Step-Grinch (Wanting What’s Wrong #11)
Chapter 1
Christmas in Montana is not all romance and fluffy snowflakes like the Hallmark movies make you think.
This year at least, it’s going to be about me staring at the bare corner of the living room where a ten-foot Norway pine usually stands twinkling with a thousand white lights and carefully curated aesthetic ornaments.
Not this year.
“This is for your own good.” My mother cocks a flawlessly arched eyebrow, darting her eyes to mine as I sit in the passenger seat of her new Mercedes GLS, an early Christmas present from my stepfather, Colbert, as she drives us into town.
I barely had ten minutes at my family’s ‘cabin’ to drop my bags and take a breath before she scurried me to the car. And, by cabin I mean ten thousand square feet of hand set pine logs set on a thousand acres of some of the most stunning land in Montana.
I’ve had a hellish week, with studying and then driving the five hours home from Bozeman through a typical Montana December blizzard.
Did she even ask about my grades or how finals went?
They went well, Mom. I should maintain my 4.0 GPA and stay on track to graduate in three years with my double major in English and Political Science. Thanks for asking.
My half-sister Isabel giggles from the backseat, staring at her new iPhone. She’s been watching cat videos on TikTok since we pulled out of the drive.
She’s been indoctrinated from birth into the Elena and Colbert Houser playbook of life.
This includes church every Sunday, and watching my parents make donations to politicians who support ‘traditional’ values.
Their presentation of the perfect family to the upper crust of Montana is their true religion, if you ask me.
But, as usual, no one is asking me.
And yet, Isabel has still maintained her sweet nature and wisdom beyond her six and a half years.
I love her.
“Yes, mother.” I swallow around the tightness in my throat as Mom takes the turn onto East Chester Avenue, and then we see it.
Him, I mean. A guy. In a mask.
Isabel squeals as she sees him too. I suck in a sharp breath, my fingers darting to my lips. He’s just standing there with people walking around him shooting him looks as he stares straight ahead as though he was waiting for our car to turn the corner.
“Look! It’s the Grinch!” Isabel lowers her window and yells, “Go back to where you came from, Grinchy Grinch! You’re not in Whoville!”
“Isabel!” Mom snaps as I lock onto the man in the green mask, his head tipping to the side as we pass. I note the stiff khaki pants and plain gray sweatshirt that make him look like a convict on his first day of parole. “You don’t know who that is! He could be dangerous.”
“He’s wearing a Grinch mask, Mom. How dangerous could he be? What’s he gonna do? Stuff our Christmas tree up the chimbly?” Her little lisp is so cute. “Oh, wait, we don’t even have a Christmas tree this year.”
Her voice falls, eyes meeting mine with a pity shrug.
I turn my head as we pass, watching the man raise a gloved hand, finger waving at the car as we go by, and a chill shakes my shoulders.
Why did it have to be the Grinch? I exhale hard, crossing my arms over my chest as Mom pulls the black SUV into the valet line at The Cobalt Club. I turn to look through the rear windshield at the freak on the corner, but he’s already gone.
“Ignore him,” my mom says, blinking at herself in the rearview. “Christmas is not about caricatures and cartoons. We know better, don’t we?”
She winks at Isabel, who is back to staring at her phone. “Yup,” she answers without looking up.
We’re at the club for a holiday late lunch, a concession to me before the three of them head to the airport, and I don’t see them again until after the New Year. They’re leaving for a Christmas ‘retreat’ at the secluded Barbados resort owned by the First Church of Holy Values in Christ.
Don’t let the name fool you. It’s more like the first church of you-need-two-commas-in-your-bank-account-to-be-a-member.
If Jesus were alive, he wouldn’t make it through the front door on a carpenter’s salary.
“Let’s get going, girls. Some of us have a plane to catch.” Mom finger brushes her freshly highlighted and blown-out blonde bob before putting the car in park and grabbing her purse.
I look back at Isabel, and she gives me a tight smile. “We all want you to come, Sadie. But God needs you to take some time to re-evaluate your priorities.”
Her blue eyes flick to my mother, who nods in approval, glowing with pride that her and my stepfather’s training has worked its magic with their third child.
Third time’s the charm, as they say.
“I’ll be sure to do that.” I wink, and she checks that Mom isn’t looking at her in the rearview before she winks back.
I’m disappointed that there is basically going to be no Christmas for me this year, but in another way, having them leave is a relief.
I have things going on in my life that I’m not ready to talk about, and the likelihood that said things would remain hidden, so to speak, if we were all together for the next two weeks would be slim.
Two valets in burgundy western-style blazers and tan cowboy hats open each of the front doors. I step out, my black Uggs squishing in the gathering muck on the street.
The tickle of falling snowflakes hits my cheeks as Mom comes around the front of the car in her Burberry tan jacket, waving for Isabel to come hold her hand.
And then we walk across the snowy sidewalk to the front door, which is already being held open by another of the burgundy-jacketed attendants who I’ve come to believe must be cloned in some mad science lab in the basement at The Cobalt Club.
They’re all chiseled jaws and dark hair, eyes just friendly enough, but not so much that you’d think to engage them in conversation.
Inside, the walls are dark, ten-inch-thick logs, the air warm and scented with piped-in evergreen and leather.
It’s decked out for the holidays with the kind of understated luxury only a private Montana club can manage.
If you threw a snowball across the restaurant, you’d likely hit at least one billionaire and a few millionaires.
Lots of money hides under those cowboy hats.
Inside, the maitre d’ sweeps his arm forward, ushering us to our usual table right in the center of the front window, so anyone walking down the sidewalk in downtown Bremmer, Montana will see the perfect Houser family, dining and chatting so casually in a club where ordering a steak ‘well done’ will get you kicked out, the hundred-thousand dollar a year membership dues keep the riff raff out.
“The usual,” my mom says, as a waiter appears out of thin air to pull her chair back, offering to take her coat which she refuses because she’s always freezing. “Girls? What would you like to drink?”
“Two Shirley Temples,” Isabel chirps, pulling her shoulders back to stand up straight as I bump her with my hip. “Four cherries in each.”
“Four?” I mouth as she looks up at me with those same blue eyes I see when I look at myself in the mirror. A genetic trait all three of the women in the Houser family share.
She snorts a little giggle and nods, then slips into the chair next to Mom, while I step toward the one across from her next to the window which offers a perfect view of the evergreen and gold garland that’s draped and wrapped around everything in downtown that would hold still.
“Your father will be along in a few minutes.” Mom smiles, her teeth as white as the snow coming down outside the window. “Even with the less-than-ideal circumstances, it’s nice to share a meal with the whole family before we head to the airport.”
The whole family. Right.
I unwrap my pink and lavender anti-Burberry scarf from around my neck, and before I can hang it on the back of the chair, another of the dark-haired cowboy clones appears.
“Ma’am. Let me check that in the coat closet for you.” He holds out a numbered ticket, then nods toward the oversized fleece jacket I’ve kept securely buttoned around myself since I got out of the car at the ranch.
“Let him take it dear.” Mom’s hushed voice tells me something I’m doing is embarrassing her. “Why didn’t you wear the Double D coat I got you last year? That fleece is—” She trails off with a sigh.
I bite back the silent groan, press a smile to my lips, and let him slip it off my shoulders. My mother’s new lash extensions flutter, her eyes rolling back for a second before she rests two manicured, red-tipped fingernails against the bridge of her nose.
“Thank you,” I say as the cowboy-clone scurries off with my invisibility cloak I would keep me from having to see that look in my mom’s eyes.
I drop into the wooden chair as her eyes track up and down my body.
“Dear.” She only uses that term when what comes next is going to be something I don’t want to hear. “I told you, my doctor would gladly get you on one of the GLP medications. They are like magic. I mean, look.” She turns her palms up, leaning back in her chair. “Even me, I’ve lost fifteen pounds.”
“You need to gain it back, Mom,” I retort. “This is Montana, not Orange County, and not everyone needs to be a size zero.”
She shakes her head as the server comes over with her martini and our two Shirley Temples balanced on a tray.
The weight battle has been ongoing since my childhood.
Mom was a former Miss Indianapolis and three times Miss Indy 500.
She puts image before substance in almost all areas of life, especially physical appearances.
Her go-to line is, ‘If you don’t respect yourself, how do you think anyone else will respect you? ’
Which, as I got older and became aware of the way she disappeared into the bathroom after every meal and kept a detailed chart of her weights at exactly eight am, noon, and eight pm, made me question her version of respect.
Because turning your body inside out several times a day in order to keep that magic number in the green on the chart did not seem to track.