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She watched him get into his truck and drive off through the cypress trees. Back inside, she plugged in the Christmas tree and smiled. It was truly a Charlie Brown tree, skinny and a little lopsided from being packed in with the other saplings, but it was their first tree. Grabbing her phone, she took a picture of it and sent it in a group text to her mother and father and sisters and friends.
Our first tree. I’m getting married next summer. Call for details.
A few miles away in the LeBlanc residence, Kelly Casson and her four-year-old son, Danny, stood together on a ladder to place the star on top of a ten-foot-tall blue spruce that Ted had found at an expensive nursery north of town.
“Smile!” he said, aiming a real camera containing film at them. “This will be our first Christmas, so every photo op will be taken advantage of.”
He’d retrieved boxes of lavish decorations his mother had left behind when they moved into their retirement community, and they’d spent the better part of the week decorating the entire house and yard.
“What will your parents use for their tree?”
“My mother is into the latest trends now. Whatever she sees on Pinterest that catches her eye will be on her tree. She’ll dump the previous year’s crap on me. I hope you’re up for a visit because we’ll go there on Christmas Eve, and they all come here on Christmas Day.”
Kelly blanched, grimacing. “Who’s they all?”
“Mother and Father and my three sisters, their husbands and kids. I think I have eight nieces and nephews, so Danny will have lots of little cousins to play with.”
“I’ll have to fit my family in there somewhere,” she said, still not convinced they’d last until Christmas. It was sounding more and more unlikely the more she was hearing what her obligations were. He was going all in.
He had the nerve to chuckle at that. No wonder the guy had mental problems.
“You’ll see. It’s very congenial. You won’t have to buy your son another piece of clothes or toys for the rest of his life after this. My parents are generous to a fault.”
That didn’t exactly make her feel better. It sounded like she was losing control of her life. How could things deescalate so rapidly from being in heaven for a week to trying to figure out how she could escape?
Common sense won out then. She’d found her voice.
“Ted, get real. You can’t dictate your family’s holiday traditions to me. We either start making our own right now, or I’m moving out.”
Taking his focus out of the camera lens and really looking at her up on the ladder with the kid he had already fallen in love with, Ted knew viscerally that she was right.
“I’ve never stood up to my parents before.”
“Well, that’s probably why you’re still single.”
“I’m not sure what to do.”
“We need to make a list of everything that we want to do for the rest of the month. Next week is the Papa Noel Festival,” Kelly said, climbing down the ladder, with Danny laughing and trying to hang on to each rung. “Kid, I’m gonna beat your ass if you don’t stop,” she told him. “Then there’s the Christmas festival and boat parade, then Christmas Eve and Day. Since your house is closer to the village than your parents’ place, I say let’s have everyone over for the boat parade, and then we can eat downtown and don’t have that mess here. We can have everyone back here later for dessert and coffee or wine and cheese or whatever you’re in the mood for.”
“I can do that. Give me a list. I think we can leave it at having them come here for the boat parade and we go there for Eve. Nothing more unless we have to go to your parents’ house.”
They looked at each other and high-fived.
“God, this is exhausting.”
“It’s called compromise,” Kelly said. “You’re an adult man. A successful veterinarian. You can do this.”
“Please come here,” he asked, grabbing her arm as she walked by. They embraced tenderly, and Danny came up to them, wrapping his arms around their legs, and they included him in the hug. “My family.”
Kelly grinned up at him. “Whatever you say, dear.”
Chapter 8
After working up a sweat dancing like a wild woman to her grandfather’s old zydeco records, Maggie climbed the stairs to the second floor to take yet another shower. Afterward, she sat at her computer at the kitchen table situated where she could look out the window at the water, and the peace that surpasses understanding washed over her. She had a job she loved with great clients, a wonderful home in a place she loved, and if Justin calmed down, a great boyfriend, too.
For the next hour she worked on her clients’ projects. At four, her phone beeped. It was Justin. Her badly behaved inner child wanted to ignore it, but she didn’t want to destroy their relationship, and if she gave in to her baser desires, which included going introvert on him, it wouldn’t take long for the end to come.
“Hey.”
