Each weekday begins the same. I have every intention of writing. Then paralysis sets in, the dread of the empty page. Whether it be the blank screen on my laptop or a pristine sheet of note paper on my clipboard, there is always anxiety to be got over before the work of the day can start. Perhaps you can relate.

It’s taken me years to accept that dread presents the biggest challenge for me as a writer. Mine is sometimes of monstrous proportions. I’ve had to confront my fears at their root before any techniques for overcoming artistic inertia could help me in any lasting way. Even with the self-knowledge I now possess, this daily dread still presents an obstacle. It arrives each morning and takes shape as one of two main types, I call them ‘the dread of the task itself’, and ‘the dread of being seen’. Here, I explain both and offer helps for those who might be experiencing similar impediments to their writing. These helps have worked for me more often than not.

The Dread of the Task Itself

There is a general, garden-variety kind of dread experienced by many writers. You wake up hopeful. Then you sit down at your desk. This is the moment the negative self-talk begins:

I can’t do this. Can I do this? I’ve done it before. Maybe that was a fluke? Maybe I’ve created everything I’m capable of creating. Maybe I have nothing left. I feel nothing. I can’t think. There are no thoughts in my head. This is intolerable. I am a fraud. I am a failure. I am sure to be found out. Everyone will find out I can’t really do what I told everyone I was going to do and the next thing I do is sure to be laughed at, rejected, and scorned. I want a sandwich. I need a drink. Maybe I’ll go for a walk. Maybe I wasn’t meant to do any of this anyway. I want to disappear. I want to curl up and fade out of existence.

Highly unpleasant. Though not uncommon.

This kind of dread is understandable. After all, the creative act inspires awe in a person for good reason. The ability to create is a gift given to us by God that reflects His own, the ability to bring something into being that was not there before. Second only to the creation of children, the creation of art is the greatest creative act any human being can engage in. By ‘art’ I mean anything that is not of necessity. Other creatures create because they need to. Humans create because they can. While a bird may make a nest that is beautiful in its symmetry, he does it by instinct and does not embellish it for embellishment’s sake alone. On the other hand, when a carpenter finishes a sideboard for his dining room by hanging a triptych of doors depicting a woodland scene he carved by hand, that’s art.

The act of creating art partakes of the sublime. When anything inspires awe, dread lives in its shadow. It is natural. As a result, it is by natural means that it can best be overcome. Despite how very disconcerting artistic dread can be, I still have found this type more easily dealt with than the more insidious variety I’ll describe below. Here are some things that have helped me to overcome it.

I begin by reversing the negative self-talk. I find that this is a good time to employ a modified version of Morning Pages1. My version is simple. I sit down at my laptop, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and then write whatever comes into my head without stopping until the timer goes off. To reverse negative thoughts like those above, I might begin my session in this way:

I can do this. I can. I’ve done it before and I will do it again. Take deep breaths. Your thoughts are scattered because you’re not present, not grounded, and not in your pre-frontal cortex. Smell your coffee. Literally smell it. There that’s better. You don’t have to impress anyone. Write whatever comes into your head. Getting anything down is better than getting nothing down at all. You will be fine. You are fine because you’re writing. You always feel better if you’ve written anything at all. Plan to give yourself a treat at the end of the day for having done what you set out to do. Do it now. I am writing, writing, writing.

Often, if I stick with the exercise for a full fifteen minutes, I have produced a few paragraphs of mind-clearing gobbledygook and a few of usable writing. Sometimes a new story idea or character has presented itself strongly enough to be later developed into something more.

Once my dread-induced writing block had been broken by positive self-affirmation and my writing muscles have been warmed up, it’s a good time to employ another strategy to keep me at my desk. This is when I often use some version of a pomodoro.2 I choose a specific writing task (for example, “I am going to finish this scene in my novel.”), plan how long I will work on it without interruption (typically no longer than 30 minutes), set the timer, write, then take a brief break after my time is up.

This technique has helped to keep my fears a bay in two main ways. First, by putting parameters around the amount of time I have to work on a particular task (this lessens the chances I will avoid working altogether or allow my work to take up huge chunks of my day) and secondly, it elevates my work in my mind and gives me a sense of its importance. My thinking shifts from seeing my writing as something I’m ‘allowed’ to do and becomes something I ‘must’ do, for my own sake at least.

Other things I’ve found helpful in coping with the dread of writing include:

• Leaving my writing at a point where I know what happens next.

• Making deals with myself (for example: two hours of writing plus one hour of editing equals one fifty-minute episode of a BBC historical drama).

• Prepping my workspace the night before (keeping my physical space clean and preparing word docs to use the next day).

• Listing writing tasks for the day on a Post-it and placing it where I’ll see it often.

• Trying to imitate the writing schedules of famous authors.3

There is, of course, an endless variety of helps and techniques writers may use to overcome the dread of the task of writing. These are just some of the ones that have worked for me personally. Understanding your own writing process, your own obstacles to that process, and pulling together a repertoire of techniques that work best for you is key to overcoming your own dread of writing.

“That’s all well and good,” you might say. “But what if my problem isn’t simply the dread of the task of writing itself which is proving to be an obstacle? What if it’s something deeper?”

The Dread of Being Seen

If you have wonderful self-esteem, unwavering confidence in your abilities, and/or experienced a sunny childhood surrounded by adults who affirmed your inner world and encouraged you to develop your gifts, you can skip this part and go about living your marvelous, productive life. I’m not certain why you chose to read this essay in the first place. I ask that you take your self-actualized personality elsewhere and leave us neurotic nervous nellies to overcome our misfortunes on our own, without having you around to constantly remind us of what we have missed out on in life. Good day to you. Us worrywarts, however, must learn to struggle daily against an invisible foe who has plagued us from our earliest years if we are going to be able to write, or indeed do anything publicly. We must find ways of overcoming our dread of being seen.

It might have begun as something seemingly small. A criticism. A rejection. A joke that went beyond mere teasing. Maybe it was something worse (perhaps much worse) that caused a wound in your soul. Whatever it was, it planted a dark seed that grew and spread without your knowing it until one day you were no longer sure who or what you were anymore. You became quiet. Pensive. Less inclined to seek another’s company. Before too long, you began hearing criticism where there wasn’t any, seeing judgment where there was none to be found. You had developed a dread of being seen.

I have found this type of dread bubbles up from my heart to my mind on those days when I’m feeling particularly vulnerable. It makes it impossible for me to write. Some days, it makes it impossible for me to even leave my house. It typically takes form as one of three kinds of fear: fear of being ‘noticed’, fear of being ‘seen through’, and fear of being ‘known’.

The first mostly concerns fears about my personal appearance. I’ve become indifferent to many of those as I’ve grown older. The fear of being ‘seen through’ is the fear I will be declared a fraud and not a Real Writer. Perhaps not a ‘real anything’ at all. The last is the deepest fear and the root of all my others. It is the fear that, if anyone really knew me as I am, really saw me as I was, they would understand I am unworthy of being loved, maybe even of living. Consequently, I am not allowed to express myself, through my writing or otherwise. To do so would be to give offense to others, to the universe, even to God. This is how deep the dread of writing can go.

What is to be done about dread so deep? How does one heal such a wound? When you sit down at your computer for the day and your first thought is something like “hellfire will be rained down upon me if I do this,” what is one to do?

For me, my woundedness always brings me back to my faith. I’ve tried many avenues of healing in my life. Some of them helped more than others. I didn’t start to really heal at the deepest, most intimate level though until I became Catholic. This is because there was nothing I could do by myself to heal such a deep wound. I needed God to show me I am worthy of existing and worthy of being loved.

This will be hard for some of you to hear. Especially those who have been wounded through religion. What I can say is, while the sacraments, scripture, Eucharistic adoration, prayer, and Catholic teaching have been the primary ways I’ve experienced this deeper healing, it has become visible to me through my personal relationships. My husband. My friends. My priests, mentors, and counselors. The intimacy of a one-on-one relationship built on trust over time is the best place for giving and receiving the message (explicitly or implicitly) that we are worthy, loved, and free. Free to live. Free to create. Free to just be. You need to know you have a right to be here, to share thoughts and ideas, to share your stories. You need to know that it is not only ok but necessary.

When you share your stories, you are sharing something of yourself, even if your stories are not specifically about the pain you’ve experienced. You’re making yourself available to be ‘seen’ by others. Through that willingness, there can be healing. For you and for your readers. You wouldn’t have the desire to write, it wouldn’t give you the delight that it does, if it wasn’t something you were meant to do. Find people who will affirm these desires in you and allow yourself to be vulnerable with them. It’s scary. It’s a risk. In the end you’ll be thankful for it, and your writing will benefit immensely.

Let’s be honest, if you’re a worrywart writer like me, even if you employ all of the techniques I’ve shared above, overcome the dread of the writing task itself through tips and tricks, made friends, built community, and worked toward your own healing, there will still be days when you wake up with the dread of the empty page upon you, goading you into giving up before you’ve even begun. Let my last word here be this. You don’t have to let it win. You can learn to hold both together. You can learn to worry… and still write.

For my fourth installment of my “First Line Friday” project, I offer A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O’Connor, first published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1955. The first line of the first (and titular) story:

“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.”

It was the spring of the year 2000. I was in seminary in Chicago studying to be a Lutheran pastor. One of my neighbors in seminary housing shared that he and a few others in our class were getting together to study the works of Flannery O’Connor.

“Flan-er-ee O’Conner?” I asked. “Who’s he?”

My fellow seminarian gently explained. “Flannery O’Connor is not a he, but a she,” he said, then gave me a brief account of her life: Catholic. Writer of fiction. Southern gothic. Died young.

I was embarrassed. I was twenty-eight, in graduate school, and finding out I was ignorant about many things including literature. It was sad. I’d been a writer for over twenty years by then. I just had never been much of a reader.

Oh, I’d read enough in school to get high marks. I took AP English in high school. I was an English major in college. That is, right up until I became fascinated with religion and switched to anthropology.

My neighbor’s innocent invitation woke something in me that day. Looking back now, I think the shame of my ignorance in that moment sent me down a path I didn’t yet know existed. Up to that point, I’d been operating under the assumption that it is possible to be a good writer without being a good reader. Now I was fearful I’d missed something important.

This was the beginning of a new idea I would develop for years to come, that there are writers, and there are writers. There are writers who are ‘good enough’ to be successful, perhaps even enormously so. Then there are writers who know the craft of writing from the inside out. They know it because they have read widely – with deliberation, intent, and discernment – from many of the best examples of the craft that can be found.

The creative writing I was producing in my late twenties wasn’t all that different from the writing I’d produced as a child. They were ‘good’ stories. Maybe even publishable. However, they were mostly modeled after television and movies and the modest number of books I’d read for school and (even fewer) for pleasure. I was suddenly aware there were some big holes in my education. I was too ashamed to ask for help. So, I did what I was accustomed to doing when I wanted to figure something out on my own. I took myself to the library to find out who this ‘Flannery O’Connor’ person was.

I had already cultivated a real love for libraries by the time I was in graduate school. I loved researching topics of interest, especially religion. It was how I’d wound up in seminary in the first place. I’d been frankly obsessed with religion for years. Seminary had been suggested to me as a good place to study toward a career, perhaps in teaching. Pursuing candidacy for ordination came later.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories was one of the few books by or about O’Connor on the library shelf that day. In the early 2000’s, the internet was just getting started. My education about O’Connor’s life and work began and ended with what was available on that shelf and a few others in libraries near the seminary and in the bookstores.

I was unraveling the mystery of O’Connor by methodically going through the descriptors of her given to me by my neighbor. The fact that she was a woman with an interesting name intrigued me. The fact that she was a Roman Catholic was of greater interest. I’d been rather awed by Catholicism for most of my life. It’s embarrassing to admit now, but I once believed you had to be born a Catholic. I didn’t think you could become one. I learned I was mistaken a few years after I learned about O’Connor. In retrospect, I wonder now if both experiences led, in part, to my dropping out of the ordination process and eventually converting.

The fact that O’Connor had been described as a writer of ‘southern gothic’ tales was also intriguing and made her seem more familiar. I’d enjoyed the unit we’d covered on southern gothic literature in my high school AP class. I’d especially liked Faulkner. Reading through a few of O’Connor’s stories in the seminary library that day, I can’t say I understood them in any deep way. That would come later. I understood just enough, however, to know I wanted to be able to write like that, and to understand exactly what ‘that’ was. Much later, it became clear. I wanted to have what the combination of faith, inborn talent, and education had given her.

The ability to evoke so much in so few words.

To employ dark humor and the grotesque in ways which, at first, disarm the reader, then shock and shed brilliant light.

To create images in the reader’s mind that are so precise, they slice right through our pretensions and go straight to the heart of the reality of human sin and God’s scandalous grace.

Thus began the next phase of my literary and writerly journey. It is a journey that has progressed in fits and starts for over twenty-five years.

I started small in the beginning. I began filling in the gaping holes in my education with all the children’s classics I’d never read growing up. The Secret Garden. Little Women. The Anne of Green Gables series. From there I progressed to Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, and Edith Wharton, among others.

I was side-tracked by the ‘literary establishment’ for a time. I read a lot of novels I’d rather forget. Then, I was distracted by ‘radical feminist literature and poetry’. I refused to read anything written by a man during this phase. I continued to be distracted by other ideologies and ‘isms’ periodically for many years. Finally, blessedly, I came into the Catholic Church.

Since becoming Catholic, I’ve read and re-read O’Connor’s oeuvre several times. I’m still not certain I understand everything. I deeply appreciate her writing regardless. The quality of her craft, achieved at a young age, is likely due to that wonderful combination of inborn talent, exceptional education, and hard work common to all the best writers. The depth, richness, and timeless quality of her storytelling, however, is undoubtedly due to her Catholic faith.

When my seminary neighbor invited me to a discussion of O’Connor’s work on that spring day in Chicago over twenty-five years ago, I’m sure he had no idea of the fire he’d ignited in my imagination. That day a bright spark of a question was lit within me, though I was ignorant of it at the time. It’s a question that has only recently become pressing.

What does it mean to be a Catholic writer?

Is it a writer who happens to be Catholic?

Or a Catholic who happens to write?

What does it mean to be thoroughly Catholic and thoroughly a writer at the same time? To be faithful to Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, as well as to the writer’s imagination and craft at once?

These are questions with which I am still wrestling, still seeking for answers both in the particular and universal sense. In the grand scheme of things, I’m still a ‘baby Catholic’ after all. It will be seven years since my confirmation at this year’s Easter Vigil. Seven years. Does that mean every cell in my body is Catholic now? Regardless, the truth is, despite years in Lutheran seminary, and even more years studying religion, as far as the Faith of the Church which Jesus Christ founded is concerned, I feel as if I still know next to nothing. The same goes for knowing what it means to be a Catholic writer.

I’ve often returned to the work of Flannery O’Connor over the last two decades and will continue to do so. I’ll return because I enjoy her stories, of course. More importantly, I’ll return because I believe she knew the answers to the questions I’ve asked above.

She died young, yes. It was a tragedy. I’ve lived fifteen years longer than she did so far. Imagine what she could have done, the work she could have produced, if she’d survived to old age? And yet, she was granted many blessings in her relatively short life, blessings of which I have a difficult time not being envious.

She was raised as a faithful Catholic. She was granted the grace of devout faith. She was born with an amazing talent. She was graced with incredible teachers and an education that nourished that talent and brought it to full fruition.

It is to her writing and her example – among those of other faithful, talented, and thoroughly Catholic writers – which I will continue to turn to aid me in answering these questions for myself. What does it mean to be Catholic? What does it mean to be a writer? What does it mean to be a Catholic writer? I want to know the answers to these questions because I want to write stories that are pleasing to God. My newfound faith has made me just humble enough to know I need other Catholic writers - more talented, experienced, and further along in their faith journeys than I am - to help me. Flannery O’Connor’s work has been there from the beginning of my journey. I’m certain her work will continue to be an inspiration to me for years to come.

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For my third installment of my “First Line Friday” project, I offer The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton, first published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York on October 21, 1913. The first line:

“Undine Spragg – how can you,” her mother wailed, raising a prematurely wrinkled hand heavy with rings to defend the note a languid ‘bell-boy’ had just brought in.

The Custom of the Country is described as a satirical novel of manners, set against the backdrop of New York high society in the early 1900’s. It was written at a time when the ‘new people’ were, according to Wharton’s keen observations, buying their way into the upper classes with the help of very large (and recently acquired) fortunes.

Undine Spragg, an antiheroine and social climber, pursues her dreams of wealth, admiration, and social standing by using her beauty and charm as weapons of manipulation to get what she wants, unconcerned about who gets hurt in the process. As the bodies pile up, Undine’s greed and ambition grow until the final scene. The novel ends in the only way it really could: with Undine undeterred in her quest for ‘more’ just when she’s finally gotten everything she ever wanted.

I went through a period in my life when I re-read this novel by Wharton many times. In researching for this reflection, I was at first surprised (and then resigned) to find how many critics, scholars, and fans of the novel describe Undine (in various ways all boiling down to the same thing) as a main character who ‘you can’t help but root for even though she’s so awful’. I couldn’t disagree more.

For me, the fascination with this book was (and still is) the fact that Undine is so awful, I know she is awful, and she is exactly that opposite of anyone I ever could ‘root for’.1 My sympathies lie entirely with the characters in Wharton’s novel who are left bleeding (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) in Undine’s wake.

In my opinion, the story of Undine Spragg is the story of the havoc wrought by a Cluster B personality left entirely unchecked. Wharton, as an educated woman of the upper classes, might have been familiar with the language and classifications of psychiatry, which was rapidly developing as a discipline during her lifetime. One needn’t possess such knowledge, however, to know that the Undine Spraggs of this world are not to be ‘smiled at’. They are to be pitied and avoided like the plague.

In reading and re-reading Custom, I wasn’t simply reliving (with fascination and horror) the slow trainwreck that unfolds when such a person as Undine is, after first being created by nature and circumstance, loosed on the world. I was trying to understand what drives a person like her.

Having been the victim of several narcissists in my lifetime (a few of them of the ‘malignant’ variety) it was important for me, I think, to read Wharton’s work over and over until (like a toddler asking for the same picture book every night for months) I felt I’d ‘mastered’ what Wharton had to teach me:

About what makes a person like Undine tick.

How those harmed by people like Undine fall under the spell of their artificial charms.

And what the chances are for those of us, discarded by the Undines of the world, to pick up the pieces, heal, and move on.

Each time I set the book down after reading it afresh, part of me felt satisfaction at seeing Undine, yet again, prove herself to be an empty human being, devoid of virtue, destined never to find happiness or fulfillment.

There is a righteous sort of schadenfreude in that.

Another part of me, however, was left bereft each time, for those characters who were used by her and left depleted, and those who did not survive. It’s their after-stories I write for myself in my imaginings. About what could have happened and should have happened to and for them.

In the end, I’m left hoping Undine’s son (who does survive to the end of the story, albeit in loneliness and solitude) will wake up one day when he’s grown and make a life for himself, apart from his mother, and have a chance to become virtuous, unlike her. I fantasize he becomes a real human being, a truly loving man, who finds his happiness in God, even if he must come to God in a roundabout way. As I have.

I read a book like Wharton’s Custom over and over again, not simply because I appreciate good writing and literature (I do). I come back to it because there is a lesson in it I still need to learn. When I have learned enough, I instinctively feel ready to set it down and move onto another story. The story I need for the next moment, the next lesson, and the next stage of life. Until, perhaps at later time, I’ll feel the need to revisit the same lesson again and go deeper. If or when that ever happens, I’ll pick up the novel again and re-read the story of Undine Spragg, those who survived her, and those who did not.

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Today I’m posting my second note for my “First Line Friday” project, wherein I’ve committed to posting the first line (or lines) from a book that has inspired me as a writer. First Line Friday #1 was from Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This week’s selection is from The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin, originally published by HarperCollins in 2004.

“On January 12, 1888, a blizzard broke over the center of the North American continent. Out of nowhere, a soot gray cloud appeared over the northwest horizon.” (Prologue, pg. 1)

Laskin’s book, described on Amazon as “the gripping true story of an epic prairie snowstorm”, is a work of creative non-fiction in what might be called the ‘disaster’ genre. I’ve read and enjoyed other books in this genre, such as Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer. Among all the disaster accounts I’ve read so far however, Laskin’s book is the one that has stuck with me the longest. It’s also the one I’ve re-read the most.

The Schoolhouse or Schoolchildren’s Blizzard, as it came to be called, began in the late morning and early afternoon of January 12, 1888. It struck “the most thickly settled sections of Nebraska and Dakota Territory”, according to Laskin, at “the worst possible moment”. It was the first mild day in several weeks, which meant hundreds of children left their homesteads that morning for their schoolhouses on the prairie, and their fathers and older brothers were tending fields far from home.

The science of weather forecasting was still in its infancy at this time in our nation’s history. It was then the province of the National Weather Service under the auspices of the Department of War and the United States Army Signal Service. What began as the brainchild of an Army medical officer during the American Civil War, was by this time a Corps of ‘signal officers’ assigned to take readings from weather stations, chart the ‘indications’ on maps, and share their predictions with one another via telegraph communications. These indications were then published in local newspapers and communicated by way of special flags raised atop the signal station offices. In this way, citizens of the towns and surrounding countryside would be warned of impending cold fronts or storms.

A lot can go wrong in such a system. A lot did go wrong on the evening of January 11 into the morning of January 12, 1888. So many factors, including the unpredictability of untamed nature and human error, all figured into the disaster of the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard. An estimated two-hundred and thirty-five people lost their lives on the prairie that day, many of them children. It is still counted as the tenth deadliest winter storm on record in United States history.

Every winter, an undeniable desire for snow begins growing in me a week or two before Christmas and reaches its peak in mid-January. Living as I do now, not far from the ocean in the Pacific Northwest, I’d have to drive an hour or two into the mountains most years if I wanted to see more than a dusting. I didn’t grow up in ‘Blizzard Alley’, the Great Plains region of the U.S. that is the setting for Laskin’s book. I spent my childhood in the second-most snowy place in the country, the Great Lakes region of Western New York. There, winter Nor’easters can bring snows that rival those of Minnesota and the Dakotas, in their destruction and death tolls if not in inches of accumulation.

The high stakes, multiple personal accounts, and historical detail presented in David Laskin’s depiction of the great blizzard of January 12, 1888, feel personal and immediate to me. Laskin so thoroughly captures the sensation of a serious winter storm. The dread. The danger. The historical context heightens the sense of threat, as the modern technologies that might have proved lifesaving are absent. For these reasons, as was said by a writer for Entertainment Weekly when it was first published, Laskin’s book “reads like a thriller”.

I’m fascinated by how and why some people make it through a disaster and some do not. When does survival hinge on making one right choice, or the wrong one? Does divine intervention play a role? Or is it just blind luck? How did the person doomed to die face their death? Did they fight until the end? Did they give up? Or did they put their fate in the hands of God with total trust? All of these and more are represented in the various accounts recounted in Laskin’s book.

One of my early memories is of being stuck at school in a blizzard. I was in kindergarten at the time. Most people know about the Blizzard of ’77 in Buffalo. There was another one, less well known, in early February of 1978. This is when I was trapped along with many other children and staff at my school, children ranging in age from kindergarten all the way up to the twelfth grade.

My father, who worked for a stone quarry at the time, was able to follow in his car behind one of the quarry’s large county snowplows as it made its first sweep of the town. It was almost ten o’clock at night before my father reached the school. Once there, he fetched me and a few of the neighbor children. We inched our way toward home at less than ten miles per hour. The swirling snow was so thick my father had to keep the headlights on the lowest setting to see anything. Even with this precaution, visibility was close to zero. That was the year I learned, if you can’t see anything else in a snowstorm and pulling over is too dangerous, follow the tracks laid by the car in front of you and pray they didn’t wind up in a ditch.

I was relieved beyond words when we finally reached home. I’d been horribly anxious while snowed in with the other children. I remember sitting on the lap of the elementary school nurse, Mrs. Brackett, and clinging to her for comfort. The six-mile trek home had taken close to an hour. I remember my father telling me and the neighbor kids to be quiet so he could concentrate on driving. I was terrified.

I didn’t get over my fear for quite a while after that. I refused to take the bus to school for a year. I convinced myself that, if my parents had to drop me off and pick me up, I’d never be stuck at school again.

I’ve read and re-read Laskin’s book over the years, since I first purchased it a few months after it was published. I suspect a part of me is still frightened by the idea things could have ended differently for me if my circumstances had been other than they were.

What if I’d been a little girl living on the Dakota prairie in 1888 trapped in my one-room schoolhouse? Instead of a child living in Western New York in 1978? I was trapped, yes. But I was warm, fed, and provided distraction watching television re-runs of children’s Christmas specials while waiting for my rescue. I wasn’t forced to make a choice between staying in the schoolhouse where the wood for the stove was about to run out or braving the mounting storm on the open prairie.

These kinds of questions move me deeply. They drive me to read the books I read and write the stories I write. The Children’s Blizzard raises questions that still haunt me. For that reason, I know I’ll reach for it again one of these years. When I’m ready to wrestle with one of the deepest and most existential fears of my childhood once more.

The Choice: A Christmas Story is a three-part novelette about big decisions. This is Part Three. Click here if you’d like to start from the beginning with Part One, or here if you’re looking for Part Two. Here’s a recap:

In Part One, we met Tyson Hollywell. Bored with life and afraid of change, Ty was launched into a fight he wasn’t looking for when his old college nemesis, Luke Donnelly, showed up out of the blue the night before Thanksgiving declaring his intention to die by assisted suicide on Christmas Eve. In Part Two, Tyson enlisted the help of Luke’s family and friends, new and old, on a quest for a reason compelling enough to convince Luke to choose life. Ty uncovered a secret from Luke’s past he wasn’t expecting. Will it be enough to change Luke’s mind?

At Christmas, there’s always hope.

I was a few minutes late when I got to the café.

Ditching Luke’s car wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. I was out of practice with parallel parking. Luckily the December weather had been mild so far. We hadn’t had any snow. Still. Even when I’d found a big empty space to park in, it took me a few tries to get the car in straight and close enough to the curb.

Alicia was waiting in one of our old booths by the windows in the café. She looked even more beautiful than she had two days before. She was dressed up. Her hair was fancier. She was wearing a red-and-black plaid dress with a deep green peacoat over her shoulders. I wanted to believe she’d taken extra care because she was meeting me. It was probably because she was meeting anybody, not just hanging out a home.

Alicia looked up. Smiled and waved. I waved and smiled back.

“Hey Ty,” she said.

“Hey, Lish.” I leaned in, gave her a hug, then took a seat on the other side of the booth.

“Do you remember this place?”

“Of course.”

I was wondering if she remembered everything about this place. That it was the only place where she and I had ever hung out alone. Once.

“What would you like? My treat,” she said.

Once we had our drinks – regular latte for her, plain Americano for me – we got down to business.

“What do you know?” she asked. “About Luke and me?”

“Honestly? Nothing.”

She nodded slowly. “Ok. Well. Here goes.”

It turns out I was right.

She did start thinking of Luke as potentially more than friends during our last year at school. She didn’t tell anybody about it. She thought no one knew. She didn’t want to be embarrassed when Georgette or someone else told her she didn’t have a chance.

That Luke never dated ‘nice’ girls.

Then Donnelly started flirting with her out of the blue during our last month before graduation. She didn’t know if he was just messing around or if he was serious. That’s when she decided to tell someone. Sort of.

“We were sitting in this exact booth,” she said. “You and Georgette were on that side. Me and Blake on this one. Housman and Donnelly had chairs pulled over. I was nervous that morning and trying not to show it. I was waiting for everyone else to leave before telling you I wanted to talk to you alone.”

She did remember. I was starting to feel a little queasy.

“Donnelly, Housman, and Georgette all left about the same time. Blake just kept on talking. Sometimes he really didn’t have a clue.”

I forced myself to smile and nod. I knew exactly what was coming.

“Finally, Blake got up and asked if we were leaving. We could all walk back together. I said I wanted to hang out and finish my drink. You said you would hang out too, if that was ok. I said it was fine.”

My stomach started to knot. I changed my position in the booth and forced air deep into my lungs.

“I think you could tell I wanted to talk to you about something. About something specific.”

She looked at me sideways as she said this, seeing if I’d acknowledge it.

Not gonna lie. It was a punch to my gut. I didn’t let on, though. I nodded for her to continue.

“I wanted your advice.”

This was hard. Oh, man. This was the hardest.

“I remember,” I said. “You didn’t…”

Could I do this? Deep breath.

“You didn’t say Luke’s name. You said ‘if you thought someone liked you, and you liked them, but they hadn’t made the first move, and you weren’t sure if they were ever going to, would you make the first move instead? If you were a girl?’ That’s how I remember it anyway.”

She blushed. “Is that really how I put it?”

“Yes,” I answered. “You did. I said you should go for it.”

We sat there staring at each other for what felt like forever. Then she closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and spoke.

“Well. It turned out I didn’t need to. Make the first move, that is. That last night at Mulvaney’s…”

I braced myself for what was coming.

“…Luke asked me to leave with him. So, I did.”

She ducks her head and sips her drink. I’m waiting for her to continue. To tell me what happened after.

It’s a masochistic need to know I’ve been carrying with me for so long I’m not sure how to stop. The longer she sits there silent, the more the desire to know is growing in me. And along with it, my anger. At him. At her. At myself for being a coward.

“I thought you were talking about me when you asked me that question,” I blurted out. “Here. In this booth. That day. At least, that’s what I was hoping. I thought you were talking about us.”

She stared at me. “Wait. What?”

“You heard me.”

“Oh, Ty.”

Was she tearing up?

“I had no idea.”

I looked away. I hadn’t anticipated my secret might hurt her. I didn’t think anyone got hurt that night at Mulvaney’s except me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I meant it.

She took in a shuddering breath. “I wish I had been talking about you. In retrospect.”

She had my attention now. “What do you mean?”

“After that night. With Luke. He and I got together… a few other times. I took a chance one night and told him I wanted more. He said he didn’t. That’s when he broke it off.”

I forced myself not to shrug or roll my eyes or otherwise indicate that anyone could have seen that coming. My heart was softening toward her.

She stopped, took a long sip of her latte, and turned toward the window. She was trying to make up her mind about something. I could see it.

“About a month after graduation, after we’d gotten together for the last time, I found out I was pregnant.”

Well. I sure as hell did not see that coming.

“You what?”

“I was pregnant.”

!!!

“Did you tell Luke?”

She pressed her right forefinger into the tabletop and started tracing circles in the sugar crystals laying there. She’d spilled them from one of the packets she’d used to doctor her latte.

“Yes. I told him.”

“How did he take it?”

She shrugged. “Not well.”

I can imagine.

Knowing Luke – self-centered, irresponsible, party boy Luke – this would not have been welcome news at all.

“What did you do?”

“I tracked him down. Blake knew where he was staying for the summer. He agreed to see me. I didn’t tell him what it was about beforehand. I was afraid he wouldn’t show up.

He was so guarded. I could tell he was ready to bail if he didn’t like what I had to say. He looked so… smug. Arrogant. Like he was doing me a favor by showing up. I couldn’t help it. I got so mad. I just spit it out. That I was pregnant. That it was his. Everything.”

“What did he say?”

“What do you think? He said it didn’t have to be a big deal. He said we could fix it. Together. That he’d pay for me to have an abortion. That he had plenty of money.”

“What… what did you do?”

She looked exhausted. Deflated.

“I was angry. I told him no. I said he couldn’t bully me into doing what he wanted. There were other options. I told him he should be a man and face up to his responsibilities. That choices have consequences.”

I couldn’t help myself. I was impressed.

“It didn’t matter though,” she continued. “He told me he’d pay for an abortion and nothing else. He told me if I didn’t take his offer, it would be the last time I ever saw or heard from him again. I said he wasn’t serious. And he said watch me.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. I finally broke the spell. “So, what happened?”

She sat back in the booth, a tight smile on her face. “He disappeared. For a whole year. I heard a rumor he was down in Costa Rica or something.”

This surprised me. I didn’t think anything still could surprise me, as far as Luke was concerned. “His parents have a place down there,” I said.

Alicia nodded. “Figures. Anyway. I gave up looking for him after another month or so. Then I got his letter. Well. Not a letter exactly.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. It was an envelope with a check inside. Made out to me. For one thousand dollars. He put the word ‘gift’ on the memo line.”

I thought I felt queasy before. Now I felt really sick.

“He did that?”

“Yeah. It was more than enough money to fix his little problem.”

“What did you do then?”

She paused, raised her chin, and looked me right in the eye. “I took the money.”

I was stunned. “I… I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head. “Don’t be. Hey,” she leaned toward me over the table and grabbed my hand. “I was ok. I am ok. Really.”

She dropped my hand and sat back in the booth.

“This is what I really wanted to say. Tell Luke I forgive him, ok? Tell him… if what he’s going through now has anything at all to do with what happened between us, he can let it go. Because I have. Will you tell him for me?”

I nodded and forced myself to smile. “Of course.”

“Thanks.” She checked the time on her phone. “I should get going. I need to use the restroom first.”

I waited while Alicia was in the bathroom. What could I say to her? Should I ask if she wanted to get together some time? As friends? Maybe I could meet Justin. Maybe I could somehow make it up to her, everything Luke had put her through.

The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded. Why would she want to hang out with the one person besides Luke who would remind her of everything? I would let her make the first move. If she wanted. After all, that’s what I told her to do when she asked in the first place.

Alicia came back. She pulled on her matching emerald-colored knitted hat and scarf. We exchanged a few words. We even laughed about something or other. We hugged. I said I was going to stay a few minutes to finish my coffee. Really, I just needed a minute to gather my thoughts.

I watched as she walked out of the café, turned to wave at me, and crossed the street. I figured that was probably the last I’d ever see of her.

I reached for my phone to distract myself and check the time. That’s when I noticed Alicia had left hers on the table. I downed the last of my drink, grabbed both our phones, threw on my coat, and headed toward the door.

I saw Alicia across the street before she saw me. She was hustling back toward the café down the bricked path from the park.

“Alicia!” I called. When she looked up, I waved her phone in the air so she would see it. She started jogging over.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she said. “I never forget my phone.”

“No problem,” I said, and handed it over.

“Mommy!”

We both heard it at the same time. Alicia instantly turned toward the sound. A little boy came running right toward her down the path. A woman and two other kids, both older, were running after him, coats flapping. The woman was jogging over as fast as she could, pushing a stroller.

“I’m so sorry, Lish. He saw you turn around and got away from me.”

Alicia looked from me to the woman and back to me again. Her face had gone stark white. I had no idea what was going on and decided to try to diffuse the situation.

“Hey there,” I said. “I’m Ty.”

The woman took my offered hand and shook it. “Amber.”

“Ty,” Alicia said. The color had come back to her face. “This is my sister, Amber. Amber this is Ty.”

We smiled at each other.

“An… and those are Amber’s daughters, Sarah and Hannah…” Alicia pointed to the two older girls. “That’s Felicia, my daughter, the baby in the stroller. And this…” she put her hands on the shoulders of the little boy in front of her. “…is my son.”

“How old are you?” Sarah said. “Come on Jonathan. How old are you? Show your mom!”

Jonathan held up four fingers on one hand and five on the other.

“Four years and…uh…nine mmm-months,” he said.

“I taught him that,” Sarah said grinning. “He didn’t know months before.”

I exchanged a look with Alicia. She turned bright red. Amber saw it and shooed the kids back toward the park.

“Let’s give your mom another minute with her friend to say goodbye, ok J?”

The boy waved at Alicia and obediently took Amber’s hand. I waited until they were all out of earshot before I said anything.

“Is he who I think he is, Alicia? Is he Luke’s?!”

“Don’t,” she said and closed her eyes.

“I was always good at math, Alicia. Remember? It was one of the only things I was ever any good at. Four years and nine months? Funny. That would mean you got pregnant around the time we graduated from college.”

Alicia’s eyes flew open. “You can’t tell Luke, Ty. You cannot.”

My phone rang in my pocket. I thought maybe it was Kaitlyn. Wouldn’t that have been something? It wasn’t though. I checked, and it was a number I didn’t recognize. I stuck my phone back in my pocket.

“Does your husband know?” I asked her. “Does he know that’s Luke’s kid?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Yes. Justin knows. But my parents don’t. Though they suspect something. Amber told me our mom thinks Justin got me pregnant with Jonathan and that’s why we decided to get married. It isn’t true of course. It’s kind of funny really. That’s exactly what happened with Amber and Dave with their oldest, though nobody suspects them because it happened so close to their wedding.”

“And Justin was cool with that?”

She snorted. “You sound surprised. Just because Luke’s a total jerk doesn’t mean every guy is that way. Justin fell in love with me before he knew I was pregnant. I told him as soon as he needed to know. He said he didn’t care. That he wanted to marry me anyway.”

“I thought you’d forgiven Luke?”

She looked taken aback. “I have.”

“Good,” I said. “Then you have to tell him.”

Her eyes widened. “Tell him what?”

“That he has a son!”

“I can’t. Excuse me.”

“Don’t walk away from me Alicia!” I grabbed her. A little too hard. She yanked her arm out of my grip.

“Let me go!”

“I’m sorry! But don’t you see? This is exactly why he doesn’t want to live anymore!”

“What are you taking about?”

“He can’t have kids, Alicia. He can’t have kids anymore! And he still thinks he convinced you to get rid of the only one he’ll ever have.”

I could see her wavering. Her eyes panned over the park for a moment before settling back on me. “I don’t think I can. I don’t think I can tell him.”

I stiffened. My jaw felt as tight as it did the night Luke first came to my apartment. The night he told me he was going to kill himself.

“Fine,” I said. “Then I’ll tell him.”

“Ty!”

I could hear Alicia calling me the whole time I was marching back toward Donnelly’s car. I didn’t stop though. I couldn’t. He had to know. Before it was too late.

I’d never driven as fast in my life as I drove back to Luke’s parents’ house. I pulled in the circular drive and jumped out by the front door. I called his name as I barreled down the hall. I kept expecting to see him or Kaitlyn or that aide they hired or somebody. When I didn’t, I noticed the house was very, very quiet.

“Luke?”

I poked my head into the library where I’d seen him last. Where the hell was everyone? I went back into the hall. Checked the other rooms nearby. The dining room. The kitchen. The laundry room in the back. No one. That only left the upstairs rooms.

I retraced my steps through the hallway, to the foyer, to the staircase across from the front door.

“Luke?”

I called up the stairs. I was getting scared now.

I was halfway up the stairs when my phone rang in my pocket. I nearly lost my balance as I scrambled to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Ty? What the hell is going on?!”

“Kaitlyn? Why? I just got back to your folks’ place, like, a minute or two ago.”

“Oh, thank God! Did you find Luke?”

My stomach dropped through my shoes and I wasn’t sure why.

“Not yet. Isn’t that aide you hired with him?”

“No! Didn’t you get their call? They said they called you.”

“When?”

“I don’t know! Like, twenty minutes or half an hour ago. The aide called in. She said she was going to be delayed by almost two hours. I’m leaving the office now. I got freaked out when some of the house cameras went dark. I don’t know what happened.”

Kaitlyn was talking. But I wasn’t listening anymore.

I raced up the stairs. I saw the first camera, the one from the upstairs hall. It was smashed and lying in pieces on the floor.

I barged down the upstairs hall, pushing open doors, shouting Luke!

I finally found him. In the ensuite bath attached to a bedroom.

He was lying in the clawfoot bathtub. The mirror above the vanity was still steamed up, so the hot water had been shut off not that long ago.

Just long enough.

I collapsed to my knees beside the tub containing my friend. My friend Luke. Floating in his own blood.

The rest was a blur. I felt like I’d barely hung up after calling 911 when the paramedics showed up. I’d taken every towel I could find in the bathroom and wrapped Luke’s wrists. He was super pale. Lifeless looking. At least he was still breathing.

I asked one of the EMT’s if I could ride in the ambulance to the hospital. He said ‘no problem’.

I hung back while they worked on him. When they were done, I squeezed in next to the gurney. They said I should talk to him. Try to bring him around.

“Hey, Donnelly,” I said. That’s as far as I got.

I was never a crier before. Ever. It just seemed so unfair though. So tragic. I never liked the guy. Not really, if I’m being honest. Still. That didn’t mean I didn’t see the absolute catastrophe in dying right before you found out you have a reason to live. A good one.

“How long do you think he’s got?” I asked through my tears.

“Long?” The EMT closest to Luke was taking his vitals.

“Like, how long until he dies?”

“Oh. No, man. He’s not going to die.”

I was confused. “He’s not?”

“No. Well. Probably not.”

“He’s lost a lot of blood though, hasn’t he?”

Luke looked whiter than anyone I’d ever seen. ‘White as a sheet’ as they say. I’d never realized how true that could be until now.

“Yeah, quite a bit. But not as much as he would have lost if he wasn’t so drunk.”

“Drunk?”

“Yeah. His blood alcohol count is through the roof. He must have chugged it before he cut himself, to dull the pain. He didn’t cut himself very deeply. Well. Not as deeply as he probably wanted to. Honestly? I’m more worried about alcohol poisoning at this point than blood loss.”

I wanted to laugh. It bubbled up in my throat against my will, and I had to force it down. Too drunk to kill himself properly. Really, Luke? What a moron.

After the fear and the ironic urge to laugh had subsided, I leaned in close. I didn’t want anyone else but him to hear what I had to say.

“Hey, Donnelly,” I said. “You got a minute? You’re never going to believe what I’ve got to tell you, bro.”

Christmas finally came. I could hardly believe it. After everything, and everyone, and all the things, here it was.

Luke recovered. His parents stayed home for the holidays. The whole family got together at the house. Luke’s folks offered to take him back to Costa Rica with them after New Year’s. He decided against it. He asked his youngest sister Valerie to move back into the house with him instead. She said she would. He wasn’t ready to be alone.

Alicia came around to the idea of having Luke in Jonathan’s life. Her folks still didn’t know the truth. She was working up the courage to tell them. Soon.

Justin was totally cool about it. He and Alicia decided Luke would have visiting privileges once a week to start. Luke was stoked beyond belief. He hasn’t shared his secret with his family yet. He’s planning to though. In the meantime, I’m the only one besides Alicia and Justin who knows the whole story.

I waited until Christmas morning to make up my mind about where I would spend the day. I’d gone to Christmas Eve mass the night before. I prayed about it.

Luke’s parents invited me over. Alicia reached out too, which surprised me. The only thing that made sense to me though was to finally visit my mom. I’d missed too many holidays with her. It was time to set aside everything that had kept me away. It was time to grow up.

Luke offered to let me borrow his car again so I could drive out to my mom’s. It was nice of him. I told him thanks, but no. I wanted to get there my own way. I ordered myself a ride.

I got to thinking on the way to my mom’s. I might bite the bullet and visit a dealership next week. It isn’t easy to own a car in the city. Especially when you’re not exactly flush with cash. Still. I’m thinking it might be nice to finally have one. Now that I have people I’d like to see. And places I’d like to go.

When the car pulled up at the end of my mom’s driveway, I was surprised to see my sister’s SUV. Had Caroline told me she was going to be here? How did I miss that? It didn’t matter. I was glad. For once I was looking forward to seeing her. And her husband. And their kids. I could admit it to myself now. Deep down I was angry when they’d moved away. Not anymore.

The stores were closed by the time I’d decided I was going to my mom’s. I arrived with nothing. I wasn’t proud of myself. I hoped it was enough just that I’d shown up.

I mounted the steps of my mom’s front porch. The house is a nice little historical bungalow she and Stuart are restoring. They’ve painted it a cheery sunflower yellow with a green front door. I knocked and waited. When Stuart opened the door, he was clearly surprised to see me. We stood there staring at each other for a few seconds until I forced myself to talk.

“Hey Stuart,” I said, and squirmed.

He could have acted like a jerk. About me showing up without any warning after so long. He would have totally been within his rights. He didn’t though.

“Hey, Ty,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” He stuck out his hand. I shook it.

In the room behind him, the fireplace was lit. The table was set for dinner. Everyone was gathered in front of the tree, lit and decorated, in the corner.

My sister, her husband and kids, and a few people I didn’t recognize, were standing around or sprawled out on the floor. Behind them, my mom stepped out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel, coming to see who it was.

Stuart turned and saw her as she crossed from the kitchen to the front door. “Grace,” he said. “Look who came for Christmas.”

“Tyson,” my mom said. She reached for me. I walked into her arms and embraced her. I’d forgotten how small she is. A lot smaller than me. Almost tiny.

“Tyson,” she said again, holding me close. “Welcome home.”

The Choice: A Christmas Story is a three-part novelette about big decisions. This is Part Two. Part Three will be published on December 22nd. Click here if you’d like to start from the beginning with Part One. Here’s a recap:

In Part One, we met Tyson Hollywell. Bored with life and afraid of change, Ty was launched into a fight he wasn't looking for when his old college nemesis, Luke Donnelly, showed up out of the blue the night before Thanksgiving, declaring his intention to die by assisted suicide on Christmas Eve. Shocked out of his paralysis by Luke’s declaration, Ty sought solace and answers in his abandoned Catholic faith. In Part Two of the story, Ty seeks help from others who might be able to convince Luke to choose life. Will Ty uncover the key to Luke’s desire to die before it’s too late?

At Christmas, there’s always hope.

I took the train out to the island on Saturday. The number I had for Blake was still good as it turned out. I texted him and he wrote back almost immediately. He wasn’t married. Or dating anyone. Something we had in common.

He’d done way better at making money than I had though. He went from being a poli sci major in college to working for his dad’s bank. He was pulling down a solid six figures already, with full benefits. And we’d only been out of school for five years.

Blake’s place was just a few blocks from the train station in a bougee neighborhood with expensive townhouses. On my walk to his place, I passed a posh home furnishing shop, an upscale grocery, a French bistro, and a wine bar. I felt a bit intimidated as I scaled the steep concrete and metal staircase to his modern front door. He buzzed me in after he answered the call box the way he used to answer his phone.

“Mmm…yello?”

I was a bit shocked when Blake opened the door. He did not look at all like I expected. I’m not exactly a gym nut by most standards. I go because I feel like I should and it’s something to do. Blake looked like he hadn’t done so much as take a long walk in months. He was puffy and bleary-eyed. He hadn’t shaved in a while. He’d gained at least twenty pounds since the last time I saw him. He was wearing an old concert t-shirt stretched over his paunch.

“Hey Tyson,” he said.

“Hey Blake.” I offered him my hand and he shook it.

He motioned for me to follow him into his front living room, where the windows looked over the park.

“Can I get you anything? Water? Beer? Espresso?”

“No thanks.”

I took the leather swivel chair near the fireplace mantle. He took a seat on the matching leather couch. He opened a silver box on the stone-topped end table next to him, pulled out a bowl and a lighter, and prepared to toke up. I caught myself staring in disbelief and turned toward the window.

“So. Ty,” he said. “What can I do you for?”

I decided there was no point in playing around and got right to it.

“Has Donnelly texted you? Or called?”

He took a long drag on his short glass pipe and held his breath. He lifted his chin, squinted his eyes, and exhaled with a tight “Yep.”

I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I asked, “So? What do you think we should do?”

He shrugged. “What can I do about it? It’s his life. Right?”

I was about to argue when a little voice in my head asked, what’s the point?

I looked Blake up and down. Maybe there was none.

Blake lit his pipe again. Took a drag and offered it to me. I waved him away and he set it down. I tried once more.

“You didn’t try to talk him out of it?”

Blake shook his head slowly back and forth.

“Look. It’s sad, ok? I’ll give you that. I probably wouldn’t choose that route myself. But dude! If the same thing happened to me? I sure as hell would think about it.”

That’s all I needed to know.

I nodded. Forced myself to smile. We talked about this and that for another twenty minutes or so. Then I stood up.

“Thanks for seeing me, man,” I said. “It was wild. Having Donnelly show up and drop a bomb on me like that. After all this time.”

Blake nodded and gave a short laugh. “No doubt.”

“I just needed to talk to someone about it.”

I extended my hand. Blake shook it and stood up.

“No problem,” he said. “Glad I could help. Let me walk you out.”

After I was on the train heading back toward the city, I put my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands, closed my eyes, and groaned.

“What was that back there?” I asked no one.

And I thought my life was messed up.

I decided to take a different approach after I got home. For now, I wouldn’t contact anyone else Donnelly and I had in common. I’d look somewhere else for help. On Monday, I asked Shawn if he’d join me out for a beer after work.

We talked sports, movies, and music all during our first round before I found the courage to get to the point. I’d ordered another round for the both of us before I finally blurted it out.

“Oh, now I get it,” Shawn said.

My stomach did a little flip. “What do you mean?” I asked.

His eyes narrowed to slits. “It’s why you asked me here. To get my advice, right? I was wondering. Since it’s Monday. Kind of weird for you. You’re not exactly the social type.”

Shawn took the last swig of his beer just as the waitress was setting our new round on the table. He pushed his empty toward her without taking his eyes off me.

I swallowed my anxiety and told him about Donnelly. About him showing up at my apartment and unloading on me. About what it was like with him in college and on our last big night out as a group. I told him what Donelly said he wants to do. How it made me think of that night we all went to the bar a few weeks ago, with that creepy commercial for the suicide pod. How what Jessie said, and what Emily said, and what he said to Emily, got me to thinking.

He said he understood. I asked him what he thought.

“Gimme a sec.”

He swung himself up into the booth, stretched his legs out, and put his back against the brick wall. He sat that like for a while. One ankle over the other. His patent leather work shoes catching the light from the lamp hanging over the table. His necktie loosened. His head against the brick wall, eyes closed.

He was quiet for the longest time. I wasn’t sure he was going to answer my question.

He finally opened his eyes, took another pull on his beer, and turned to face me.

“I don’t have any advice, man,” he said. “I wish I did. It sucks. It’s wrong. It shouldn’t be legal to kill yourself. But it is, so there we are.”

“So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying I don’t know if there’s much you can do about it.”

My heart sunk. You know that saying? ‘My heart sunk’? I’d heard it a hundred times before. Now I knew exactly what it felt like.

“There’s got to be something,” I said.

Shawn shrugged. “You tried telling him it’s wrong. He said it’s his life. It’s legal for him to end it if he’s approved. If he’s determined, I don’t see how you have any recourse.”

I felt sick. I put my half-empty beer on the table and my hands under my thighs.

“So that’s it? I just give up? Isn’t there anything else I can try?”

Shawn looked thoughtful. He tipped his nose toward the ceiling and scratched the stubble on his neck.

“You need a reason for him not to kill himself besides the fact that it’s wrong. You already know he’ll never listen to you about that. What else have you got?”

“Nothing. Yet. If I was going to look for something, where do you think I should start?”

Sometimes it just takes one person to point out the obvious to finally turns things around. That’s what happened in my quest to help Donnelly when Shawn asked me a simple question.

Had I talked to his family yet?

I felt like a dope for not thinking of it myself. Then again, I don’t know Luke’s family at all. Beyond seeing a couple of his sisters once or twice during college and his parents at graduation. They’ve just never been on my radar.

I stalked Donnelly’s social media accounts to find his sisters and his folks. It looked like his parents were retired and at their place in Costa Rica for the winter. A luxury I couldn’t fathom. One that almost made me jealous. Almost. I got over it when I considered their only son was planning to off himself while they enjoyed a tropical Christmas.

I decided not to contact his parents first. That would just be cruel.

Two of his sisters lived less than an hour from me. I reached out to the older one first.

Kaitlyn had no idea what Luke was planning. He’d bailed on her for Thanksgiving a week ago. Though it wasn’t unusual for him to ghost people, she’d been getting worried as more days went by without him returning any of her texts or calls. When I told her what was going on, she didn’t freak out. She got super serious.

When had he told me this? How did he look? What did he say he was planning to do? Did I know when he’d received his approval from the government?

I answered her questions as best I could and agreed to meet her the next day.

It turns out, Kaitlyn is a lawyer. One of many on their mother’s side of the family. She works for her uncle’s firm.

I was impressed and a bit intrigued, if I’m being honest, when I met Kaitlyn at her office. The last time I’d seen her, I’d been a sophomore at college and not at all interested in this tall, blonde, preppy-looking, older sister of Donnelly’s, who’d showed up for one of his infamous parties wearing cropped jeans and an oxford button-down. She was in her first year of law school by then and, I later realized, there to keep an eye on the golden boy. Luke was the baby of the family and already a known boozer.

Older, wiser me is now contemplating the professional, slender woman in a suit jacket, pencil skirt, and long blonde hair clipped back into a loose bun. I know I probably wouldn’t have a chance with her, even if she wasn’t sporting an engagement ring with a diamond the size of a golf ball. In another world, if I’d been another person, it still might have been fun to try.

“Tyson, right?” she asked, barely looking at me.

“Right,” I said.

She opened her laptop, found the document she wanted, and hovered her fingertips over the keyboard. “Ok,” she said. “Tell me everything you know.”

Kaitlyn and I have a plan now. We made a deal. She won’t contact Luke right away. Neither of us wants to scare him off. I’ll track down the leads she gave me. We’re hoping I’ll find something to delay him long enough while she and her uncle put a case together. A case she’s hoping will get Luke’s approval for assisted dying overturned. She guesses he might have lied on the disclosure portion of his application about his prior mental health history. If so, she might get a delay for a review by the health department and that could take months.

I was sorely tempted to skip ‘lead number one’ on Kaitlyn’s list. It was the one that scared me the most by far.

Kaitlyn has always suspected something went down for Luke not long after college graduation that led to all the rest. The depression. The drinking. The being fired from his many, many jobs. She’d tried to get it out of him over the years. The only thing he would ever say was,

“We all make mistakes, Kait. And we all have to pay for them.”

After I’d told her about that last night at Mulvaney’s right before graduation, she got fire in her eyes. It made me want to run.

“You have to go talk to her.”

“Who?” I’d asked, playing dumb.

She stared daggers at me. “Alicia. You know that, right?”

I didn’t answer.

“Look,” she said. “You’re the one telling me getting his family involved might push him to do something drastic, right? Like disappear somewhere and go through with it anyway? If it can’t be us, then someone else has got to do something. This is the best place for you to start, as far as I can tell. I’m asking you to do this for Luke.”

I still kept my mouth shut, nice and tight.

The lefthand corner of her upper lip twitched ever so slightly.

“Think about it like this,” she said. “If something happened to my brother, something someone could have done something about, I’d hate for that someone to have to spend the rest of his or her life living with the fact Luke might still be alive if he or she hadn’t been such a coward.”

Well, that was harsh.

It was exactly the motivation I needed though. The very next day, I was back on the bus.

It was weird. Alicia turned out to be kind of hard to track down. I thought for sure she’d be an easy one. In college, she never struck me at all as the mysterious type.

I tried an old number I had for her. Ironically, or not, it now belonged to a funeral home. Then I found one of her old socials she had when we were in college.

It was a bit strange, clicking on all those pictures and videos of us. Alicia and Georgette. Housman and Blake. Me and Donnelly. She’d stopped posting on her account the year after we graduated and hadn’t been in touch with anyone from our old group since then as far as I could find out. I heard a rumor she’d gotten married. Maybe she’d changed her name? Maybe that’s how she’d managed to disappear?

The only thing I had left to try was an address for her parents’ house. We all went there for a cookout and bonfire our last summer. That was when it started for me with her, I think. The summer before senior year. That’s when I started with the ‘should I? shouldn’t I’? stuff.

Georgette was usually the one everybody noticed back then. She was the loud one. The good-looking one. In an in-your-face kind of way. Wrapped in short skirts and crop tops. Alicia’s looks, personality, and style were more subtle. She always kind of blended into the background.

At her house that summer, it was different. In her element, Alicia was relaxed. Poised. Confident. Beautiful.

Her long, light brown hair, usually in a pony, was loose, running all down her back. She was wearing a white spaghetti strap tank top. Her arms and shoulders were lightly tanned and looked darker in the firelight. I’d never noticed how beautiful her mouth was until that night. I couldn’t take my eyes off her when she was eating something. Or when she talked.

I decided to show up at the address I had for Alicia’s parents on Saturday. I was hoping they’d be home alone. Maybe they’d remember me. Maybe they’d be willing to give me her number.

On my ride out there on the bus, I started to worry about what I was going to do if, on the off chance, Alicia was visiting. I imagined it would be kind of creepy to have a guy you knew in college just show up on your parents’ doorstep after five years without warning and be all like, what’s up?

It turned out I didn’t need to imagine this scenario. The worst happened just like I’d worried it would. I arrived at the well-kept brick colonial house I remembered, with its red door, white gables, and black shutters. Several SUVs were parked in the driveway next to a vintage sports car. Clearly, more people than just Alicia’s folks were home.

I walked up the brick walkway, hopped the three front steps, and knocked. Before I could put my hand back in my pocket, Alicia had opened the door.

We stood there staring at each other long enough for me to register her expression as equal parts ‘surprise’ and ‘creeped out’. That’s what I thought it was anyway. Later, I learned more.

“Holl…. Tyson?”

Adults were talking in the room behind her. I could hear kids laughing and running around. She closed the door and crossed her arms over the long baggy sweater she was wearing over skinny jeans. The sweater was a deep, crimson red and brought out her green eyes. I tried to ignore her legs in the jeans.

She was even prettier now than she was in college. In fact, she was stunning. Her face was angled and less girlish. Her wide green eyes more pronounced. She seemed mature. More sure of herself. She even looked taller.

“Tyson,” she said again. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Lish.” I decided not to beat around the bush. “Got a minute to talk?”

After going through all the ‘how did you find me?’ stuff, we got to the ‘what are you doing here?’ part and that’s when I told her. As it turned out, she was the one person Donnelly hadn’t contacted.

Alicia was always good at schooling her face. It’s the reason why I never made the first move. She never gave me the slightest hint. Things were no different now. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I was still hoping she’d give me something to go on. Something that might help Luke change his mind.

“When did he tell you this?” she asked.

“The night before Thanksgiving.”

She rolled her eyes. “Typical Luke.”

I flinched. She noticed.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, touching my arm. “I know that must have sounded harsh.”

She looked over her shoulder at the closed door to the house. She turned and grabbed me by the sleeve, hauled me off the porch, and down the front walk.

We were standing behind one of the SUVs in the driveway. She crossed her arms over her middle again, ducked in close, and spoke in a lowered voice.

“Ok,” she said. “Maybe I can help. I’m willing to tell you what I know. But it can’t be here. Definitely not.”

She reached into her back jeans pocket and pulled out her phone.

“What’s your number? I’ll text you. I’ll meet you in the city. Maybe Monday. Or Tuesday.”

I gave her my number. When I got her text, I responded with a thumbs up.

“Ok,” she said. “I’ll text you tomorrow to schedule. In the meantime, promise me something.”

“What?”

“You were never here, ok? Do not tell Luke you’ve seen me until you and I have a chance to talk. I’ll tell Justin, my husband, you were here and what it was about. But not my folks. They don’t know the whole story. And I don’t want them to.”

What whole story?

I wanted to ask. Badly. But I kept my mouth shut.

“Promise?” she asked again.

I nodded. I stuck my hand out without thinking. She reluctantly took it and gave it one good pump.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Ok. Now. Pretend you were doing a delivery and got the wrong house. Leave through there and put your head down.” She pointed toward the neighbors’ yard.

Early Monday morning, I got a desperate call from Kaitlyn.

“Change of plans. I need you to get over to my parents’ house right now. Do you have the address? Do you need me to text it to you?”

“What?”

She’d woken me out of a dead sleep with her angry voice on. Her angry voice kind of made my brain shut off.

“Get out of bed. Put on some clothes. Order a ride and get to my parents’ house. Now. Which app do you use? I’ll call for you and charge the fare to my expense account.”

“No. I mean… what is happening? Why do I have to go?”

Kaitlyn filled me in. Using that brisk staccato way of speaking she has when she’s dead serious and pissed off. It’s a bit like what I imagine getting rapped on the forehead with the spike heel of one of her leather pumps might feel like.

Luke figured out something’s up.

He moved his ‘expiration’ date forward.

Paid some third-rate psychiatrist to sign off.

Kaitlyn’s meeting clients in twenty minutes.

I need to go instead.

RIGHT NOW.

“Serenity is helping him set up shop at our parents’ house as we speak.”

Kaitlyn almost sounded frantic. That wasn’t a good sign.

“I thought your folks were in Costa Rica. How do you know what’s happening at the house?”

“Because they left me in charge of their property, didn’t they! I get notifications when someone disables the security system by punching in the code. I’m checking the cameras. Hold on a sec. Oh, great. Just wonderful. Now I’m watching the people from Serenity back their death mobile out of my parents’ driveway on my parents’ driveway cam!”

Um… whoa.

Kaitlyn got a ride for me. I called off work and was at the Donnellys house by eight. I was high on adrenalin and having a difficult time thinking about anything except getting to Luke. Not so much though that I didn’t notice the absolute monster proportions of their house.

It was a mansion, really. Like one of those English country homes. My mom and my sister were forever watching Jane Austen movie adaptations and this house looked like it could be in one. It had double front doors behind a stone portico supported by columns, east and west towers, and a circular drive with a fountain.

This was where Luke was planning to kill himself? I had to hand it to him. He certainly had a flare for drama.

I hopped out of the car and was already at the door before the driver had pulled away. I knocked but didn’t wait for Donnelly to answer. I let myself in, marched down the marble foyer, past the huge gilt mirror with a half-moon table in front of it, under the Tiffany chandelier, and across the blue-and-yellow Turkish carpet. He must have heard me coming. He opened a sliding wooden pocket door to my left and stepped into the hallway.

“Hollywell,” he said, looking me up and down. He leaned his back against the flowered wallpaper above the oak wainscoting and crossed his arms. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Don’t be a jerk,” I snapped. “Kaitlyn called me. She knows Serenity has been here already. What the hell is going on?”

“Kaitlyn called you? How did she know?”

I pointed to the camera at the end of the hallway and the one above the door next to where he stood. “Your folks left her in charge.”

He looked surprised at first. Then determined. Then blank. “Good to know,” he said. “Well. Come on in.” He waved me forward. “Welcome to Chez Donnelly.”

I followed him back into the room where he had come from. It was a Victorian library straight out of a magazine. Complete with a huge oak desk, marble fireplace, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a sliding ladder.

“So, is this your plan?” I stood in the middle of the fancy carpet and spread my arms to take in the whole room. “To off yourself all alone in your parents’ house? A little passive aggressive, even for you Luke, don’t you think?”

I hadn’t realized how angry I was. The look on his face set me off. He didn’t look concerned. He didn’t look scared. He just looked the way he always did. Apathetic. Smug.

He stayed calm. Refusing to take the bait.

“No… Ty. In fact, discovering Kaitlyn’s meddling has led to a change of heart.”

I was skeptical. Still, I was willing to bite. “You’re not going to off yourself then?”

“No. That is, I wouldn’t put it that way. I’m still planning to die with the assistance of the lovely people at Serenity and the obliging doctor who pushed through the order. However. Instead of doing it alone in some dingy back office in a clinic for patients on public assistance, I’ve decided to invite the whole family.”

I was so disgusted I was speechless. I just stood there staring at him in disbelief.

“Nothing to say, Ty? That’s… interesting.”

His sarcasm woke me up. “Your parents are in Costa Rica.”

He smiled. “I wrote them this morning.”

“Wha…?”

How was I supposed to respond to that? What kind of person even does such a thing?

“Kaitlyn is going to fight this,” I said. “With your uncle, your sisters, and whoever else she can get to help her. You’re not going to be able to go through with it.”

“Won’t I?”

I was so angry now. I was incandescently pissed. Where was this rage coming from? I didn’t even like Luke that much!

“Fine. You know what Luke? You do you. I’m done.” I crossed the carpet and got right up in his face. “Where’s the pod Luke? I want to see it up close. Show me. Where did you have them put it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The damn suicide pod, you psycho! Where is it?”

He rolled his eyes. He rolled his eyes at me.

“There’s no pod here yet, you idiot. A couple of reps were here this morning for a consultation. They’ll come back in two weeks with a team and their equipment.”

“Two weeks?”

My voice sounded dead. Exhausted.

We’re playing this game for another two weeks?

For a second, I wanted to give up. Then Alicia’s face loomed up in front of me and my rage came back full force.

I promised I’d keep it a secret. That I’d seen her and knew something happened between them. I didn’t care anymore. Whatever happened between Alicia and Luke, I felt sure it was all his fault. I was certain it was the key to this sick little game he was playing, and I was done with him holding all the cards.

“I saw Alicia on Saturday,” I spat out.

I don’t think anything in the universe could have wiped the smirk off Donnelly’s face as quickly as that one word. Alicia. I didn’t understand it. Now I couldn’t stop.

“You saw her?”

“Yep. Kaitlyn suggested I track her down.”

That wasn’t totally true. But he didn’t need to know that.

“What did she say?”

Was he shaking?

I shrugged. “Nothing yet. She didn’t want to tell me anything after I surprised her. I just showed up at her parents’ house unannounced. We’re meeting today though. At nine-thirty. At that café near the park. Remember?”

He knew exactly which café I was talking about. That hole-in-the-wall place not far from the college where we all used to hang out. The one painted like a Mexican restaurant inside. The one with hippie art on the walls. The one where he’d carved his name into the tabletop in one of the ancient booths. The one where I sat watching Alicia watching him week after week during our senior year and him pretending not to notice.

He ignored my question and casually checked his watch.

“I guess you’ll have to get going soon then. That’s at least an hour away from here by bus. It’s almost eight-thirty.”

My phone rang. I jumped. It was Kaitlyn.

“Hello?”

Luke disappeared into the hall.

Kaitlyn found a service that was sending a home health aide to babysit Luke until she could come. She said her parents got Luke’s message. They were headed to the airport in San José and were freaking out.

“I need you to stay there until the aide arrives. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I have an appointment with Alicia at nine-thirty,” I whispered. “She was skittish about talking to me from the start. I’m afraid if I’m late, she’ll leave.”

“Do you think she knows something that can help us?”

Luke popped his head back into the library. Did he hear me talking about Alicia? I never should have said anything to him. I promised her I wouldn’t. I made my face as blank as possible and answered Kaitlyn with “Mm-hm.”

“Is that Kaitlyn?”

Luke was standing right in front of me.

“Give me the phone.”

I handed it over. He took it and shooed me out of the room.

I heard him and Kaitlyn going back and forth. Him, laying down ultimatums. Her, arguing. Finally, they reached a truce. Luke hung up, called me back in, and handed me my phone.

“Ok, so here’s the deal,” he said. “You stay until ten after nine. Then I’ll let you borrow my car. The café is about a fifteen-minute drive away. That still gives you five minutes to park. The aide should be here by nine-thirty, like Kaitlyn asked for.”

I calculated quickly. Luke would be without a babysitter for only twenty minutes. He knew he was being watched through the security cameras. I could live with that if Kaitlyn could.

“Fine,” I said. “Where are your keys?”

He rooted around in his pants pocket, then tossed them at me.

“It’s the silver Porsche out back,” he said. “Enjoy it Hollywell. Might be the last time you ever get to drive one.”

The comment stung. But not as much as he thought it did when he flung it at me. I wanted to point out that at least I had a job, which was a lot more than he had going for him at present. I didn’t say anything though.

I thought about where I was, the house I was standing in, and decided it didn’t matter. Even if he didn’t kill himself. Even if he chose not to be a total idiot and give up on his life. Just by virtue of his birth alone, Luke Donnelly would always be able to get anything he could ever want.

“Right,” I said. I looked at my phone. It was a little after nine o’clock. “Guess I’ll head out to the car.”

“You’re really going to go talk to Alicia?” he called after me. “Right now?”

I turned around and glared at him. “That’s what I said.”

“And she hasn’t told you anything yet?”

I stiffened. “Not much.”

He nodded. “Ok,” he said. “Well. When she does, remember what I told you.”

“And what was that?”

He smiled. “We all make mistakes, Ty. And we all have to pay for them.”

The Choice: A Christmas Story is about big decisions.

Tyson Hollywell is bored with life and afraid of change when he’s launched into a fight he wasn't looking for, just in time for the holidays. His old college nemesis, Luke Donnelly, shows up out of the blue the night before Thanksgiving and declares his intention to die by assisted suicide on Christmas Eve. Will Ty fail or succeed to convince Luke to choose life?

At Christmas, there’s always hope.

If that sounds like your bag, welcome! The Choice will be published as a three-part novelette on three consecutive Mondays. Hope you enjoy Part One!

It all started when Donnelly told me he was going to kill himself.

Scratch that.

It started the first time I saw a suicide pod.

I was flipping through a magazine at the doctor’s office and there it was. It reminded me of a concept car. Sleek, egg-shaped, bright white. Like a space capsule. Or a submersible.

The elegant body construction of steel and carbon fiber provides a safe environment of the highest quality. The porthole window is shatterproof polycarbonate with security glazing, offering a crystal-clear view so you can rest easy. Be at peace under the sky.

When I realized what it was, I threw the magazine on the table like I’d been burned.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even when I was sitting in that stupid gown under that stupid paper sheet waiting for the doctor. I could see it.

Imagine an idyllic copse of pine encircling you completely, blocking out all ambient noise. The setting provides a relaxing view above the porthole window – evergreen branches swaying gently in the canopy of the forest.

It was starting to freak me out.

I felt better after I’d seen the doctor. I had a rash down there I was really worried about. He said it was nothing to get excited over. He gave me some cream and told me not to forget to wash my gym shorts between workouts.

The ad for the pod flashed through my mind a few more times over the next couple of days. I finally forgot about it. My rash cleared up. I went back to working out. It was all just work, gym, sleep, work again for a while.

A couple of weeks later, in early November, I went out after work for some beers with Conner, Jeremy, and Shawn. There was a basketball game on they wanted to watch. Emily and that new girl from the sales department came too. Jessica. Jessie, she liked to be called. She’s cute. She reminds me a bit of Alicia from college. It’s the reason why I can’t imagine ever asking her out.

We were sitting at the bar watching the game on the big screen when a commercial came on. It was for that damned suicide pod.

“What the hell?” Jeremy said. We all looked up.

“Is that for real?” Conner.

When you or your loved one needs an end-of-life plan you can trust, call Serenity. We provide peace of mind when you’re out of options.

Are you kidding me? I thought.

The camera zoomed in on a group of people standing around one of the pods on a beach by the ocean. Some old guy climbed inside. The other people held hands around the pod with goofy grins on their faces.

“That’s messed up,” Shawn said. He took a long swig of his beer. Everyone else went quiet.

“My aunt did that,” Jessie said out of nowhere.

Everyone’s heads swiveled in her direction.

“What?”

She nodded. “Last year. She had cancer. It was, like, the second or third time she’d had it, I think. She said she’d had enough.”

“That’s bull,” Shawn said.

“Shawn, come on.” That upset me. It’s messed up, sure. Still. He didn’t have to be nasty about it.

“Why would you say that?” Emily said. “It’s her life. Maybe she didn’t want to be in pain anymore. Doesn’t she have a right to decide?”

Shawn snorted. “To kill herself? Um…no.” He tipped back his bottle of beer, drained it, slammed it on the bar, and lifted his finger for another.

Everyone was quiet again until the game came back on.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Shawn said on my walk home. Was it wrong? What Jessie said? For her aunt to kill herself? It felt wrong. Then again, maybe Emily had a point?

I wasn’t sure what to think and I was a too drunk to figure it out. I passed out after I got home. I didn’t even bother to take my shoes off.

It must have been at the back of my mind for the rest of the week. I can’t explain what happened the next weekend otherwise.

Friday came around again and Jeremy invited me out. I said no. Which was unusual for me. What else did I have to do on a Friday night?

I ate takeout, played video games for three hours straight, and went to bed before ten o’clock. That wasn’t normal. I’d felt weird all day and kind of sore all over. Was I getting sick? Maybe it was just from working out too hard the day before.

Saturday, I kept busy. I got up early. Went to the gym. Did laundry and even cleaned the bathroom in my tiny apartment. I hadn’t cleaned it for months. I thought about visiting my mom. It’d been a while since I’d seen her. Decided I wasn’t in the right mood. I went to a movie by myself instead. Something I hadn’t done since college.

I woke up on Sunday planning to do more of the same. Then the weirdest thing happened. I was heading out the door after my post-run shower to pick up my usual bagel and coffee around the corner. Instead, I caught the bus downtown.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was walking up the steps and through the doors of the Cathedral. I walked straight down the center aisle and stopped about half-way toward the front. I found a seat in a pew on the left side of the church. Next to one of those enormous columns.

It was early so there weren’t many people there at first. Some old ladies were praying the rosary toward the front. Otherwise, it was quiet. Peaceful. I still wasn’t sure what I was doing there. I hadn’t been to mass since my confirmation in the eighth grade. Right before my parents broke up.

The church got crowded after a while. By the time the mass started, the ushers were doing some heavy lifting. Getting everyone squeezed in looked like a chore. I had to scoot all the way over until my left arm was pressed up against the stone column. A huge family took up the rest of the pew.

The mom of the family sat next to me with a baby in her lap. The baby stared at me through the whole first part of the mass. It kind of weirded me out. Then the baby started crying and the mom got up. I stood up too so she could get by me and out into the side aisle. I could hear that baby screaming all the way back toward the Cathedral doors.

When the priest got up to preach the homily, he made a few announcements. That’s when I realized why it was so crowded. Thanksgiving was this coming Thursday. Lots of people ditch mass on the Sunday afterward. Or go to a different one out of town. I guess everyone who lived in the city was making up for it ahead of time.

I didn’t hear much of anything the priest said after the announcements. All I could think about was Thanksgiving and my mom. I hadn’t been to my mom’s house for a holiday in almost three years. Not since she and Stuart got married.

They were ‘just friends’ at first. Mom said she was too Catholic to be anything more while my dad was still alive. She tried to make a joke of it. I knew it wasn’t. She’d never wanted to get a divorce. That was all Dad. He met Julie on a work trip to Thailand and decided she was worth blowing up his whole life for. Then my dad got sick four years ago and was dead inside of six months.

I don’t blame my mom for marrying Stuart. He seems nice enough. Kind of weird though. Even if I’d wanted to go back to mass before now, it would have been impossible to go with Stuart. He’s so serious about it. With his suit jackets and chinos and oxford shirts. His rosary clutched in one fist with his eyes closed. His black leather missal falling apart. Mom seems happy though.

I went to their wedding. My sister told me I had to.

Caroline hardly ever called me after she moved to Ohio with her kids and her husband. She said I could always call. What did I do every single weekend that I couldn’t? She had a point. Though I wasn’t about to let her know.

She called me on a Tuesday, so I knew something was up.

“You have to come,” she insisted.

Not a ‘hey how are you doing’ before she said it or anything. Just come.

I went.

The wedding was in a little Catholic church, in the little neighborhood they live in, with a little reception afterward in their new house. Quaint, I think you’d call it all. I stayed for the whole thing like a good boy. I even brought a present.

Caroline said to get a houseplant since mom liked them. I thought that was lame. Instead, I got her and Stuart a gift certificate to the fanciest restaurant I could find in their part of the city.

Mom thought it was ‘sweet’. Stuart said something about taking his lady out for a night on the town and kissed her right in front of us. It kind of made me uncomfortable.

It was Tuesday evening. Thanksgiving was less than two days away and for the first time in three years I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

The first year after mom married Stuart, Caroline invited all of us to Ohio. I said I’d think about it. In the end, I just wound up getting a catered dinner from a local ‘family style’ restaurant and eating by myself at home. After dinner, I drank a whole bottle of wine in front of the TV while binge watching some show.

The next year I went to Shawn’s parents’ house. His folks told him he could invite anyone he wanted to from work. The ‘Thanksgiving orphans’ as they called us. It was kind of awkward, crashing their family thing. Everyone was nice enough though. After a few drinks I loosened up. I’d brought Shawn’s mom a poinsettia and his dad a bottle of scotch. I felt like I should bring something. They couldn’t stop talking about it.

Shawn’s family was away on a ski trip this year and no one else was around. I really didn’t want to be alone for some reason. I guess that’s why I started thinking about my mom.

We got off work early on Wednesday. I was home by four. I’d finally decided. I was going to go to my mom’s place. I wasn’t going to call, just show up.

I was getting ready to watch some TV for an hour or two before heading to bed. The building phone next to my door started buzzing as soon as I sat down. Someone was buzzing the wrong apartment again. Probably a restaurant delivery. Or a guest who’d had too much at the bar. I hustled over and scooped the receiver off the hook.

“Hello?”

There was silence for a few beats. Then, “Hey. It’s Donnelly.”

I was so shocked I almost hung up.

“Uh…hey?”

“Yeah. Hey. Can I come up?”

“Um…sure,” I hit the buzzer.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I opened the door. It was surreal to see him standing there. Just the same as the last time I saw him. That last night at Mulvaney’s in college. A good-looking rich guy. Perfect hair, teeth, and clothes. Blonde and slim to my dark-haired and stocky. The kind of guy you pretend to like because you’re supposed to. When really you just want to sucker punch him when no one is looking.

Donnelly, Housman and Blake got our old group together for one last blow-out at Mulvaney’s right before graduation. There were about ten of us all together that night, all from our dorm floor. Donnelly left early with Alicia. I’d been wanting to ask her out for months and kicking myself for being a gutless wonder.

I was into my fourth or fifth beer, doing the ‘should I? shouldn’t I?’ routine in my head, staring at Alicia and Georgette laughing about something-or-other. Donnelly walked over, picked up the shot sitting on the bar in front of Alicia, downed it, smacked the shot glass back down on the bar, and tipped his head toward the door. Alicia tossed back the rest of her beer, shrugged her shoulders at Georgette, and followed him out.

Staring at him now, standing here in the dingy hallway of my apartment building, I realize I still haven’t forgiven him.

“Hey Ty,” he said.

Ty? I thought. Are we using first names now?

“Hey…Luke. What’s up?”

He gave me that half grin of his. My irritation ticked up a notch.

“Can I come in?”

“Um…yep.” I stepped aside so he could sidle by.

I was ridiculously proud I’d cleaned my cruddy little apartment the week before as I watched him stroll down my hall. I lifted my chin and shut the door.

He was sitting in my favorite chair, a leather recliner, by the floor-to-ceiling windows in my living room. His elbows were on his knees. His feet flat on the floor. His fingertips tented together, tapping slowly. His face was turned toward the window. I slid onto the couch, put my socked feet up on the coffee table, and crossed my arms.

“So. Luke. What’s up?”

He cleared his throat. Sat back. Put his hands on the chair arms. “I’ve come to say goodbye,” he said.

Goodbye?

Like it hadn’t already been five years since I’d seen him? I think we talked, like, once since then, when we happened to be on a player chat at the same time.

“Goodbye. Ok,” I said. “Where’re you going? Back to Cali?”

It was an old joke. One he started, I might add. He didn’t laugh though.

“I’m going to die,” he said.

I felt like he’d just slapped me in the face.

“Are you sick?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“With what?”

“With everything.”

Was he smiling? What the hell could he be smiling about?

“Dude, are you messing with me right now?”

He hung his head between his shoulders and sighed. He raised his head and his face was blank.

“This was a bad idea.” He got up.

“What are you doing?” I swung my feet off the coffee table and sat forward.

“I’m leaving.”

“Dude, you can’t just come in here, tell me you’re dying, and then leave again without saying anything.”

“Can’t I?”

“No!”

He glared at me. He was angry. Why was he angry? I’m the one who just got dumped on without an explanation and now he was getting ready to go.

“Like I said. Bad idea.” He started walking toward the door.

I jumped up from the couch and went after him.

“Hey, wait, wait.” I grabbed him by the shoulder.

He turned around slowly.

“Sorry,” I said.

What exactly was I sorry about?

“I’ll listen, ok? Or… whatever you want.”

He sighed again. Shrugged his shoulders. Walked back toward the living room.

He sat down. On the couch this time. He didn’t say anything. He just kept sitting there. I tried a different approach.

“Can I… get you something? A beer? Some soda?”

He used to like gin and tonics. Excuse me. Gins and tonic. He’d corrected me I don’t know how many times in college. I don’t have any gin, though. Or tonic.

“No, no,” he said, waving me away. “I don’t need anything. Sit down.”

I sat in my recliner.

“Has anyone texted you or called? About me?”

I shook my head. “No. Should they have?”

He pressed his mouth into a grim line. “Guess not.”

We sat together in silence. One minute. Two. I started getting antsy.

“Ok. So, here’s the deal,” he finally said. “I’ve been depressed. Like, really depressed. For a long time now.” He stopped.

“Did it start when you got sick?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, that’s not it. Look.” He sat forward. “Things have been going downhill for me for, like, a long time. From right after we graduated really.”

I must’ve looked surprised. Because he raised his hand at me. Like he was swearing an oath or something.

“Believe me,” he said. “It’s true.” He got up and started pacing the room. “Nothing went the way I thought it would after graduation. Nothing worked out. Not with my job. Or… relationships. Or with my family.”

His eyes got hard and for a second, I thought he was going to tear up. It was over so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it.

“I had an accident.”

His voice got quiet. I leaned in to hear him.

“I was on a mountain biking trip. We were heading back down the mountain on our last day. It had rained a lot the night before. I took a bad slide. My bike came up from under me.”

He stopped. He turned white right in front of me. And sat down. I was counting in my head as I waited for his breathing to restart. I felt cold all over.

He stared out the window and exhaled slowly through pursed lips. When he looked at me, his face was a mask of stone.

“They said I was lucky. I didn’t break any ribs. I could have punctured my lung, they said. I could have torn my spleen and bled out before the rescue had come. I got mangled though. Down there. They had to take both my balls off.”

“What?”

“My testicles, Ty.”

He laughed. It sounded angry. Fake and forced.

“I don’t remember anything between when I fell and when I woke up in the hospital. I must have passed out. When I came to after the surgery, they told me both testicles were gone. The weirdest thing is I didn’t really have any other injuries. Just some bad scrapes and lots of bruising. I didn’t even lose that much blood. Just my manly bits. Totally gone.”

Um. Wow.

“Man, that’s so… I’m sorry.”

He shrugged.

“That wasn’t really the worst part. The worst part came after.”

He told me how he was in shock at first. Then glad it wasn’t worse. Then it started to dawn on him he was going to look like that forever. Disfigured. A monster. The worst part came when his dad was talking to him about it. He mentioned how he wouldn’t be getting any grandchildren out of him now.

His dad played it off as a joke. But things were different. Now he was a disappointment. Now he would never be what his folks had hoped for.

“The Donnelly line ends right here.” He slapped his hands against his thighs, near his groin. “At least, our branch of it.”

I’d forgotten he only had sisters. There’s like four or five kids total or something. I always thought of them as a big family. Without really thinking about it, I saw them as going on forever. Rich, handsome, Donnellys for all time. His sisters would marry. Change their names. Even if they didn’t, it wasn’t the same. Was it?

“So,” he said. “I got wickedly depressed for, like, three months. I almost drank myself to death until one of my sisters blew the whistle and they put me on a psych hold. I agreed to go to rehab without much of a fight. It went well. I got a lot of clarity. When they let me out that’s when I made my choice.”

“Choice?”

“I applied for assistance through Serenity. My last day is December 24th.”

“Wait…”

I felt weird. Like time had slowed down and the light in the room had gone too bright.

“Serenity? You mean like that company that makes those suicide pods?”

The strange blank look came back to his face.

“They don’t make them. They buy them from a third party. Serenity is just the supplier. They facilitate your application with a doctor and set everything up. I’ve been approved.”

He looked smug when he said this. My stomach was instantly in knots.

“How the hell did you get approved for that? How do you get to just kill yourself?”

“It’s not killing myself. It’s assisted dying. And I get to do whatever I want.”

“It’s illegal, though.”

He snorted. “No. It’s not. Let me guess? You still don’t follow the news, do you? They passed the legislation last fall.”

Is that true? Did I miss that? What the hell is going on?

“You’re not sick,” I said.

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“How? With what?”

“I’m sick of life!” He yelled. I jumped. “I’ve had enough of it.”

What do you say to something like that? What was I supposed to say?

I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t reason or argue with him. All I could think to do was to ask him why he’d come.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened something, scrolled.

“You were on my list,” he said. “Just a few more people to go.”

A few more people to go?

Like, everyone you’ve ever known and cared about gets a ‘nice knowing you’ visit before you off yourself? What was I supposed to do with that?

I wasn’t done. I was still angry. About all of it.

“That’s just a cop out bro. You didn’t need to put me on any list. We haven’t seen each other since college. Why did you really come?”

He looked surprised. Like maybe he didn’t know I had a backbone or something. He got up again. He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared out into the dark.

“That night,” he said. “That last night. Do you remember?”

He turned to look at me. I stared straight into his face.

“I remember. Didn’t think you did though.”

He nodded. Turned back to the skyline above the city.

“I do. Did. I knew you liked her. Alicia, I mean. I had a feeling you were finally going to get it together and ask her out that night.”

“Why did you get the jump on me then?”

He did that half grin thing again. It made me want to smash in his face.

He shrugged. “I guess I just couldn’t help myself, Ty.”

He sat on my couch, sat back and slid down, and put his hands in his pockets.

“That’s how I was. Back then. A cocky S.O.B. with a chip on my shoulder. I didn’t even like Alicia, if I’m being honest. I had my eye on that chick who came in with Blake. You just looked so desperate bro,” he smiled. “I couldn’t resist the urge to ruin your night.”

Part of me knew he was being cruel on purpose. Part of me knew he hadn’t given it that much thought. That night at Mulvaney’s or now. He was trying to make me an enemy.

It was suddenly clear. If we were enemies, he would never have to get real. With anyone.

“You didn’t ruin it,” I said.

His face fell. “I didn’t?”

“No. In fact. You helped me.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I realized I made a mistake, and I better not do it again. I started asking people out as soon as I got my first job.”

That wasn’t true. Well, not exactly. I did start asking people out after I got my first job. It just took me another whole year to start.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said.

I could tell it was anything but.

“I should go.”

He stood up and started walking toward the hall.

“Wait!”

I jumped up. I was still angry. Though not so angry I’d forgotten this whole thing was totally screwed up.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I called after him.

He stopped and turned around.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. It’s what I want.”

Looking at him standing there, I just saw the same old Donnelly. Arrogant. Selfish. With looks and money and everything I want.

With one exception.

Ok. Two.

And they’re important exceptions. I’d give him that. Still. Even the loss of his manhood, as he saw it, was not enough to justify throwing away everything else he still had going for him. Everything else so many other guys would kill for.

“It doesn’t matter what you want,” I said. My jaw hurt. I realized I’d been clenching it ever since I first opened the door. “It doesn’t matter. It’s still wrong.”

Several emotions passed over Donnelly’s face. I couldn’t tell you what they were. He could have made another snarky comment like he usually would in a situation like this and let that be the last words between us. Instead, he stuck out his hand. I took it. He grasped mine and gave it a slow shake.

“Thanks, Hollywell,” he said. “See you around.”

I didn’t fall asleep for hours after that. One thought kept repeating over and over.

Hollywell.

Donnelly had used my real last name. After four years of hearing nothing but ‘Holly! Hooolllyyy!’ everywhere I went in college, he had given me my dignity back. Just when it didn’t matter anymore.

Thanksgiving was a bust now. There was no way I could show up to my mom’s house after something like that. I needed time to figure things out.

I finally fell asleep around two or three in the morning from sheer exhaustion. It wasn’t enough to keep me asleep though. I was up again as soon as it was light out.

Part of me must have remembered there was a Thanksgiving mass at the Cathedral because before I knew what I was doing I was showered, dressed in my work clothes, and headed downtown.

The mass was more crowded than I thought it would be. Lots of families there together before the turkey and pie and football. I stayed after for a bit. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere any time soon and I was still pretty messed up about Donnelly.

What was I supposed to do with this information? Sure, I’d kind of hated the guy for years. That didn’t negate the fact that we’d technically been friends for all of college. I felt like maybe I was obligated to do something.

I slid down onto the kneeler in my deserted pew, folded my hands on the back of the pew in front of me, and closed my eyes. I felt a little stupid. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tried to pray. It had never come naturally.

“God, I know I don’t have a right to ask for anything. I’ve done a lot of bad stuff. I haven’t been to mass, except for once last week, since the eighth grade. I’ve taken your name in vain and… lots of other things. You know what I’m talking about. This guy, Luke Donnelly, he says he’s going to kill himself. I know that’s wrong. I’m just not sure what I can do about it. I thought maybe you’d help, since it’s not for me I’m asking. Let me know. Send me a sign or something. Amen.”

I left feeling a bit better. Even though I was still confused. I picked up a Thanksgiving dinner from the same local restaurant where I got it two years ago. I ate it in front of the T.V. while the game was on.

When I woke up the next morning, I had an idea.