Page 7 of Daddy's Little Christmas

“Men kicked out of their families.

Women escaping marriages.

Interracial couples. Artists. Drifters.

People who could not bear to go back to where they’d started.”

By the 1970s, the article said, Winterhaven had an unofficial Pride walk that wound through the snow at night, lit by lanterns. By the time the town’s name was printed on state maps, it had already been home to countless people the world tried to forget.

At the bottom of the article was a picture of a plaque:

WINTERHAVEN, VERMONT

Founded on love, held together by it still.

My throat felt tight. I swallowed and read the final lines.

Winterhaven was never about geography.

It was about choosing a community where people who did not belong anywhere else could finally say: “I’m home.”

I locked my phone and set it face-down on the coffee table. Sat back. Tried to breathe around the ache in my chest.

Home.

I was thirty years old and had never said that word without qualifiers. It was alwaysmy apartment,the place I’m renting,where I sleep.

For a long minute, I just listened to the hum of my fridge, the occasional car outside. The city felt too big, too close, too loud. Like I was hogging space I didn’t deserve.

I picked the phone back up.

Not because I’d decided anything. Just… because I couldn’t not.

Winterhaven, Vermont,I typed into the search bar.

A map loaded—tiny town icon up in the northern corner of the country, surrounded by green that turned white the closer I zoomed. Far from where I was. Really far.

I hit Directions without letting myself think too hard. Fifteen, sixteen hours of driving if you went straight through. More if you weren’t stupid about it. I switched to satellite view; the screen filled with ridges and winding lines of road cutting through them. Narrow. Curvy. Mountain roads.

A little banner at the top of the results mentioned early snow and travel advisories for northern Vermont. Late November, of course.

I wasn’t planning to move there. That would be insane. Irresponsible. I had a lease. Furniture. A whole life tied to this city.

But the idea of being there for a while—just for a while—lodged somewhere in my ribs and refused to leave.

What would it feel like to wake up in a place built by people like Arthur and Henry? A place that existed because two men once decided they were done asking for permission?

My screen dimmed. I woke it and, without giving myself time to second-guess, opened my calendar.

December was never light for me. Every client wanted a year-end push, every brand wanted to sound festive without sounding desperate, and every campaign had the wordholidayin it somehow.

I could do something uncharacteristic: pull some nearly-all-nighters, schedule everything through New Year's and tell my clients I'd be working remotely for the rest of the month.

No one would question it. If anything, they might thank me for being “ahead of deadlines.” They wouldn’t know it was grief and panic and insomnia doing the work.

Some might even assume I wanted to spend the holidays with family. No one needed to know the only family I’d ever really had was gone.

I exhaled slowly.