ELARA'S POV
Christmas that year we spent in Tacoma with my parents.
Damien's idea, which surprised me until it didn't. He'd been quietly building something with my father since the conversation in the hospital hallway after the wedding. Phone calls about basketball. A book Thomas had mentioned wanting that arrived in the mail three days later. Nothing large, just consistent attention to what mattered to the people I loved.
My mother cooked for two days beforehand. The house smelled like it always had at Christmas, cinnamon and something roasting and the specific warmth of a home that had been lived in fully.
Damien helped my father assemble a bookshelf on Christmas Eve that had been sitting in its box for three months. I watched them from the kitchen doorway, my father reading instruct
