The days leading up to Christmas in Green Valley carried a completely different feeling from the snowy holiday movies Matteo loved watching every December. Instead of snow-covered streets and frozen pine trees, the neighborhood outside Diane and Arthur's house glowed beneath crisp desert skies and cold dry air that smelled faintly like dust and winter plants after sunset. Palm trees wrapped in white Christmas lights lined the quiet streets, enormous houses shimmered with expensive decorations, and the distant mountains beyond Henderson looked purple beneath the evening sun.
To Matteo, it still felt magical. Maybe even more magical because it looked so different from what Christmas was "supposed" to look like.
The house itself had fully transformed by the second day of the trip. Blankets covered half the couches, Christmas music played almost nonstop somewhere in the background, and every surface seemed occupied either by holiday snacks or one of Diane's decorative candles. The kitchen had become command central for the adults, while the upstairs belonged entirely to the children now.
And unfortunately for Diane's sanity, Christmas baking day had arrived.
The moment she announced everyone would be making gingerbread houses together, the kitchen descended into immediate chaos.
Nathan, at fifteen, treated the activity like a hostage situation and looked deeply exhausted by the entire concept. Olivia acted like she was competing on a baking show and criticized everybody else's frosting techniques. Ben kept eating decorating supplies instead of using them, Sophie somehow got icing on the dog within ten minutes, and Matteo—
Matteo treated the entire event like a historical lecture nobody had requested.
"Technically gingerbread became popular in Europe during the sixteenth century because expensive spices became more accessible through trade routes," he explained while carefully aligning peppermint candies along the roof of his house with alarming precision. "But honey cakes existed before that in Ancient Egypt and Greece."
Olivia stared at him from across the kitchen island.
"Why do you know medieval baking history?"
Matteo looked genuinely confused by the question.
"Because gingerbread exists."
Apparently that explanation made perfect sense to him.
Arthur laugh out loud while sitting near the patio doors watching the disaster unfold. Warm sunlight poured through the windows behind him, reflecting against polished floors while Christmas music drifted softly through the speakers overhead.
Meanwhile Matteo continued uninterrupted.
"And Queen Elizabeth the First may have invented gingerbread men because she made cookies shaped like important guests."
Sophie blinked.
"That sounds fake."
"It's historically debated."
Nathan rubbed both hands down his face dramatically.
"He talks like a tiny college professor."
"He talks like Wikipedia became a child," Olivia corrected.
The kitchen only became messier as the afternoon continued. Icing somehow ended up on cabinet handles, candy wrappers covered half the counters, and at one point Diane walked in holding fresh cookies only to stop in visible horror at the condition of her previously spotless kitchen.
There were crushed graham crackers across the floor.
Red frosting on one chair.
And Ben appeared to be eating gumdrops directly from the decorating bowls with the focused intensity of a survivalist rationing food.
"Oh my God."
"We're creating architecture," Matteo informed her seriously without looking up.
"This looks like structural collapse."
"It's artistic," Sophie argued while trying to glue an entire wall together using frosting alone.
Diane slowly closed her eyes.
Arthur, meanwhile, looked like he was having the best day of his life.
By late afternoon, the children had consumed enough sugar to become borderline impossible to manage. The cousins sprinted through the massive house while sunset painted the Nevada sky outside in shades of orange and pink. Christmas lights flickered warmly against the windows while holiday music echoed through the downstairs rooms.
At one point Ben and Sophie started throwing mini marshmallows at each other across the living room until Nathan threatened to "report both of them to the United Nations."
Matteo, meanwhile, sat cross-legged on the floor beside the fireplace trying to explain the religious symbolism behind candy canes to Olivia, who clearly regretted asking any follow-up questions.
"You know way too much about Christmas," she finally informed him.
"I researched it."
"Why?"
Again, Matteo looked deeply confused.
"Because Christmas exists."
Arthur laughed so hard he nearly spilled his drink again.
That evening, after dinner and several failed attempts to convince the children to "calm down before someone breaks something expensive," the house slowly separated itself naturally into two worlds.
Children upstairs. Adults downstairs.
From the second floor came constant distant noises—running footsteps, laughter, arguments over board games, doors opening and closing dramatically every few minutes. Somewhere down the hallway, Sophie screamed because Ben had apparently cheated at something again.
Downstairs, however, the atmosphere softened.
Arthur poured wine near the kitchen while Diane settled beside Elena on the massive sectional couch facing the Christmas tree. Warm yellow lights reflected softly across the room while the desert night outside turned cold and dark beyond the windows.
For a while, the conversation stayed easy. Work. Travel. School schedules. How quickly all the children were growing up.
Nathan was learning to drive now, which apparently terrified everyone involved. Olivia had become "aggressively opinionated," according to her mother. Ben was suddenly obsessed with hockey despite living in Nevada. Sophie had recently informed her teacher that "rules are more like suggestions."
Then naturally, the conversation shifted toward Matteo. Arthur leaned back in his chair thoughtfully. "He seems happy." Elena smiled softly. "He is."
"A little more intense than last year," Diane added carefully. The room quieted slightly. Not uncomfortable. Just attentive.
Henrique rubbed one hand against his jaw before answering. "Yeah," he admitted quietly. "This year's been… complicated."
Arthur immediately looked more serious. "What happened?" Elena and Henrique exchanged a brief glance. Then Elena sighed. "There was an incident at school."
Slowly, the story unfolded. The evaluations. The diagnosis. The emotional overwhelm. The preschool concerns. Then finally the situation with the vice principal and Matteo leaving school alone.
By the time Elena reached the part about receiving the phone call from the police station, Diane looked horrified. "He WALKED there?"
"In the rain," Henrique added tiredly. Arthur lowered his wine glass slowly. "How far?" "Almost a mile." For a moment nobody spoke.
Upstairs, laughter echoed faintly through the ceiling while the adults downstairs sat quietly with the lingering memory of panic still hanging in the air.
"I've never been that scared in my life," Elena admitted softly. Henrique nodded immediately. "I genuinely thought something terrible had happened."
Diane reached over and squeezed Elena's hand. "Oh honey…" Arthur stayed quiet longer than the others.
Then finally: "And what did Matteo say?" Elena blinked slightly. "What?" "When you asked why he went there." Henrique exhaled softly. "He said it was somewhere logical."
That made Arthur pause. Not because it sounded ridiculous. Because honestly… it made perfect sense. Arthur recognized too much of himself in Matteo sometimes. Not the memory exactly, but the need for structure. Systems. Predictability. The instinct to solve emotional problems through logic first.
"He wasn't trying to run away," Arthur murmured eventually. "No," Elena admitted quietly. "He wasn't." The room settled into silence again for a moment while soft Christmas music continued playing somewhere in the background.
Finally Diane glanced upstairs toward the distant sound of children yelling. "Does he have friends at least?"
That question immediately softened Elena's expression. "Yes," she answered. "Actually… yes." Henrique smiled slightly. "He talks nonstop about this girl from volleyball named Charlie and his friend Liam from school."
Arthur smirked faintly into his drink. "Well, if he's got friends, he'll probably be okay."
Right on cue, a loud crash echoed from upstairs followed immediately by Matteo yelling: "THAT WAS STATISTICALLY PREDICTABLE." Then Sophie burst into hysterical laughter. Arthur leaned back smiling.
"…Yeah," he said softly. "He'll be okay."