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It’s been weeks since Buck had last heard from Maddie with a phone-call in the middle of the night. The same phone call that had him send Chimney after her on a trail to Boston, Massachusetts.
And Buck knows how crazy it must’ve sounded—that he’d heard some church bells ringing in the distance, and jumped to the conclusion that his sister was on the east coast—but he’d never been so sure of anything else in his whole life. He knew she had to be there. Maddie had told him before how much she loved it in Boston; it had all of the seasons of their hometown with none of the parental baggage, and if she needed to get away from Los Angeles then it made sense to pick a familiar spot that was three-thousand miles in the other direction (and still a good three- hundred miles or so from their parents).
She’s there Hen, Buck had insisted a few days later, when she’d mentioned her phone call with Chimney, I just know it.
But Buck hadn’t heard much of anything since, and now he’s sitting on his sofa, with his small box of Christmas decorations sitting abandoned at his feet, spiralling.
The festive season had really snuck up on him this year. He’d worked through Halloween and Thanksgiving—eager to volunteer to cover shifts to keep from addressing the elephant in the room—and time seemed to only exist as far as to tell him what shift he was working that day. The rest of it was just this nebulous mist that kept him unsettled and flailing. It was getting easier and easier to shrug and say that he was fine, to keep quiet, to keep everything behind a wall... Put it away. Put it away and save the next one.
But then last night Eddie had sent a photograph of his Christmas tree to the group chat, which had started a chain reaction of everyone else doing the same. Athena had even forwarded a photo from May of her miniature Christmas tree in a plant-pot, set up in her new apartment.
Where’s yours, Buck? Bobby had asked after the significant delay made it clear he was unlikely to join in.
Really, it’s his own fault. He was always the first to don a Santa hat at the Annual LAFD Toy Drive, always the one to beg to come along when people were picking their Christmas Trees, even though by now he knew he had an open invitation to every single one, so the begging was wholly unnecessary.
Luckily Christopher had sent him a drawing via his father as the messenger, and so Buck had snapped a quick photograph of the sprawling Christmas tree, coloured in green-marker with its red and yellow and blue presents sat underneath—that was currently pinned to his fridge—and that had kept everyone distracted, buying him some time to make a little effort in his own loft to avoid an intervention.
Which is why he’d dug the box of decorations out from the back of his storage cupboard in the first place. And why he was currently sat, staring at them all as though he didn’t even recognise what they were for. He’d been halfway through unfurling a tangled set of lights when he’d seen them; the pile of handmade bows that Maddie had presented to him last year, sitting forlorn at the bottom of the box.
He’d reached out for them, as memory after memory of childhood Christmases rushed forward to the forefront of his mind—and in every one Maddie was there by his side; playing games, singing songs, dragging him out of bed in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to show him the boot-prints that Santa had left in the snow. Can you see them Evan? I told you he was real.
The velvet ribbons slip through his fingers; and the soft curled material floats down back into the box. He runs his hands through his hair, before pressing his palms into his eyes for a moment. He wonders if Maddie heard him start to say I love you before the line cut out on their last phone call. He hopes she knows. He hopes she’s safe, and warm, and that she has someone to talk to. He hopes she’s okay, even though he knows things aren’t as simple as that. He hopes, he hopes—
The ache in his chest builds like an awful weight pressing down on him, and he jumps to his feet to try and shake away the feeling. He starts to pace the length of the apartment, and even though he knows it’ll hurt all the more—he gets out his phone and dials Maddie’s number, just to hear her voice, before the automated message interrupts to remind him that he can’t say a damn thing after the beep because her inbox is full.
You can’t come with me Buck , Maddie had told him that day before she left. I need to—I need to do this on my own.
Buck wonders if there was anything more he could have said then to make her stay. Maybe he should have tried harder. Or told Chimney what had happened sooner. Maybe he should have said something when he’d come over to spend time with her and Jee-Yun over the summer before the blackout. He could see then that there was something wrong, something going on, but no one was saying anything and he didn’t want to be difficult. He didn’t want to crowd her. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing. He’d been trying to give his sister space to come to him in her own time, in her own way.
And technically she had.
She’d come to him to say goodbye.
And even though he’d convinced himself that it was temporary, that she was going to be okay because she always was—it had still taken every ounce of his self control not to run after her.
Ever since then Buck had been desperately trying to keep everyone together, to honour his sister’s wishes, to keep Chimney and Jee happy and safe until he could convince Maddie to come home... but he’d failed on all accounts. And he was still failing. Eddie had told him, not unkindly, that his failing had been inevitable, and so he’d sat back. He’d waited, and the second he had an idea of where Maddie might be, he’d told Chimney so that he could be the one to bring her home.
(So what if he kept checking to see what flights were leaving for Logan Airport out of LAX every other day. That was his business.)
And if there’s one thing Buck knows for certain, it’s that he can’t go any longer without news. He can’t just sit around staring at bows and lights and tinsel all day, and pretend like everything isn’t slowly going to shit.
He tries Chimney’s phone, but it goes straight to voicemail and he hangs up before the message even gets halfway.
He needs something . He needs a sign, and he’s not going to find one here, hanging white paper snowflakes up in his kitchen, so he grabs his keys, with every intention of dropping in on Bobby and Athena to ask for their help. He takes the stairwell, skipping over as many steps as he dares to get him to ground level faster, but when he makes it to the foyer, he almost collides with a life size nutcracker soldier, and he can’t help but be a little taken aback at what he sees.
It’s.... very Christmassy. To say the least.
There are multicoloured lights strung up from every corner of the space, all trailing towards the largest light in the centre of the ceiling. There’s a brightly lit star hanging down, that gently swings and twirls in the light breeze that happens each time one of his neighbours comes or goes through the front door. There are green garlands tucked around almost every surface, with small red berries peeking out amidst their leaves, and there are little ceramic trees spread out like a small forest on top of the rows of mailboxes beside the fire exit. There’s a thin layer of glitter on almost everything Buck can see, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up trailing it all around the greater Los Angeles area for the next month and a half.
“My favourite season,” a voice says with a chuckle, and Buck looks up from where he’d been reading the sign that said ‘ Santa, please stop here’ , to see a man standing there, half blocking the exit with a large sack at his feet resting on his black boots. It’s the mailman, Buck supposes, judging by the piles of letters in his hands, and the familiar blue USPS uniform-shirt that’s visible underneath his red fleece.
The light from outside that shines through the tall glass windows of the apartment complex is almost blinding, and Buck can’t quite make out the man’s face, but he can just about see the outline of his white bushy beard shining in the sunlight.
Definitely not the regular mail-person then, Buck confirms, unless Jessica had decided to moonlight as a mall-Santa on her days off… which, honestly wouldn’t actually be that weird for LA, all things considered.
Buck gives him a polite nod as he goes by.
Up-close, he can hear the man whistling, and it’s a Christmas jingle— because of course it is —and now that Buck can see the man’s face past the glare from outside, he thinks there might be something almost familiar about him that he can’t quite place. But then that happens to Buck almost once a week with the amount of people he meets through work on various calls, so he shrugs, and keeps walking past him all the same.
“Evan?”
Buck almost gives himself whiplash with the speed and intensity by which he turns around to face the man with a frown. He thought he might have seen the guy around, sure, but to be on a first-name basis? And his actual first-name too, not Buck ? He hadn’t been expecting that at all.
“Uh, I’m sorry, do I know you?” Buck asks with a frown, recovering from his surprise in time to stammer out a response.
The man just chuckles.
“Maybe - I have one of those faces,” he says with an honest-to-god twinkle in his eye. What the hell…?
“I’ve got some mail for you.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Would you believe me if I said you were the fourth person I’d asked?”
But before Buck can respond with a resounding no , the mailman’s laughing again, and something about it puts Buck at ease. It sounds...warm? And a feeling of déjà vu tickles at the back of his mind, but he doesn’t have time to address it before the man’s speaking once more.
“These mailboxes are just too small on a normal day, there’s no way these would have all fit,” he explains simply, and it’s then that Buck spots the pile of mail in the man’s hand, all wrapped up and bunched together with four elastic bands, clearly intended for the one address.
His address, apparently.
The mailman hands them over to Buck, who only just catches them in time. He has no idea why there’d be so much all of a sudden—he always sets his correspondence to be electronic where possible. He supposes there could be an early Christmas card or two in there, but his parents sure as hell never bothered, and most of the people he actually kept in touch with would hand him one in person.
“Uh, thanks!” He says, shaking his head out of his reverie and giving the man a grateful nod as he goes. He’s still intending on heading over to see Athena, figuring he’ll dump the mail in the passenger footwell of his jeep and sort it out after he’s spoken to her for advice on finding someone who doesn’t want to be found—when he spots the familiar cursive on one of the postcards in the pile and stops in his tracks.
“Maddie?” He whispers, as though the mail might actually respond.
He quickly unwinds the elastic bands, and starts sifting through the post. There's at least one utility bill, two junk mail leaflets that he’ll recycle later, and a note from the sorting office apologising for the delay, but the rest are postcards. All with a variety of images on the front, landscapes and animals, some with place names, some not, some with great paragraphs of text on the back, while others barely have more than Buck’s address.
And all of them signed with his sister’s name.
Buck’s fingers ghost over the paper—drifting over the familiar handwriting, as if he were afraid that he might smudge the precious ink that sits there. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat before turning on his heel and running back up to his apartment—his plans all but forgotten in his pursuit of reading them all as quickly as he can.
“Happy Holidays!” The mailman calls after him from behind, but Buck barely hears him as he races back up the stairs, down the corridor, through his front door, and all but collapses into one of the chairs at his kitchen table without a care.
The postcards scatter across the surface, unbound and free from the tethered elastic bands, and like a man possessed, Buck starts desperately trying to sort them into some kind of date order. Finally, he finds the oldest one, dated just a few days after he’d seen Maddie last.
I’m on the train , the postcard says.
The writing’s cramped and small as though even on the page, Maddie was still trying to hide.
The carriage is almost empty, which is good. I was worried someone might sit next to me—that they’d take one look at me and know what I’d—
The sentence cuts off, the pen stutters, and Buck desperately wishes he was sitting beside her right now. That he was on that train with her even though the postmark’s date weeks and weeks ago.
He wants to pretend that he’s there, and so is she, and that when he sees her hand falter—the pen hovering in mid-air—that he could just reach out and hold onto her instead. It’s okay , I’m here, he might have said, curling their pinky fingers together as they often did.
I couldn’t find my ticket , Maddie says on the next line, with no intention of finishing her aborted sentence. And I was looking through my bag and I realised I’d brought all of your postcards with me . I used to keep them hidden away in every half-packed bag I ever had in Hershey, and I guess I must have grabbed them without thinking.
Buck remembers the last time he’d seen the postcards that Maddie was writing about. He’d felt adrift from his own existence — that his parents didn’t have a single thing to put in a baby box of his own, that they hadn’t even marked his birth with anything more than—
He lets out a long, slow breath, before inhaling through his nose and holding it to help steady his heartbeat.
After everything about Daniel had come to light, he’d felt so lost, but then Maddie had produced every single one of his postcards, spanning years of travel from when he’d been desperately trying to find himself in all the wrong places, and it was like a lighthouse in a storm. Because Maddie saw him, and that made him real again.
He’d felt so unmoored by the family secrets that had been kept from him for his entire life, but when the time came—when he’d sought comfort and strength and love? It hadn’t been his parents he’d gone to. It was Maddie.
We always had each other —he’d said then.
I’m glad I have you with me — he reads now.
I must have kept this blank postcard with the others. You know it was the first thing I bought when I arrived in LA?
Buck turns the postcard around to appreciate the image on the other side. ‘Greetings from California’ is written over a wistful sunset overlooking the sea. In the distance, the Santa Monica Mountains are silhouetted against the soft pink and orange sky, and the white water that’s drifting in on the tide looks calm. He can see why Maddie would have been drawn to the postcard. She’d always loved the ocean, just like her little brother.
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find you back then, or that you’d even want to see me after so long. I had this whole bit planned. I was gonna give you this postcard as an IOU to break the ice, but then you weren’t at the return address, and when your super let me into Abby’s apartment and everything looked so different, so unlike you, I was worried you wouldn’t even find me funny anymore. But then you made me breakfast for dinner and the moment passed, you know?
So here it is now instead. Maybe I’ll hand it to you one day. Maybe I’ll just post it and hope for the best.
I love you Evan, take care.
Hug them for me?
Maddie x
It doesn’t take a genius to know who his sister’s referring to at the end of her first postcard, and that familiar feeling of guilt starts to creep in underneath Buck’s skin. Maddie had stood in the middle of his apartment and begged her little brother to let her go—to keep an eye on her partner, on her baby—and he’d tried, really he had, but now all three of them were dotted somewhere along on the I-90, out of reach.
He picks up another card.
There’s no place name this time, and instead of a photo, there’s an illustration—a painted image of a large Orangutan sitting beside a much smaller version of the same animal; its baby.
The handwriting on the back of the card breaks Buck’s heart. Most of the lines are scribbled out, visible beneath the crossed-out-lines, but only just.
Kiss Jee goodnight for me— Tell Howie it’s better this way— Tell him I’m— They must hate me.
But I can’t have this… I can’t have it touch them. They’re too good Evan, they don’t deserve it.
Please take care of them.
I’m sorry.
Maddie x
There are two more cards like that, both with abstract illustrations of skylines that Buck doesn’t quite recognise on the front. On these, Maddie’s crossed-out-lines are far more determined, and Buck can’t make out the words at all. One thing that’s still crystal clear though is the pain that’s hidden in the harsh black scribbles that have his eyes stinging with fresh tears. He wishes he could talk to her. He wishes he could tell her right now, irrefutably that she deserved to be happy and loved. That she was the best person he’d ever known, and that none of the dark feelings that were inside her head were her fault.
His legs are bouncing underneath the table as he reaches for another postcard. This one has a picture of a brown Moose standing stoic on it, with a two-toned green forest at its back.
There’s a place… Maddie writes, and there are tiny black dashes of ink next to the sentence, and Buck can imagine Maddie flicking the pen back and forth between her fingers as if trying to decide what to say next. He used to watch her do that with her homework all the time, a kind of nervous tick while she waited for the words to form.
A clinic. I used to volunteer there when I was in nursing school. I reached out to them, and I think it might be good for me. I’m not sure yet I just. I feel broken. It’s like there are these cracks and fissures that just go so deep and I can’t pull myself together, but I can’t keep pretending they’re not there either.
I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
I miss you all so much.
Maddie x
The next card Buck grabs from the pile is small, and blue, with a white architectural drawing of Willis Tower on it. It tells him helpfully that the tower is 1, 450 ft tall and that the skydeck is on the 103rd floor.
I don’t know why I’m still writing these, Maddie says, and Buck wants to scream don’t stop, please don’t stop , as though he were getting them in real-time, and not over a month late.
I know you’ve been leaving messages and emails, and I’m sorry I can’t—
This feels safer. Easier. I think. Maybe I won’t send all of them, but it’s kinda nice to pretend that I might?
Maybe that would be the braver thing.
Maddie x
He picks up a postcard from Ohio, and judging by the date on the postmark it was sent much later than some of the others. It has the Main Avenue Bridge taking centre stage on the front, and on the back it says, I feel a little better when I write these . Like getting it out gives me more space to breathe.
Do you remember when dad took us to see Uncle Richard in Cleveland? Maddie asks, her handwriting looking a little bigger here, a little more sprawling like she’d let her thoughts let loose on the page instead of choreographing every individual letter.
We were supposed to stay for a week, but they kept arguing and arguing and we just drove straight home. And you were so sad the whole time - I think you must have been five? Uncle Richard had a dog, and you’d always wanted one.
We never saw them again. They never visited. They never wrote.
I don’t want that to happen —
What if I’m no better —I hope you’re okay.
Maddie x
The gaps between the dates of the postmarks are growing, but there’s a lightness to Maddie’s handwriting now, as though before she’d been forcing herself to write in the first place, pressing down hard, clutching the pen too tightly in her first. But now?
I’m glad I came here, she writes.
I think it’s helping. I’m sorry I hung up on you so quickly on the phone. I think I panicked.
You started saying you could come get me, and I knew if I’d stayed on the phone I’d have said yes but that’s not—
I need to do this.
Maddie x
Under that card there’s another with the distinct air of Massachusetts about it. There’s a picture of a park filled with Autumn leaves, and on the back, Maddie writes, I miss you all so much. I miss Howie and I miss Jee. All I want to do is hold her in my arms, and I’m so scared that he won’t forgive me.
I even thought I saw him the other day.
Who knows, maybe I did. Maybe it was him.
I think I’d like that. I think I’d really, really like that.
Maddie x
Buck reaches for the next card, but there isn’t one. He looks again, a little more frantically this time, sifting through the mail that’s spread out across the table. He looks again, and again.
“No,” he mutters under his breath. “No, no, no.”
That can’t be it, that can’t be the last message. It was still dated over two weeks ago, which meant there was still this gaping hole of time unaccounted for, and being without it made Buck feel like he was losing Maddie all over again.
He starts looking through the cards for the fourth time, trying to be more methodical in his search, tidying them up as though doing so might appease the USPS gods and one more card might be revealed to him.
But there’s nothing there, there’s—
—A sudden knock at the door, and he drops the cards in surprise, scattering them once again.
He’s ready to tell whoever it is to go away, but when he opens the door, it’s the mailman from that morning.
“Son, you dropped this,” he tells Buck, gesturing to the piece of mail in front of him. “Merry Christmas,” he says sincerely then, as he hands it over, his eyes sparkling with a kind of knowing that on anyone else would make Buck instantly suspicious, but somehow on this man, it just seems...right. He gives Buck a little wave, before he turns to go, leaving Buck to stand dumbfounded in the doorway of his apartment, staring down at the final postcard in something akin to awe.
This one doesn’t look like the others.
This one’s special.
It has a gilded white border that says it was taken in Plymouth, MA, and in the center of the card, instead of a generic picture of a tourist destination, or an illustrated image, there’s a photograph.
A photograph of Maddie, holding her daughter. The two of them are bundled up in layers of cardigans and coats, with hats and scarves to keep them warm, and they’re pointing out to the boats on the water of Cape Cod Bay. Jee’s cheeks are red, and she already looks so different to the last time Buck saw her—so does Maddie in fact. The dark hair under her yellow hat is shorter than when he saw her last, but it’s curling at the ends in a way that Buck recognises all too well. Her fingers are holding on to Jee so tightly, that Buck can see the distinct indentations in the thick blue coat.
There’s a thin layer of snow on the ground that makes it easier for Buck to spot the distinct outline of Chim’s shadow in the bottom half of the picture. He’s holding one hand aloft in a frozen wave, while the other holds his phone up as he takes the photo.
Buck’s not sure how long he spends staring at the picture with a smile, but the natural light in his loft has started to dim before he turns the card around to check for a message. Only this time, it’s not Maddie’s handwriting that he sees, it’s Chimney’s, and he’s written a promise there that means more to Buck than they could ever know.
We’ll see you soon.
It’s little more than an hour later when Buck’s phone rings, he almost drops the newly untangled Christmas lights he’s hanging in his haste to answer when he sees the caller ID. He feels his whole body relax at the sound of the voice on the other end, and he lets out a steady exhale of relief that he thinks he might have been holding on to ever since his sister left his apartment, and greater LA, that night.
Buck knows recovery isn’t linear, he knows the impact that depression can have on every part of a person’s life, and he knows that even the strongest person can struggle to keep their head above water when the waves are so unyielding—when the torrent’s coming from inside—but he also knows that Maddie isn’t alone. Even if she might have felt that way for a long time, Buck’s gonna do everything in his power, every day, to remind her that she isn’t, just like he knows Chimney will too. And so will her friends—her chosen family.
Maddie’s been found , and in the photograph that’s now on Buck’s fridge alongside Christopher’s drawing, she looks happier than she has in months, so that has to mean something. Even if it’s just the beginning of a long journey, it’s one that Buck’s more than ready to follow her on to the ends of the earth.
“The signal isn’t great. Can you hear me, okay? Are you still there?” Maddie asks on the other end of the line, and Buck swipes at his eyes, and lets out a small laugh under his breath for having lost himself in his own thoughts for so long. He looks down at his hand, and holds onto his own pinky finger—somehow instinctively aware that on the other end of the line, on the other side of the country, his older sister was doing the same.
“Yeah, Mads, I’m still here,” he promises. “Always.”
.