Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Where’s Charlie?” Emmy asked when she got back out into the waiting room.
Elsie put down her knitting. “He got an Uber. He said he needed to run out and get a few things and he’d meet you at Madison and Jack’s after.”
“Okay.” She had taken quite a while.
“How’s your dad?” Charlotte asked.
“Really great. We talked the whole time.”
“Wow,” Uncle Stephen said. “He’ll be tired now, I’m sure. Maybe Uncle Brian should go next. He’s the quietest one of us all.”
They laughed.
With a mixture of emotions, Emmy left the hospital and stepped out into the cold air.
The temperature was dropping. She tightened her scarf and braved the winter breeze all the way to her car, everything going around in her mind.
Moments with Mitch floated in and out, as she tried to find similarities between the two of them.
They once laughed because they’d both cut their fabric the same, holding the piece in a certain way while lifting the sheers in an odd looping pattern.
She tried to tell herself that her mother must have taught her that skill; that it wasn’t some genetic quirk.
And they always selected the same design from each of the seasonal panels.
She got into her car and quickly started the engine, blowing on her hands while she waited for warmth.
When she arrived at Madison’s, her sister was putting away groceries, her head in the pantry. “Hey!” she said, distracted by an armful of potato chips.
“Is Charlie not back yet?”
Madison glanced over her shoulder. “No, I thought he was with you.”
“They said he had to pick up a few things.”
Madison shrugged. “He can’t need much. Did you see Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“How was he?”
“Good. He was chatty.”
“Oh wow, really?” Madison’s gaze popped over to her and back to the full grocery bags all over the floor.
“Yes, he was sitting up and everything.”
Madison put her hands on her cheeks in surprise. “I can’t wait to get over there to see him.”
Her excitement was definitely warranted, but Emmy held onto the conversation she’d had with her dad. The quiet house was a reprieve, given what she’d just learned. She went over to a bag of cold items and began stacking them in the refrigerator.
“With the upcoming snow, the store was a madhouse,” Madison said, “but I managed to get five pizzas, cold cuts and cheese for sandwiches, and a ton of snacks. I also got stuff to make a couple of casseroles and enough baking supplies to get us through an apocalypse.”
Emmy barely heard her as she piled fruit into a temperature-controlled drawer.
The rustling stopped and Emmy turned to find Madison facing her.
“You okay?” Madison asked.
“I don’t know.”
With a bunch of bananas in her arms, Emmy told Madison what her dad had heard in his dream, and then she laid out what she’d been thinking.
Madison stood, silent.
“I know,” Emmy said in response to nothing at all. Madison hadn’t had to say anything, but Emmy could guess all the things that were going through her sister’s mind.
“That’s ridiculous,” Madison said. “There’s no way…” But the way she trailed off as she looked at her suggested that the idea of Emmy being Mitch’s daughter might not seem so far-fetched.
“I’ve been going around and around with everything,” Emmy said. “Why am I the only one of all of us who likes mint chocolate chip ice cream? Does Mitch like it? I’m a night owl and everyone else in the family turns in early. I could keep going.”
“Those might just be your own traits, though, Em. You’ll drive yourself crazy. There’s no way you’re not one hundred percent my sister.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
They both stood there silently. Emmy hugged the bunch of bananas to her chest.
“I want to call Mitch to ask him some of these questions, but Dad says we should do a paternity test first.”
“That’s a sensible idea.”
The crease between her sister’s eyebrows made Emmy’s chest tighten. Did it really matter where her genetics came from? “Even if it came out that I’m Mitch’s daughter, the results won’t impact my life. I’m still the person I was before.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“Then why does it weigh on me so badly?” Emmy asked.
“There’s no use in worrying about any of it until we have a definitive answer.
” Madison swiped her phone off the counter.
“How do you even do paternity tests?” She tapped her screen a few times, that line between her eyebrows getting deeper.
“This says if you only want one for personal use, you can get an at-home one. They’re available at pharmacies or online.
It’s just a cheek swab and then you mail them to a lab. Who knew?”
“Right?”
Madison set her phone down and walked over to Emmy. Gently, she took the bananas from her arms and set them on the counter. With resolve, she said, “I’ll pick one up today on my way home from the hospital.”
Emmy nodded. Is this some kind of bad dream?
“We can do this together, and no matter what the outcome, it won’t change anything between us.”
“I said the same thing to Dad.”
With their father up and around, he was tired out by evening, and everyone went back to Madison’s house.
Jack turned on a rerun of last week’s Baltimore Ravens vs.
Atlanta Falcons football game that he’d missed when Madison asked him to pack for their trip to New York.
Charlie and the rest of the guys were in the family room hooting and hollering over it while Emmy and the other women were in the kitchen.
Madison stirred meatballs in the Crock-Pot; Charlotte was on beverage duty, combining ginger ale, cranberry juice, and orange juice in a punch bowl; Elsie was making a charcuterie board; and Emmy took on the slice-and-bake sugar cookies.
Charlie poked his head in. “It smells delicious in here. Need any help?”
“Want to spoon the meatballs into the serving dish?” Madison said.
“Sure.” Charlie went over to the counter and spooned the meatballs from the Crock-Pot into a white porcelain serving bowl.
“How’s the game?” Emmy asked Charlie.
“Exciting. The Falcons made a forty-four-yard field goal, giving Atlanta a three and oh lead.”
“Sounds like the making of a nail-biter. Let’s get the food in there right away so you don’t miss the game.” Emmy wrinkled her nose at him playfully.
Charlie and the women took the dishes into the family room and set them on the coffee table.
Madison added a stack of plates and a pile of silverware while Charlotte brought everyone cups of punch.
Just then, the Ravens’ quarterback scored a thirteen-yard rushing touchdown, putting Baltimore ahead and sending the guys into fits of howls.
A tiny hoot came from the laptop on the side table. Emmy went over to it.
“Dad?”
“Charlie put me on video chat so I could watch the game with you all,” he said. “I’m on my phone. The nurse helped me, but she said the monitor can’t show too much of an increased heart rate or she’s shutting me down.”
“I thought you were tired,” she said with a laugh.
“I slept for an hour, but if you all have football on, I’m up. I didn’t get to see this game.”
Emmy grinned at her dad. “It feels a little more normal knowing you’re with us. I wish you could be here.”
“The nurse thinks I should be able to get out of here in five to seven days.”
“That’s great news.” Emmy looked around at her family, the festive food on the table, and the glittering Christmas tree. “It almost feels like Christmas.”
“Thanks to Charlie, it’ll feel a lot like Christmas at halftime,” Uncle Stephen said.
Emmy faced Charlie to find out what her uncle was talking about.
“While you were with your dad, I went out and bought small gifts for everyone and wrapped them up so we could do the gift exchange, since you said you all hadn’t had a chance to plan one this year. I also grabbed a few bottles of wine.”
“Oh my goodness,” Emmy said. “You didn’t have to do all that.”
“Don’t get too excited.” He chuckled. “You haven’t seen the gifts yet.”
Charlotte clapped her hands together. “This is going to be so much fun!”
“I’ll make the slips of paper with the numbers,” Madison said.
“I even got a gift for you, James,” Charlie said, leaning toward the computer screen. “I’ll draw your number and let you tell me what gift to choose.”
James’s voice came through the speaker. “Thank you, Charlie.”
When everyone had turned their focus to the last of the finger-foods before dessert, Emmy pulled Charlie aside. “You’re an angel.” She pushed herself up on her toes and kissed his cheek, his spicy scent taking her breath away for a second.
With the test kit that Madison had brought home sitting in a bag in her bedroom, Emmy had gone into tonight feeling tentative, but now Christmas seemed to be just right, and that was what she wanted to focus on. Everything else could wait.
With only six seconds before the end of the half, the Ravens’ kicker tied the game up with a forty-one-yard field goal, making it a nail-biting ten to ten at halftime.
Even Elsie, who never seemed to know what was going on during a football game, was out of her chair, pumping her fists, completely unaware of the ball of yarn rolling off her lap.
The house smelled of sugar cookies. Charlotte set a platter onto the coffee table while everyone pulled chairs into a circle around the room for Charlie’s gift exchange.
Uncle Brian was the first to draw a number from the cup of slips Madison had quickly scribbled down during the first half of the game.
“Number seven.” He danced a little jig in his chair.
Madison brought the cup to Emmy next. She reached in and mixed up the slips before grabbing hold of one. She pulled it out and opened it. Ten.
“Emmy got ten!” Madison said. “You never get ten. This is going to be an interesting year.”
Emmy agreed with her on that point, for sure.