Ah. I catch sight of the bouquet of flowers Hall left behind and remember why I feel like I’ve been bulldozed.

I slowly drag myself upright on the living room couch, meeting my grandmother’s hawkish, annoyed stare. “Sorry.”

“Where’s your fiancé? I came downstairs and there wasn’t a hot breakfast waiting for me. What the hell is up with that? I refuse to get used to it.”

“He had to leave.”

She reels back. “On Christmas morning?”

“It’s not his fault. He didn’t want to go.” I stand up, all the blood in my body running down my legs. I’ve had a long, emotional night, and my circuitry doesn’t know what to do with itself.

I slept with Hall’s sweater as a pillow, the sight of it making my heart squeeze. My gaze drifts over the hill of presents gathered around the tree, the shape of a gold-plated guitar I bought for Kaia with Hall’s money. Jennifer Lopez’s stolen Versace dress rests next to it, tied up in a bow for Athena.

These gifts, which I’d congratulated myself for picking out so perfectly, rub me the wrong way in the stark morning light. Staring at them now, I wrinkle my nose. They’re gaudy displays of wealth I don’t actually have. I envision Kaia holding the guitar in her lap, and how the big, impressive reveal will actually look to her and everyone else: like I’ve got a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. They’ll smile and thank me and say the presents are amazing, but they’ll know the intention behind them. If they found that obnoxious, I couldn’t blame them.

I don’t want to watch any of that happen.

Quickly, I grab all my presents and rush them back up to my room. Without Hall’s magic, and on such short notice, I don’t have anything to offer anybody. So I decide to take a route I haven’t visited since I was a kid and go for homemade.

While the rest of my family works together to cook breakfast, I round up construction paper, washi tape, and glitter, going to town making Christmas cards. Each of them bears a Christmassy cover: trees, wreaths, candy canes, with a goofy sentiment or joke inside. When I’m finished, I have four cards per person, which I slip into boxes folded from cardstock I found in Hall’s scrapbooking supplies. Then I use his stamp kit to emboss each with Hughes & Co. Cards: Holiday Chocolate Box Edition.

Because inside, you never know what you’re gonna get.

I return to the living room as children are beginning to accumulate, faces sticky with cinnamon roll icing, impatient to learn what Santa brought. They all start ripping into their presents as my mom trails behind, cleaning up shredded paper and bows (and a million wrappers from Band-Aids, which are this year’s stocking stuffers of choice). She’s always the one cleaning up messes, never the one who gets to relax on the sofa and enjoy. I take the trash bag from her, forcing her into a chair. She keeps trying to get back up, helping Domino remove tags from her shirt, recovering Ichabod’s glasses before Frangipane steps on them, fetching Avenue a muffin. “Sit down, Mom,” I order, bringing her a cup of strong black coffee. I press a button on the side of her armchair to make it recline, draping a blanket across her legs. “Relax.”