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Christmas music from the old vinyl echoed through the house, sliding through the crack under Nell’s bedroom door.

Two weeks since she’d returned, and slowly it’d become less agonizing.

Her parents had swept through every inch of her room and somehow managed to find everything she’d hidden. The only things they left behind were the shoe boxes under her bed when they’d read the names written on them.

She spent hours the first couple of days shaking in her mother’s arms, screaming and begging for her to help her.

She stopped feeling so physically miserable a few days later. Mentally, however, she was eroded.

It wasn’t easy to wake up, join her parents for breakfast every morning, and sit through normal conversation.

It was difficult not to plan ways she could find where her parents had hidden her drugs, or where her dad now hid his alcohol, and even harder to do it with her parents constantly over her shoulder.

They involved her in everything they did, putting their foot down on “wasting away alone in her bedroom”.

She’d begrudgingly accepted it and tagged along every time her mother went grocery shopping, or to send mail to family members or the hair salon. She even quietly slipped away at one point in a store to find gifts for her parents when she realized Christmas was in a few days.

So that was where she was now: sitting on her bedroom floor, poorly wrapping their gifts to add to the exorbitant amount already under the tree.

A knock on her bedroom door startled her. “Sweetheart, you ready to open your gifts?” her mother asked.

“Coming!” Nell hastily stuck the last piece of tape and stacked the gifts up, balancing them in her arms to carry.

Her mother’s eyes widened when she saw the plaid wrapping paper covering two gifts. “What are these?”

“Gifts for you and Dad.”

Her mother’s mouth fell open, taking in the sight, and after a few seconds, Nell noticed the watery lines growing along the bottom rim of her eyes. Her mom turned away, wiping discreetly and walking toward the living room. “Your father is waiting.”

Just like every year before, her dad sat next to the tree on the ground, organizing gifts into three respective piles. Nell’s was bigger, just like always.

Her parents’ eyes burned into her as she placed her gifts onto their respective piles, then took her place on the couch.

She couldn’t imagine what they’d gotten her. She’d lacked enthusiasm for the holiday this year, not even offering up a list of what she wanted, yet there had to be at least fifteen perfectly wrapped gifts in front of her.

Her expectations were low, her excitement even lower.

They started, and Nell began opening. One by one.

She was surprised when she saw the first gift she picked up: a simple black journal and a pack of pencils. Nell had never been much of a writer. The last time she’d written much down was in school. But her parents smiled eagerly as she observed it.

“I know you don’t like to talk to us much, but we figured you’d like to get your thoughts out some way. You can write down whatever you want in there!” Her mom grinned, waiting for Nell’s reaction.

Nell looked back at the journal, considering what her mother had said.

Nell did tend to keep everything locked in her head. She wouldn’t get caught dead telling her parents her thoughts, but right now, she didn’t have anyone else to tell either. Barrett had been where she deposited all her thoughts and secrets, until she’d started keeping them from him too.

She blinked, and the journal suddenly looked different. Not just blank pages bound in black leather, but an invitation to escape in a way she had yet to try.

Something brightened in her head, clearing some strange murkiness.

She blinked, and her parents suddenly looked different. Not a pair of controlling figures trying to hide her away and keep her a secret; they were her mother and father who loved her, and were starting to see her and what she really needed, not what they thought she did.

A heavy stone of emotion settled into her throat, and she cleared it down and blinked rapidly.

“Thank you. I love it.”

From then on, nothing they gave her was what she thought it would be: new bed set to replace the one she’d spent days wasting away in, an offer to pay for new wallpaper to replace the pink one she chose when she was fourteen and no longer fit her, a new denim jacket to replace the old one her mother had always said looked “too out of place” on her.

Every single thing was Nell. Not the Nell they had been clinging to, but the Nell she was now. Down to the new Walkman and AC/DC cassettes they got because they had found a single cassette she had borrowed from Barrett and thought she liked the band.

They were trying.

She felt like she had her parents back, and she was starting to get herself back too.

“There’s one more,” her dad said. He shot her mom a look, but she smiled and nodded.

Nell raised a brow. “There is?”

Whatever it was, it wasn’t under the tree.

Her dad got up and walked out of the room as her mom reached over and grasped her hand. “We weren’t sure if we should give it to you today and . . . Well, you’ll see.” She squeezed Nell’s hand.

Her dad walked in, and Nell’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open.

Unlike the other gifts, it hadn’t been wrapped up aside from a large green bow wrapped at the top.

Her heart started to pound in her chest, a fluttering starting in her stomach.

She recognized it: a beautiful wooden acoustic guitar, the same one she looked at every time she went to the music shop since the first time she went in there.

Nell opened her mouth, reaching out for it as her dad handed it over, a soft smile on his face at her reaction. Her words came out breathless. “How did you . . .”

It fit perfectly on her lap, her fingers running up and down the length of the strings to make a familiar but more resonant ring than Sandra had.

“It showed up on the porch this morning,” her dad said.

Nell paused, looking up at them in surprise. She almost asked what they meant, but they were way ahead of her.

“There’s a note at the top there.”

Nell looked closer at the large bow, only to see a small folded note hanging by a string hidden by the fabric. She opened it, reading over the short message.

To: Nell

Play whenever you can’t handle anything else. Trust me, it helps.

Merry Christmas.

No “from” listed because he knew she would know exactly who it came from.

Nell choked again on the unbearable emotions she’d had since she opened that journal.

She really thought she would never hear from him again, that he hated her for lying and betraying him.

It may not be a conversation or a lesson, or sleeping next to him, but it was enough.

Tears fell from her cheeks onto the body of the guitar.

Her mom was next to her, wrapping her arms around her from the side and pulling Nell into her body.

She could hear the emotion in her mother when she spoke into her hair. “We didn’t even know you play guitar.”

“I don’t, not really. I was just learning.”

“Well, I can’t wait to hear you play anyway.”

Nell laughed through her sobs.

She’d forgotten what it felt like to be normal.

But if this was what normal had always felt like before, then it was about time she tried to be normal again.