Midwinter's Eve: Chapter Six
It's for a grade...
The classroom hums with pre-winter break restlessness. Backpacks slump against chair legs like they’re as tired as everyone else. Mrs. Delaney claps her hands once to quiet everyone.
“For your holiday assignment,” she says, “you’re going to write a letter. To anyone in the world. Real, fictional, alive, or long gone. Make it personal. Make it honest.”
The room groans. Someone mutters boring as a boy in the back asks if he can write to the cafeteria lady and complain about pizza Fridays. Laughter rolls and fades. Pencil tips tap. A radiator rattles once in the corner and then settles.
Eve sits tall in her seat. She likes assignments like this, crisp edges, clear rules, the quiet promise that if you put the right words in the right places, something good will happen.
“Pick someone who matters. And tell them something you wouldn’t say out loud,” Mrs. Delaney declares.
Eve leans toward her best friend, Emma. “Harry Styles,” she says, soft but certain.
Emma grins. “Obviously.”
“It’s for a grade,” Eve says, already flushing. “Not because he’s...”
“...gorgeous,” Emma finishes, delighted.
Eve rolls her eyes, but she can’t help the small smile. It’s not just that he’s gorgeous. It’s the way he looks at crowds like he actually sees people. It’s the way the songs sit right in the middle of the warmth and the ache and don’t apologize for either.
The bell rings. Chairs scrape. The room dissolves into voices and zippers. Eve slings her backpack over her shoulders and heads into the hall, already composing sentences in her head that will sound like admiration and definitely not like a crush.
At home, Eve’s room is a pool of lamplight in the early dark. Her desk is tidy: stacked notebooks, a mug with a chipped rim, two pens aligned like train tracks. She adjusts her glasses and writes in careful script.
Dear Harry,
You probably get a thousand letters a day, but I think mine has better handwriting.
She pauses, winces, and smiles at herself. Too much. She tries again, pencil a little lighter.
Dear Harry,
My teacher said to write to someone who matters. I picked you. Your songs are beautiful and emotional... bright and heavy at the same time. I like that you don’t hide either part.
Her heart lifts. That’s closer. She keeps going, the words loosening, her hand finding a rhythm.
Also, your style is, my mom says “too much,” but I think it’s exactly right. Pearls and cardigans aren’t brave because they’re loud; they’re brave because they’re honest. People at school try so hard to look like they don’t care. But you look like you do, and it makes other people feel allowed to care, too.
A smile tugs at her lips. The room is quiet except for the faint, clicking sound of the heater.
She leans back and reads it again, cheeks warm, pleased and mortified in equal measure. It’s a good kind of ridiculous, she decides.
From down the hall, a cupboard door thuds shut. Her mother’s voice rises and fades, the way it always does when she’s moving around the kitchen. The clink of a pot. The rattle of a drawer. Familiar, safe, ordinary sounds.
She laughs under her breath, thinking about what else to write, when a voice floats down the hall. Calm but careful.
She doesn’t catch the first words, only the shape of them. Then she hears a single word clearly, as if the room has leaned in to deliver it.
“Cancer.”
The word lands. The air suddenly feels colder. She hears the soft scrape of the wooden spoon against a pot.
Her mother answers, light and quick, the way people talk when they want the air to stay easy. Eve can’t make out the sentence. She hears her father again, quieter now.
Eve looks at the door. She waits. She listens. The voices drop, rise, drop again, a pattern she knows without knowing the words. She stands, the chair legs whispering against the rug, and moves toward the hallway, following the sound of her parents the way you follow a song you can’t yet name.
Eve’s socks whisper against the wood as she hears her mother’s voice, soft and steady, a little too bright around the edges.
“…it’s early. That’s what they said. Early.”
Then her father: “Early doesn’t mean small.”
Eve stops just before the doorway. Her fingers press into the wall. She can see the edge of her mother’s red sweater, her hair pulled back loosely, the glint of the wooden spoon she’s holding as she stirs something on the stove. Garlic and tomato fill the air. It smells like every night that’s ever felt safe.
Her father sits at the table, elbows on the wood. He shakes his head once, slow. “We’ll do what they said. The treatments...”
Her mother interrupts, quick. “It’s fine. Don’t make it sound worse than it is.” She drops the spoon against the pot rim with a bright little clink, as if punctuation could make it true. She turns to Eve. “Sweetheart! I didn’t hear you come down.”
She wipes her hands on a dish towel, smiling in a way that’s almost normal... almost.
Eve steps forward, pulse rising. “What’s going on?”
Her dad straightens in his chair and forces a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hey, kiddo. Nothing to worry about.”
Her mother cuts him a look, gentle but sharp, then exhales. “It’s… well. The doctor found something in one of my tests,” she says. Her voice steady.
“Cancer?” Eve asks. It sounds wrong in her mouth, too adult for her to be saying.
Her mom pauses, still smiling, and nods. “I know that sounds scary, but really, honey, it’s not a big deal. I’m going to be okay.”
Her dad’s jaw tightens. He nods, quickly, like an agreement he needs to believe and then reaches across the table and takes her mom’s hand. His thumb traces slow circles against her knuckles. It should look comforting. Instead, it looks like they’re both trying not to break.
Eve nods, because she doesn’t know what else to do. Her mother gives her a hug. “Now, go wash up. Dinner’s almost ready.”
Eve turns before they can see her face. Her breathing now shallow and fast. The smell of garlic feels too thick; the house’s warmth is suddenly heavy.
As she re-enters her room, she hears her parents again, her father’s low murmur, her mother’s lighter reply, and then the faint, awful sound of the spoon hitting the pot once more, rhythmic and steady, like someone pretending everything’s fine.
The dinner table looks exactly like it always does as her mother talks about grocery sales, the neighbor’s new wreath, and the way the post office is always out of tape this time of year. Her father nods, laughs in the right places, and tells a story about the man in his office who keeps setting the microwave on fire. They never once say the word “cancer.”
The sauce is garlicky and rich, but Eve can’t taste it. She twirls her fork in silence until the noodles collapse into a limp knot. She looks up at her mom, hair perfect, sleeves rolled neatly above her elbows. Her mom smiles at her, the same way she always does, except there’s something new behind it now. Something tired. Something scared.
“How’s your letter going?” her mom asks, voice light.
Eve blinks. “It’s fine.”
“Who’d you pick?” her dad asks, trying for normal.
Eve forces a half-shrug. “Harry Styles.”
Her mom lets out a soft laugh. “Of course.”
Eve stares at her plate. “It’s for a grade,” she mumbles.
Her mom leans forward, teasing. “Well, tell him I said thank you for inspiring my baby girl.”
Her mother’s laugh is the same shape as before, but quieter around the edges.
She wants to scream. She wants to shout, Stop pretending!
She wants them to say it out loud, Mom has cancer, we’re scared, we don’t know what’s going to happen!
But they don’t. They talk about wrapping paper and traffic and nothing at all.
Eve feels her throat close. Her fork clinks against the plate. “May I be excused?” she asks.
Her mom looks up. “You barely ate.”
“I’m not hungry.”
A pause. Then her father says, softly, “Okay, sweetheart.”
She stands, chair legs scraping the tile, and carries her plate to the sink.
Behind her, their voices pick up again, light, distant... as if she’s already left the room.
She dries her hands and doesn’t let herself cry until she’s halfway down the hall.
Eve closes her bedroom door behind her and leans against it, breathing hard.
Her desk lamp glows in its familiar circle, lighting the draft of her letter. The first lines stare up at her, girlish and bright.
You probably get a thousand letters a day, but I think mine has better handwriting.
The words look ridiculous now.
She picks up the paper, continues reading, and winces.
Also, your style is, my mom says, “too much,”
Her throat tightens. My mom.
Eve presses her lips together and tears the letter clean in half. Then in half again.
The sound is soft but satisfying.
She sits down slowly. The silence stretches.
Mrs. Delaney’s voice echoes in her head: “Real, fictional... Make it personal and honest.”
She glances around the room for inspiration, for anything that doesn’t feel hollow.
Her eyes catch on her vanity mirror.
Tucked into the corner of the frame is a photograph, her at six years old, sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall. Her mom is kneeling beside the chair, smiling at her, one hand resting lightly on Eve’s shoulder. The photo is slightly faded now, the edges curled, the colors soft.
She stares at it a long time. At her own small, gap-toothed grin. At her mom’s eyes, bright, alive, untouched by words like “treatment” or “chemo.”
Her chest tightens until it hurts.
“This is so stupid,” she mutters, turning back to the desk.
But she pulls a new sheet of paper toward her anyway.
The pencil feels heavier than it should. She presses it to the page, hesitates, and then writes:
Dear Santa,
I can’t believe I’m even doing this. It feels ridiculous. I’m thirteen, not a kid. You’re not real. You never were. But my teacher said I could write to anyone, real or imagined, so... here you are.
She pauses, rolls her eyes at herself, but keeps going.
I don’t even know what people used to write to you about. Cookies? Bikes? Toys? It all sounds so dumb now. But my mom...
Her hand stalls. She exhales hard through her nose.
My mom has cancer!! Everyone’s pretending it’s fine, but I know it’s not!! My parents won’t even say the word, but it’s everywhere! In their voices, in the way she stirs the sauce, in the way he watches her when she’s not looking. I hate it!!! I hate that it’s happening!! I hate that I can’t do anything!
The words come faster, harsher.
The pencil digs into the paper until her knuckles ache.
You’re supposed to make people happy, right? You’re supposed to fix things? So fix this. Just this one thing. Don’t bother with the rest of the world. Just make my mom better.
Her hand trembles.
The anger drains all at once. Her fingers ache. She feels emptied, almost hollow.
Tears fall before she can stop them, heavy, warm drops splashing onto the paper.
She presses her hands over her face, the sob catching in her throat before it breaks free.
For a moment, the only sound in the room is her uneven breathing.
Then she hears the slow rumble of a snowplow coming down the street.
A low scrape, the grind of metal against pavement.
She lifts her head. Through the window, she can see it passing, yellow lights flashing in the dark, snow tumbling through the air in thin, uncertain flakes.
Her tears slow.
She watches the flakes drift down and vanish into the thin white sheen on the street. The world looks softer through the blur, like it’s been erased just enough to start over.
She wipes her cheeks with her sleeve, stands, and presses her forehead lightly against the cold glass.
Down below, the snowplow turns the corner and disappears.
The snow keeps falling, patient and quiet.
She turns back toward her desk.
The photo on her vanity catches the lamplight again, her mother’s laugh frozen mid-breath, the faint sparkle of tinsel behind them. Eve stares at it until the memory unfurls on its own, gentle and vivid:
the bells, the scent of cookies, the warmth of her mother’s hand on her shoulder as she tried not to squirm in Santa’s lap, the flash of the camera, the way her mother said afterward, “You looked so happy, sweetheart.”
The memory pulls at something deep inside her, the part that used to believe without needing proof.
She sits down again, flips the paper over, and begins to write once more.
Her hand trembles as she begins again.
The words come slower now, uneven, as if they’re feeling their way out of her.
Santa,
I know you’re not real. I know it’s just a story. But I don’t know what else to do. And for some reason, it feels better to talk to you than to no one.
She pauses, the pencil tip resting against the paper.
The window glows faintly behind her, snow thickening, light from the streetlamp turning it gold. The house has gone still. Even the heater’s stopped its clicking.
I’m scared. I don’t know what happens next. Everyone keeps saying Mom’s going to be fine, but they said that about my friend Emily’s aunt too, and she wasn’t. I hate that I even know that. I hate that I can’t un-know it.
She stares at the photo on the vanity mirror, and something inside her cracks, not a sharp break, but a slow, aching release.
When she writes again, the tone changes. The words shrink, her handwriting looping softer, rounder, like the hand of a child.
I miss when things felt easy. When it snowed and it didn’t mean the roads were dangerous or appointments might get canceled. When I thought you really could make everything okay.
If you can still hear people like me, the older ones who aren’t supposed to believe anymore, please listen. Please keep her safe. Please make her better. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll even try to believe again, if that helps.
The pencil shakes to a stop.
She sits back, breathing in tiny, uneven pulls. The snow outside falls heavier now, soft flakes tumbling against the glass, slow and steady.
She reads the letter once more. The paper is blotched with tears, creased from where her hand pressed too hard. But it feels honest, and real.
Eve folds it carefully, smoothing the crease with her thumb, then slides the paper beneath the photograph on her vanity.
She stares at it a long moment, then turns toward the window.
The world beyond glows faint and gold, the kind of light that makes everything look softer, less cruel. She looks back at the photograph and at her and her mom, and then at Santa.
Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“Please.”
One word. Small. Honest.
Such a warm and heartfelt story for a young girl to experience written with so much feeling as though, you yourself, have gone through it. This is so important for ALL to read, both young and old. Thank you for sharing 💕