Landline

“I can’t take your sweater,” Georgie said.

“Take it. You can mail it back to me—my mom sews my address inside everything. Take it, it’s no big deal.”

“Just take it,” the girl said.

“I’m trying to think if I have extra boots. . . .” He shoved his clothes back into the bag. “I might have some waders in the back.”

The girl rolled her eyes, and for a minute she looked just like Heather.

“Or—why don’t you tell me where you’re going?” he said to Georgie. “I’ll run up to the house and come back with your shoes and your coat or whatever.”

“No,” Georgie said. She pulled the sweater on over her head. “You’ve done enough, thank you.”

“You can’t walk through the snow barefoot,” he insisted.

“I’ll be fine.” Georgie opened the passenger door.

He opened his door, too.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” the girl said. “You can wear my boots.” She reached for the floor. Georgie noticed she was wearing a small engagement ring. “You can have them. I don’t even like them.”

“Absolutely not,” Georgie said. “What if you get stuck in the snow?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “He’d carry me across the city before he let me get my feet wet.”

The boy gri

Georgie took the boots. Knockoff Uggs. They looked about her size.

She kicked off her patent leather ballet flats—a birthday gift from Seth, so undoubtedly expensive. (Seth always bought Georgie clothes for Christmas, usually to replace the most pathetic item in her wardrobe. Good thing he didn’t know about her bras.) “You can have these,” Georgie said, “if you want them.”

The girl looked dubious.

“We’ll wait here for a while,” the boy said. “Come back if you need help.”

Right, Georgie thought, putting on the boots. If my husband doesn’t recognize me. If my in-laws don’t live there anymore. If everyone I know is either dead or not born yet because I ruined time. . . . “Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas,” the boy said.

“Be careful,” his fiancée warned. “There might be ice.”

“Thank you.” Georgie swung her legs out of the truck and jumped onto the ground, catching the door as her feet slid out from beneath her.

No one had shoveled yet on Rainwood Road. Georgie vaguely remembered that there weren’t any sidewalks; she and Neal had walked in the street that time they went to get pizza, their hands swinging between them.

The snow came up to the top of Georgie’s calves—she had to lift her feet high to make any progress. Her ears and eyelids were freezing, but after a block of climbing, her cheeks were flushed, and she was panting.

God, she’d never even been able to imagine this much cold before.

How could people live someplace that so obviously didn’t want them? All that romance about snow and seasons . . . You shouldn’t have to make a special effort not to die every time you left your house.

Everything was so quiet, Georgie’s breath sounded thunderous. She looked back, but she couldn’t see the red truck anymore. She couldn’t see any signs of life. It was easy to imagine that every house she passed was empty.

Georgie felt tears in her eyes and tried to pretend it was because of the cold, or the fatigue, and not because of what was waiting for her—or not waiting for her—at the top of the hill.

CHAPTER 36

Neal grew up in a brick colonial house with a circular driveway. His mom was overly proud of it; the first time Georgie visited, a few months after they got engaged, his mom told her the driveway was one of the reasons they’d bought the house.

“I don’t get it,” Georgie said later, after she’d snuck up from the basement to Neal’s room, and he’d shoved her up against the wall, under his Eagle Scout certificate. “It’s like there’s a road in your front yard,” she said. “How is that a good thing?” Neal had huffed a smile into her ear, then pushed the neck of her pajamas open with his nose.

Georgie walked up the drive now, wrecking the postcard perfection of the snowy front yard with her tracks.

She opened the storm door and knocked—the front door pushed open under her hand. Because in Omaha, apparently, nobody even closed their front doors. Georgie could hear Christmas music and people talking. She knocked again, peeking into the house.

When no one answered, she stepped cautiously into the foyer. The house smelled like apple-ci

She tried it a bit louder: “Hello?”

The door from the kitchen opened partway, and the music—“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”—swelled. Neal stepped out. Half a room away from her.

Neal.

Milk chocolate hair, pale skin, a red sweater she’d never seen before. A look on his face she’d never seen before. Like he didn’t know her at all.

He stopped.

The kitchen door swung to and fro behind him.

“Neal,” Georgie whispered.

His mouth was open. Lovely mouth, lovely matching lips, lovely dents like handholds for Georgie’s teeth.

His eyebrows were low and stern, and when he closed his jaw, there was a tense pulse in the corners of his cheeks.

“Neal?”

Five seconds passed. Ten. Fifteen.

Neal right there. In jeans and blue socks and a strange sweater.

Was he happy to see her? Did he even know her? Neal?

The door flew open behind him. “Daddy? Grandma says—”

Alice walked into the room, and Georgie felt like someone had just kicked her in the back of the knees.

Alice jumped. Just like kids do in the movies. For joy. “Mommy!” She ran for Georgie.

Georgie’s phone slid out of her hand as she dropped to the floor.

“Mommy!” Alice shouted again, landing in Georgie’s arms. “Are you our Christmas present?”

Georgie held Alice so tight, it probably hurt, and covered the side of the girl’s face with kisses. Georgie didn’t see the kitchen door open again, but she heard Noomi squeal and meow, and then there were two of them in her arms, and Georgie was falling sideways off her knees, trying to hold on.

“Missed you,” she said between kisses, blinded by pink skin and yellow-brown hair. “Missed you so much.”

Alice pulled back, and Georgie tightened her arm around her. But Neal was lifting Alice up and away. “Daddy,” Alice said, “Mommy’s here. Were you surprised?”

Neal nodded and lifted Noomi up, too, setting them both aside. Noomi meowed in protest.

Neal held his hands out to Georgie, and she took them. (So warm in her freezing fingers.) He pulled her to her feet, then let go. He still wasn’t smiling, so she didn’t smile either. She knew she was crying, but tried to ignore it.

“You’re here,” he said without moving his lips.

Georgie nodded.

Neal moved quickly, taking her face in his hands—one on her cold cheek, one under her jaw—and pulling it into is.

She felt relief blow through her like a ghost.

Neal.

Neal, Neal, Neal.

Georgie touched his shoulders, then the back of his hair—still sharp—then the tops of his ears, rubbing them between her fingers and thumbs.

She couldn’t remember the last time they’d kissed like this. Maybe they’d never kissed like this. (Because neither of them had ever almost fallen off a cliff.)

“You’re here,” he said again.

And Georgie nodded, stepping forward just in case he was thinking of pulling away.

She was here.

And it didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change anything.

She still had her job. And the meeting maybe. She still had Seth to sort out—or not. Georgie hadn’t made any real decisions. . . .