“Remember when your father bought the Christmas tree that was so fat it couldn’t fit through the front door?” Mom asked, a smile in her tone. “The beginning of our porch tree tradition,” Maeve recalled. I felt a stab of guilt. I hadn’t put up a porch tree this Christmas. I hadn’t even put up an indoor tree. Just the now-dead wreath I’d bought from Chloe’s school fundraiser. Cancer had made other plans for our family. I would make up for it next Christmas, I decided. There would be life here. Family here. Laughter and cookies and alcohol and badly wrapped gifts.
