Thanksgiving came and went in a strange blur.
They didn’t close the tasting room—they needed the cash—but they cut hours and let the crew go early on Thursday. Rosa insisted on making a turkey the old-fashioned way, in the oven this time, with enough sides to feed an army.
Aanya sent a care package from the city: artisan pies, a bottle of Champagne, and a card that said, To my two favorite occupational hazards. Don’t burn the house down.
They ate on the porch, wrapped in jackets, plates balanced on laps. Marco and his wife, Elena, came up from Sacramento, Elena’s belly round now, baby due in a month. Diego brought his new girlfriend, a shy nursing student who drank the white blend and asked good questions about soil. Yolanda showed up with her sister and three rambunctious nieces.
Even Rhys stayed, despite an invitation from a friend in the city. He sat at the edge of the group, laughing at Rosa’s stories, letting Elena ask him about 529 plans, offering to help Diego’s girlfriend with her FAFSA.
Nora watched him from her perch on the porch steps. It felt…dangerous, how easily he’d slipped into the edges of her life.
After dinner, when the plates had been stacked and the last of the cranberry sauce wiped with tortillas (Rosa refused to waste anything), someone suggested they get the Christmas boxes down from the attic.
“It’s too early,” Nora protested.
“It’s never too early,” Rosa said. “We have to find the star. I don’t know which box it’s in.”
“The ugly glitter one?” Marco asked. “The one Dad loved?”
“Yes,” Rosa said, eyes shining. “That one.”
They went up in shifts, dusty tarps, careful steps on the old ladder. Boxes emerged one by one: LIGHTS. ORNAMENTS – FRAGILE. NATIVITY. RANDOM CRAP in Marco’s teenage handwriting.
“Be careful,” Rosa scolded as Rhys carried down a box marked GLASS. “Those were my grandmother’s.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
He set the box on the coffee table, dusted his hands. Glitter puffed into the air.
“You’re very domestic today,” Nora murmured as she passed.
He gave her a look. “Don’t get used to it,” he said. “I only do attics for people I’m foreclosing on.”
She snorted. “You should put that on your LinkedIn,” she said.
They opened boxes. Lights tangled. Ornaments wrapped in old newspaper. A clay reindeer Nora had made in second grade, one leg forever shorter than the others.
“Aw,” Elena cooed. “Baby Nora.”
“Don’t,” Nora said, flushing.
Rosa dug through a box, muttering. “Where is that star,” she said. “Marco, you took it, didn’t you.”
“Why would I steal a star,” he protested. “I live in an apartment with popcorn ceiling.”
“Because you’re sentimental,” she said. “Like your father.”
He rolled his eyes. “If I’m sentimental, you’re a telenovela,” he said.
She threw tissue paper at him.
“Got it!” Diego suddenly yelled from the corner, holding something aloft.
The star glinted in the lamplight. It was as ugly as Nora remembered—gold cardboard, shedding glitter, edges bent from years of being shoved into too-small boxes. Her father had bought it at a drugstore their first Christmas in the house, declaring, We don’t need fancy. We need ours.
Nora’s breath hitched.
“Put it up,” Rosa said, thrusting it at her.
“There’s no tree,” Nora said, voice thinner than she wanted.
“There will be,” Rosa said. “Next week. We can test it on the wall.”
It felt…wrong. Star without tree. Symbol without substance.
Nora took it anyway.
She turned—and froze.
Rhys stood in the doorway, watching. Something in his face she couldn’t read.
“What,” she said, more sharply than she meant.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just…looking.”
“At what,” she pressed.
He considered. “At…continuity,” he said. “At…how this house holds…layers.”
She frowned. “You’re being weird,” she said.
“Occupational hazard,” he said.
She smirked. “Stop hiding behind that,” she said. “Say what you mean.”
He hesitated. “I mean…this,” he said, gesturing to the boxes, the glitter, the people crowded into the living room. “Is what Aurora doesn’t understand. Can’t. No matter how many decks they make.”
“Good,” she said. “Then they can’t ruin it.”
He smiled faintly. “They’ll try,” he said. “With curated wreaths and monogrammed stockings. But this…” He nodded at the star. “This is…yours.”
“Not for long,” she said.
He tilted his head. “You think they’re going to care about a cardboard star,” he said. “They’ll bring in some designer thing. You can slide this one back on the tree when they’re not looking.”
She pictured it: a glossy magazine-ready living room, some tasteful minimalist tree with white lights, and this ridiculous, tacky star hidden near the back.
The image made her…smile.
“You’re very sneaky,” she said.
“You’re very stubborn,” he replied.
“Dangerous combination,” she said.
They both looked up at the corner where the tree would go. The faint water ring on the floor.
“Tree next week?” he asked.
“If the lot has any good ones left,” she said. “Last year they tried to sell me a lopsided thing and call it ‘modern.’”
“Modern trees,” he said. “Who knew.”
She hugged the star to her chest for a second, glitter dusting her shirt.
“Will you…” she started, then stopped.
He waited.
“Be here,” she finished. “When we get it.”
He swallowed. “If you want me to,” he said.
She shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “You’re tall,” she said. “We need someone to put the star up.”
“I see,” he said. “My role reduces to manual labor.”
“It was always manual labor,” she said. “The rest was just…foreplay.”
He choked. “You can’t say that with your mother in the room,” he hissed.
“What are you two whispering about,” Rosa called.
“Nothing,” they said in unison.
Rosa eyed them. “Uh-huh,” she said. “If you break my ornaments, both of you are in trouble.”
They looked at each other. Smiled. For a moment, the impending January, the purchase agreement, the closing…faded. There was only cardboard and glitter and ghosts.
* * *
The tree came the following Saturday.
They drove to the lot in town, the same one they’d been going to for twenty years. The same grumpy guy, now older and grayer, shuffled between rows of cut evergreens.
“‘Bout time,” he grunted when he saw them. “I was starting to think you all moved to Napa with the money people.”
“Don’t curse us like that, Ron,” Nora said.
Rhys came with them, despite an amused raised eyebrow from Aanya on a group call that morning.
“You’re really driving an hour to pick out a tree,” she’d said. “You are deep in it, my friend.”
“Tradition,” he’d said. “And manual labor.”
“Wear gloves,” she’d said. “Pines sap.”
“You should come,” he’d told her impulsively.
She’d laughed. “Someone has to keep your LPs happy,” she’d said. “Bring me a branch. I’ll sniff it and pretend.”
Now, in the lot, the trees stood in uneven rows, some too tall, some too stubby, some already browning at the edges.
“Not this one,” Nora said, bypassing a lopsided fir. “It leans.”
“They all lean,” Marco said. “It’s called gravity.”
“You’re not helping,” she said.
“What about this?” Rosa called, standing beside a full, well-proportioned tree. “She’s nice.”
Nora eyed it. “Branching’s too dense,” she said. “We’ll never get the ornaments in.”
Rosa muttered something about her being picky like her father.
Rhys trailed behind, hands in his jacket pockets, watching the bizarrely intense ritual. He’d never cared about trees growing up; their small house in Vacaville had gotten whatever came cheap at the grocery store lot, and some years only a plastic one.
“These all look…fine,” he said at one point. “Green. Vertical. Festive.”
She threw a sprig at him. “You know nothing,” she said. “There’s a science to this.”
“I’m listening,” he said. “Professor.”
“Height,” she said, counting off on fingers. “Needs to fit under the ceiling without scraping. Branch structure—enough gaps for ornaments, but not so sparse it looks like a plucked chicken. Health—needles shouldn’t fall off when you shake it. Smell—resinous, not moldy. It’s like fruit. You don’t just…grab.”
He watched her talk, amused and entranced by her seriousness over something so…mundane.
“You apply that level of scrutiny to…everything?” he asked.
“Everything that matters,” she said. “Trees. Grapes. Men with spreadsheets.”
“Glad to be in such esteemed company,” he said.
She shot him a look. “Don’t get cocky,” she said. “You barely passed the pump test.”
He laughed.
They eventually found it: a mid-height Douglas fir with good structure, deep green needles, and a smell that hit her in the chest like memory.
“This one,” she said.
Rhys reached up, fingers closing around the trunk.
“Got her?” Marco asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “She’s not that heavy.”
“She,” Nora echoed. “You gender trees now.”
“You gender grapes,” he said.
“Fair,” she admitted.
They strapped the tree to the truck roof with more twine than strictly necessary—Rosa insisted. Rhys double-knotted anyway.
On the drive back, he watched it through the sunroof, branches whipping slightly in the wind. It felt…symbolic. Of what, he didn’t know.
Back at the house, they maneuvered it through the door in a series of awkward pivots. Needles rained down. The stand slid. Diego, drafted into service when he showed up to borrow the truck, cursed when sap got on his hoodie.
“Left! No, your other left!” Marco shouted, directing.
“I know my left,” Rhys gritted.
“Debatable,” Nora muttered.
They got it in place. Stepped back.
It was…perfect.
“Good bones,” Nora said approvingly.
“Little lean,” Rhys observed.
“We’ll shim it,” Marco said.
They did, bits of cardboard and two folded beer coasters wedged under the stand. The tree straightened.
Rosa clapped. “Lights,” she declared.
They strung them as they always had: starting from the bottom, winding up, arguing about spacing, cursing when a strand went out halfway through.
“You have to test them before you hang them,” Rhys said, exasperated, as a middle section flickered.
“That takes the fun out of it,” Nora said.
“Your definition of fun is broken,” he said.
“Says the man who reads loan covenants for entertainment,” she shot back.
Elena sat on the couch, feet up, watching, hand on her belly. “You two are like an old married couple,” she murmured to Rosa.
“Don’t say that,” Rosa said. “They’ll both run.”
Elena laughed.
Ornaments came next. The good ones first: glass balls, delicate stars, the hand-painted ones from friends who’d gone to Italy and brought back something “Tuscan.” Then the homemade: school projects, macaroni wreaths, the aforementioned lopsided clay reindeer.
“Front,” Nora said, placing a sleek glass ornament. “Back,” she said, tossing the reindeer at Marco, who hung it dutifully on the less-visible side.
Finally, the star.
Rosa pressed it into Rhys’s hands. “You,” she said. “Up.”
He blinked. “Me?” he said. “Shouldn’t this be…family?”
“It is,” she said simply.
Something wobbled in his chest.
He glanced at Nora. She looked…stricken. Then she nodded, almost imperceptibly.
He stepped forward.
The tree scratched his arms as he reached up. He felt Rosa’s hand on his back, steadying. Felt Nora’s eyes on him.
He placed the star on the highest branch. It wobbled, then settled, glitter shedding on his hair.
“Moment of truth,” Marco said. “Lights.”
Rosa flipped the switch.
The tree glowed.
Warm. Imperfect. Beautiful.
For a second, no one spoke.
Then Yolanda sniffed. “You’re all ridiculous,” she said, eyes bright.
“Shut up,” Diego muttered, wiping his own eyes.
Nora’s throat burned. She looked at the tree. At the star. At Rhys, standing there with glitter in his hair and sap on his wrists.
“You’re part of this now,” she thought wildly. “Whether I like it or not.”
She wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
* * *