I forced myself to take a deep breath. My sister was a practical person, rarely frivolous or given over to fun or whimsy. “It’s a theme. See”—I pointed to everyone else in turn—“Dad and Mom are Santa and Mrs. Claus. Brady and I are elves. The float is decorated for the theme, Joan.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know that?”
It felt like there was steam gathering behind my ears, and some pent-up, rage-filled, resentful part of me possessed my mouth. “Well, let’s see. There were like twelve family meetings about the parade and float decorating that you conveniently missed. You would have known about the costume if you’d bothered attending.”
Joan sighed like I was the biggest idiot on the planet. “I’m a grown-up, Candy. With grown-up responsibilities.”
“So am I!” I finally snapped. “I haven’t been your bratty little sister in a long time, Joan. If you’d bothered to notice, I’m twenty-five. I have a great credit score and a fucking investment portfolio. I’m not a kid. Stop treating me like one.”
Silence rang in the wake of my pronouncement. I might have been shouting. I didn’t know. All I could hear were my angry heaving breaths and the deafening sound of blood rushing in my ears.
Vaguely I noticed Mark coming over, concern etched between his dark brows, but I couldn’t pay him any mind because I was so mad that I could hardly see straight.
This confrontation with my sister had my heart going a million miles an hour.My sister. Someone I’d loved and respected and admired all my life.
She was staring at me in stunned shock, but then her eyes defaulted to narrowed slits.
I realized suddenly that Joan was not perfect. Far from it. Maybe she was a great daughter and a devoted orchard employee, farmer of the fucking year. But I’d made allowances for her for far too long. I’d taken every single snide remark in stride—all the bitter negativity she’d wielded so subtly.
Since I’d been back in town, my sister hadn’t even given me a chance. It went beyond a pumpkin patch or a parade float. It was the eye-rolls and the constant mistrust. She treated me like an incapable child hell-bent on stealing her inheritance. All these painful realizations were swirling around inside me. I didn’t have room for anything rational.
Joan was selfish and single-minded and astonishingly bad at communicating. She expected everyone to be just like her—just as dedicated, just as hardworking, just as fanatical about the farm as she was.
And I’d committed the cardinal sin. I’d left. I’d devoted my life to something that wasn’t Judd’s Orchard.
But I was done paying for it.
“Maybe we should take a minute,” my father said at the same time my mother cautioned, “Girls, you both?—”
“You know what—” Joan began, but stopped abruptly when she placed her hand on the side of the float to brace herself. It must have been at a crucial, weight-bearing point because the hanging garland dislodged and landed in a sad little serpentine coil at her feet before systematically popping off at the remaining intervals until the entire length of the trailer was garland-less and unadorned.
My mouth dropped open in horror as my hard work was once again dismissed and discarded by my sister.
I heard Brady mutter a low, “Oh shit,” from somewhere.
Logically, I knew that Joan’s harmless touch probably dislodged an already loose staple and the resulting chain reaction had been bad luck.
But whether you were two or twelve or twenty-five, there was nothing logical about fighting with your sibling.
“How could you!” I yelled.
“That was an accident.” Joan held her hands up in the universal sign for hold on a minute, but I wouldnotbe holding on for any length of time.
In a fit of blind rage, I grabbed the closest thing I could find—a shiny red Rome apple decorating the Fraser fir to my right—and chucked it at my sister. It missed her by a mile but practically exploded on impact. Bits of apple flesh and juicy innards splintered off the asphalt as my sister jumped to the side.
“Hey!” she shouted.
But I didn’t care. I grabbed another—a Granny Smith this time—and threw it at her head.
“What the hell?” she shouted when it caught her in the shoulder instead. “Great way to prove you’re an adult, Candy. Jesus Christ.”
But I was on a roll. “It’s Candace!” I screeched.
I grabbed apple after apple along with strings of popcorn and plastic snowflakes and threw them all in my sister’s direction. She ducked and shouted and picked up pieces of apple and popcorn from the ground and threw them right back.
I had sticky juice splattered across my face and my costume, popcorn stuck in my hair, and I was pretty sure I’d lost a fake eyelash.
My parents were hollering, trying to intervene, and, at one point, I heard Brady shout, “You have to eat those apples. You know the rules!”
