Part 1 — Christmas Eve, 5:58 a.m.
On Christmas Eve, my seven-year-old found a note from my parents. She woke me like the world was ending. “Mom.
Mom—wake up.”
I cracked one eye open. My bedroom was still dark—the kind of dark that means it has no business being morning yet. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand without even looking and squinted at the screen.
5:58 a.m. Of course. Because if your life is going to fall apart, it might as well happen before six, while your brain is still loading and your mouth tastes like regret.
Grace stood beside my bed in her pajamas, hair sticking up like she’d slept in a wind tunnel. Her cheeks were wet. Her little hands clenched a piece of paper like it might bite her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice thick with sleep. I pushed myself upright, scanning her the way moms do—checking for blood, checking for fever, checking for the kind of panic that usually ends with, Did you throw up somewhere?
She shook her head hard, like the words were stuck. “Look,” she whispered, and held the paper out with both hands.
Her fingers trembled. I took it carefully, like it was fragile and sharp at the same time. My eyes moved over the handwriting and my stomach dropped in slow motion.
It wasn’t a long note. It didn’t need to be. We’re off to Hawaii.
Please move out by the time we’re back.
That was it. No Merry Christmas. No Love you. Not even a smiley face—which, honestly, might have been worse. I stared a second too long, hoping I’d blink and realize it was a weird dream delivered by late-night cheese.
Grace sniffed. “I found it on the table,” she said, voice tiny. “I think it’s from Grandma and Grandpa.”
My brain tried to scramble into the shape of logic.
“Okay,” I said slowly, because I needed a word to hold on to. “Okay… maybe it’s a joke.”
Grace’s eyes filled again. “Is Grandma mad at me?”
“No.” The answer shot out of me too fast, too sharp.
I forced my voice down into something steady. “No, baby. This isn’t about you.”
I didn’t know that for sure yet.
But I wasn’t about to let a seven-year-old carry adult meanness on Christmas Eve before sunrise. I swung my legs out of bed and stood. The floor was freezing—of course it was.
“Stay here,” I told her gently. “Okay? I’m just going to look.”
Grace nodded, wiping her face with her sleeve like a tiny, exhausted accountant.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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