Magic Hour

This year there had been no invitation at all. No doubt Cal assumed that she and Julia and Alice were a new Cates family and wanted to be alone. But she knew that without Lisa he would be having a rough time of it.

She packed up their presents in a pretty silver Nordstrom’s bag, and headed down the driveway. On either side of her, magnificent fir and cedar trees grew tall and straight; their green tips plunged into the swollen gray belly of the sky. Although the rain had stopped, drops still fell from leaves and branches and eaves, creating a steady drip-drip-drip that matched her footsteps. There were the other sounds of the forest, too. Water rushing, needles rustling, squirrels scurrying across branches, mice running for cover. Every now and then a crow cawed or an owl hooted.

These sounds were as familiar to her as the crackling of a fire in the fireplace. Without a worry she turned onto the path and walked into the woods.

There was no way to calculate the number of times she’d crossed this bridge or walked from one house to the other. Enough so that nothing ever grew up in the path. Even in recent years, when cars and telephones were more common than walking to the neighbor’s house, nothing ever grew up to hide the way.

She followed the beaten and stunted grass around the orchard and through the vegetable garden, past the old pond that used to be their childhood fishing hole. As she pushed through the cattails and heard her boots squish in the soggy grou

nd, she heard a long-forgotten echo of their childish laughter.

There’s a snake in the water, Cal—get out!

That’s just an ol’ twig. You need glasses.

You’re the one who needs glasses—

She remembered their laughter . . . the way they’d sit on that muddy bank for hours, talking about nothing.

She followed the path back around the bend, and there was the house. For a second she expected it to look as it once had: a slant-sided shack with fake shingles; shutters hanging askew on cracked, dirty windows; a battalion of snarling pit bulls chained in the yard.

She blinked and the memory moved on. She was staring at the house Cal had built by himself, in the years after junior college and before marrying Lisa. He’d worked for a construction company back then. After a forty-five-hour workweek he’d piled on the extra hours at his own house, literally building the place around his drunken, useless father.

It was a small house that seemed to have sprouted outward, growing in a collection of sharp angles and awkward slants. Rooms had been added on as money came in, without real rhyme or reason. Cal had poured his energy into the place, trying to build for his family the home he’d never had. The end result was a quaint shingled cabin set on a patch of velvet green grass, surrounded by two-hundred-year-old evergreens.

As always, the holiday lights and decorations were world-class. Ellie always figured he went overboard to make up for all the years there hadn’t even been a tree in the living room.

The porch was studded with white lights; the railings were festooned with boughs. A giant homemade wreath decorated the front door.

Ellie expected to hear music seeping through the walls, but it was oddly still. For a second she wondered if they were home. She glanced behind her and saw Cal’s baby—the 1969 GTO he’d restored to perfection.

She knocked on the door. When no one answered, she tried again.

Finally she heard a thunder of footsteps.

The door wrenched open and Cal’s daughters stood there, huddled together, smiling brightly. Amanda, the eleven-and-a-half-year-old, looked impossibly grown-up in her low-rise jeans and studded silver belt and pink tee shirt. Her long black hair had been coiled into the haphazard braid that could only be made by a father’s clumsy hands. Nine-year-old Emily was dressed in a green velvet dress that was at least a size too big, and eight-year-old Sarah—the only child to have inherited her mother’s strawberry-blond hair and freckled complexion—hadn’t bothered to change out of her Princess Fiona pajamas.

At the sight of Ellie, all three smiles faded.

“It’s just Aunt Ellie,” Amanda said.

The trio mumbled “Merry Christmas.” Then Emily called out for her dad.

“Gee, thanks,” Ellie said, watching them walk away.

Cal came down the stairs. He was moving slowly, as if maybe he’d just woken up. His black hair was a tangled mess. Tiny pink lines creased his left cheek. He wore a pair of Levi’s so old that both knees were gone and the hemlines were foamy fringe. His Metallica tee shirt had seen better days, too.

“Ellie,” he said, trying to smile. As he passed each of the girls, he hugged them, then let them go.

“You look like hell,” she said when the girls were gone.

“And I was going to say how beautiful you are.”

Ellie closed the door behind her and followed him to the living room, where a huge decorated tree took up the entire corner. She set the bag of gifts down beside it.

Cal flopped down on the sofa, put his feet on the hammered copper coffee table. His sigh was loud enough to set a tiny ornament spinning and jingling.

Ellie sat down beside him. It confused her to see Cal this way. He’d laughed his way through too many hard times to fall apart now. If Cal could become fragile, then nothing was safe. “What happened?”