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“No, I can do much better than him, don’t you think?” she asked him.
I scuffed as the boy nodded happily.
“Edgar. You forgot the cranberries. Edgar?”
“Huh?” I looked at the elderly woman beside me as she held the grocery bag open.
“The cranberries.” She pointed to the array of food in front of me, utterly annoyed at my presence—or lack of presence.
“Right,” I said, putting the can into the bag for her.
She shook her head before taking the bag to the donation table. There was no Thanksgiving in Ersovia, but I’d seen the holiday in movies. So, when Odette had invited me to her family’s place to spend Thanksgiving with her, I thought I knew what to expect. But then she gave me a hairnet, gloves, a face mask, and to add to my disguise, Iskandar once again brought out fake glasses for me.
I didn’t argue. I was looking forward to my first Thanksgiving. However, this was nothing at all like the movies portrayed. There were hundreds of people here instead of a large table full of an overstuffed turkey. I was shocked to see how many of them were single women with children, or, worse, children with no parents at all.
Hundreds of canned and frozen foods were donated, and my current job was filling a bag, handing it to a volunteer, and then filling another bag. It should have been easy enough, but apparently, Thanksgiving meal bags were a bit more complicated than I thought. I was always forgetting a can of something, a box of something else, or putting all the somethings wrong in the bag, causing it to rip.
Rippppp.
Bloody hell. And there went another paper bag!
“Sorry,” I said to the volunteers who probably wished I would stop helping right now.
Bending down, I picked up all the cans and stacked them onto the table.
“Having trouble there?” Odette asked from above me, grinning.
“Yes, and I have no idea why! These bags must be defective!”
“Really, is that why you’re the only one with the issue?” she asked me.
“Hmm.”
“Don’t pout.” She giggled, poking my cheek before bending down to help me.
“Careful, Ms. Wyntor, you wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m your boyfriend or something,” I shot back at her as I rose to my feet.
“Jeremy has a little crush on me. I can’t go breaking a kid’s heart.”
“Ah, but my heart is okay?”
“I didn’t even scratch it. You’re fine, you big baby.” She put the cans onto the table. “Come on, let me show you. You have to make sure there is even weight on both sides, or you will rip one of the handles.”
“Does your family do this every year?” I asked her.
She nodded, putting the stuffing box down gently. “Since I can remember. Why? Are you not having fun?”
“Are we supposed to be having fun?” I asked, nodding over to the pregnant woman who was on her knee with two other children, crying over being given groceries. “These people—”
“Are the working poor,” she finished before I could speak. “Why are you so shocked? Don’t ro...doesn’t your family do charity work, too?”
“Not like this.”
“Like how, then?”
“Charity balls or garden parties. A few hospitals or veteran visits. We’re on a lot of boards, too. My mother goes for a woman’s mental health society meeting or something every year with my sister, as well.”
She just looked at me.
