I finished my book and turned it in. Stefan got ready for school to start in a couple of weeks. Jep began his quiet season, with hours at home with me, big meals, movie nights together.

All the other shoes had dropped. All the cats were out of the bag. We had lived innocently in Beforeland and suffered our sins in Afterland. Perhaps, this new land, Tomorrowland, was where we would live from now on.

16

At first, the snow on Greek Orthodox Christmas spun down in big lacy pinwheels that looked like something that would taste of pineapple. Then afternoon brought in a rock wall of weather, and the world disappeared. We ate early, with candles, the kind of meaty, stuporous meal that rightfully should be followed by two hours of baling hay. Instead, we topped it off with the ekmek kataifi that Amelia made to perfection and drank Greek coffee from demitasse cups. We would then ordinarily do something antique and embarrassing with the kids, like team charades, but Phoebe and Amelia wanted to leave for home earlier; and my parents decided to stay overnight. We had celebrated what my aunt Elena called “American” Christmas like most of the secular Christian world but Greek Orthodox Christmas in January was still a religious holiday for my parents, like “Greek” Easter, with its red-dyed eggs baked into tsoureki. It was celebrated when Americans celebrated The Feast of the Epiphany, if they celebrated it at all, the day when the three kings finally arrived at Bethlehem, after all those days of GPS-ing by that one outrageous star. I loved Orthodox Christmas, especially this Christmas—which I thought of as the first Christmas out from under—and it was especially thrilling because what Stefan had done to our decked-out house made me feel like I was living in a Viktor&Rolf perfume bottle. So after American Christmas, I might have been downcast when my sisters left, drawing all the chatter and teasing after them like a crown of ribbons, had I not known we would be together in a short while for another groaning meal and more presents. After they were gone, the five of us left broke holiday protocol by turning the television on, not to the Vienna Boys Choir but to 13 AccuWeather. By four, the front door was so drifted that Jep couldn’t open it.

“I have to plow,” Stefan said regretfully. “I should be ahead of it. What did I think it was, Christmas?” He told us he understood now why people worked in offices.

“I’ll come with you,” Jep said. “We can share father and son bonding. I can tell you lore from Christmases of old, stories of ancient Scandinavian drunks who are your forebears.”