A Very Happy Thanksgiving (Happy Ever After #5)

1. Phae

Phae

“T he weather was so bad I thought we wouldn’t get a single pumpkin this year, but when I was clearing away the leaves, I found half a dozen hiding behind the old apple tree,” my stepmother said through the phone.

Stepmother. Kitty was only eight years older than me.

“So I’m trying out a new pumpkin pie recipe, but I have a spare?—”

“We ordered an extra one from the store in case the pumpkins we grew taste icky,” my brother put in—the two of them were on speaker. “Can’t have Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie.”

“I’m sure the homemade version will turn out just fine.” The car in front of me turned off, leaving the road clear as I headed north out of Vegas. “Did you decorate yet?”

Holidays were Huck’s favourite thing. The food, the decorations, the house filled with people…

Yes, those get-togethers had been the best part when we were younger.

I actually didn’t care much for people, but at least if there was an audience, Dad couldn’t fly into a narcissistic rage.

Thankfully, he was dead now, and my biggest disappointment was that I hadn’t been the one to help him shuffle off this mortal coil.

And I was also bitter as hell that he’d taken my beloved big brother with him.

If reincarnation was a thing, I was going to spend my next life hunting that asshole down and making his existence as miserable as he’d made mine growing up. However, despite throwing myself into danger on a regular basis, I didn’t intend to die any time soon, so revenge would have to wait.

“Yes, I decorated,” Huck said, even though Thanksgiving wasn’t for another three weeks. “Everything’s done, and we’re having pumpkin lasagne.”

“You’re having that tonight? Or on Thanksgiving.”

“Neither. We’re having pumpkin lasagne when you come, and you’re not coming on Thanksgiving. You’re coming the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Marc’s coming on Thanksgiving, and I already finished his painting.”

Enough with the fucking paintings. Every year, Huck painted three more, one for Kitty, one for Marc, and one for me.

Five of us sitting around the dinner table, smiling, laughing, a figment of his incredible imagination.

It was the only way I’d see Booker grow up, the only way I’d see the real Marc again, but I hated it, hated that Huck lived with a foot in the past while I fought to focus on the future.

Booker was cold in the ground.

Marc was Hollywood’s hottest property.

And me? I liked to kill people.

Okay, perhaps “liked” was too strong a word, but every time I popped another pimple on the backside of humanity, I felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

Of course, Huck and Kitty didn’t know that.

They thought I had more of a desk job. Anytime they asked questions, I bored them to death by talking about Army logistics for ten minutes, then watched them sag in relief when I changed the subject.

So, why did Marc get custody of my family on Thanksgiving? Well, he’d never let them down, only me, plus he was great with Huck. Some years, I didn’t even make it home for the holidays, so it didn’t make sense to ruin their relationship as well as my own.

“How did the trip to Omaha go?” I asked.

My little bro was an artist. More of a sculptor, really—wood carvings were his speciality.

Ever since we were kids and he used to squirrel himself away in a corner, alternately rocking back and forth and whittling away at a stick with an X-Acto knife, Huck had been happiest with a lump of wood in his hands.

Now, his pieces sold for thousands. Kitty managed his money and his life, booked his shows and negotiated the contracts, and to give her credit, not once had she ever tried to rip him off.

Which was a good thing, because I didn’t want to have to fuck with her.

“Awesome! All the birds except for two are sold, and the gallery lady said those will go soon. So many people love birds.”

“Which was your favourite?”

“The blue jay.”

It was always the blue jay or the cardinal. “What’s your next project?”

“A mountain lion.”

A mountain lion? Fuck. Huck liked to sculpt from life—it was his gift. He saw something once—a bird, an animal, a person, a building, a landscape—and then he recreated it in his studio.

“Tell me you saw it in a documentary?”

“No, in the yard.”

He sounded excited. I was wondering how fast I could get to Nebraska with a gun. I didn’t make a habit of shooting for sport, not since Dad died, but I’d do anything to protect my little brother.

“Don’t go out there again, okay? I’ll see if I can bring my flight forward.”

Kitty laughed, a sweet, melodic giggle.

“No need to change your plans. We’ve had a talk about safety, and Huck’s not going to go out when the mountain lion is around. Did you forget the sensors?”

Of course I didn’t forget the sensors; I’d installed the damn things.

A network of motion detectors and cameras surrounding the estate, ready to alert both Kitty and me to any danger.

Even though she hated guns, I’d made sure she knew how to shoot, and she’d protect Huck almost as fiercely as I would.

I slowed to a stop outside Casa del Gato and waited for the gates to open.

The Cathouse. We’d named it for a joke because the house had once belonged to Dick Steele, aka the Prince of Porn, but Casa de Perra would have been more appropriate, seeing as we had three dogs and no cats.

As soon as the gate rolled far enough to the side, I inched my SUV forward, heading for the nearest carport…

then stopped short as a pair of turkeys ran across the courtyard.

The turkeys were followed by Marcel, who was wearing chino shorts, a pale pink golf shirt, a single loafer, and a panicked expression.

Marcel was our home help, but in reality, he thought of himself as a mini dictator.

We kept him around because he could cook.

Like Huck, he’d been prepping for Thanksgiving since Halloween, and if he mentioned cranberries or nutmeg one more time, I was going to line his collection of pumpkins up in the yard and use them for target practice.

“Uh, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Nothing to worry about. I think our Thanksgiving dinner just escaped.”

“Huh?”

“How can a pumpkin lasagne escape?” Huck asked.

“Love you, speak later.”

“Close the gate,” Marcel shrieked. “Close the gate!”

I hit the button as Jezebel strolled around the corner, shaking her head in bemusement.

“If the turkeys run into the desert, wouldn’t that be a positive?” I asked. “I mean, not our problem anymore.”

Marcel paused, hands on his knees as he sucked in air. “No, no, no, they’d get sunstroke.”

“Aren’t you planning to cook them?”

“They were supposed to come pre-prepared. That’s what I ordered.” The nearest turkey putt-putted in alarm, which only seemed to agitate Marcel further. “That’s what I freaking ordered!”

“Relax, I’ll take care of it.”

I retrieved my .22 from the car’s centre console, screwed on the silencer, and stepped out into the sunshine. The turkeys had disappeared around the side of the house, heading for the pool area.

“Can turkeys swim?” Jez asked.

“How should I know?”

“Didn’t you used to live on a farm?”

“It wasn’t a real farm. Dad just used to pretend it was for tax purposes.”

He’d made his money through lawyering, investing in the stock market, and making shrewd real estate deals, not by working the land. Rex Roebuck hadn’t been fond of getting his hands dirty.

Sin sprinted out the front door, waving a taser. “Don’t shoot the turkeys!”

Ah, the vegetarian had arrived.

“You’re going to tase them instead? I’m not sure that thing is designed for use on a bird.”

Although a cardiac arrest would partially solve the problem.

She scrunched her lips to the side, considering. “Good point. We should have a defibrillator on standby.”

“Fried turkey for dinner, anyone?” Jez asked. “Who’s gonna make the gravy?”

Barbie leaned out of an upstairs window. Barbie wasn’t her real name, of course, the same way mine wasn’t Dusk, but we rarely called each other Kendall and Phaedra. Our nicknames were part of our identity now.

“Echo told me to tell you that turkeys can swim.”

“And I’m telling you to tell Echo to stop bugging the house,” Jez yelled back.

Echo was our pet hacker-slash-sociopath, a tiny blonde who shopped for clothes in the kiddie section but packed a cyber punch like no other, and boundaries weren’t a thing she recognised. If she weren’t on our side, one of us would have dumped her in the ocean years ago.

I rolled my eyes. “Good luck with that.”

Sin glared at me. “Stop chatting and catch a turkey.”

“This might be a dumb question, but why are there two turkeys running about the place?”

“Because they escaped from their box,” Marcel said, enunciating clearly as if I were the idiot here.

“Okay, wiseass. Why did you open the box?”

Jez laughed, something she’d started doing after she miraculously met a man who put up with not only her job but also the fact that she was a world-class bitch. And I meant that as a compliment.

“Marcel tried to give them a dish of water.”

“It’s hot,” he defended. “What did you expect me to do?”

“Move the box into the air-conditioned garage and call the supplier?”

“Oh, please. You think I wasn’t on the phone with the supplier already?”

Storm meandered out of the house. “Marcel ordered two fresh turkeys for pre-Thanksgiving dinner, and something got lost in translation.”

Yikes. “I mean, they are fresh.”

And with Sin around, they’d clucking stay that way.

For a gal who’d put a bullet through a man’s head with zero regrets, she got surprisingly pissy about our consumption of animal products.

She also rescued stray dogs in her spare time and gave half her money to the animal shelter.

Someone would be building a turkey pen this afternoon, and I was torn between sneaking off so that didn’t end up being me and sticking around to watch the fun.

“Marcel versus two turkeys,” Jez mused. “My money’s on the turkeys.”

Mine too.