“You’re right. I would not have understood giving up our beautiful home, a fascinating city, all the good work we were doing, to live in a ramshackle dying inn with molding parrot-print wallpaper, in the middle of the woods, surrounded by nothing but trees and lakes as far as the eye can see. This would never be what my heart could want.”

“Cass—” Miriam started.

Tara cut her off. “All weekend I’ve heard about the magical Cass.” That Southern drawl somehow made her sarcasm extra sarcastic. “But you can’t use her as an excuse with me, because you never introduced me to her.”

“I deserve that,” Miriam conceded. “I just didn’t think you wanted to deal with all the baggage that came with Carrigan’s.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I wouldn’t have.” Tara shook her head. “I’m tired, Miri. I know we’re not some great love story. It’s fine if you came up here and realized you needed something different. It’s reasonable to decide you want to fall in love. But we’re friends. We were a team. You should have told me the truth.”

“I didn’t know if I would be brave enough to stay,” Miriam admitted. Saying the truth out loud, to Tara, made it so real. The part of her heart that always hid from realness was screaming at her, even as the rest of her breathed a sigh of relief. It was all out there now. She couldn’t take it back.

“I’ve never seen you happier than you are, here,” Tara told her, stuffing her hands in her jacket pockets. “I didn’t even know this side of you existed. I’m glad you’re staying, if this is who you are when you’re at Carrigan’s. And maybe you didn’t tell me because I’m hard to talk to about emotions, or because I would have tried to lawyer you into the rational choice, but now I’m out here in the snow getting dumped, instead of with my family for the holidays, because you were scared.”

Every day since she’d arrived at Carrigan’s, Miriam had been forced to confront the fact that she’d hurt people she cared about by shielding herself from reality and avoiding difficult conversations. She owed Tara better than that, and Miriam wanted to believe she was becoming better than that.

“You’re right. You deserved honesty, and I was too scared to even be honest with myself. Let me try now. I love it here, and I want to stay.”

Tara chuckled sadly. “God, you’re a mess, Miriam Blum. I didn’t even know you had it in you to be this chaotic. I’m kind of glad for you. One of us should be able to lose her shit. And to be honest, this is low in the ranking of worst Thanksgivings of my life.”