Georgia cradled her wine as she sat on the couch in front of the fire. This was the den, the heart of the five-bedroom cabin. Chris had built this room first, he’d told her, after purchasing the small patch of land with his savings from working the two jobs he’d always made sure he had from the time he was fourteen.
It was a big room. Vaulted ceilings adorned with large wooden beams, a fireplace with a knotted, rustic mantle that seemed sadly empty. A home should be filled with pictures of family vacations and birthdays. It shouldn’t be lived in only on weekends or holidays. It should always be loud with the sound of laughter and life.
Instead the three men were silent as they brought out that small Charlie Brown Christmas tree from Flynn’s room. She’d wondered where it had been. They didn’t bring out boxes of colored balls or strings of lights to decorate it. She didn’t even see any popcorn to be threaded. What were they planning to trim the tree with?
Flynn looked over at her for a moment before turning back to the tree. The playful man, who couldn’t be more than a year or two older than her, seemed suddenly ancient and achingly sad.
“Let’s get this over with, Chris,” Jimmy snarled softly. He poured four small shot glasses of tequila from a bottle she hadn’t noticed until that moment. The fourth glass wasn’t handed to her. She sat up straighter, alert, watching them all closely.
Chris nodded. “Agreed.” He glanced at Georgia almost apologetically. “We made a promise a few years ago, that we’d do this, on this night, every year.”
“Do what?” She was speaking in hushed tones right along with them, as if the cabin had become a cathedral. As if someone were listening in.
Flynn answered. “We remember. And we decorate the saddest, ugliest little dwarf tree we can find. The one no one else would pick to take home if you paid them. The one that, without us, would be alone.”
Her eyes welled up at the lost, ragged sound in Flynn’s voice, and she knew. It had something to do with their time in foster care. She tried to smile. “Lucky tree.”
Flynn smiled back and Chris gave her a look of approval. “Nicholas always thought so. He would insist, even when we could afford better, that we got a tree that would remind us that we were different. That we would look after that tree the way we looked after each other. I think it was because none of us were ever adopted.”
Nicholas? Jimmy noticed her confusion, the way he’d noticed everything else. “Nicholas is the reason we made the promise. He was our brother too.”
Was. It was clear from his tone that they’d lost him. “When?”
“Three years this past May.” Flynn looked down at the tree as if remembering. “He joined the Marines about ten years ago now. Kept volunteering for new tours. He always said that serving his country, being a part of something greater than himself, was the second best decision he’d ever made.”
Georgia wanted to put her arms around him. Comfort him. “What was the first?”
Flynn’s voice was raspy with emotion. “Leaving with us to come to Colorado. Making our own family.”
Jimmy put his hand on Flynn’s shoulder, and Chris stood up to stare into the fire, hands in his pockets. “I always wondered if I did the right thing, taking the rest of you with me. I was nineteen, already out of the house when Flynn, the youngest, turned sixteen. The courts considered that old enough to decide where you want to live. Nick was the one who gave me the idea to come here. He carried that damn postcard with a picture of the snow-covered Colorado Rockies in his pocket for as long as I knew him. His good luck charm.”
Georgia was crying now. How could she not? They were breaking her heart. She tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she’d never known Grandpa Bale. If she’d never known her family, as distant as they were. Despite her usual abilities…she couldn’t. Or she didn’t want to.
“Read it already.” Jimmy was fiddling with the full shot glass, obviously waiting, obviously impatient.
Chris pulled a folded letter out of his pocket. “Our yearly note from Nick. We have two to read for every year we lived here together. One when we trim our unwanted Christmas tree, and one on Christmas morning, along with his present to us.” He glanced at Flynn. “He had one of his friends in the corps promise to bring the packages and instructions to our younger brother if he…if he didn’t make it home.”
He opened the sealed envelope and cleared his throat. Georgia watched the fire cast shadows over his body, his handsome face, and she felt like she could see the weight he was carrying.
Like she knew this Chris, knew all of them, better than she imagined someone could after so short a time.
He began to read. “Hey guys, it’s me again. Year three. I remember our third Christmas in the cabin like it was yesterday. Chris was hardly home, working full time and going to college. He still managed to scrape enough money together between us to make it a wonderful Christmas. Even tried to cook a goose, since we’d finally gotten around to seeing A Christmas Carol. We all agreed we would stick with turkey or ham after the fire in the kitchen.”
Flynn laughed quietly at the memory. Even Chris smiled at that before continuing.
“Jimmy decided he wanted to be a police officer that year. No one was surprised. Flynn had decided he wanted to do whatever Jimmy was doing. Again, no one was surprised. And me? I think that was the year I realized we were really a family. We fought, but we stayed together. We struggled, but we worked through it.”
Chris’s whiskey voice was rough. “I wish I knew what happened with us. I know one of you said we all needed to grow up. That our family wasn’t meant to last forever. “
Georgia noticed Jimmy look down uncomfortably. Did he feel guilty?
“But that year? That year we were a family. That year Jimmy helped me work on my old mustang. The one that came without doors or brakes? That year Flynn taught me how to ski after he’d spent all morning teaching tourists; slowing down for me again and again, when I knew all he wanted to do was fly. And it was that year that Chris told me he was proud of me for getting the scholarship to DU. Proud. Of me. You’ll never know how much it meant to me to make you proud.
“Is Jimmy crying like a girl yet? Probably not. I’ll stop talking so he can have that shot…hopefully one of you has brought home a special girl to share it with. None of you should be alone. Always your brother, Nicholas.”
Georgia saw Flynn stand over the Christmas tree and reach into his pocket, pulling out a pocket watch on a gold chain. He hung it on one of the sturdiest branches, then took the glass Jimmy handed him and raised it before tipping back his head and swallowing the tequila.
Jimmy took out an old, dented tin sheriff’s star and placed it on the tree, cradled between several branches. He toasted the others and took his shot.