The night before Christmas Eve, Dez dreamed of the Queens apartment—not as tragedy, but as a room where his mother spun a tree beneath a low ceiling and laughed at the impossibility. In the dream she handed him scissors and said, "Trim the fear, baby. Leave the reaching." He woke with the words intact and wrote them on a grocery receipt so they would not dissolve. In the morning he taped the receipt inside the KEEP box lid. Wren saw him do it and asked no questions. Some rituals are private until they are ready to become shared.
When they carried the tree to the curb in January, needles trailing like a farewell parade, a neighbor from two floors down—Mrs. Okonkwo, who baked too much and shared compulsively—pressed a tin of cookies into Wren's hands and said, "Wherever you go, make the walls strange on purpose. Strange walls keep you honest." Wren hugged her. Dez promised to send a postcard from every strange wall. Gus pretended he had something in his eye.
Years later, when someone asked Dez why he always chose Christmas trees that challenged architecture, he would say it was hereditary, then smile, then add that he had friends who taught him how to lift with his knees and a woman who threatened his bangs with holy scissors and a life that finally fit because he stopped asking it to be small. He would not say it was simple. He would say it was worth the needles in the carpet, every time.
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By the following December they were not all under one lease, and that was all right. Wren's Los Angeles apartment had white walls she hated and a balcony she loved. Dez had taken a six-month trial at the Portland shop and discovered that misty winters suited his sweaters. Gus remained in New York, teaching, writing, sharing Thai takeout with Elena in a walk-up that collected drafts like other places collected dust. They spoke constantly—long distance charges be damned—and in early December Dez flew south and Gus flew west and the three of them, plus Elena for the western leg, met in Wren's too-small living room with a fir tree Dez had selected from a lot near the freeway, a tree that scraped the ceiling fan and made Wren threaten bangs again with scissors that had traveled in her purse for exactly this liturgy.
"Nobody panic," Dez said, grinning, dragging the thing through the door while neighbors stared. "It shrinks when it warms up."
Wren raised one eyebrow, honey-blonde hair catching the California winter light that was not snow and still somehow festive. "Trees don't shrink, Dez."