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My heart sank. They were giving her a hard time.
Me:It didn’t go well?
Lucy:It went better than I expected. I was super nervous, especially about telling Mom and Dad, but once they got over the initial shock, I think they’re excited. Mom was also ecstatic to realize her intuition is still intact, since she swears she knew it wasn’t just a stomach bug that made me so sick.
I smiled.
Me:Okay, so what’s the bad news? This all sounds great.
Lucy:Mom is rabidly insistent that you come for Christmas. I explained that they usually had stuff at the base for service personnel, but she’s not taking no for an answer. Plus, baby and marriage aside, she would love to see you.
Dante:And your dad?
I couldn’t imagine many men being happy to meet the guy who’d just done what I’d done to his daughter. That hurt, because Bruce Cooper’s opinion of me still mattered, even after all these years.
Lucy:Dad wants to shake your hand and say congratulations and drink a beer with you. And grill you for all the details of what happened after he dropped you off at Kingsley.
That was unexpected. Nice, but unexpected. Then I had a thought.
Dante:If it would be too weird and uncomfortable for you, I can easily find an excuse to stay away.
Lucy:I’m fine with it if you are.
Dante:It’ll mean—My fingers paused, not sure how to word what I was trying to say.It’ll mean acting like a proper couple.
Which meant touching each other, being affectionate, pretending to be in love.
Lucy: …
The three dots hovered, then vanished, then appeared again.
Lucy:I’ll just pretend we’re in Seattle.
I had no idea what to say to that. What did she mean? Just that remembering Seattle would make it easier to fake it, or something more? Fuck, this was complicated enough without me seeing a hidden meaning in everything she said to me.
* * *
Isat in the parked car, Lucy at my side, looking through the windshield at the Coopers’ house. It had barely changed in the years since I’d left Esperance. The sandstone brick looked mellow in the cool winter light, and the tiled roof—blue-gray, if I remembered right—was covered in snow. The cream pillars that lined the wide verandah gave it an added elegance. I smiled, remembering how Ellen had insisted to Bruce that the pillars had to be there, to complete the look she was going for. He’d grumbled, but he’d done it. More than a decade later, I could see she’d been right. The whole house looked elegant, yet homey. It was the best house on the street. Okay, I was putting way too much thought into pillars, to avoid thinking about what was coming. I was nervous as fuck. A Cooper family Christmas felt like a big deal to me.
“You good?” Lucy asked, reaching for the car door handle.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason. You’re just giving off a vibe.”
“No vibe. Let’s go in.”
We were running late because I’d arrived at Lucy’s that morning with a box full of gifts for her family, only to realize that she had a box ready to go as well. We figured that a married couple giving separate Christmas gifts to the wife’s family would look weird. So we’d taken the time to change the gift tags on all the presents to be from both of us. It was a stupid detail that seemed to stress Lucy out, and of course that made me feel stressed too.
Now we were late, would probably be the last ones to arrive, and I had no idea what I should even expect when I walked through the front door. I retrieved the boxes from the trunk and walked behind Lucy up the pathway, dragging my feet like a child that didn’t want to go to bed or some shit.
With her hand on the door handle, Lucy looked at me over her shoulder, her green eyes shining with concern. “You ready?”
I swallowed. I was doing this for her. All for her. Making sure she was okay was the primary objective, and standing here like a wuss wasn’t helping with that. “Sure, of course.”
There was a LOT of noise coming from the living room—talking, laughing, a child giggling. Until we entered it. Everyone fell silent at once, even the little baby sitting on Elissa’s lap. It was as though they’d orchestrated it. I felt all eyes on me and had to swallow hard, forcing myself not to take a step backward into the hall under the scrutiny.
“Yay! Auntie Lucy’s here! Now we can open presents!” A little girl was sitting so close to the Christmas tree she was practically underneath it, with three wrapped gifts in her lap.
