Page 3 of The Holiday Makeover

The woman who raised me.

The woman who was everything to me.

There were no words to convey what her loss meant to me.

“What is this last wish, and when did she tell you?” I couldn’t help it—the words just spilled out, sounding too juvenile.

How had Lily kept this from me? Hello, we’d made a solemn vow when we were twelve to never keep secrets. A real vow. With red raspberry jam smeared on our hands because neither of us could stomach the whole blood oath thing.

Lily bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Rory. This was an attorney‑client privilege situation. I didn’t want to keep it from you, but it’s the law, and Cosette made me swear. Who knew she could be scary? Anyway, she called me to the hospital as soon as she was stable. She had a feeling this was it, and she kept saying she wanted to see her husband and her daughter, and even your dad.”

A laugh bubbled out of me even as tears started leaking. Coco used to call my dad an interesting soul. He liked to call himself a dreamer. Professionally, he’d been an art teacher, like me. Well . . . like I used to be before Tate convinced me to follow another path. A path that was way, way outside my comfort zone. A path that I mostly ended up loving, but didn’t want to think about right now.

While I wiped at my eyes, Tate reached for the Kleenex box on Lily’s desk and handed me a tissue.

The last thing I needed was for him to be kind.

Kindness was a direct pipeline to more tears.

Didn’t he realize how much I’d missed him these last two years? Especially these last few days. I hated how much I wanted to reach for his hand. I’d always thought he’d be the one to help me through something like this. Even before we dated. He was just . . . my person.

Even more than Lily—but don’t tell her that.

I took the tissue, unable to even choke out a thank-you.

Lily gave me a sympathetic look before soldiering on. Probably for the best. We needed to get this over with so I could fall apart in private. Not in front of the boy I’d daydreamed about and the man I’d fallen in love with.

“Cosette asked me to give you these letters.” Lily pulled two sealed envelopes from her desk and held them up as if she were negotiating a hostile company takeover. “But before you read them, she wanted me to make a request. A personal plea on her behalf.”

Her face scrunched as if she were physically resisting the words.

I stopped dabbing my cheeks and braced myself. I had a feeling this was going to be epically bad.

It was worse.

Lily pulled out a legal pad and began to read from it. “Cosette Fox would love more than anything if you both threw her annual Christmas party together on Christmas Eve and made it her celebration of life in lieu of a funeral. And . . . she would really appreciate it if you renovated the following rooms in her house before said party.”

I held up a hand before she could continue. Absolutely not. This request or plea was out of the question. At least the together part. I would honor her last wishes, just not with Tate.

Lily shook her head, silently telling me she was plowing ahead and there was nothing I could do to stop her. Apparently, Coco had put the fear of God into her.

“Entryway, dining room, kitchen, parlor, and if there’s time, the living room could use some sprucing up. And these are her exact words: ‘Rory and Tate, I know I can’t make you do any of this. But just remember, I never missed a football game or marching band competition. Who had the biggest signs in the stand?’”

That would be Coco. She cheered even louder than Tate’s parents at the games. Tate was, of course, the quarterback, and he won two state championships. Like I said, he was the height of cool. And I was the girl in the marching band playing the clarinet. I wasn’t even first chair. That honor went to Lily. But Coco couldn’t have been prouder of me. She once made a sign that said, No One Toots a Horn Like Rory.

Yeah, it was embarrassing, but no one loved like Coco.

“‘And who got the entire town to subscribe to Hammer and Hue when you first started? And responded to every critical comment until they took it down and I got banned from YouTube,’” Lily continued for Coco.

I smiled to myself, thinking of Coco’s crusade on behalf of Hammer and Hue. It was the name of our YouTube channel. Did I mention we had three million subscribers? Yeah, we were kind of a big deal.

One of us still was.

It wasn’t me.

“‘So, I think you would agree that the house and I deserve the best. And you two are the best. And you’re best together.’”

Lily cringed as she said it, fully aware those words were basically a defibrillator to my nervous system.