“I know you are,” I said, and I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you’d think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous, or so I was noticing.

As December came, and everything was suddenly green and red and tinseled, and holiday music pounded in my ears at work, “Jingle Bells” again and again and again, I still hadn’t made any real decision about Macon. The only reason I was getting out of it was the pure fact that we hadn’t seen each other much, except in school, which was the one place I didn’t have to worry about things going too far. I was working extra holiday shifts at Milton’s and busy with Scarlett, too. She needed me more than ever. I drove her to doctor’s appointments, pushed the cart at Baby Superstore while she priced cribs and strollers, and went out more than once late in the evening for chocolate-raspberry ice cream when it was cru cially needed. I even sat with her as she wrote draft after draft of a letter to Mrs. Sherwood at her new address in Florida, each one beginning with You don’t know me, but. That was the easy part. The rest was harder.

Macon was busy, too. He was always ducking out of school early or not showing up at all, calling me for two-minute conversations at all hours where he always had to hang up suddenly. He couldn’t come to my house or even drop me off down the street because it was too risky. My mother didn’t mention him much; she assumed her rules were being followed. She was busy with her work and arranging Grandma Halley’s move into another facility, anyway.

“It’s just that he’s different,” I complained to Scarlett as we sat on her bed reading magazines one afternoon. I was reading Elle; she, Working Mother. Cameron was downstairs making Kool-Aid, Scarlett’s newest craving. He put so much sugar in it, it gave you a headache, but it was just the way she liked it. “It’s not like it was.”

“Halley,” she said. “You read Cosmo. You know that no relationship stays in that giddy stage forever. This is normal.”

“You think?”

“Yes,” she said, flipping another page. “Completely.”

There were still a few times that month, as Christmas bore down on us, when I had to stop him as his hand moved further toward what I hadn’t decided to sign over just yet. Twice at his house, on Friday nights as we lay in his bed, so close it seemed inevitable. Once in the car, parked by the lake, when it was cold and he pulled away from me suddenly, shaking his head in the dark. It wasn’t just him, either. It was getting harder for me, too.

“Do you love him?” Scarlett asked me one day after I told her of this last incident. We were at Milton’s, sitting on the loading dock for our break, surrounded by packs upon packs of tomato juice.

“Yes,” I said. I’d never said it, but I did.

“Does he love you?”

“Yes,” I said, fudging a bit.

It didn’t work. She took another bite of her bagel and said, “Has he told you that?”

“No. Not exactly.”

She sat back, not saying any more. Her point, I assumed, was made.

“But that’s such a cliché,” I said. “I mean, Do you love me. Like that means anything. Like if he did say it, then I should sleep with him, and if he didn’t, I shouldn’t.”

“I didn’t say that,” she said simply. “All I’m saying is I would hope he did before you went ahead with this.”

“It’s just three words,” I said casually, finishing off my Coke. “I mean, lots of people sleep together without saying, ‘I love you.’”

Scarlett sat back, pulling her legs as best she could against her stomach. “Not people like us, Halley. Not people like us.”

My mother, who is serious and businesslike about most things, is an absolute fanatic about the holidays. Christmas begins at our house the second the last bite of Thanksgiving dinner is eaten, and our Christmas tree, decorated and sagging with way too many ornaments, does not come down until New Year’s Day. It drives my father, who always loudly proclaims himself a Christmas atheist, completely bananas. If it was up to him, the tree would be dismantled and out at the curb ten seconds after the last gift was opened—a done deal. Actually, if given his choice, we wouldn’t have a tree, period. We’d just hand each other our gifts in the bags they came in (his chosen wrapping paper), eat a big meal, and watch football on TV. But he knew when he married my mother, who insisted on a New Year’s Eve wedding, that he wouldn’t get that. Not even a chance.

I figured Grandma Halley’s being sick would make the holidays a little less important this year, or at least distract my mother. I was wrong. If anything, it was more important that this be the Perfect Christmas, the Best We’ve Ever Had. She took a day, maybe, after we got home from Thanksgiving before the boxes of ornaments came out, the stockings went up, and the planning was in full swing. It was dizzying.

“We have to get a tree,” she announced around the fourth night of December. We were at the dinner table. “Tonight, I was thinking. It would be something nice to do together.”

My father did it for the first time that year, a combination of a sigh and something muttered under his breath. His sole holiday tradition: The Christmas Grumble.

“The lot’s open until nine,” she said cheerfully, reaching over me for my plate.

“I have a lot of homework,” I said, my standard excuse, and my father kicked me under the table. If he was going, I was going.