Kate has to clean the attic and the basement. They’ve been on her to-do list for far too long, and she’s always put them off. There always seems to be something else to do, and now that she’s an empty nester, she finally has the time to do those other things. Still, there’s Christmas decorations that need to be found and hung up. She flicks through her mail: junk, junk, bill that should have been an email, a Christmas card? There’s a faint hope that rises in her chest that Kevin’s finally reaching out to her, and she doesn’t even care if it’s a shitty gas station card and a stamp from somewhere that’s so smudged she can’t read it, she tears open the envelope with her heart in her throat. The card is definitely a shitty gas station one, and the card practically tears as she opens it to find words written in thick black marker:
Her heart and hopes dashed, Kate frowns, cleans her eyes and sniffs as she tries to look at the card’s sender. The back of the envelope is blank, no return address, and there’s not even a name in the card itself. It’s weird, even if it’s an advertising thing or political message, it’s just weird.
Her phone rings, startling her. Since she’s alone, she laughs to herself and tries to dismiss the whole thing as she answers her phone.
“Buzz. Oh, sweetie, it’s good to hear from you! How was your Thanksgiving?”
“Yeah, it was good, Mom. How… uh, how was yours?” Buzz sounds hesitant, but Kate’s still thrown off by the card and doesn’t notice.
“Oh, you know, the usual. I went to volunteer, had dinner with a few ladies from the book club. Oh, and I visited your father and left some fresh flowers. It’s nice to see him over holidays. He always ate that cranberry sauce out of the can, and… well, we all know how much he loved Christmas. I thought we could go visit together when we go caroling.”
There’s a pause. Buzz sighs. “Look, Mom, I can’t make it this year. Fee’s parents bought us tickets to Dollywood; it’s right over Christmas. I know how much you look forward to seeing us and the kids, and I’m real sorry about this, Mom. You know how much Fee loves Dolly; she’s been excited about it since they told us. She’s already packing for it and hasn’t even looked at the dates,” he says with a fond smile.
In the background, Kate can hear her daughter-in-law singing 9 to 5, loudly and badly. Fiona’s as tone deaf as a pole, but she enjoys singing and Buzz loves her, so Kate doesn’t complain about needing to wear ear plugs when they go caroling. It’s not the point that they’re the only ones who come back to visit, that she has friends but somehow no family, and a giant house she can’t bring to sell.
“I know it’s short notice; Christmas is only next week - “
“Buzz, sweetie, it’s all right. That’s a lovely present, and you need to go and have fun with Fiona and the kids. I need to see all of the photos when you get back. Remember, don’t post them on Facebook while you’re out or - “
“People will know we’re gone and try to break in,” Buzz finishes along with her. “Everyone knows thieves are online now, Mom.”
Kate swallows her argument, swallows her fear. Thieves can take so much more than things, material goods, and money. Sometimes, they can take family, too.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay, Mom?”
It will be her first Christmas completely alone. She has no idea how Kevin did it twice when he was so young, too young, and never the same again afterwards. Even going cross-country, trying her damnedest and filled with pure desperation to get home to her son, she still had others surrounding her for company or brief comfort.
“I’ll be fine, Buzz. In fact, I’ve already got plans,” she lies with a chipper expression.
“You do? Oh, that’s great, Mom. I’ll send you photos and I’ll make sure to post them on Facebook after we get back, okay?”
“Okay. Good, I’m glad. Enjoy. Merry Christmas, Buzz.”
Kate ends the call and looks at her reflection in the entryway mirror. She looks older than she feels, the chipper expression fading as she faces the long, cold, and lonely holiday ahead. She closes her eyes, inhales, exhales, and opens her eyes. Determined not to wallow and feel sorry, Kate suddenly finds that she does have plans: the house needs to be cleaned and culled, and God help her, the attic and basement will get cleaned out by New Year’s Eve or else. Starting with the trash in her hands, she decides, stalking to the kitchen to throw out the cheap card.
Kevin wakes up after noon, decides to sleep some more, and then does so with the same relish he had as an eight-year-old at home alone. A noise wakes him up an hour later, and he’s less grateful for the interrupted sleep as he gets out of bed, running a hand through his hair as he yawns, scratches, and heads over to his computer. The noise is an alert that bypasses any silencing features he has setup while he’s sleeping, and it’s one he never hoped to hear.
It’s a news alert for the Sticky Bandits - their mugshots in the article, complete with tarred feathers and an iron brand - show that they’ve been released from prison. The article talks about reformation and good behaviour, nothing that matches with his memory of men who tried to kill him twice. There’s a newer photo of them further down, and it’s not reformation he sees in their eyes, it’s revenge.
Kevin tries to set aside the immediate reaction. He’s reading too much into this, too paranoid and mistrustful of adults - even though he technically is one now - and he needs to put it aside. Maybe they have reformed, and they’ll volunteer at a church or, better still, be on house arrest and unable to leave whatever God-forsaken neighbourhood they’ve been sent to.
He swears, runs a hand over his face, and then does a search for their names. It’s far beyond a Google search, but he’s good at this, finding loopholes, finding security hazards, and people pay him upwards of six-figures for a week of his time and security measures both in person and online. He finds Harry and Marv’s Facebook profiles easily enough, despite them not using their actual names or photos. Their private conversations - even the “secret” ones - have several references to the Sticky Bandits, references to “that damn kid” and various things they plan to do for revenge, everything they’d discussed in prison right there in blue and white. It’s embarrassingly easy to find out their idea of revenge, and Kevin swears again when he sees a photo of his mother. It’s taken at a distance, and they’re discussing how she’s alone, how the big ol’ house is still full of expensive things, and all it’ll take is some duct tape and a sturdy chair this time around.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucking fuckers.”
He hasn’t spoken to his mother since he first walked out of that house with a bag over his back, a laptop under his arm, and a taxi waiting to take him as far as his first paycheck - certainly not six figures then - could take him. Buzz’s parting shot of being an ungrateful shit hit him right in the back, between the shoulder blades and through to his heart, just like Buzz always managed to do. Kevin hadn’t told them about Harry and Marv the first time or second time around, though his father asked about a gold tooth, and his mother mentioned she could never find some of her favourite Christmas ornaments after that first year.
He never told them, but those events changed him in several deep and damaging ways, and they never quite knew what to say or how to handle him. Hell, Kevin didn’t know how to handle himself, either. Now that he’s older, he recognises that he lashed out and he hates how he acted back then, but he still can’t get the nerve or guts to call his mother to apologise. He’d rather face two homicidal maniacs than his mother and the conversation they’d need to have.
This year, it looks like he might have to face both.
Kevin wants to curse again, sighs instead. He closes his search and tries to find a goddamn flight halfway across the country, less than a week left ‘til Christmas, and the weather as foul as it ever has been this time of year.
Kate’s resolve weakens as she goes through Peter’s clothes. Her eyes are teary as she runs her hand over familiar jackets, shirts, trousers. Even his shoes, the laces all tied because he always kicked off his shoes rather than bothering to bend and untie them every time.
Maybe the extra movement might have stopped his eventual heart attack, she thinks, a stupid little thought she’s had over the years, wondering what she could have done or said or how she could have delayed her husband’s death. She misses Peter so damned much, gone in a way that her absent children aren’t, yet both of the absences feeling just as final as the other some days. Kate lets out a shuddering breath as she starts to remove his clothes and sort them into piles for donation or discard.
The car’s full of bags and boxes in two days, and she spends the third day in the garage. The garage will take far more time than she’s anticipated, and Kate sets aside Kevin’s box of toy guns and plastic green army men, among other things. She’d rather the basement or attic, and leaves Kevin’s box alone. One day, he might come home for them.
It’s a lie she likes to tell herself every now and then, just like Peter bending to untie his shoes would have made a difference, but Kate doesn’t have the heart to think about the alternative. The thought of never seeing her son again makes her heart break all over again, and it takes all her strength and willpower to continue cleaning out the garage. She finds an old iron she thought she’d somehow lost and long ago replaced, though she has no idea why it’s tied to a light bulb.
There’s a blizzard and weather reports predict it will last several days. It’s stopped all flights in and out of Chicago while Kevin was on route to that very place, and now he’s in the middle of Nowhere, capital of Nowhere, with no way to get home.
He did a job for the military, someone there owes him a favour, surely. Hell, he could call several people for favours, but this is personal. Harry and Marv are two-bit criminals, but they’re mean and cruel, and they’re going after his mother. Even after all this time, she still posts a Christmas tree photo on Facebook with his name at Christmas, like she thinks he’s following her account. (He is. She doesn’t know.)
His desperation and fear have him blurting out the story to the stranger who’d been next to him on the plane. Her name’s Joan and she’s the Polka Queen of the Midwest. He swears he can hear her capitalising the words as she speaks. Wearing polka dots is certainly a thing she seems intent on doing, but then she starts her band playing, and somehow, Kevin ends up accepting a ride in their rental truck. They’re going from wherever they are in West Virginia to Dollywood, of all places. It’s another 8 hours to get from Chicago from there, but the roads are clearer, and he can call in one of those favours to get a suitable car. It’s certainly better than this place.
Joan stays by him for the ride, keeping him company, and coaxing conversation out of him in a way that not even his trauma therapist could do some days. Kevin tells her, haltingly, about some of the things he’d done as a kid. To redeem himself, to protect his house and family, the things he did after New York when he kept seeing short and bald or tall and curly-haired strangers and almost went after one with a knife.
He shot his Uncle Frank with a pellet gun, and doesn’t entirely regret that because Frank’s a dick, but… well, his relationship with his dad had never been the same after that, especially on top of the bill from New York’s finest hotel. They’d sold all of the presents he’d been given to pay for it, and it still didn’t cover everything with the credit card’s interest.
Kevin tells her about his job, how he hacks companies’ security for money, yet all of that money’s got him nothing and nowhere. He tells Joan how difficult it is to make friends as an adult, even when they’re not reclusive like him, and how he knows what it’s like to set someone on fire.
Joan just looks at him for a long, long moment. “You know, you remind me of my cousin. Alex had a buncha stories like that, too, when he was younger. He’s in the Air Force now. Does something with chips, how he tells it. You got cousins?”
“Yeah, Frank procreated to give the world bed-wetters and tattletales,” Kevin snorts.
“Whereas your parents gave the world you,” Joan says, nudging him and looking far too friendly for Kevin to be offended.
The trip ends - far too close to Dollywood for Kevin’s liking - and he gives her a business card: Turtledove with an email address. He doesn’t give them to just anyone, and he’s pleased to see Joan tuck it away in her purse with the promise of getting her cousin to contact him.
Kevin turns to leave, to find a hotel, a car, or food, and that’s when he bumps into Buzz and his family.
Kate wakes up duct taped to a chair. It takes a moment for her to figure out what’s going on, hears a snicker of laughter from the next room over, and remembers opening the door to carolers. Except it wasn’t carolers, it was two men with a radio, and her head aches.
She’s in the garage, and they’ve taped her to an old chair she’d put aside to throw out because it was broken. Kate feels unsteady even without the broken seat beneath her, and takes a moment to breathe, relax her body, and then start rubbing the duct tape against the jutting piece of metal that’s bent out of shape.
Criminals are in her house, she has no idea where her phone is, and the old landline is probably sitting in a box somewhere. There’s an old telephone plug down here - Peter originally planned on using the basement as an office - and she hunts through the boxes as carefully and quietly as she can. She’ll call the police, tell them she’s being robbed, and -
She opens Kevin’s box. There’s a gun in there, a toy thing he’d begged for when Buzz had gotten one that same year, and the very same one that had been confiscated by Peter after Kevin had shot Frank. The box contains far more than just old toys, though. There’s blueprints, drawings, matches and tar and a few stray feathers, and as Kate unfolds a newspaper article, she sees the same men she’d opened the door to only minutes or perhaps hours ago.
The blueprints tell her everything that Kevin’s hidden throughout the house on his various projects - she knew he hadn’t needed those tin cans for a Science project that had never actually seen the light of day - and she wonders how on earth Kevin managed to saw a floorboard without them noticing or stepping on the damn thing themselves.
There’s no point finding a phone; the police won’t come with the blizzard going the way it is, and even if they do, they won’t be fast enough to stop the thieves that are already pocketing her mother’s jewellery and Peter’s watches. Kate has a house to defend.
Kevin doesn’t know why Buzz believes him. He doesn’t know why he accepts the ride from Buzz, who leaves Fiona and their three kids to continue on to Dollywood without him. He doesn’t know why they spend three hours in absolute silence on the trip to Chicago.
They have a brief stop for a bathroom break - Buzz gets soda and chips like it’s a fucking road trip - and Kevin loses it.
The next three hours aren’t quiet. Kevin unleashes verbal hell on his older brother, drags him through mud and coal and dirt, and then back again. Buzz, oddly, is quiet throughout his tirade. Kevin could be talking to a brick wall for all that Buzz is responding, but at least he’s still driving to Chicago without stopping.
Eventually, Kevin’s voice wears down and he has to stop talking because everything hurts. His throat, his head, his eyes, his heart. Everything aches.
The words echo another apology, practically a lifetime ago, but this time it’s sincere. Buzz must realise he’s said the same words he did on that night, and winces, then continues with a more heartfelt apology. He apologises for riling and pranking Kevin continuously, jealous of his younger brother getting a solo and attention, angry that he would be leaving for college and his family behind, terrified of the future, and dealing with it all in the only way he knew how: to be a bit of a prick.
Kevin laughs, which hurts his throat, but it’s better than screaming again.
They have another bathroom break - Kevin buys a few extra supplies, including a lighter, jockey straps, and a portable camper. Then he adds a bag of chips and a drink - and spend the rest of the trip talking in gentler voices, trying to catch up a decade of life and living in two hours.
Kevin gets quieter as they near the house. Buzz has to concentrate on the roads, so he falls silent too, and it’s just them on the roads with snow for company.
Suddenly, there’s a bright flash of light from up ahead - kerosene, he’d bet his last paycheck on it - and Kevin lets out a whooping cry of laughter and surprise because Mom’s found his tin can stash.
Buzz pulls up to the house, skidding on snow and sleet and ice, and they both run the best they can to the front door.
Kate spins around, armed with hairspray and the stove lighter, and almost sets her sons on fire. Buzz’s eyes are wide as he takes in the two destroyed thieves behind her, both groaning and bleeding, burned, and beaten in several ways. His eyes widen further as he takes in the state of the house that’s just as destroyed. Kevin just stares at his mother. Kate stares back at him - Kevin had sworn to never be in the same room as Buzz for the rest of his life, and she can see Buzz’s car getting filled with snow outside with two open doors - and she smiles hesitantly.
“Merry Christmas, Kevin.”
Buzz can’t believe what he’s seeing when his little brother calls a favour and fifteen minutes later, two choppers arrive. The thieves are taken away, swearing their revenge, and the taller one calling something about a Christmas calling card.
Kevin sits beside Buzz, offers him the chips and drink, and grins. “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal.”
Buzz rolls his eyes. “Those were the worst movies. I hated them.”
“Yeah, I know. Eat up before the shock sets in. I’ll call on some friends to help fix the house.”
The fact that Kevin has friends is just as much of a shock as the state of their house, really.
Buzz and Kate wake up the next morning to a perfectly decorated house. Kevin looks like he spent the entire night cleaning everything single-handedly, but they both see a black van leaving with some tinsel hanging out of the back.
There’s food - much smaller with only three - and at Kevin’s request, they get dressed to visit Dad now that the snow’s settled. Buzz’s car is only a little damp, and they head up to the cemetery with flowers and a slowly-repairing relationship between them. It’s not the worst way to spend Christmas Day.
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