I wonder if they still get a wild Christmas tree.
Of everything Gideon’s family did for the holidays, that’s what I remember the best because it was what I liked the most: the weekend after Thanksgiving, Gideon, Matthew, and their dad would go into the woods and cut down a Christmas tree, and sometimes I got to come, too, as did his other siblings when they were old enough: Elliott the last few years I lived here, Zach the final time.
I have no idea why they let me come. None of Gideon’s sisters ever did, though maybe that’s because they were too young; of the twelve kids, the eldest four were all boys. But I loved tromping through the woods with axes and handsaws, debating the merits of every fir tree we saw and finding the worthiest. The trees we got were never as pretty as the ones you could buy at Kroger or the Christmas tree lot down Old Lawyers Road—a little gangly and a little patchy and never quite right—but I always liked them better anyway.
Getting the tree always felt like an old pagan ritual, wild and out of place among the strictures and scriptures of Gideon’s house. Even after they tamed the tree with lights and popcorn garlands and thrice-repaired ornaments, it still felt wild. Like an old god in their midst, bestowing the ancient blessings, a little dangerous and a little out of control. His parents would’ve hated that I thought that.
“Is it my fault you’re here and not chopping down a Christmas tree?” I ask after a long silence.
“No,” he says.
“So, it was your plan to be in an off-grid cabin counting grice or whatever during the biggest holiday of the year?” I prod.
“Grouse, and yes,” he says.
I let it be silent for a minute, just in case he’d like to add something.
“Are you being serious right now?” I ask when it becomes apparent he wouldn’t.
“Yes,” he says, a little more forcefully than I think is warranted.
“Your family’s not doing anything?” I say, casually prodding. It gets a big sigh from Gideon, who doesn’t move his head but does scrub his hands over his face.
“They’re doing the usual and I elected not to attend this year,” he says. “Reid was very excited to host his first Friendsmas at our place, so I decided to get out of there so they could have the place to themselves, and also so no one would show up and guilt trip me or give me big sad eyes about coming to Christmas.”
“Oh,” I say, absorbing the layers of information. Reid must be the younger brother who lives with him who Lucia has mentioned once or twice; I don’t think he was born yet when we moved away.
“But that got canceled for obvious reasons and he spent Christmas under five blankets, watching Muppet Christmas Carol on his laptop and probably eating chips and marshmallows for Christmas dinner,” he goes on, sounding mildly annoyed. “Hopefully he didn’t give Dolly any marshmallows.”
“Dolly’s an animal?” I hazard.
Gideon moves for the first time in several minutes, sitting up to pull his phone from his pocket and leaning forward to show me his lock screen. There’s a faint smile on his face and some sort of creature on his phone.
“My cat,” he says of the animal who is stretched out on a comforter next to a paperback of Crazy Rich Asians and positively dwarfing it.
“That’s not a cat, that’s a five-year-old in a Muppet costume,” I say, and Gideon frowns.
“Rude,” he mutters, settling back again. “We think they’re part Maine Coon.”
“They? You have more?” I ask. “Do you have an army of giant cats who do your bidding?”
“Have you ever met a cat who’ll do anyone’s bidding?” he asks, shifting against the couch.
“My roommate had one who would sit and shake,” I say, which is true-ish. “Well, it was more of a high five.”
Gideon doesn’t look impressed.
“Dolly’s mom showed up at a friend’s place and had kittens,” he says, after a beat. “He adopted the mom, I took Dolly, and some other friends took her siblings.”
“That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard,” I tell Gideon, and he rolls his eyes and puts his phone away but I’m pretty sure he also blushes.
CHAPTER NINE
ANDI
To put it lightly, Gideon is not a good patient.
To put it honestly, he’s a grumpy nightmare who seems bound and determined to fuck up his ankle as much as possible and who thinks that I, an adult woman in her thirties, can’t make a simple dinner of spaghetti, sauce from a jar, and frozen peas. He limps around while claiming he just wants to feel useful as he narrates the extensive contents of the pantry to me, and I finally yell that I spent ten years living in Brooklyn with three roommates and a grocery budget of about fifty bucks a month, I’m very good at weird “whatever’s in the fridge” dinners, and he needs to go sit on the couch and put his foot up before I hit him with a wooden spoon.
I don’t hit him with the spoon, but it’s a near thing. I also choose to ignore the scratching sound that seems to be coming from the wall near the doorway because I don’t want to deal with Gideon coming in here and harumphing about whatever it is. Probably a squirrel on the porch or something.
He wins our standoff about who’s sleeping where that night, mostly because he’s already on the couch and no matter how annoyed I am about it, there’s no way I’m going to be able to carry him to a bed, so I leave it. He’s in a bad mood, and no matter how hard I try, that puts me in a bad mood that I can’t help, which leaves everyone irritated and no one happy and both of us still stuck in a tiny cabin with no chance of getting out in the next few days, at least.
That night, it takes me forever to fall asleep, lying on a lumpy twin mattress under my sleeping bag with a zipper that I finally had to dismantle to get apart. My brain feels like an asteroid belt or something: giant, worrying chunks flying every which way and sometimes crashing into each other, knocking loose smaller chunks that are still plenty big enough to cause concern.
I moved back to Sprucevale a couple of months ago, and in that time, I’ve seen William Bell, Gideon’s father, once. My aunt Lucia is friends with the editor of Sprucevale’s tiny newspaper, so when the reporter who usually covers the school board meetings called in sick, she asked if I’d be willing to attend and write it up since at the very least, I can string a sentence together.
I wasn’t expecting what I got, which was William Bell and two of Gideon’s brothers—Matt and Elliott, I think, but it’s been so long—in all their button-down, pleated-slacks glory enumerating a long list of books that they wanted the school library to ban. A couple people spoke against them, and they lost the vote, thank God, but it rattled me all the same. It was proof that Gideon’s father hadn’t changed in twenty years, and that at least two of his sons had grown into his likeness.
At least Gideon wasn’t there, I remember thinking. At least I don’t have proof that Gideon grew into this, too.
What I want right now, and what I don’t have, is proof of the opposite. That Gideon is just being an asshole right now because his ankle hurts and he’s stuck here with a surprise guest, not because he dislikes everything about me and still thinks I deserve to go to Hell.