“Excuse you!” someone bleats at me.
I veer to the left as the woman I’ve just walked into throws me a dirty look. “I’m really sorry,” I say, dragging my suitcase out of the woman’s way.
She’s the second person I’ve now accidentally assaulted at baggage claim. For some reason, I can’t get my head on straight.
Logic tells me it’s rejection. Plain and simple. But I’ve been rejected before. And this feels different.
The woman doesn’t seem appeased by the apology. Instead, she flicks her hair over her shoulder, huffs, and stomps off in the opposite direction.
I wheel my luggage to the side of the baggage claim lobby and try to get myself together. If I walk out of here now, Mia is going to immediately know something is wrong. I’m a bad liar under normal circumstances, and this isn’t exactly the kind of thing I know how to sweep under the rug.
I don’t want to taint this trip with my sad story. Especially when it was just supposed to be an interesting airport fling.
Why the hell did I get my hopes up? What made me foolish enough to think there was something more there? Aleks certainly didn’t think that.
If that was even his name.
“Goddammit,” I mutter to myself. “Here comes the ‘conspiracy theory’ stage of grief.”
I stand there for another ten minutes before it dawns on me that I’m not going to start to feel better anytime soon. I might as well bite the bullet and head outside.
If Mia notices something, I’ll just tell her the truth. After all, her shoulder has always been my go-to crying place whenever something goes wrong in my life. I’ve used it plenty before.
I pull off my sweater and throw it over the handle of my luggage. Then I carefully tug my suitcase through the sliding doors, doing my best not to hit anyone else.
I expect to see Mia immediately. She’s usually center stage, waving like a maniac and screaming my name.
But today, she’s nowhere in sight.
Frowning, I turn to the left. Nothing. Then the right. Nothing.
The crowd is thin enough that I can pick out each individual person easily. Mia is definitely not here.
I move to the side and pull out my phone. No missed calls and no messages.
I find a bench to sit on and dial Mia’s number. It rings forever—ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty times—before I give up and cut the line.
My frown deepens. It’s not like Mia to be late. It’s even stranger that she hasn’t even left me a message.
I decide to call Rob. Same story. Two dozen rings of nothing.
When Mom doesn’t answer, I start worrying. What could have happened that all three of them would go silent on me?
Maybe they mixed up my arrival time. Given my first flight was delayed, it’s possible. But that still doesn’t explain why none of them are answering their phones.
I fire off three texts in quick succession.
Mimi, helloooo? I’ve just arrived and can’t seem to find you anywhere. Let me know if I should take a cab home.
Hey broski, are you around? Mia’s supposed to pick me up at the airport but she’s a no show. Any ideas where she might be?
Mom? Everything okay? I just landed. Is Mia running late?
I feel better once I send the texts. They probably just had their phones on silent or something. They’ll see it in just a sec and come hustling to scoop me up.
But ten minutes later, when all three texts have gone unanswered, the panic starts setting in once more, this time with fangs.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask myself. I can’t shake the feeling that something terrible has happened.
I wait another ten minutes, and when my phone still remains stubbornly mute, I decide I’m done waiting. I veer out from under the awning and towards the taxi queue.
Of course, just my luck, that’s when the universe decides to start raining. Grudgingly, I pull my woolen sweater back on and stand in line behind a gaggle of surly businessmen.
When it’s my turn, the driver who steps up is a portly older gentleman with a thick mustache and the wispiest beard I’ve ever seen. I might have found it amusing if I wasn’t so preoccupied with where my family is.
Was there a fire or a gas leak? Did a truck run them off the road? Did all three of them suffer a case of simultaneous amnesia and forget that they have a sister and daughter who’s supposed to be spending the holidays with them?
“Home for the holidays?” the driver asks.
I jerk upright and stifle a scream the moment he speaks.
He throws me a concerned glance through his mirror. “Sorry, miss. Didn’t mean to startle ya.”
“No, it’s okay. I was just… Yes, home for the holidays.”
“Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look so happy.”
I was when I left home this morning. I still was when I arrived at the airport an hour later.
But a lot has changed between then and now. The world has shifted beneath my feet.
“Well… it’s our first Christmas without my dad,” I say before I can think. “Or, wait, actually, that’s not true. I don’t know why I said that. This is year seven.”
“Oh, dear,” the cab driver says with a sympathetic nod. “I’ve been there. Not with my pops—he was a mean old drunk and the world is better off without him. But my wife. She passed on a while back. The first everything without them is hard. But then again, so’s the rest of things. Pain feels fresh every year, if I’m being honest.”
I focus on his voice, which has a deep, soothing timbre. It feels good to sit here in the back of a cab and have a conversation with a kind stranger. A little stretch of normalcy amidst too many unexpected turns.
“Does it get easier?” I ask.
“Hm. I don’t know about easier,” he says after some thought. “You just get used to it, you know? You get used to missing them. Familiar kind of ache.”
He gives me a kindly smile through the rearview mirror and goes back to looking at the road. On any other day, I would be committing every detail of his face to memory so that I could draw it later. The bulbous nose, the paper-thin skin around his eyes that crinkles when he smiles.
But my head is too full of unanswered questions to appreciate what I usually appreciate—the simple humanity of another living, breathing person in this universe.
I’m too worried about my own people. About Mia, about Rob, about Mom.
Worried about Aleks as well, of course, albeit in a completely different way. And I will not be entertaining thoughts on that subject, thank you very much.
“Who are you spending the holidays with?” I ask—anything to distract from the too-fresh memories that keep threatening to suck me into them like a black hole.
“I’ve got a son about your age,” he says. “We’re going to do what we do every year: watch old football games, eat store-bought turkey and fruitcake, and drink lots of beer.”
I smile. “That sounds sorta perfect.”
“I sure think so,” he chuckles. “Damien—that’s my boy—he’s a good kid. He was devastated when Mary died, but he didn’t really allow himself time to grieve. It’s all that male bravado we force onto our boys. It ain’t healthy.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say.
I’m thinking of my own brother. He processed Dad’s death differently than the rest of us. Became quieter, more withdrawn. It was another reason we were grateful to Isabella: she entered his life and gave him something to smile about.
But when she disappeared, everything got worse than ever before.
Even though I wasn’t around this past year, Mia filled me in on the lows. It was easy to pick up on the changes anytime when we talked on the phone.
“I’m Liv, by the way,” I say.
The cab driver waves and laughs. “My name’s Kevin. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
He turns the corner, and I realize we’re only a minute away from the street I grew up on. It’s a neat little cul-de-sac with broad sidewalks and bright lawns. The neighborhood kids ride their bikes to each other’s houses and leave them laying in the grass. Little girls set up lemonade stands in the summer.
“What’s the house number again, Ms. Liv?”
“Further down on the right,” I instruct him. “112.”
Mom and Dad moved into the house when Mom was pregnant with Mia. They’d had Rob in an apartment in the city, but once they knew there was a second baby on the way, they made the move to the ‘burbs. So when I came along, we were well-ensconced in Suburbia. I was born and raised right here.
Until I moved out on my own, this was the only home I’d ever known.
“This is it,” I say, pointing out the house to him. It’s straight out of middle-class America Central Casting: white shutters, dark gray roof tiles, a tidy sidewalk dividing the front yard into two symmetrical rectangles.
“Nice place. Cute.”
“Thanks, Kevin,” I grab two twenties out of my wallet and hand them over. “Keep the change. And happy holidays.”
It’s an abrupt end to our conversation, but now that I’m outside the house, I can’t wait another second. I want to get inside and find out why my family dropped off the face of the planet.
The cab trundles off as I make my way up the paved path to the front door. Usually, Mom greets me at the door, opening it before I can even reach the steps.
But today, there’s no movement anywhere. Quiet as the grave.
I knock and ring the doorbell repeatedly. “Mom!” I call out. “Mia!”
When still no one answers, I try the door handle. To my surprise, it swings open immediately.
Our neighborhood is as safe as it gets. Always has been. But Mom always, always keeps her door locked. “Can’t be too safe,” she said whenever anyone asked for as long as I can remember. She’d drive twenty minutes back home if she thought she might’ve forgotten to throw the deadbolt.
I step inside as foreboding fills my veins like acid.
Everything looks right: picture frames in their place on the entryway table, keys hanging from the silver hooks on the wall.
But nothing feels right.
The house is too quiet. Something acrid like burnt sugar fills the air. Mom’s love language is baked goods in every shape and form, but the woman is religious about her kitchen timers. She never burns anything.
“Mom?” I call again, quieter this time. “Mia?”
I hear a chair in the other room scrape slowly across the hardwood floor. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.
No one in our house is a chair scraper. Dad ranted and raved about us scratching the hardwood floors to the point that we all learned to lift our chairs when we moved them. It’s ingrained. An unconscious habit that even him passing couldn’t extinguish.
I move towards the living room, and the thought idly crosses my mind that I should look for a weapon. But disbelief keeps my arms pinned to my sides, keeps my feet moving forward.
When I turn right into the sitting room, I stop short. A gasp lodges in my throat.
They’re all there.
Mom.
Mia.
Rob.
But tape covers their mouths, and their hands and legs are tied with thick rope to the dining room chairs.
Mia and Mom look terrified, though otherwise unharmed. But Rob… there’s a trickle of blood running down the side of his face from his forehead. His eyes are dazed, but behind that daze is fury.
I stay rooted in place and blink and blink and blink like it’ll change what I’m seeing. It doesn’t. Finally, I let out a ragged cry and take one step towards the last loved ones I have left.
Only to be stopped in my tracks by a deep, commanding voice.
“Hello again, Olivia,” the voice rumbles. “Nice of you to join us.”
I recognize that voice, but I don’t want to believe it.
It can’t be.
It simply cannot fucking be.
I catch his shadow first, thrown long across the floor because of the light from the kitchen. Then his smell, rich and seductive.
Then he turns the corner and I nearly drop to my knees.
“Aleks…”
