By the time I pulled into the driveway of my mom’s house, the trip had taken an hour longer than it should have and a full-on snowstorm was working through the mountains. I jogged up to the front door and rang the bell. I did a double take when my mom pulled open the door. It was one in the afternoon, she still had her pajamas on, and she was holding a half-empty wineglass in her hand. As she swayed slightly and glared at me, I didn’t believe for one second it was her first glass of the day, and that made my stomach drop.

“What are you doing here, Saint?”

There was no welcome in her tone, so I maneuvered past her and walked into the house. Before the split, she would have pulled me into her arms and hugged the life out of me whether I needed it or not. She would have asked me about work and my dating life. Now she looked irritated that I had crashed her pity party.

“Faith called me. She told me about the fire and I thought I should come and check on you. We’re worried about you, Mom.” I fought the urge to reach for her drink so I could dump it out.

She scoffed at me and slammed the door shut. I winced when some of the wine in her glass sloshed over her hand.

“You should be worrying about yourself, Saint.”

We might not have the kind of mother-daughter relationship where we were the best of friends, but my mom had never purposely lashed out at me in anger before. I reached out and snatched the wineglass out of her hand and stomped to the kitchen. Stung and annoyed by both her tone and her attitude.

“You shouldn’t be drinking anything alcoholic while you’re on so many different medications. This is ridiculous, Mom. You want to push me away by being purposefully nasty and by trying to force Faith to choose between you and Dad. You’re making this situation harder on everybody. The stunt with the fire …” I shook my head at her. “Is that a desperate cry for attention? Who did you think was going to swoop in and save you if you got arrested for arson? Dad? Well, I hate to break the news to you, but he’s moved on and so should you. Faith and I love you, Mom. That should be enough.”

She ground her teeth together and glared at me. Her eyes were glassy and she was even more unsteady on her feet than I thought. It sucked to see her this way, but it strengthened the idea that opening yourself up to someone else just to have them hurt you in the end was such an awful idea.

“What do you know about anything, Saint? You’ve never had love ripped away from you, never even had a man of your own. I feel empty inside.”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth and tried to remember that this was the wine and pills talking, but she was pushing the limits of what I was going to tolerate. I was going to tell her in no uncertain terms to knock it the hell off when she suddenly burst into tears and teetered over to the massive island in the center of the kitchen. She curled her hands around a stack of papers I didn’t notice before and waved them around in the air between us. I saw a sheen of glossy tears coat her wild eyes.

“I got the final divorce papers in the mail last weekend, and on top of that, your sister let the kids spend the weekend with him and that … that woman. How could she do that to me? She knows how I feel about his new girlfriend being my family. I just lost it. I literally went a little crazy.”

She was breathing really hard and looked so jagged and frayed around the edges that I had to walk over and wrap my arm around her too-thin shoulders. I felt an additional pang of alarm. She was shaking really hard and I felt like I could actually touch her sadness. This is what loving someone unconditionally ended you up with. I never wanted to be here.

“That had to be really hard, Mom. And I understand that you’re hurting, but almost burning down the house isn’t going to change any of it. There has to be a healthier way for you to deal with what you’re feeling because I don’t think claiming temporary insanity is going to keep you out of the hot seat for very long.”

She peeked out between her fingers at me and I winced at the makeup smeared across her normally pretty face. She looked like a drunken and demented clown. I wanted my mom back, wanted my family to be like it was. Unfortunately, that was no longer an option.

“What should I do, Saint? Pretend like your father doesn’t exist even though he lives in the same town and is flaunting his new, younger, prettier girlfriend in my face every chance he gets? You tell me, Ms. Smarty Pants, what should I do that’s healthier than what I’m doing now?”

I let her shoulder go and moved back around to the other side of the island. Mostly I needed a little space to avoid wringing her neck. I hated that it was so easy for her to be mean now.

“I don’t really know the answer to that, Mom. Maybe you just need some space away from it, away from them.”

She snorted and tossed her head back to wipe her cheeks off with the back of her hand. All she succeeded in doing was making a bigger mess. She looked absurd and miserable.

“You ran away when it happened to you, Saint. You didn’t come back for holidays or to visit, not for anything. All because you wanted to get away from a boy and hurt feelings. When college was done you took the first job you could find out there when all your family was here. Even when Faith started having all those babies, it wasn’t enough to bring you home. Try and tell me all about the healthy ways of dealing with things, Saint, go right ahead.”

I blew out a breath and curled my hands into fists on the marble top of the island. That was a low blow. She was on a roll and there was no getting through to her, and if I kept trying to reason with her while she was in this state, there was going to be irreversible damage done to our relationship, and as irritated as I was at her childish behavior, I didn’t want that to happen. Part of the reason I was back in Colorado was to work on things with my mom, not to drive us further apart.

“Mom, the holidays are right around the corner. Try and pull it together or no one is going to want to spend time together as a family. I know this has been hard for you, that Dad disappointed you and broke your heart, but life goes on. It’s going on two years, something has to give.” I was used to my family being a safe zone not a war zone, and the change was horrible.

She groaned and gave me a hard look through her watery eyes. For the last couple of years we had done Christmas Eve with Dad and Christmas Day with her. It seemed to work all right, even if no one was comfortable with Dad’s new girlfriend and Mom spent the entire next day lambasting us for spending time with them. I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat and I doubted Faith was either. A nice family get-together just wasn’t in the cards, though.

“Try and remember that it should be about family and the kids this year. Look, the roads are bad. I wanted to see you and check in. I’m worried about you for real, Mom, that fire should have been a wake-up call. You need to really evaluate what you are doing to yourself and what that is doing to the rest of the family. I really don’t want to have to bail you out of jail, or something even worse.”

I gave her one last hug and headed back toward the front door. All I could hope for was that maybe somehow my words had penetrated, that the fact that Faith and I still loved her like crazy would make up for the fact my dad no longer did. Maybe instead of just telling her to get some space, I should try and make it happen. I had plenty of vacation time saved up: maybe I should try and drag her to the Hot Springs for a long weekend or something. I just felt like she needed some kind of clarity to get back to where she was before my dad had devastated her. I got back in the Jetta, which by now had a pretty thick layer of snow coating it, and started the motor to let it warm up. While I was waiting I found a Pixies song I liked on my iPod and called my sister.

It took a few rings for her to answer, and when she did she sounded harried and out of breath.

“How was she?”

I was rubbing my hands together to keep them warm and just grunted a response.

“That bad?”

I sighed heavily and turned on the windshield wipers to clear away the fluffy white blanket covering the windshield.

“She’s a mess of pills and wine. She’s being mean and hateful. I don’t know anything because I’m a coward and left after high school and didn’t come home right after college.” With Faith, I let the sarcasm get as thick as the snow. “She’s lost her mind, but the final divorce papers came, so it’s officially over. That’s what inspired the bonfire. Honestly, I’m kind of worried about her, but I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“Shit.”

“Pretty much. Christmas should be fun this year.”

There was a really long silence on the other end of the phone that made me frown.

“What’s up, Faith?”

She muttered something again and let out a deep sigh. “I’m tired, Saint. I’m pregnant, I have a bunch of little kids that deserve an awesome Christmas for once, and a long-suffering husband that has finally reached his limit of my family drama. Justin and I are taking the kids to Aspen for Christmas. Mom and Dad are just going to have to deal with it. You’re welcome to escape with us if you want, but we just rented a tiny cabin and you’ll have to take a sleeping bag and bunk on the floor with Owen.”

I curled my hands around the steering wheel and tried to settle myself. I couldn’t say the news surprised me, but still it nipped at me. Faith was the one person I always relied on, who was always there for me even when I lived half a country away. She deserved a peaceful family holiday away from all the nonsense, but that meant I would be alone … because there was no way in hell I was tackling my parents and all their resentment and insanity on my own. No way.