Chapter Fourteen
Idiscovered Black Friday was a whole different thing at Bastian Acres.
Back home in Brooklyn, Mom would have set her alarm for five to make sure she was on the train by six to be at the nearest TJ Maxx by six-thirty for the seven a.m. opening of the doors.
Out here, there wasn’t a TJ Maxx to be seen. Or a mall of any kind. The feed store was opening at seven, but it normally did, so I wasn’t sure that was any kind of big holiday-shopping draw. Unless you needed a gift bag of duck chow for your kids, then maybe.
Black Friday was a day when little shopping was done unless it was online, but a lot of toting boxes out of the attic took place.
Aiden had appointments out the butt due to the holiday yesterday, so it was just me wading into the bedlam as I arrived back home.
I took a minute to feed Lady some dry kibble then made my way to the second floor.
Granny was at the top of the stairs, seated in a folding chair, directing the incoming flights down the attic steps like an octogenarian air traffic controller. She was rummaging through a long, flat box thick with strapping tape when I climbed up to see if they needed any help.
“Morning, Ford. Baker. Baker!” she yelled upward into the hole in the ceiling as Bella stood on the folding stairs with her arms full of holiday wrapping paper. My bestie gave me a sweet little smile, and I returned it. “Baker!”
“What?!” Baker bellowed from above, his face coming into view of a lone white bulb. “Ford.”
“Baker,” I replied, listening to the floorboards creak ominously as Linc, or so I assumed, made his way around in the attic. Either it was Lincoln, or we had Sasquatch up there looking for boxes of decorations. “Where’s Hanley? Is he up there too?”
“No, he flew out early to spend a couple of weeks in Yosemite,” Baker stated, the small lines on his brow whenever his man left on nature shoots already deep. “What did you want, Granny?”
“Where’s my plastic mistletoe ball?” She lifted her sight from the box of garland on her lap.
“How the hell should I know? You packed all this shit. Where did you put it?” Baker asked, kneeling at the edge of the trapdoor, his arm resting on his left leg. His head was coated with cobwebs.
“If I knew where I put it, I wouldn’t be asking you where it was,” Granny fired back. “Bella, honey, would you put that down and go up into the attic to help these fools? See if you can find my mistletoe ball. It ain’t the holidays without my mistletoe ball over the kitchen doorway.”
“Of course.” Bella handed me the rolls of new and half-used paper and climbed upward.
She was in black leggings and one of Linc’s massive Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirts.
Wearing his stuff was becoming more and more common.
I’d have to ask to make sure I had the details lined up right in my head. “Can you take those downstairs?”
“Sure. This one looks chewed on,” I pointed out and waved a tube of blue and gold paper at her.
Tiny bits of shredded wrapping paper and a mouse flew out the end of the tube.
Bella shrieked and dove at me, climbing into my arms, which were full of wrapping paper.
Granny said a bad word I’d never heard her say before then yanked a tube of paper from my arms to try to hit the mouse.
Guess she was better at lobbing grapefruit at foxes than boinking mice on the head.
She missed loads of times. Bella screamed in my ear to kill it.
So I tried to stomp it as it ran around in confused circles.
Lady charged up the stairs at the shout, saw the mouse, and joined in trying to catch it.
She failed but did knock over a tote filled with used gift boxes that could be used again.
My mom did the same thing, so that was like Brooklyn.
“No, don’t step on it! Don’t hurt it!” Bella yelled at the top of her lungs.
“You just told me to kill it,” I replied, holding her with one hand, her feet off the floor, while cradling several rolls of wrapping paper to my chest with the other.
A tube fell to the ground. Granny whacked it with her tube.
The mouse froze, eyes wide, and then raced down the hall and into Bella’s room.
Searching for holiday decorations was put on hold for an hour or so until we found the mouse, trapped it in a shoebox, and asked Bella what we should do with the rodent.
“Take it to the barn,” she said from behind Linc. Protecting her from a mouse. I guess? He kind of liked her pressed into his back was my thought.
“It’ll just come back into the house,” Granny mumbled, clearly not as keen on trapping and releasing mice who might end up in her kitchen.
“We don’t want them in the barns either,” Baker said while plucking webs from his hair. “They carry all kinds of diseases that livestock can pick up. Give the damn shoebox to me. I’ll take care of it.”
“No! Linc, will you drive the mouse down to the main road, then let it go?” She turned those big, sad green eyes on my big brother. He melted like butter in a frying pan.
“Sure, yeah, I can do that.” Linc took the box. Bella kissed him on his hairy cheek. His nose turned red as a radish before he left to chauffeur a mouse to a new home a few miles away.
“Glad that’s settled. You boys get back up in the attic and find my mistletoe ball,” Granny barked at Baker and me.
Bella waved her fingers at us before we climbed back into mouse central to search for the all-important plastic ball of mistletoe while Bella tried to talk Granny into getting a cat. Lady sneezed at that idea.
***
Ten days later, I was in the dress shop with the fountain, hanging tinsel.
Bella was singing in the storeroom, her angelic voice carrying the words of “The First Noel” straight up to heaven, I was sure.
She’d confided in me long ago that she’d been part of her church choir since she was old enough to remember the songs.
Then things started going badly at her house.
She’d been booted out of her very religious home at fourteen after being caught wearing girls’ clothing and makeup, but throughout all the hardship—and she’d had plenty—she never lost her love of singing.
I climbed down from the stepladder just as she emerged from the backroom with yet another box of decorations.
She and Granny were vying for who could stuff the most holiday cheer into their spaces as humanly possible. So far it was a tie.
“Your loops are sagging,” she said, placing the box of balls on the counter beside her register. Sales had been good of late. Lots of local ladies loved Bella’s clothes. Some, sadly, had to hide where they bought them by using shipping boxes from other places.
“That’s pretty personal,” I replied, stepping back to check out my tinsel loops. Oh yeah, some were sagging. That would not do at all. I climbed back up the ladder and fiddled with the tinsel until things were perfect.
“That’s good. Honestly, Ford, we don’t need a ruler. Come down and help me with my balls.”
I caught the wink as I walked over to join her, yardstick in hand. “You’re naughty. Santa won’t bring you anything if you keep talking like that.” I placed the yardstick behind the counter and opened the box of newly purchased glass balls, all red and green.
“As cold as it’s getting here, a little coal would be a good present,” she parried and pulled the cowlneck on her soft plum sweater up to her chin.
She added a dramatic shiver for good measure.
I chuckled and gave her long Ariana Grande ponytail a soft tug.
“Speaking of presents, have you gotten Aiden anything?”
“Yeah, they’re supposed to come tomorrow.
I found a hobby store online that sells metal townspeople for model train enthusiasts.
They had a doctor. It was probably a human doctor, but that’s okay.
He’s wearing a white lab coat. Well, it will be white when I paint it.
They also had farm animals, so I bought a set of those too. ”
“You’re cutting it close. Christmas is coming fast. Will you have enough time to paint them? You’re at his place almost every night.” Her elbow found my ribs. I grunted. She giggled.
“I’ll just have to do them in the afternoon.”
“Okay, we’ll sew and paint together. I have four dresses to finish before the twentieth. Seems every woman in Bastian Grange needs a new dress for the town holiday party at the fire hall on the twenty-third. Granny even asked for one, so that’s five. What is wrong with me? Why do I always say yes?”
“Because you’re an angel,” I replied. Her eye roll was epic.
“Maybe a fallen angel,” she softly answered, her slim fingers lifting a green ball to admire it in the blinking lights draped over the old beams above us. “Not to pry…”
“You always pry, so don’t act like you don’t.” I began attaching hooks to the balls.
“Fine. I pry. But only because I love you.”
“I know.” We gently bumped shoulders.
“Are you going to be moving out to live with Aiden like Dodge did?”
I glanced down at her. “No, no, that’s…shit. No, he’s not ready for that. We’re just trying this whole committed thing on for size, like the women do with your ready-to-wear dresses. So far, it’s great, but he’s…his childhood was fucked.”
“Like so many of us,” she lamented, passing over a ball to be hooked.
“Yeah.” It sucked that so many people had had such miserable childhoods. “Besides, that’s a big step for someone who may have to pick up and run at any given time.”
“No, hey.” She turned to face me, jade eyes locking me down. “Don’t let my shit keep you from being with the man you love.”
“It’s our shit,” I reminded her for the ten millionth time. “We were both involved. I stay with you no matter what, even if you do have a yeti to protect you.”
She blushed. “Linc isn’t a yeti. Bigfoot maybe. And you know what they say about men with big feet.”
“You’re for sure getting coal.”