“Good to see you, doc. Ready for the Solstice?” the woman asked. “I’ve got my heart set on a nice, traditional wreath with one of them plaid bows.”
“You can count on it,” Sammy lied through her teeth. She’d woken up at her table with a glitter bow stuck to her face and a cat with the front page of The Monthly Moon glued to its tail. She was in no position to be promising anyone anything.
Thirty-nine wreaths in two days? Eeesh. Things weren’t looking good.
“You replace Demarcus?” Mavis asked, eyeing Ryan.
“No one can replace Demarcus,” Sammy assured her. “He’s in Buffalo for Hanukkah with his wife’s family. This is Ryan. Carson Shufflebottom’s great-nephew. He’s tagging along with me today.”
“Nice to meet ya, Ryan,” Mavis said, offering him a dirty hand.
“A pleasure,” he said. To the man’s credit, he shook the offered hand without flinching or sarcasm.
“Let me get my bag, and we’ll get started,” Sammy said.
Fifty-eight minutes later, she closed the cover on her iPad, the final herd stats recorded. “Ladies are looking good,” she reported to Mavis. “Tennessee’s gait is a lot better this week, and the wait and see with Vermont worked. No antibiotics needed.”
The farmer swiped a hand across her brow, miming sweat. “Thank God for that.”
“You’ve got a healthy herd here. Keep up the good work, and I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Thanks, doc. I’ll see you at the Solstice,” Mavis called. “Ryan, it was a treat.”
“Thanks again for the tour, Mavis,” he said, sounding almost cheerful. “You’ve got a hell of an operation here.”
“Was it my imagination, or did you actually enjoy yourself?” Sammy asked when they climbed back into the SUV.
He’d asked a hundred questions about the dairy business. Animals as capital, day-to-day maintenance, streams of income. Mavis had been delighted with the interest in her livelihood from the rugged-looking accountant.
“Definitely your imagination,” he said, checking his phone. He let out a surly sigh and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
“Nothing from your firm?” she guessed.
“It’s stupid,” he said, staring out the window. “I feel like the guy who got dumped on prom night and sits on his front porch hoping she’ll change her mind and show up.”
“It’s not stupid if you love your job,” she told him, shifting into drive.
“I do. Did,” he corrected, picking up the to-go mug and sniffing the cold coffee. “Though, judging from how you stuck your entire arm inside that poor cow, not as much as you.”
“Every day, I feel like I’m doing what I was meant to do.”
He shot her a look like he was trying to tease apart the meaning of her words. “Really?”
“Didn’t you?” she asked.
He frowned, considering the question. “I thought being good at something and being well-compensated for it was as good as it got. But I suppose I never considered saving corporations millions of dollars a calling.”
“The way I looked sticking my arm up a cow’s rectum is how you looked yelling at that IRS phone scammer,” she pointed out.
“I didn’t get to do much yelling at scammers in my job. It was more dealing with internal accounting departments, managing bookkeepers, interpreting volumes of tax code, and attending a lot of meetings that could have been emails.”
“But there was something you loved about it. Otherwise you wouldn’t care so much.”
“Maybe,” he hedged, brooding out the window.
“Let’s go find you a Rainbow Berkowicz,” she decided. “While Mavis gave you the tour of her financials, I called the coffee shop. Rainbow is there right now.”
“Oh, thank God. Coffee.”
Sammy smiled as she accelerated toward town while Trans-Siberian Orchestra poured from the speakers. She’d deliver Ryan to Rainbow, grab a fresh cup of coffee for the road, and be back almost on schedule.
“Text message from Mom,” the stereo reported. “The dates you suggested for Christmas won’t work for us. I have the third weekend in January open.”
She sighed and felt Ryan’s gaze on her.
“Your mother bailed on Christmas with you?” he asked.
“At this point, it’s kind of a family tradition. She’s one of those perpetually busy, over-scheduled people. She likes it that way.”
“What do you do for Christmas?”
“I sleep late. Have wine for breakfast and hang out in my pajamas all day. It’s kind of great.” It really was. But she had to admit that sometimes she wished she had someone to eat cookies with on the couch. “What about you?”
He blew out a breath. “I try to survive a Sosa-Shufflebottom Christmas. I fly to Philly and split my time between my dad’s place and my mom’s. It’s chaos with siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles. Everyone’s yelling just to be heard over everyone else’s yelling.”
“That doesn’t sound that terrible.”
“It’s always too hot because there’s thirty exhausted adults stuffed into a room. My cousin Margo’s kids run around biting each other and knocking over furniture. She’s got six of them and decided to raise them free range.”
“What does that mean? Do they live outside?”
“Worse. Their parents don’t use the word ‘no’.” He shuddered. “Do you know what it’s like trying to get through a meal with six kids who have never heard the word?”
“Okay, sounding slightly more awful,” Sammy conceded.
“My mom sneaks into the pantry to drink wine straight from the bottle. By the time I leave in the afternoon for my dad’s, she’s shit-faced and eating chocolate chips by the five-pound bag. For my dad’s side of the family, we go to his sister’s house. She breeds these tiny fluffy dogs that never stop barking. Her entire house smells like dog pee, and everything is covered in fur.”
“Fun.”
“It gets better. Last year, my cousin Albert showed up to surprise his mom and introduce her to his boyfriend. Aunt Maude ripped the wooden baby Jesus out of the nativity scene on her mantel and threw it at them. Apparently, she’d told everyone that Albert wasn’t coming home for the holidays because he was going into the priesthood in South Dakota.”
“Oh, no.”
“My dad flipped off Maude, and my siblings and I stole two apple pies on the way out. We took Albert and Ricardo to a bar, ate the pies, and drank until Christmas was over. They’re getting married next fall.”
She blinked. “Wow.”
“I’d already decided to skip the whole thing this year. So, yeah, your Christmas for one sounds far superior. As soon as I get this Carson crisis taken care of, I’m flying home and taking a page out of your book.”
Over Caffeinated was a colorful, cozy storefront on Main Street. Sammy and Ryan were welcomed at the door by a rush of heat and the smell of freshly ground coffee beans. The window display was a Christmas tree made entirely from gold, silver, and green to-go mugs, looped with tree lights.