Part 1
Sukkot to Thanksgiving
Chapter 1
Miriam
When Miriam Blum’s life changed forever, she was holding a chain saw in both hands, a bottle of glitter glue between her teeth, and standing in an empty warehouse over an antique bed frame.
The warehouse was mostly dust, painted concrete, and fluorescent lights, but soon it would be the flagship storefront for Blum Again Vintage & Curios, her online antique upcycling business. The old naval shipyard of Charleston was the perfect spot for its first ever physical space. As part of the up-and-coming arts destination, it would be a place for people to find, as her window promised, “What You Never Knew You Always Needed.”
She’d just flown back to Charleston this morning from a whirlwind trip to spend Sukkot with some friends, and to check in on her network of Old Ladies who owned antique and junk shops. They kept her supplied with weird vintage things she chainsawed, decoupaged, and hot-glued into art pieces that were shockingly popular on Pinterest. At the moment, she was waiting on a potentially haunted doll for a client in Huntington and some brooches she was going to make into the skirt of a life-sized ballerina.
Her phone played a dirge from the pocket of her dress—her mother’s ringtone. Setting down the chain saw, she walked outside to take the call, not wanting to get her mother’s energy in this space. The dread that always accompanied speaking to her mother coalesced uneasily with the realization that it wasn’t their designated time to check in. Miriam couldn’t handle more than one phone call a month, which her mother knew—even if she never acknowledged it. If the schedule had changed, something bad must have happened.
“Mom, what’s wrong? It’s not our Friday,” she said, instead of hello.
“Well,” her mother said primly, “if you would accept my calls any time other than Shabbos…” She trailed off, her guilt trip hanging heavy in the air. Miriam didn’t feel guilty. Her mom knew why their relationship was relegated to fifteen carefully curated minutes a month.
“Mom. Why. Are. You. Calling?” Miriam asked, again. She kicked an acorn across the street, watching it skitter.
“Cass died, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.” Her mom’s voice broke on the last word.
Miriam gasped, her heart clenching.
Despite not having seen her in ten years, Cassiopeia Carrigan was the North Star in Miriam’s life, her role model and hero. Her mother’s aunt was the gray sheep of her family. She’d walked away from the family’s booming bakery business to open, of all things, a Christmas tree farm. More than that, the property was a Christmas extravaganza, with a tree farm, a Christmas-themed inn, and a two-month-long festival full of every Christmas tradition ever invented. An immersive Christmasland experience.
“I’m still Jewish,” Cass would explain. “I just couldn’t find another job where I only had to talk to people two months out of the year.” Cass was An Eccentric. Every winter break, her parents had taken Miriam to Carrigan’s Christmasland for the world’s least traditional Hanukkah.
“Miri? You still there?” Her mother’s voice cut through her memories. She sounded exhausted and broken, two things Miriam would have said her mother was incapable of feeling.
“How?” Miriam asked, trying to wrap her mind around the idea of anything taking out the human tornado that had been Cass Carrigan as Miriam knew her.
Her mother took in a sharp breath. “She was sick for a long time, Miri. Years. We thought she was getting better, but she had a relapse, and she was gone fast.”
Cass Carrigan, her Cass, had been sick and no one told her, so that she could say goodbye. In the lifelong list of her mother’s betrayals, this one was worse than most.
“When is the service? I want to sit shiva. I’ll be there, even”—she tried not to choke on the words—“if Dad is coming.” Her mother was silent for a beat.
“I’ll text you all the details,” she said, finally.
Just like that, it was settled. Miriam would fly back to the place she’d been avoiding for a decade. She told the voice in her head screaming in panic that it would be fine.
She’d spent every Christmas, and some summers, at Carrigan’s. She’d thrived under Cass’s love—a heat lamp compared to the frigid conditions of her house—running wild through the trees with her cousin Hannah and their childhood best friend, Levi. Being safe, for little pockets of time, from the worst of her father’s behavior. Until her dad finally went too far, and she’d stopped going anywhere near her family—anywhere he’d ever been. There hadn’t been goodbyes or any explanation for the people she’d left behind.
Miriam had kept in touch, sort of, with a happy birthday text here, a letter there, sometimes sending a flower arrangement for the High Holy Days. Nothing that went past the surface. She’d never meant for her absence to be permanent. She’d just needed some time.
“Next year, at Carrigan’s” was her tiny private version of “Next year, in Jerusalem.” She’d always thought,Next year, I’ll have the courage. Next year, I’ll stop running, and go home to my family. But she’d always seemed to have a good reason to put it off, and now it was too late. Now, the only thing left was to say the goodbye she hadn’t said ten years ago.
Miriam locked up the warehouse and began walking home, hoping the long meander through the old city would help sort out her thoughts. Her mind raced as she tried to figure out how to fit a trip to New York into her current life. The storefront’s grand opening wasn’t until New Year’s Eve, but she would have to be back in Charleston as soon as shiva ended to prepare.
On top of the store opening, her fiancée, Tara, hosted or attended a seemingly never-ending stream of social events. Miriam was expected to appear at them all and schmooze. She didn’t know how Tara would react to her having to leave, even for a short time. Probably not well. Tara’s life was impeccably planned, and any variation perturbed her.
The tight schedule was good. No matter how nuclear things went at Carrigan’s, she had reasons to come back to Charleston immediately. An escape plan. At worst, she would have a really bad week dealing with everything she’d left behind, but it would only be a week.
Charleston’s Historic District was a town of ghosts, held at bay by the haint blue painted around doors and under porches. Horse-drawn tourist carriages clogged narrow streets, winding past the market that stretched for blocks, where you could buy artisan goods, Gullah-Geechee baskets, and so much food. Master builders renovated historic homes, churches older than the country flew Pride flags from their wrought iron fences, restaurants did molecular gastronomy takes on shrimp and grits.
It was a city full of people trying to tie their roots to their futures. Miriam, who had severed nearly all her roots and was making her future up as she went, was drawn to that. Charleston was a perfect place to lick her wounds, hide out, build a new version of herself that none of her family knew. The polar opposite of Carrigan’s, which had built her and knew all her secrets. Charleston wasn’t home, exactly, but it was a hell of a lot safer than Carrigan’s.