Chapter 4
Dottie insisted on having “the murder room,” as she called it—even after I’d explained, as many times as I could, that nobody had been murdered in that room.
Well, not unless you count Nathaniel Blackwood, I guess.
Or Nathaniel Blackwood’s wife. Although, those killings had technically happened on the balcony, so maybe the room was fine, but it was more of a murder balcony?
In any case, Dottie seemed perfectly comfortable in Vivienne’s old room. It had been untouched, aside from fresh bedding, since the days when Vivienne had lived here. Dottie quickly got caught up in looking at Vivienne’s private collection of books.
As soon as I could, I escaped to the kitchen. The only way out of this evening seemed to be a sugar coma, and the Boston cream pie was calling my name.
When I got there, though, Bobby was standing in front of the refrigerator. His stance was wide. His arms were crossed. Even in a sweater and jeans, all his muscles were popping. (God, please let that be a thing people say.) “What’s going on?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to get my emergency cake.”
“Dash.”
“Nothing’s going on.”
Bobby set his jaw.
I pushed him out of the way. Well, I tried to.
After a while, Bobby must have gotten tired of being embarrassed for me because he caught hold of my hands and held on until I had to look him in the eye. “Are you upset because she was telling people about your life?”
“Embarrassing things. Humiliating things. Soul-crushing abominations that should have been swallowed up by the dark tide of history.”
“Like Dasher the Loneliest Reindeer.”
I shuddered. “Exactly.”
“It was cute,” Bobby said.
I rolled my eyes.
Bobby’s pause was so slight that I might have missed it from someone else. “A quarterback?”
I groaned.
“He was very good looking,” Bobby informed me.
“How are you being polite and somehow making this so much worse?” Before Bobby could answer that, I continued, “Look, that’s just Dottie; she has a hard time remembering I’m not twelve.
” The look on Bobby’s face made me say, “Rude! Anyway, it wasn’t my favorite part of the evening, but she’s been doing that my whole life. It’s just a big sister thing.”
“Is there a reason she shouldn’t stay here? Because I’ll ask her to leave.”
“Oh my God, Bobby, don’t you dare!”
“I understand family can be difficult—”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. Everything’s fine.
She’s great. I love Dottie. I mean, I haven’t been around her for much of my adult life, but she’s my sister, and she really is an amazing person.
It’s just—” I fought to keep the disappointment out of my voice.
“I had such a nice evening planned.” Heat bloomed in my face, and I rushed to add.
“With the nachos. And then she showed up, and now everybody else is here, and I’m not going to get to spend any time with, uh, the nachos, and I don’t get a lot of one-on-one time with the nachos, and—have I stopped talking yet? ”
“No, and it’s getting interesting.”
I groaned, squeezed my eyes shut, and concentrated on melting into the floor.
Bobby’s quiet laugh ran through the kitchen. And then he squeezed my hands and said, “I appreciate that you planned a great New Year’s Eve.”
“It’s not a great New Year’s Eve. It’s a terrible New Year’s Eve. We might as well be—be doing puzzles and eating soup.”
“I like puzzles,” Bobby said.
“No,” I moaned. “Why is everything the worst?”
He laughed again and squeezed my hands again until I opened my eyes. Then he said, “The nachos are very grateful that you tried so hard.”
Looking into the burnished bronze of his eyes was overpowering; it felt so intimate, so intense. But I couldn’t look away.
Fortunately, my “friends” chose that moment to barrel into the kitchen.
“She’s incredible,” Fox was saying. “She’s like my big sister.”
I wrenched my hands away from Bobby—discreetly—and said, “Who? Dottie? You’re twice her age.”
Indira said, “Dashiell!”
“You’re missing the point,” Fox said. “I’d kill to have a big sister like Dottie. I’m going to ask her to adopt me.”
“Breathe,” Bobby whispered to me.
“And did you know you can cut your own hair?” Millie announced. “Dottie’s going to show me! She said you just need scissors and a bucket for the well!”
“What well?” I asked. “We have running water. For that matter, we have hair salons!”
“I’m going to give myself BANGS!”
“Oh no you’re not, young lady. Keme, help me out—Keme!”
The boy was busy on his phone. It only took one look at the screen for me to realize things were spinning out of control. “Nope. No way. Unh-uh. You are not going to spend the next six months backpacking in Vietnam.”
Keme said three words to me, and they weren’t “Happy New Year!”
“Indira, will you please talk some sense into him?” To Bobby, I said, “Remember how you promised to arrest Dottie and throw her in jail?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Well, I changed my mind. I mean, this is classic Dottie—showing up out of nowhere, expecting everyone to drop everything, making the locals restless, telling people they can cut their own hair. I love her, but I’m an adult. I’m allowed to have boundaries.”
Keme snorted.
I barreled on. “She can’t just show up here unannounced and tell people about Jake—
“I knew his name was Jake!” Fox shouted.
“—and pretend like somehow, this is normal behavior. She can stay at a motel. Or she can drive back to Portland. Or—” Genius struck. “If she’s so good at backpacking, she can just backpack her way out of here!”
Even Bobby looked a little disappointed in me.
“Dash, she’s your family,” Millie said. “She has to stay here.”
Keme’s look suggested that he had different ideas about family.
“You know what you should do?” Fox said. “You should fight her.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Indira said, with a tone she’d once used when I’d spent too much time trying to choose between mint chocolate chip and cookie dough ice cream.
(The words Shut that freezer right now had been the gentlest part of that memorable encounter.) “Why don’t you go ask her why she’s here? ”