Her dad was waiting on the pavement for her, stamping the way he did when it was close to freezing outside. She felt a pang of guilt—not just that her dad was standing outside in a snowstorm guarding her luggage, but that she was abandoning him—and her mother, her brother, her stepdad, and her aunt’s whole family—at Christmas. A gust of wind whipped her honey-blonde hair into her face, and it felt like a slap.

This is why I’m going to Australia where it’s hot.

“Bye, Dad,” she said, throwing her arms around her dad’s broad shoulders.

“Bye, sweetheart.” He enveloped her in a tight hug. “Text when you land, so I know you’re safe.”

“I will.”

Her dad’s hugs were the stuff of dreams, but there was no putting it off any longer or they’d both get frostbite. It was time to go. Jules stepped out of the hug and grinned at her dad. “See you next year!” She grabbed the handle of her luggage and jogged off towards the terminal door, the sound of her dad’s laughter catching on another gust of wind.

*

Denver-LA-Melbourne—as flights went, it was an easy journey. Even the two-hour layover at LAX wasn’t as bad as she had expected. Maybe the tacky piped holiday music and even tackier tinsel, Christmas lights, and gaudy Santas had worked their magic. People were actually smiling.

Or maybe, five days before Christmas, everyone was just in the holiday spirit. Everyone but her. On the short flight between Denver and LA, she had convinced herself she was doing the wrong thing.

She should have stayed and had the loud, chaotic Christmas that her screwed-up, but lovable family had every year. Or, at the very least, she should have waited and welcomed Lucy. She loved Lucy. Lucy was the sort of person who, just by being around her, made Jules’s spirit soar.

She should have stayed for her dad.

She knew, on the surface at least, that everything was amicable and her parents still shared some weird kind of love—just that it was platonic now. She knew he got along with her stepdad, Joe, and that he could handle himself among the brash familial love that Aunt Jackie and her family would bring to the holidays.

And yet …

Jules also knew she was her dad’s biggest ally, that when the family dinners and games of Cards Against Humanity or Trivial Pursuit got too rowdy, she could catch his eye across the table and they’d share a moment of calm, just with a look. Those moments were a sort of “time out” from their maelstrom of family life, shared by two introverts who loved everyone there, but longed for a breath of quiet and stillness.

She knew her brother, Will, would do his best. He was under strict instructions to look out for their dad—and for Lucy—but he didn’t see the world quite the way Jules did, and she was worried he would neglect his duties.

Why, oh why, am I going all the way to Australia for the holidays? she’d asked herself, just as the plane touched the tarmac in LA.