December 2025 #3
The issue was, Kola could draw, it just took him, like, fifteen minutes to do one finger of a hand.
Hannah could draw as well, but sometimes she got distracted in the middle and started making her picture prettier.
She was also big on grounding her picture in space and time.
Which meant background needed to be added.
By that time, Jake had Rodin’s Thinker sketched out well enough that the rest of us could see it and guess it. Finn could not draw to save his life.
“That’s a bridge?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
I coughed. “How is it a bridge?”
“I find it very avant garde,” Kola defended the guy he loved.
“Don’t help me,” Finn ordered.
Now Dane, of course, was the best at drawing of everyone there, with Chris coming in a strong second.
It was a given, as they were both architects.
They could both sketch things very, very fast, as they were used to giving people ideas of space and interiors and exteriors so they could get an idea of what something would look like.
Buildings, any kind, from the pyramids of Giza to the Guggenheim, from Big Ben to the Coliseum, Dane or Chris was your man.
Where they bumped up against some problems were with things like… people.
“That’s a woman,” Dylan said authoritatively, glancing at me, and then her voice changed, becoming concerned. “I mean, isn’t it?”
I shrugged, having absolutely no idea.
“It could be Thomas Jefferson,” Aja suggested. “There’s a lot of hair there.”
“It’s not hair,” Dane said under his breath.
“Hey, no talking,” Sam admonished him.
“As if that will help,” Duncan said snidely.
“It’s not hair?” Aaron was horrified. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” Dane snapped at him.
Hannah snickered, hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the sound.
“What did I say about the talking?”
“You’re doing a valiant job,” Chris commended him.
“Thank you,” Dane almost whimpered.
“Time’s up,” Aja announced. “Now we can all guess.”
“Will that help?” Robert asked her.
“Really?” Dane chided his son, who only laughed.
Gentry scoffed and then ducked behind Kola on the couch to hide when his father shot him a scathing look.
“It’s really good, Uncle Dane,” Kola assured him. “Is it a yeti?”
That was it, Gentry was howling, face pressed down into the pillows.
“It’s the yeti,” Chris offered. “Like, one specific one, right?”
Dane growled.
“Bigfoot?”
Much like Aaron, I lost it.
There was a knock at the door then, and Hannah stood up to answer it. She brought in George and Kurt, entering with chocolate silk pie that I had not been able to find for Sam, which he got up and took and thanked them lavishly for.
“Oh, I love Pictionary,” Kurt said.
“He’s on my team,” Sam stated with conviction.
“That puts you with us,” Dane told George, “so take a guess at the board.”
George gave him a smile, and then squinted at the drawing a moment. “It’s the Flash.”
We all gasped.
Kurt looked at his husband like he’d grown another head. “Pardon me?”
“It is, isn’t it?” George asked Dane.
“Yes,” Dane replied, sounding relieved and so very pleased.
“How?” Sam was stunned.
Crossing the room, George took the green dry-erase marker so he could circle things on Dane’s black-and-white rendition. “This is movement, right? These are individual pieces of the same person running, like stop-motion, and you can tell it’s fast from the lines between.”
“That’s not hair?” Aja asked him.
“And even if I missed all that, the boots are here, and of course, the lightning bolt on his chest here in profile.”
Dane reached out and took hold of George’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re here. Would you like something to eat?”
George chuckled. “I would.”
Hannah collected one of her favorite people on the planet, taking hold of his arm and leading him to the kitchen, where Finn and Kola were now unloading the dishwasher.
Kurt was examining Dane’s rendering and shook his head. “I still don’t see it.”
“I don’t see it either,” Duncan told him. “Nobody sees it.”
“George did,” Dane said haughtily, sitting down, utterly vindicated.
“We should play something else now,” Dylan suggested.
“Monopoly,” Aaron said evilly.
“Oh God,” Wick groaned.
Finn’s parents had to leave; they still had to pop in on other family but thanked us for having them.
Everyone said their goodbyes, both Aja and Dylan hugged Anne, and Anne told me as Sam and I were walking them out to their car, that she was thrilled that Finn was there with us, in our home, as she was certain that both her other sons, who she had seen earlier in the day at Eammon’s brother’s house where the entire family had gathered, were out drinking.
“Well, Thanksgiving is a daytime holiday,” I soothed her. “Sam and I used to take the kids to a movie during the night.”
“A movie would be fantastic, but drinking and whatever else is something that concerns me.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I said, unsure what else to say.
“Finn has always been different, more grounded, more serious, I guess, and Kola, studying to be a doctor, is very much the same, so… I’m thankful.”
“As I am for you and Eammon having made such an amazing man for my own amazing man to love.”
We were hugging when Eammon and Sam turned to us.
“Your husband is very emotional today,” Eammon stated.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Sam said with a shrug. “It brings it out in him.”
Back inside, I noted that the kitchen table was being set up for Monopoly, the living room coffee table looked like Trivia Pursuit, and the round card table had been carried up from the basement for whatever else would be played.
There was also more pie eating, Hannah and Jake were serving, with Gentry and Wick taking orders like waiters, and Aaron was calling his husband, the man he could not live without, a chicken.
“Why’re you baiting your man?” Sam asked him.
“He’s too scared to play Monopoly.”
“I’m not scared,” Duncan told him, gesturing at the table, “it’s just that is not a friendly game and I’m not doing it.”
“Oh come on,” Kola said, counting his money, “it’ll be great.”
“It won’t be great,” Finn sided with Duncan. “It’s scary how you people play.”
George turned to me. “I want to see those Uno skills I’ve heard so much about, Mr. Harcourt.”
“Certainly,” I said, grinning at him. “Step into my parlor.”
“No Monopoly for you?” Kurt asked, taking a seat beside Kola at the table.
George gestured at Aaron. “You think that any of you can outplay my boss at Monopoly? Are you serious?”
Aaron cackled.
“You’d be surprised,” Dane said cheerfully.
George looked at Hannah, who shook her head no, clearly in full agreement with him.
Aja, walking around behind her husband to drop him off some pie, kissed him on the cheek and wished him good luck.
“Thank you for the pie, but I don't need luck. It's all skill, baby.”
Her snort of laughter was adorable.
“Yeah, we’ll see,” Sam said, taking a seat beside Aaron as Duncan and Finn went to join Dylan, Gentry, Jake, and Aja in the trivia area.
It was me, Robert, George, Wick, and Hannah playing Uno.
“You can come be on my team when you lose all your money over there,” Jake called out to Harper.
“In your dreams, buddy.”
There was a lot of trash talking going on.
“What is that?” Kurt asked a few minutes later.
“That’s a skyscraper,” Harper answered him. “But you have to roll to see if you get one.”
“Did you put money in for the planning commissioner?” Sam asked him.
“I…no, where does that go?”
George chuckled at our table.
“Don’t make fun,” Hannah scolded him and then called over to Kurt, “You can join us when you’re out.”
George shook his head. “And you think that was nice?”
“I was being supportive. He’s a bunny at a table with wolves. He’s not going to last long.”
“No,” Gentry said from the trivia area. “Mom and Aunt Dylan do not get to be on the same team. That’s not fair.”
And it wasn’t. They were both exceedingly smart women to begin with, and Dylan was a sports nut, and Aja’s movie memory was encyclopedic. “You tell ’em, Gen.”
“I don’t wanna hear from the peanut gallery over there,” Dylan chided me.
In the end, Dylan and Duncan teamed up, and Aja and Jake, and Finn and Gentry. There was quite a bit of yelling over there, much more from the scary Monopoly table, and a lot of whining at mine.
“How?” George asked me. “There’s no way you have only two.”
“Two is a lot for me,” I said, glancing at my girl. “You still counting?”
“Yes, I’m still counting,” she snarled at me. “That was a second Draw Four you gave me on top of the first one!”
I smiled at her.
She groaned. Loudly.
“Hannah,” Aaron said pointedly from the Monopoly table.
“I know, but he’s being impossible.”
“What do you know?” I asked her.
“Never let the other person see your frustration,” both Hannah and George answered me.
After a moment, George shrugged. “It’s a thing at Sutter.”
I smiled at him like a cobra.
“You take this game a bit too seriously, Mr. Harcourt.”
“So I’ve been told, George.”
It was fun; everyone stayed late. Aaron killed all comers at Monopoly, Aja and Jake massacred everyone at trivia, and Hannah hit five hundred first, after two hours, so we had to end Uno.
I had fifteen. George was very impressed, and so was Kurt, who had come in after we started and still had a higher score than me.
We all broke for coffee and tea, and then there was talking, which was always my favorite part of the evening.
Even though Hannah’s birthday was the following day, since all she planned to do was veg, not even wanting to have her regular food crawl with her brother, and definitely not a big blowout of a party, she was happy when a small devil’s food cake with chocolate sour cream frosting, that Aja had made for her, was brought out of the pantry.
Gifts were brought in from cars, and we all sang.
It turned out to be exactly what she wanted, and she got to hug and kiss all her favorite people, including George and ending with Jake, who she leaned against and didn’t move away from.
I couldn’t think of a better end for Thanksgiving.
Hannah promised to be back over first thing in the morning, as she wanted pancakes and gravy and maple syrup.
Finn was horrified, and so was Wick. Jake, Kola, and Finn would be there as well.
Even though there was no food crawl, Kola still wanted to do whatever it was that Hannah wanted.
He was looking forward to falling asleep on the couch after eating a turkey sandwich with extra mayo and salt on white bread later in the day.
“No mustard?” Finn asked as they were walking out the back door.
“Absolutely not.”
“No lettuce or tomatoes?”
“Gross. No.”
“What kind of sandwich is that? It sounds as bad as the pancakes Hannah will be eating.”
“You’ll see. I’ll make you one.”
“You really don’t have to.”
“Hey, if you have to go visit your family or––”
“No,” Finn rushed out. “All yours. I’ll be on the couch as well.”
“That’s really good,” Kola said, and I could see how pleased Finn was from his smile.
When Sam carried me up to bed—I was a bit unsteady on the stairs between a lot of moscato and far too much food—I hugged him tight.
“It was a good day,” I told him.
“Yes, it was.”
“Apparently your parents gave Hannah her gift today as well, since they have to fly out to go on that cruise tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“I’m surprised Hannah didn’t want a huge party.”
“Not me. She’s been to so many and hosted so many, I could see how having a day where no one expects anything from you at all would be really nice.”
“Well, that’s what she’s getting.”
“It sounds good to me too, though I don’t want Hannah’s pancakes or Kola’s sandwich.”
“I’ll make sure everything is how you like it,” I promised before I kissed him.
“I have you,” he said, when I let him breathe. “I already have everything how I like it.”
And I knew that.
Okay, I hope you all had a lovely holiday, and I will see you next year to chat about Christmas and the cold weather and everything else. Stay warm, everyone.