Chapter 10: Next New Year’stext
The following New Year’s Eve, the apartment was warm.
Liam, a year older, slept through the early fireworks in his crib. Maya stood at the window with a glass of sparkling water and watched the light over Manhattan without shivering. On the table sat actual food—soup that was not instant, bread, fruit, a small cake she had wanted for no reason other than wanting it. The thermostat answered to us. The cameras watched the hallway for packages, not for relatives with coolers.
Eleanor sent nothing. Chloe sent nothing. The absence was not a wound we dressed each hour. It was a fact we had stopped interrogating. Helen’s wall held. The canceled cards stayed canceled. The building staff still had the notice.
I stood beside Maya and felt the weight of the previous year settle into something carryable—scar, scar, archive, full fridge, child breathing under a blanket that fit the season. She leaned her head against my shoulder.
“You came home early,” she said.
“I’ll do it again if I have to,” I answered.
“You won’t have to. The door is ours.”
Outside, the city made its noise. Inside, we did not open champagne for ghosts. We ate cake with forks from the same plate and checked the monitor once, not from fear, from habit that had softened into care.
I had flown back on New Year’s Eve expecting a surprise celebration and a first held son.
I had found a bloodstained cardigan, a starving recovery, a freezing infant, and a note that treated my wife as an obstacle to a beach reservation.
I canceled the cards, filled the hospital chart, saved the footage, changed the locks, and built a year in which the only authorized users of our life were the people who lived it—
and on the next New Year’s Eve,
with the fridge full
and the cameras quiet
and the baby warm,
we let the fireworks
May you like
belong
to everyone else.
