Chapter 2
TWO
The house rattles as Jesse slams the door behind him, and finally, I let the facade drop, if only for a moment.
I allow the easy friendliness I’d put on my face to make him feel slightly more confident to slip away, and I take in a deep breath.
The air doesn’t get to where I need it the most, to the bottom of my lungs, which feel like they haven’t felt fresh air in a decade, anxiety tightening my chest to stop it.
It’s been sitting there ever since Adam asked me to help take over Wren’s responsibilities while he took her on a trip, and I realized one of those would be watching Emma.
I knew Jesse wouldn’t be happy to see me today, but I think in some delusional part of my mind, I had convinced myself it would be fine.
At some point during my drive over here, I’d told myself he would welcome me in happily, and we could go on with our lives.
Maybe we could go back to the way things were before that trip.
Clearly, the delusion was very strong this morning. Thank goodness I can always count on reality to knock me down a peg or four.
“Hallie! Come here! I want to show you something!” Emma’s voice calls from down the hall, knocking me from my thoughts.
With the reminder that Emma deserves the most fun week ever, and I’m here to make that happen, I take in another deep breath that doesn’t make me feel any better, brush my sour thoughts aside, put on a happy, animated look, and make my way to her room.
Two hours later, my phone rings, and the name Madd Dawg, accompanied by the world’s worst photo of Madden King, lights up the screen.
Madden added the name when he was going through a phase where he was trying to convince everyone to call him that (thankfully, the phase only lasted a few weeks, but I’ve never had the heart to change it), but the photo is all me, and something he complains about regularly.
His eyes are bugged out, his lips curled back in the most alarming, horror movie-worthy grimace, and his chin is deep into his neck, looking more like a meme than my friend and pseudo-boss.
“Is that Uncle Madden?” Emma asks with wide, horrified eyes when she catches sight of my screen, and I nod, letting out a laugh.
“Yeah, he’s a big goofball. I’m gonna take this, are you good in here?”
“Yeah, I’m going to keep organizing my clothes,” she says, and I try not to look too self-satisfied, though I’m loving that my plan is falling into place, before walking through her room and into the now-clean living room.
What Emma wanted to show me earlier this morning was all the new clothes she’d gotten the day before as gifts.
As she was flipping through them, I told her we could totally do a fashion show in the living room, if only it were clean.
I added a bit of dramatic disappointment to the words, which had the exact reaction I had hoped for, and put a fire under her ass to get the living room cleaned up.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my best friend, it’s that you can convince kids to do just about anything you need them to, so long as you give them the proper motivation.
Together, we cleaned up piles of her things strewn around the house, making sure they were all put away and not just thrown into a closet, and then put on music for her fashion show.
Once she showed me her new clothes, I told her we should put them away and sort out any clothes that don’t fit, which is where we’re at now.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to convince her to completely clean her room before Jesse gets home, but it’s a start.
Once I’m out of earshot of Emma, I hit accept and put the phone to my ear. “Hey, Madd—”
“What the fuck did you do to my brother?” he asks before I can finish my greeting, and my entire body seizes up.
Does he know? All this time, I assumed neither of the King siblings knew, since neither of them is good at keeping secrets or being casual. I figured if they had even a hint of it, I would never hear the end of it, and the silence was a good sign, but maybe…
Okay, Hallie. Play it cool. Play dumb. Easy as that, I tell myself, desperate to keep myself from going into a full-blown panic.
“Me?” I ask, my pulse beating like a drum. I sit down on the arm of the couch, worried my legs will give out. Maybe everything I worried about was real. Maybe—
“Yeah, you,” Madden says with a laugh. “He came into my parents’ place on a fucking rampage, bitching about Wren not telling him she was going to Paris.”
Relief washes through me as understanding creeps in.
He’s talking about Jesse’s bad mood. Not great, but I can handle that.
“Well, in her defense, Wren didn’t know she was going to Paris,” I say, standing once more and moving toward the kitchen to grab a glass of water. I balance the phone between my ear and shoulder as I open the cabinet to grab a glass, then fill it from the fridge dispenser.
“Yeah, yeah, I got that. Mom came in when he started getting loud and put him right in his place.”
I take a sip of the water and can’t help but chuckle at the idea of Mrs. King, who is barely five-four and in her late fifties, marching in and giving her eldest son, who towers over her at six-two, a piece of her mind.
I can picture it perfectly, and even more, I can picture the way Mr. King would have gone from defensive for his wife to impressed by his wife’s attitude in the blink of an eye.
I’ve seen similar exchanges more times than I can count since Mrs. King pseudo-adopted me in middle school.
“So is he mad that Wren went away and didn’t tell him?
Or that I’m the one watching Emma this week?
” I ask, morbid curiosity winning out. There’s a beat of uncharacteristic silence that comes over the line, and I set my glass down, the nervousness I thought I’d set aside coming back with a vengeance and making my stomach flip.
“I don’t know. You never really know with Jess, but he mostly seems pissed you’re the one watching her.”
“Hmm,” I say noncommittally, my finger moving along the rim of the glass. That’s not good. My mind moved over the look he gave me when I stood at the door, then the way his irritation grew as I explained what the new plan for the week was.
But mostly, it goes to the way how, for a split second, his face went soft after I talked to him when Emma left, and the way I desperately want to know what was going through his mind in that moment, right before the wall slid back down and he stormed out of the house.
“You’ve got nothing to add to that?” He’s fishing, trying to understand something he doesn’t quite have all the intel for, but I stick to the threads of a story I have.
“I mean, he clearly looked pissed that I was the one who showed up, but other than that, who knows why Jesse is the way he is,” I say, echoing his sentiment, something I’ve long discovered to be the best way to deal with Madden.
Silence fills the line again, and I feel the urge to fill it but manage to keep quiet for long enough.
“What happened with you two?”
“Hmm?” I ask, walking down the hall and peeking into Emma’s room. Her music is blasting, Willa Stone pouring from the speakers, and watch as she puts a dress on a hanger and places it in her closet.
“I don’t know. He never used to be like this with you.”
He’s right. After high school, I spent a lot of time at their house, even when Wren was at college.
During that time, Madden and I grew close, and he became somewhat of a second brother to me.
Jesse kept to himself after Emma was born, but when her mom left, he started spending less time staying secluded in his small home on the King property and more time at the main house, where his parents lived and I often was.
Over the years, we became friends, picking on Madden together and laughing over the way Mr. and Mrs. King bicker.
He even used to take me out on the UTV when I needed to take pictures of the farm for the Three Kings Tree Farm website and social media channels, which I manage.
But then Vermont happened.
The memory of it comes fierce, pulled from the depths of my mind where it’s buried deep. The dark night sky with the shining stars and fresh snow on the ground over ice that I slipped on. The warmth of his body when he caught me.
The four words that I whispered that changed everything.
I shake my head to rid myself of the memory before speaking again.
“No idea. Who knows why Jesse does anything he does? Anyway, I don’t want you to worry about me getting things done this week while I watch Emma.
I have a bunch of content scheduled, and I’m going to make sure the emails are all answered when I get home at night and again in the morning.
I also brought my laptop, so if there’s an emergency, I’m around.
” I pin the two together as casually as I can, desperate to change the topic but also wanting to reassure him.
I started working for the Kings right out of high school, desperate to find a few jobs to support myself since I wasn’t going to college.
My older brother had graduated four years before and was already out of the house, and I knew my dad was waiting for me to be settled on my own before he could move down to Florida, where his two other brothers lived.
He already gave up so much to raise Colt and me after our mom left, staying in the town he never wanted to be in so we could finish out school here, that I wanted to get out of his hair as quickly as I could.
I offered to run their social media for free to help me build up a portfolio, and not only did they hire me, but they also refused to let me do it for free, becoming my first and longest-standing client.
Six months later, with the constant glowing referrals from Mrs. King to everyone in town, I had more than enough clients to move out on my own. The second I moved out and into a shitty apartment across town, my dad sold our childhood home and moved to Florida, just like I knew he would.
Madden manages the business and wholesale side of the Three Kings Christmas Tree farm, Jesse manages the maintenance and labor, and Mr. King covers everything in the middle. Because of this, I mostly report to Madden for my work with the Kings.
“Uh, I’m really not worried about it, Hal,” Madden says, confusion in his words. “You know that. I just called to fill you in and see if—” I step into Emma’s room, and the music is louder once I’m inside, working in my favor. I don’t need or want Maddena singing any more questions right now.
“Okay, well, let me know if you need anything, and I’ll do it! Emma needs me right now,” I lie. Emma’s face turns toward me, confusion written there.
“Okay, well, bye—” he starts, but I hang up before he can finish.
“I don’t need you for anything,” Emma says, looking at me skeptically.
“I know,” I say with a smile. “But your Uncle Madden is a yapper, and I would much rather have girl time. How are we doing over here?”
That’s enough to distract her, and she launches into an explanation of the shelves she’s moved onto organizing. Then she gives me a task of my own, a distraction for which my lingering guilt and I mind are grateful for, as I throw myself into it.