On Christmas Eve, they watched It’s a Wonderful Life (she’ll never watch that movie again—where was Sunil’s Clarence when he needed him?) and ate pizza in front of the fireplace. At midnight, their mother made cocoa that they sipped while opening one present each before bed. Thinking of the gift Sunil gave her weakens her stitches a little more. It was a blown-glass ornament made of red and white swirls with Our First Christmas written in gorgeous loops on one side. She pictures the ornament now, safely wrapped in green paper, among the others she has stored away in the closet, which she hasn’t had the will to confront, let alone display. She brushes the slanted writing with her mind, knowing her brother meant the first Christmas of many, but now she doubts whether her marriage will survive another year. She went to bed that night with the feeling it really was a wonderful life, wasn’t it? The tinny sound of a bell ringing made its way into her dreams. The next day, Sunil woke up first and cooked a breakfast of eggs and pancakes for breakfast. They ate hastily and then opened presents She had knitted him a blue scarf, her first ever, obvious from its raggedy edges. He wrapped it around his neck and told her it needed breaking in. They tried to recruit Nirav in joining their childlike regression, but he wasn’t a fan of playing in the snow. They built a fort that could rival any they had made as kids, then had a snowball fight, and when their age finally caught up with them, collapsed in the snow and swept a pair of snow angels to life. Sunken in the drifts, she listened to the faint tap of snowfall against her hood, the ghostly trill of the north wind, and Sunil’s breath, deep and constant, beside her.

Out of the tender memory, a heaviness descends upon her, like the heel of a god.

No more good times, says Anchor. Every Christmas, and birthday, and milestone big and small, incomplete, like your family.

…No more good times.

Because of you….

The heel crushes her even more, the heaviest weight yet, an unearthly gravity. Her body isn’t built to endure its pressure. She grips the filmy rim of the tub to stop the sensation of plunging through the floor, as if she is being forced to the centre of the earth.

You never say or do the right things at the right time, says Gloom. You never found the perfect words to make him stay. The perfect words to convince him everything was going to be all right. Now nothing is all right. Everything is broken. Everything is broken beyond repair.

You tried to fix it. But you aren’t him. You don’t have the magic he had.

All you do is fail.