I join the choir at the local Catholic Church because of fond memories I’ve had from childhood. I’ll be singing in the Christmas Messiah, which I’m really excited about. (Yet, the evening of the performance ends in disaster for me when long-time skiing friends, Frank and Judy Jellinek – who are sitting in the front row of the church – refuse to acknowledge I breathe…when our eyes meet. I was thinking they could recognize the truth by now! And, I’m crushed.)

When Christmas rolls around I force myself to return to Michigan, to spend time with my family, leaving Idaho around the twenty third of December. “Perhaps something will heal?” I think to myself. The girls seem happy that I’ll be home, yet to me, Rick is acting like it’s his obligation to have me present. I suspect he’s telling my daughters something completely different.

When I show up at the airport, there is no one to greet me. I must take a cab to my home, a good hour and a half drive on the expressway and another hour down Haggerty Road, passing millions of trees naked of their leaves in freezing cold, violent “snain,” as the combination of snow and rain is lovingly called in Michigan.

When I walk into our home, which most would describe as a “Country English Mansion” on the lake, I see the huge twelve foot Christmas tree is up in the corner of the gigantic family room, exactly where it has always been placed for twenty-four years, decorated with ornaments I collected for eons, many from the time I was a child, and others the girls and I had collected marking each milestone of their lives.

My desk, in the huge gourmet kitchen, usually covered with neatly stacked papers, magazines, photo sleeves, and recipes…is completely cleared as if I were dead. I notice my beautiful sewing studio upstairs is piled with what use to be on my desk, and there’s more junk just strewn in the middle of the floor as if a crazy person went berserk. Of course, I know this has been done to display my insanity, yet Rick is the insane person who did it.