Chapter 21 – Eden
EDEN
Christmas
“Who’s on burner three?” Wade demands, brandishing a spatula. “Your pancakes are burning!”
“Sorry!” Jasper says. “I was cutting the fruit salad.”
“There’s no ticking clock on a pineapple,” Wade scolds. “Get it together. The bacon’s been done for ten minutes.”
“I’m doing my best. Reed’s not doing anything,” Jasper adds resentfully.
Reed holds up his cup of coffee. “I’m caffeinating.”
I lean toward him and whisper, “I saw you pour whiskey in that mug.”
“Toronto didn’t turn you into a narc, did it, Edie?”
“If you wanted my secrecy, you should have offered me some.”
“Why, when I know you’ll just say no?” Reed nudges me with his elbow. “The Good Little Sister doesn’t indulge until happy hour, even on Christmas.”
“Maybe Toronto changed me a little.” I nudge my mug over. “Just a smidge, though.”
Reed waits until Wade and Jasper’s backs are turned and adds a little whiskey to my coffee. We clink glasses and sip.
It’s a longtime Locke tradition that the kids make Christmas brunch for Mom while she lays in bed watching Love Actually.
It always goes exactly the same. Wade and I are the only ones who actually wake up with our alarm, so we come down and get started with the prep work.
Jasper scrambles down halfway through cooking, then argues so much with Reed that I quit shortly after.
Reed shows up when and if he feels like it, snatching bacon off the plate and otherwise not contributing.
When I think of home, I picture this kitchen. It hasn’t been renovated since the 80s, and it has the warped linoleum and honey brown cabinets to match. It smells like cleaning solution and coffee and freshly baked bread. Now, as I sip my coffee, I can add the scent of whiskey to the mix.
“So, Edie, how’s your boooooyyyfriend?” Reed croons.
My face flushes slightly. “He’s good.”
In fact, Luke has been texting me since I woke up this morning.
Luke
How was your flight?
Eden
I sat next to a 60-year-old Santa Claus lookalike. He snored.
Luke
Wow, you should have let me give you that Christmas present I bought.
Eden
What was it?
Luke
Earplugs.
Eden
Damn. Guess I lost my chance.
Luke
I’ll just save them for your birthday.
I wonder if Luke knows that my birthday is at the end of September.
Does he really imagine sticking around for that long?
I should burst my own bubble and remind myself that Luke and I aren’t real.
He might want me, but it won’t be forever.
Forever’s not what he’s looking for—once his good reputation is firmly cemented, he’ll want his freedom again.
But it’s Christmas, so reality can wait another day. When I remember him calling me “wildflower,” I can let myself feel warm inside.
“Oh hey, take a picture of us for him!” Jasper suggests. “You’re always sending us a thousand selfies. It’s time for a swap.”
Grinning, I pull out my phone and turn on the camera. My brothers jump behind me, Wade holding his spatula, Jasper making a goofy Blue Steel face, and Reed giving me bunny ears and sticking out his tongue. I snap the photo and send it to Luke. He responds immediately.
Luke
Damn, you got all the good looks in the family, huh?
“Tell him I resent that,” Reed says, looking over my shoulder shamelessly.
“Tell who?” Mom’s voice drifts into the kitchen right before she wheels inside. Her voice has always been quiet, but for her kids, it instantly cuts through the noise of sizzling pans and Christmas carols. We’re so attuned to her, we could probably hear her cough across a baseball field.
“Tell Eden’s boyfriend that she has three very handsome brothers,” Reed says. He’s already standing to make Mom a cup of coffee that’s really mostly almond milk and honey, just like she likes it.
“It’s true. All my sons are handsome boys,” she says proudly. “That said, Luke’s a looker himself.”
She winks at me, and the warmth in my chest twists. I don’t know how I feel about Mom complimenting Luke. The last thing I want is for her to start getting attached when our “relationship” has an expiration date.
Wade quickly puts together a heaping plate of brunch, which he sets at the table in front of Mom. “Merry Christmas and bon appétit.”
“I made banana pancakes, your favorite,” Jasper says proudly.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” Mom says. “Thanks to all of you for such a wonderful breakfast.”
“Where's my plate?” Reed asks.
Wade snorts. “Get your own.”
The four of us load up on pancakes, bacon, eggs, and fruit salad.
The boys shove food in their mouths with abandon, chatting about which farmhands will be coming in for the week after Christmas.
I might be the only one who notices Mom picking around her food, taking the occasional bite.
Sometimes, the meds she takes for her muscle pain lower her appetite.
I catalogue it the way I always do—the fullness of her plate, the tremor when she lifts her fork, whether her smile reaches her eyes—and file it away in the part of me that never stops keeping inventory.
It’s the tax on loving someone whose body keeps its own secrets. You learn to count what they can’t say.
Mom looks like me through a warped piece of glass.
Her hair is a paler gold, her eyes a watery hazel.
She’s significantly thinner, too, even though old pictures of her show her closer to my weight.
She’s shrunk over the years, under the weight of grief and her illness, but she’s never faded completely.
She’s still sharp, determined, and stubborn.
On her better days, she’ll still go out to her beloved garden and pull weeds until her muscles give out.
She never needed physical strength to keep us in line, anyway.
Where Dad was quiet and loving, Mom was the family planner and leader.
When she said jump, her kids learned to ask how high.
Seriously, once she set a long jump challenge for us when we were bored and whiny.
Reed won with his long legs, making Wade and Jasper complain for days.
“Thank you for making the time to come home,” Mom says, reaching over and patting my hand. “I know you’re busy, but we appreciate having you.”
“She should have come sooner,” Wade says. “We could have used the help.”
“Nonsense. You three boys did just fine without her,” Mom says. “If you needed the help, you could have hired someone.”
“With all the competition for workers this time of year? We’re lucky to have the farmhands we got.” He glances over at me. “People are leaving for the city these days. They seem to think life out here isn’t worth it.”
Familiar irritation burns in my chest. Wade has taken me on this guilt trip dozens of times in the past few years. I'm not in the mood to hear it, especially on Christmas. Luckily, before he manages to start an argument, my phone buzzes with a call.
“Sorry, I should take this,” I tell Mom. “It's Brinley.”
“Tell her Merry Christmas for me,” Mom says.
Grabbing my coffee, I walk out onto our wraparound porch.
Here, we have the best view of the ranch—the rolling prairie hills, currently coated with frost, the winding dirt drive up from the road, the old barn in the front.
To the right, you can see the industrial barns and the small blurs of animals walking in the fields.
I can’t count how many hours I’ve spent on this porch, in a rocking chair or the wooden swing, reading or daydreaming.
In the winter, we keep wool blankets in a chest so Mom can still sit on the swing and look out on the nearby prairie. I grab a blanket for myself as I pick up.
“Merry Christmas!” Brinley says.
“You too! How are you feeling?”
“Amazing. A little hungover, but amazing. Not so long ago, it seemed like this engagement would never happen.”
“But it did, and you deserve it. I'm obsessed with your ring by the way.”
“Beau says you approved it.”
“Obviously. What if he had tried to buy you some giant pink heart-shaped diamond monstrosity?”
“Then you would have murdered him, as is your duty as best friend.”
“Of course I would have. So, I know you haven't had much time, but have you started thinking about the wedding yet?”
“Actually, I have. You're under no obligation to say yes, and you can tell me if it’s too weird. But I was thinking it might be nice to have the wedding at your family’s ranch this summer?
I know, it’s a working ranch, and you don’t normally do this, but it might be romantic to do a barn-house wedding. ”
I grin. Brinley’s dropping this like it’s an idea she just came up with, but I know it’s always been her dream to get married here. My parents upgraded to an industrial-sized barn when I was a kid, leaving the old barn house for storage.
Brinley and I used to wander around it during the summer, shoving aside old farm equipment to create an aisle and turning a wooden trough on its side to be the altar.
We pointed out where we’d hang twinkly lights, where the woman with an acoustic guitar would play, and where we’d put the flowers.
We were both a little too self-conscious to pretend it was our weddings we were imagining.
Instead, we talked about starting our own business renting out the barn to local brides.
At age thirteen, it all seemed possible.
Maybe that’s when I planted the seed of starting an event planning business.
Now, of course, I know the ranch wedding was Brinley’s dream, and I know what it’s costing her to ask.
“I’ll talk to my family, but I think it’s a great idea,” I tell her. “And if you think I’m not planning your wedding, you’re crazy.”
“Of course you are!” She laughs. “There’s nobody else I’d rather spend Beau’s money on.”
“Hey!” I hear Beau yell from the background. “Who are you talking to?”
“Eden!”
“Oh, yeah. Well she can have my money. She has to put up with Luke, so she deserves it.”
“Speaking of Luke, I can’t believe you told everyone last night,” Brinley says.
I pull the wool blanket tighter around me. “I’d been thinking about it for a while. It makes life easier if I can stop pretending in front of everyone. Look, let me go in and ask Mom about the wedding. I’ll text you with the answer.”
“Thanks, Eden. Merry Christmas!”
I expect Mom to say yes, and she does. What I don’t expect is for Wade to agree without an argument.
“Seriously?” I demand. “You’re not going to complain about pausing work and interrupting the farm schedule for a wedding?”
“What?” He shrugs. “Brinley’s a good girl, and I’m rooting for love.”
“Why haven’t you ever introduced me to a girlfriend, then?” Mom asks.
“I’m rooting for other people’s love,” Wade says. “I’ve got other things to worry about.”
After some texting with Brinley, we land on a wedding date of June 5.
Christmas goes smoothly after that. Mom must have given Wade a talking-to during my phone call because he doesn’t try picking a fight about me leaving Sundre again.
Mom and Jasper kick Wade and my asses at Scrabble, with Jasper eking out a victory with a well-placed Z.
Reed gets me a pair of white fuzzy earmuffs which I love instantly.
I text Luke a selfie of me wearing them.
Eden
A substitute for your earplugs?
Luke
I doubt their noise-blocking abilities, but you do look adorable.
Nobody has ever called me adorable before. Pretty, sure. Confident, smart, determined, once even elegant. In general, though, people don’t tend to think of me as cute.
I like that Luke thinks I’m adorable.
Because he’s two thousand miles away, because it’s Christmas, I let myself pretend it’s real.
Tomorrow, I’ll remember the rules. Tonight, I wear my new earmuffs at the dinner table until Wade threatens to confiscate them, and every time my phone buzzes, my heart does something the napkin never authorized.