Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
“Dinner,” Aunt Elsie called.
Madison stood up from her spot next to Emmy on the sofa.
“Don’t be so gloomy. Charlie getting stuck in Chicago is a tiny setback.
We’ll check on him throughout the night to be sure he’s okay.
But right now, we’ll refill your sparkler, eat until we feel like beached whales, and then have a girls’ night instead. ”
“What about Jack?” Emmy asked.
“They’ve got football on. He’ll have plenty to keep him busy. And there’s always the family ping-pong tournament.”
“I made a promise to myself that I’d try to participate and hang out with the family.”
“All right. We can hang out with the aunts instead. I’m sure Aunt Elsie would love to show you her latest knitting stitch. Maybe we could get a tutorial. And if we do, I’ll be sure to keep the champagne coming.” She raised her half-empty glass and made a face.
Aunts Elsie and Charlotte were already sitting around the table when Emmy and Madison took their places.
Emmy sat between Uncle Brian and her dad, a few people down from Madison, who’d made the great mistake of taking the chair beside Uncle Stephen, ensuring that she’d have quite a bit of interesting conversation.
A place sat empty across from Emmy, reminding her of Charlie’s absence.
Aunt Charlotte had set a place for him—that was sweet of her.
Elsie was the first to begin passing the dishes, opting for the mashed potatoes. She scooped a large dollop and dropped it onto her plate, then passed the bowl to Charlotte.
With the empty spot across from her, Emmy had a clear view of her mother’s painting, as if to put an exclamation point on the atmosphere of the holiday.
She focused on the long brown locks of her mother’s hair, adjusting her fixation on it until the image became nothing more than shiny streaks of oil paint.
“She was certainly beautiful, wasn’t she?” Aunt Charlotte asked, following Emmy’s gaze. “Your mom had such a gentle and easy presence—she didn’t have to try.”
Aunt Charlotte passed the platter of turkey to Elsie.
“And talented,” she added. “Did you know that when you girls were little,” Elsie waggled a finger at Madison and Emmy, “she was offered a design contract in New York, but turned it down? She’d left the business a few years before, and they were still asking. ”
Emmy’s dad smiled lovingly at the painting, thoughts lurking behind his eyes.
“She wanted a family more than all that glitz and glamour,” Emmy’s father said.
His comment drew Emmy inward. Her mother knew what she wanted, but Emmy seemed to be floundering. For so many years, she’d focused on school and then on getting a job. Then, she’d thrown herself into trying to move up the corporate ladder to no avail. Was Emmy chasing the wrong thing?
After dinner, they all gathered in the living room for the annual White Elephant gift exchange. Emmy had been so excited about her fortune-telling ball, but without the fresh perspective that Charlie brought, she’d slipped back into the normalcy of her life.
Be positive, she told herself. Try to enjoy the moment.
Aunt Elsie clapped her hands together, getting everyone’s attention, her hips swaying back and forth, and picked up the jar that had held their drawing numbers over the years.
“I thought we’d mix things up this Christmas,” she said, as she began handing everyone a slip of paper.
“Each of you has a trivia question. We’ll start with the youngest person and go clockwise.
If you can answer your question, you choose a gift or steal.
If you can’t, you skip your turn, wait until everyone has gone once, and draw another question. ”
She finished handing out the slips of paper.
“I guess I’m first then.” Emmy opened the folded slip. “Which reindeer’s name begins with B?” She mentally hummed the song with their names but as she got to the fourth one, her mind went blank. She sang it again under her breath.
“You know this,” Madison said.
“No helping,” Elsie said lightheartedly.
“I’m not helping. I’m encouraging,” Madison returned.
“Blitzen!” Emmy called, utterly relieved.
Though if she hadn’t thought of it, she could’ve stolen a better gift later.
She picked up a large, wrapped cylinder and pulled it into her lap. Curious, she knocked on the top of it by the bow. “It sounds like a drum.”
Her dad laughed.
Emmy tore off the paper to reveal an enormous tin of popcorn. “Oh, it has three flavors,” she said, scanning the ingredients and information. “Caramel, butter, and chocolate.”
“Better not open it yet,” Madison said. “I’ve got my eye on that one and I’m next.”
Her sister read aloud her trivia question: “What were Frosty the Snowman’s first words when he came to life?” She wrinkled her nose. “Hello? Merry Christmas?”
Elsie reached under her chair and consulted a clipboard.
“Wait, you have the answers?” Madison said, pawing playfully at her aunt. “Let me see.”
Aunt Elsie leaned away from her. “Don’t be a party pooper,” she said with a laugh. “I’m sorry to say that Frosty’s words were ‘Happy birthday.’”
Madison pretended to pout, crossing her arms.
Emmy leaned toward her. “There’s one flaw in this game,” she whispered. “If you answer incorrectly, you actually have a better shot of a good gift. Now, you’ll get last pick.”
Madison tipped her head back, amused.
“Jack’s turn,” Elsie called.
Jack stood up and smoothed his little paper between his fingers. “What did the other reindeer not allow Rudolph to do because of his nose?” His brows pulled together.
“That’s a tough one, babe,” Madison called.
Jack sucked in a breath. “I know it. He couldn’t play their reindeer games.”
“That’s why I love that man,” Madison said. “He’s so smart.” She batted her eyelashes at him.
He grabbed a gift and unwrapped it. “Oh, nice. It’s a car emergency kit.” He snapped open the lid. “I have jumper cables, a flashlight, a flare, and a warming poncho.”
“Very useful,” Emmy’s dad said with a nod.
“I suppose I’m next,” Charlotte said.
But Emmy was distracted by a text from Charlie that pushed through on her phone:
I got a flight coming in tomorrow morning. That was the best they could do. What time are you planning to be up and around?
She texted back:
I’ll be up early, so text me whenever you want. I can come over there if that works better.
As she hit “send” on the text, the popcorn tin slipped out of her lap.
“I’ll take that,” Uncle Stephen said, wiggling the tin in front of her and bringing her back to the present. With a wide grin, he handed her another gift.
“Oh, man,” Emmy said in mock disappointment.
She unwrapped her gift. “This is actually really nice.” She held up the box decorated in muted colors. “Stationery and thank-you cards.”
“I thought that would be great too,” Charlotte said with pride. She put so much effort into her presents every year.
“Was that Charlie?” Madison said in her ear, while the game moved on.
“Mm-hm.”
“What did he say?”
Emmy leaned in. “He can’t get here until tomorrow morning.”
“That might be better anyway. You could have more time with him—all day if you want to.”
“We don’t need to spend the whole day together. And he has to see his own family too,” Emmy noted.
“You haven’t seen him in a year. You two have a lot to catch up on!” Madison winked at her.
Emmy didn’t want to admit how much his text had filled her with hope for the holiday.
“I can’t believe no one stole my stationery set,” Emmy said as she and Madison sat at the kitchen table that night sipping mugs of decaf and picking at leftover cheesecake truffles.
Everyone else had turned in, but neither Emmy nor Madison was ready to head to bed. They’d both changed into their pajamas, and Emmy had twisted her hair up into a clip. Now, they were chatting the way they had when they were girls.
“Tonight was fun,” Emmy said. “Better than years past.”
“It was pretty much like any other Christmas. What changed for you?”
Emmy set another cheesecake bite on the napkin in front of her. “I’m not sure... I promised myself that I’d try harder to enjoy it for Mom.”
“For Mom? What about enjoying it for yourself?”
“Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me. It isn’t like bad luck follows me or anything. It’s more that I’m sort of stuck in complacency. Nothing out of the ordinary happens to me.”
“Are you giving the out of the ordinary a chance to happen to you?”
Emmy turned toward her sister and propped her feet on the bottom of her chair. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes, you can be too careful—to the point of missing opportunities.”
“Like when?” Emmy challenged.
Madison frowned. “You chose to go to college based on how close it was to home.”
“That was just being practical. I didn’t have to pay for room and board.”
“True, but you didn’t experience any of the on-campus activities. You never got to learn what it was like to order pizza at two in the morning when you had a group of friends in your dorm room, staying up all night just because you could.”
“Who would do that?”
Madison grinned. “I did. It’s a true story. We went out to a party and then came back to my room.”
“And doing that was more helpful to your life than saving money?”
“One of those girls was my bridesmaid, Amanda Mathis.”
“And?”
“I met her that night. She lived on the other side of campus, and we didn’t share any classes together. I wouldn’t have met her had we not come back to my room. She’s been my best friend ever since.”
“I think life is full of those moments, though. Maybe if you hadn’t met her, you’d have met another wonderful person later. What does this have to do with me?”
“Who are your best friends, Emmy?”
Was Madison seeing something that Emmy didn’t?
“I’m not trying to bring you down,” Madison said. “You asked why nothing out of the ordinary happens to you, and I gave you my honest answer. I think you should take more risks.”
“Mom didn’t take risks. She was happy at home, raising us.”
“But before we came along, she flew to Paris to study design. And the biggest risk of all: She gave it up to raise us.” Madison picked up her mug, thoughtful. “I miss her.”
“Yeah, me too.” Emmy took a sip of the dark-roast coffee and swallowed, the liquid warming her. “I wish I could’ve questioned why she let go of her talents to be our mom. I never asked her whether she missed designing.”
“I feel like she stopped before her designs had a chance to get traction and blow up. She could’ve been huge. She was so talented.” Madison shook her head. “I guess she just wanted to be a mother.”
“I get so wrapped up in my own life. I can’t imagine having two little souls to take care of.
She did everything for us. She was at all the school activities and meetings.
She sat with us every afternoon—remember?
She spent hours—all the way until dinner.
Then, she’d make a huge feast for us all. And I never saw her flustered.”
Madison squinted at Emmy and then took a sip from her mug. “That’s not normal, is it?”
“I don’t think it is. How did she do that?”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m happy she did all that for us,” Emmy said, “and she seemed content. But don’t you wonder what she could’ve been if she hadn’t chosen to be our mom?”
“I wonder all the time.” Madison set her mug back down.
“Oh, speaking of Mom, last year, when her dress arrived from Baudelaire’s, I was so worried about it getting wrinkled in packaging that I hung it right up on the closet door and shoved the box in the loft closet.
Dad mentioned when he went to break down the box, there was an envelope with some of her designs stuck in the bottom flap. Do you want them?”
“You and Dad don’t want any of them?”
“We talked about it, and you’re the one who was always creative like her. We think you should have them.”
“I actually brought my own designs to show him. It might be fun to compare them to Mom’s.”
“I’d love to see your latest designs. You could frame them side by side and put them up in your apartment.”
Her dingy dwelling was definitely not the place for her mother’s designs. But at least she’d have them, and one day she’d hopefully be in a place where she could display them properly.