“He did. He’s just nervous about it,” I said.
This caused Mom’s eagle eyes to bounce back to mine, directing her frown toward me instead of the cake. Mom didn’t know Stephen was proposing, because, as much as we all loved Mom, she wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret that big from Aunt Cam. Which meant Khiley would have known, and he wanted to be able to surprise her in a way he’d rarely been able to do growing up together.
“Why? What is it?” Mom asked.
To distract the hound from the scent, I did the one thing Dad and I had silently agreed we’d never do, which was to make fun of her baking. “Are you sure that isn’t going to fall over?”
Mom’s eyes narrowed more, but she turned back to the cake, and I sighed with relief.
I shot a text to Stephen.
ME: You better get this over and done with on Christmas because Mom is getting suspicious.
BRO: What did you do?
ME: Nothing.
BRO: If she’s suspicious, it’s because you said something, and you suck at lying.
ME: So do you.
BRO: I only suck at lying to Khiley. You suck at lying to everyone.
ME: I’m leaving in a few for Grandma Marina’s. You on your way?
BRO: Khi and I are just leaving her house now. Everyone else coming?
ME: Not everyone. Eliza won’t even be home ‘til after Christmas.
BRO: Really? Aunt Mia must have been pissed.
Aunt Mia had probably been more hurt than angry. She liked having everyone close for the holidays, but our parents were going to have to understand that not all of us were going to stay close to home. That some of us might wander away to find our dreams. It was one of the reasons I’d wanted to do the surprise party this year. Who knew when we would all be together again?
This thought made me think of Garrett…far away in Scotland. His grandmother had summoned him, and he’d gone. Right at this moment, she was probably shoving down his throat the importance of his being there to take over the reins of their company and carry on their family legacy.
“You’re far away today,” Mom said, probably because I hadn’t joined her in the kitchen and taken the icing bag away from her before she did more damage than good to the poor cake.
“Just got a lot on my brain with the baby due soon,” I answered. The baby kicked me again, as if telling me that it didn’t like me using it to lie.
“I’m glad you came home so we can spoil you a little. You’ll be on your feet nonstop and run ragged once the little critter enters the world. You need to relax before that happens.”
I may be run more ragged if I have to do it on my own without Garrett, I thought.
The words he’d uttered the day he left while I’d begged him to stay still twisted like a knife in my heart. “You don’t really need me standing next to you. That place is already taken by all the people you call family.”
I finally joined Mom at the counter, hugging her awkwardly with the baby belly I wasn’t used to. Our strawberry-blonde hair tangled together and reminded me of how much we were alike, even when we weren’t related by blood at all. In truth, Mom would understand exactly what I was going through if I told her. After all, she’d had a marriage that had ended well before she’d met Dad. I just wasn’t ready to say any of the words for fear they’d come true.
I swiped a finger in the frosting bowl and then said, “I’m off to see Grandma Marina.”
“What? She’s not baking with Mia this year?”
Aunt Mia and Grandma Marina were, hands down, the best bakers of the entire family, and they always made more treats than even our big family could consume. Half of it ended up at the family’s dealership, causing a mad rush that had nothing to do with the cars being sold and everything to do with the delectable treats.
“I think they’re starting later.” Which again was true, but we had surprise party details to discuss before that. The party was for Mom, Dad, Aunt Cam, and Uncle Derek. One giant birthday party because they were all turning fifty.
“Well, give her a hug for me,” Mom said.
“Will do,” I replied, stuffing my phone into my purse, hoping it wouldn’t buzz again. Then, I headed out the door with my baby rocking and rolling fiercely inside my belly as he or she continued to object to all of my omissions.
Garrett
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
“Christmas night, another fight
Tears, we cried a flood.”
Performed by Coldplay
Written by Berryman / Buckland / Champion / Martin
I looked down at the phone before tossing it, disgustedly, onto the desk, which sent a stack of papers soaring.
“This is a fucking disaster,” I cursed under my breath, as I bent to pick up the papers at the same time my grandmother entered the room.
“Language, Garrett, language,” she said. She sat down across from me in a wingback chair covered in the family’s tartan. You’d never guess she was seventy-five by looking at her. She looked closer to fifty than anything else. Like she could have been part of the group of people Edie was going to be celebrating on New Year’s Eve. Without me.
“It is a disaster, though,” Margery continued in her calm, unruffled voice, brushing at her perfectly tailored gray slacks and peach button-down in the latest fashion.
While I’d been talking about Edie and the fact that we’d left things in such a godawful state that she wouldn’t even pick up my calls, my grandmother was talking about the mess of invoices and undelivered shipments of whiskey. She patted her hair, which was expertly dyed the same toasty caramel as my own, and turned her knowing blue eyes toward my matching pair.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked. It was a test. Like every other test she’d given me over the years.
If I couldn’t hold my marriage together for even a year, what was to say I could hold a multi-billion-dollar international whiskey distillery together? Nothing. Not even the decades of learning at Margery’s side since I was a preteen.
There was no way in hell I was admitting it to her, though. Instead, I said, “Mitchell’s already on the shipment.”
“The shipment is not the real problem, is it?” she asked, her voice certain.
I scratched the back of my shoulder before I caught myself. She saw it, as she always did. I’d mostly broken myself of the habit, aiming for my grandmother’s expressionless stature, but damn if Edie didn’t bring out all my hidden flaws.
When I refused to rise to Margery’s bait, she continued, “The real problem is you not being here on a day-to-day basis. Instead, you’re in the States, trying to manage the company from a subsidiary. It can’t last that way, Garrett. You know it can’t.”
I did know it. But I’d promised Edie I’d try. I’d promised her the day she’d accepted my engagement ring, knowing full well her family, and her home, and the place she belonged was in Tennessee. Knowing full well I was needed in Scotland. But I’d been unable to walk away from her without doing everything I could to mold us together.