Page 35 of Remain

Erik’s voice stays steady, even as his eyes don’t. “I kept it going,” he confirms, proudly. “I talked to Mrs. Kincaid, and we agreed this was too special to let it end.”

I think of that big box of photos I came across lastnight, all of the ones that Erik took over the years. For every year I was gone, for every year my mother couldn’t continue what she had created.

He didn’t just keep the drive alive.

He protected it.

“I wondered,” I say softly, “why you broke down today. With those boys.”

Erik exhales, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “They ran to me instead of the toys.”

His mother reaches for his arm. “Just like you did, with Diane.”

This wasn’t just kindness passed along in small, quiet ways. This was lineage. This was history, moving forward instead of fading out.

Ruth to Diane, Diane to Erik, and Erik, faithful and unassuming, carrying it forward year after year without asking, without waiting, without needing anyone to notice. He did it for her. He did it for me. He did it because that’s what love looks like when it’s learned early and honored often.

My mother didn’t just leave me memories. She left me a legacy. She left me people, and a kindness that refused to stay still, that kept moving through hands and hearts long after she was gone.

The man standing beside me, the one who loved her, who honored her, who carried her generosity through every Christmas I missed, didn’t just love me. He loved what made me.

And suddenly, devastatingly, beautifully, there is no denying it.

15

Savannah

By the timeChristmas night finally settles over Pineview, the town feels as though it has reached the end of something and set it gently down.

All around the square, windows shine with quiet life. Families are tucked away inside, coats hung by doors, shoes kicked aside, tables crowded with half-cleared plates and cooling desserts. Laughter presses softly against the glass in muted bursts, the sound of it contained but undeniably Christmas Day. Wrapping paper lies folded or forgotten where it fell. Gifts have been opened. Stories have been told. Joy has been gathered and held close, sheltered from the cold.

Outside, the air sharpens, clean and biting, carrying the scent of snow and pine and the faint trace of woodsmoke drifting from chimneys farther up the hill.

Erik and I walk side by side through it all, close enoughthat our coats brush with every step, the contact constant and unintentional, a quiet awareness that settles into my body and stays there. We do not touch in any way that could be called deliberate, and yet neither of us pulls away, neither of us widens the space, as if we are both conscious of how easily it might disappear.

Snow crunches beneath our boots, the sound startlingly loud in the hush, each step echoing farther than it should, a reminder of our presence in a town that has otherwise turned inward for the night.

“She used to make me walk this way,” I break the tension because the silence feels too consuming if I let it linger. “Every Christmas Eve and Christmas Day night. We would walk the square after dinner. She said we needed to get our steps in.”

Erik turns his head slightly. “Your mom?”

I nod. “She said Christmas didn’t end until the town went quiet. That joy needed somewhere to land.”

He exhales slowly, something like recognition passing through him. “My mom used to say the same thing. She said if you rushed the night, you forgot what you were grateful for.”

That stops me. I look at him then, really look at him, and for a moment I can see us as kids again. Two families circling the same traditions. The same truths and already intertwined long before either of us understood what that meant.

We pass the gazebo, its lights glowing soft and gold against the dark. I remember sitting on those steps at sixteen, knees pulled to my chest, Erik beside me, both of us pretending we were not terrified of what came next.

“You said once you would never leave,” I hush.

He smiles faintly. “You said you would never stay.”

“That feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It kind of was.”

We stop near his truck. Snow dusts the hood, untouched, the engine long cold. Erik leans back against it, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared like he is bracing for something he already knows is coming. He looks exactly the way he did as kids. It takes me back.