I hold onto the hope that she’ll give me a call back and apologize for everything she’s done and hasn’t done for me. I hold onto that hope for about the length of time that it takes for my car’s lights to shut off from disuse until I’m left in the darkness.

Alone.

Always, always alone.

You could have been with Marshall tonight.

If I hadn’t been an idiot. If I hadn’t carried a lifetime of trust issues and hightailed it the moment the road grew bumpy.

Before we’d even discussed what truly mattered—Dave and the accusations he’d leveled against Marshall.

For what feels like the fiftieth time, I scroll through my past texts with Marshall and stare at the one that I’ve left half-written: You frighten me, you know. You frighten me to take a leap of faith into the unknown, where my only safety net is your arms. You frighten me with the realization that I have never trusted another human in my life not to hurt me. I strike out first—

I stopped writing after that. It all felt like an excuse and I’m done with excuses.

The truth of the matter is, I panicked. I panicked and I ran, and the blame for our broken relationship can rest on my shoulders exclusively.

Movement in my rearview mirror catches my attention, and I squint at the mirror. Behind me, at the house across the street, the front door cracks open and light spills out onto the snow. Kids pile out of the house, one after another, as they dart into the front yard and start tossing snowballs at their siblings.

A couple stands in the doorway, arms wrapped around each other’s waists. No coats from what I can tell, just their combined body heat.

Without realizing quite what I’m about, I turn on my car and roll down my window so that I can listen even as I keep watching in the rearview mirror.

“I’ve got you!” one kid squeals. “Bam! Bam! Bam! Triple throw!”

“Not at the face, Toby,” the mom warns loudly enough that I can hear both the censure and the humor in her voice. “Below the shoulders, remember?”

“Bam-bam!” Toby shouts, hurling more snowballs like he’s on the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park. “I’m going to win!”

I watch as the couple twist their bodies so that their chests touch as their lips brush together in a kiss.

And I yearn. I yearn with everything that I am to know what that’s like—to have a partner by your side and kids to laugh with, and someone to love unconditionally.

Loneliness seeps into my bones, whispering hello to the regret already residing there like they’re old friends.

Take the leap of faith.

With cold, numb fingers, and my rapidly beating heart, I pull up his phone number and make my second call in the last hour. I wait and I wait and I wait, and then my pulse leaps when the phone clicks on and—

“Hello, this is Marcus.”

Marcus? I pull the phone back to stare at the number, just to make sure I called the right one. “Hello?” I say. “I’m sorry, I think maybe I’ve got the wrong phone number? I’m looking for a Marshall?”

I hear molars grinding like the guy is chewing gum. “No Marshall here, lady. Listen, I got to go, okay? It’s Christmas and I’ve got people over. Have a good one, yada yada yada.”

There’s an audible click as the call ends.

My gaze shoots back up to the rearview mirror only to find that the family has moved back into the warmth of the house and the door is shut.

Locking their love inside where it belongs.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting in my car on Christmas night with absolutely nowhere to go and no one to see. I don’t want to bring down either Zoe or Charlie’s holiday, and it’s incredibly obvious that Marshall has moved his queen into place on the chessboard.

Actually, he’s swiped all his chess pieces off the board and removed himself from the game.

The knowledge burns like hot coals under my feet.

My phone comes to life on my thigh. Marshall. I swipe it open without glancing at the Caller ID, giddy butterflies coming to life in my belly as I answer. “Marshall.”

“Not Marshall,” comes a female voice with a laugh.

Crap. Rolling up the window, I tuck my phone against my shoulder and then rub some warmth back into my fingers. “Holly. I’m so sorry. I thought . . . Well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought. What can I do for you?”

There’s a small pause before she replies. “Does the offer still stand to hang out today? I’m drinking alone at a bar and I’m not going to lie, it’s mighty damn pathetic.”

Part of me wants to ask where Jackson is if he’s not with her, but it’s none of my business. “Which bar?” I ask, already backing my car up out of my mother’s driveway. “Any chance you could have a shot waiting for me?”

“How about a flight of shots?” She laughs into the phone, but the sound is tired and more than a little sad. “It sounds like you might need them just as much as I do.”

I think of calling Marshall and some random guy named Marcus picking up. If that’s not a sign then I don’t know what it is. “You think one of those will cure a broken heart?”

“Not sure. But I’m down to give it a go if you are.”

“Done.”

Then I think of the couple standing over their suburban kingdom, watching their children play in the snow and the almost reverent way they held each other.

Marshall is the only man I’ve ever wanted—loved—with all of my being. I want it all with him: kids, the white picket fence, marriage. Not necessarily in that order.

Don’t ever bail.

I bailed and I bailed hard, but that doesn’t mean the game is over, right? Sometimes there’s overtime. Sometimes there’s a shoot-out. And sometimes I need to stop thinking about hockey references, even in my own head.

Foot to the brake, I slow the car as I pull up to a red stoplight. Feeling bolstered by my mental pep talk, I say, “I need a plan.”

Holly’s momentary silence is interspersed with her asking for another round of drinks. “Good thing you’re a publicist. Planning is pretty much your job description, isn’t it?”

For the first time since I walked away from Marshall, I grin. It’s small and pathetic but it’s mine and it’s full of hope. “It’s actually my middle name. But I’m bringing it up because I need your help.”

“Of the cocktail variety?” she asks with just-there trepidation.

“Of the photography variety, which is your middle name.”

“I’m drunk.”

“Even better,” I tell her. “Drunk planning gets way more creative, and if I want to show Marshall that he should trust me again, I’m going to need something elaborate.”

“Like John Cusack in Pretty in Pink?”

Something tells me Marshall wouldn’t be impressed with me holding a boom box over my head while playing “In Your Eyes” loud enough to wake his neighbors. Unless I was naked. Maybe.

“No,” I say finally, “but I have an idea.”