Page 97 of Mom Com

Liv exhales long and loud. But she takes the next turn onto my street. “Okay, I respect your decision. And I’m gonna butt out. All I’m saying is that if youdowant to talk to him, I mean if you change your mind, he’s not at my parents’ house.”

This, of course, gets my attention. He’s not at his parents’ house on Christmas? “Where is he?” I ask, hating myself a little for not being able to resist.

A hint of a smile appears before she erases it from my view. “He’s at his house... alone. I guess whatever happened last night between you two devastated him, made him not want to be with my mother. And good for him. It’s been far too long since he’s drawn a line with her.” She steals a glance at me to make sure her words are landing, and I wish I could say they weren’t. “I’ll give you the address. He gets spotty reception there, so he doesn’t always see texts.”

“I don’t need—” I start as she pulls into my driveway.

“31 Winter Street,” she says before I can get out my objection.

She pulls to a stop in my driveway, and I give her an objecting look.

“Merry Christmas, Mads,” she says with a grin, leaning over to hug me. “I’m glad we did this.”

I lift an amused eyebrow. “Uh-huh,” I say, opening the door. “Me, too, I think?”

She laughs as I step out into the driveway. “Say hi to your mom and Spence.”

I grumble a little as she pulls away, vowing to block out the things she said about Wilder, especially the part where he’s spending Christmas alone. But as the day winds down, my thoughts keep drifting back to him. I’m positive he wasn’t devastated. Liv was probably exaggerating. Had to be.

But... what if she wasn’t?

Ugh! SHUT UP, brain!

When Jake finally shows up (an hour late), the phone rings. While my mother answers it, I excuse myself and head up to my bedroom to have a minute alone. To stare at my suitcase, as it were, the one I was so intent on packing not twelve hours earlier. Because the question of leaving, the one that I’ve been struggling with since I first read my dad’s will, has been buzzing in the back of my mind all day. But before I have a chance to really agonize over it, there’s a knock.

“Madeline?” my mother says, and I tell her to come in.

She, too, looks at my suitcase. “I wanted to give you this... before Christmas was over,” she says, holding an envelope between her hands.

On the outside is my name written in capital letters, the way my dad always printed, and the sight of it sends my pulse skittering into chaos.

“Your father,” she says and swallows, “had this awful dream about three months before his heart attack.” She stops, rubbing her thumb along the envelope in a way that tells me this is hard for her, which only unsettles me further. “In his dream, a truck drove into the bakery and killed him.” She looks at me meaningfully.

My eyebrows push together in confusion. “Wait, hang on... You think the dream was a premonition?” I ask, not able to hide my surprise—my mother isn’t one to give credence to anything she can’t see.

“Not at the time,” she admits. “But he did. When he woke up, he wouldn’t stop talking about it, about how real it felt. As you might imagine, I argued with him about it. But he wouldn’t let it go. Two weeks later, he went and changed his will, wrote that addendum about the bakery.”

Her words hit me like a right hook, spinning my head and rattling my vision.

Mom takes a breath. “He tried to talk to me about it, but it only made me angry.” Her voice catches slightly, and she takes a moment to even it out. “Then he put this letter in the safe. Told me to give it to you a year after he died. I was so mad at him for going on about his death, that I almost burned the thing.”

I stare at the letter, struggling to breathe. I don’t ask her why she never told me because the answer is obvious by the look on her face—that after fighting with him about the validity of it and being proven wrong, she felt it her duty to honor his last wishes.

“Anyway,” she says, lifting her chin to stave off a sniffle. “I wanted to give it to you before you left.” She glances at my suitcase once more.

There’s no judgment in her tone this time, no veiled insult about my maturity, and it gets me. I have to clear my throat in order to speak.

“Thank you,” I say as she hands it over.

She nods and leaves the room, neither of us composed enough to talk about it further. And for a solid minute, I stare at my dad’s penmanship on the envelope, frozen in place on my rug. For a passing second, I think maybe I shouldn’t read it; maybe I should wait until Spence is asleep, until I’m not so confused, until I have time to process, until, until, until... But when does that moment come? When do things get so perfect and calm that you can deal with all the broken bits? Never, that’s when.

So, I do it even though I don’t want to, even though I’m terrified, even though part of me is trying to launch a defense about why my dad didn’t tell me about his dream. But I know why, because I wouldn’t frighten Spence with that if the dream had been mine.

My hand shakes as my finger catches the back flap, pulling it free and breaking the seal. I slide the paper out with care, like there might be a piece of my dad inside. And as I unfold the letter—stationery I recognize from his desk at the bakery—I brush my eyes with the back of my hand.

Madeline,

I’m a simple man, and I often get things wrong when it comes to other people’s emotions. But just the same, here it goes, the sloppy version that I hope you’ll be able to understand.