The Christmas Blanket

“Yes, I realize that,” I conceded. “But come on, this is different.”

“Well, how I was supposed to know what was okay to mention and what wasn’t? What you’d want to know versus what you wouldn’t?”

Beth let out a frustrated breath, glancing at the tree before she found me again.

“You left this town like you never wanted any piece of it ever again, Eliza. I was trying to abide by your wishes. I was trying to give you what you wanted.”

What I wanted.

I laughed under my breath at that.

It seemed everyone was trying to figure out what I wanted, including myself.

I abandoned my pie on the coffee table, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’m just… I feel like a fish out of water. I’m back home in the town I grew up in, and everything is the same, yet nothing is. River’s parents are gone, Beth. They’re gone. I never got to say goodbye. I never got to tell them how much they both meant to me. I never got to…” I held back the sob building in my throat, shaking my head. “I wasn’t here for River. I wasn’t here to help him, to listen to him, to hold his hand at the funeral. He went through all of that alone.”

Beth’s brows bent together, and she scooted close enough on the couch to where she could place her small, pale hand over mine.

“And he knew,” I whispered, shaking my head as my eyes welled up. “He knew his dad was sick, that he wouldn’t be here long. But he didn’t tell me.”

“Of course, he didn’t,” Beth said, as if it were obvious. “He loved you. He wanted you to be happy, and you had literally told him that you weren’t happy here. Why would he try to keep you in that situation?”

“But it wasn’t that simple,” I said, frustrated. “We had been stuck in a rut for a full year. He was miserable, trying to work all those odds and ends jobs, breaking his back, never having a vacation or even a full weekend off. I was working at the supermarket. We were working, day in and day out, all day and night long sometimes just to pay our freaking bills.” I shook my head. “That’s not living, Beth. Neither one of us was living.”

“I know,” she said, rubbing her belly. I knew she was thinking about Robert, about how hard he worked to make ends meet, and how hard she worked to keep their little home up. “But then again, that may not be living to you, but to some of us, just getting by is enough. You know? I mean, sure, Robert and I don’t have a bunch of nice things. We don’t get to go take all these fancy vacations. But at the end of a long day, we come home to each other. We love watching our TV shows together, and we love sitting out at the lake watching the sunset, or taking a long drive through the old winding roads.” She shrugged, a soft smile on her lips. “Sometimes you gotta look past all the hard things you go through and look at all the little things you have to be thankful for. Like someone to hug you, someone to laugh with.” She patted her belly. “Someone to make new life with.”

I swallowed down the emotion still strangling me. “I guess some of us just want more.”

“Maybe,” she said, but her smile told me she thought otherwise. “But maybe some of us just get lost and think we know what we want when really, we have no idea.”

I frowned.

“Why do you think you’re so sick to your stomach right now, Eliza?” she asked. “Why do you think you can’t eat, can’t fathom trying to sleep? Something has changed. Something inside you woke up that you didn’t even realize was there, soundly sleeping, all this time.”

Beth moved even closer, taking both of my hands in hers and looking into my eyes earnestly.

“Let me ask you this, sis. When you left, you said you were off to find adventure,” she said, accentuating the word like it was an epic tale itself. “You’ve been gone for four years now. You’ve seen dozens of different countries, hundreds of cities and towns and farms and lakes and rivers. You’ve spoken new languages, walked down new streets, met new people and maybe even found a new version of yourself, too. But tell me this… have you found what you’re looking for yet?”

My heart thumped hard at the question, another searing zip of pain splitting my chest.

“Because if you haven’t,” she continued, a little shrug on her shoulders and knowing smile on her lips. “Maybe it’s because you’ve been looking in the wrong places. Maybe it’s because it’s been right here, in the town that built you, all along.”