Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-five
Hannah had splurged on a can of expensive cat food.
It was organic turkey and gravy. Smoky scarfed it down in record time, and then she gave him a couple of cat treats for dessert that she’d gotten from Kate’s shop a couple of weeks ago.
They were little orange acorn shapes. Smoky had eaten one right away.
Now he was batting the second acorn around the kitchen.
Hannah had started the day with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
She’d gotten a small pot roast from Diamond’s Grocery Store right before closing on Wednesday night.
They were out of all turkey options, including the tofurkey, which Hannah had been willing to try.
After the parade was over, she checked her phone for any missed calls, and then she took it and put it on the charger furthest from her.
Hannah knew that scrolling social media today would be a terrible idea.
She envisioned post after post of aesthetically pleasing dinner tables, families enjoying dessert together, family versus family football games.
Even though she knew on some level that no one’s family was perfect and any picture that made it onto Instagram was carefully curated and filtered to show the poster’s life at its best, holiday scrolling was nothing but FOMO for her.
She seasoned the pot roast and put it in the pan with potatoes, carrots, and celery.
She set the timer for ninety minutes and cleaned the rest of her place while she waited.
Her mouth watered as the smells from the stove took over her home.
Ninety-minutes later, she checked the temperature, and it was done.
She pulled out the roast, and after letting it rest, she began slicing off a piece.
Her knife had a hard time cutting the meat; it must have gotten dull.
After what seemed like ten minutes to her, Hannah sat down at the table.
Again, the meat was hard to cut. While her stomach growled, she ate a forkful of her long-awaited dinner.
She chewed and she chewed, and then she managed to get the piece down with a big gulp of water.
Why wasn’t the roast melting in her mouth like the pot roast she’d had at her godmother’s last Christmas?
Hannah pushed away her plate of food. She really didn’t feel like trying to eat the tough meat, and she didn’t want to die on Thanksgiving after choking alone.
Her stomach churned, and she thought she might throw up her meager dinner.
Tears pricked her eyes. There was no way around it.
Today sucked, and she couldn’t think of any way that it could get worse.
She looked at her watch. It was too early to call Brandee.
She needed a friend right now, but the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt Brandee and Luc’s first Thanksgiving.
Unsure if it was possible to salvage her meal, she dumped everything into the trash.
Then she felt bad about wasting food. She shouldn’t have even tried to make it.
She should have just made a batch of peanut butter cookies.
And since she was still starving and sad, what could be better than cookies right out of the oven?
She pulled out eggs, peanut butter, and sugar.
Hannah preheated the oven and began mixing the three ingredients.
In no time, the batter was ready, and she scooped dough onto the pan and added the signature fork marks that just made the cookies taste better.
As soon as the timer went off, she took the cookies out of the oven and used a spatula to put some on a cooling rack.
The rest she put on a plate, and once she’d made herself a cup of tea, she went back to her couch and put on the Hallmark channel.
One of her favorite iterations of Christmas movies was when a woman moved from the big city to a picture-perfect small town nestled in the mountains.
Hannah loved the idea of living in a small town in the mountains in a cozy cabin, so this was a perfect distraction.
She scarfed down the plate of cookies, and soon her eyes were heavy.
She curled up under a throw blanket that was covered with cats and dogs dressed like Santa.
The slow pace of the movie lulled her to sleep.
It was dark outside and in her apartment when she woke up.
It was also late November, so the darkness could mean it was five in the afternoon or midnight.
She stood up and stretched. She looked at the cookies on her counter, enough to take a plate of cookies to work tomorrow and still have some left over.
Her phone rang like an old-fashioned telephone.
That was the ringtone she’d assigned to her parents.
She paused for a second; did she want to talk to her parents?
Most of her said no, but there was a small part of her that hoped without any reason that this conversation would be different.
Maybe this time they’d be sober. She unlocked her phone and answered.
“Hello,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Hi, daughter. Long time no talk.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. Her mother wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t talked to them since Father’s Day. At least her mom wasn’t slurring her words. A minor miracle. She didn’t hear background noise, which was unusual for a call with her parents on a holiday. “Hi, Mom.”
“How was your Thanksgiving? You know you could have come home, right? You haven’t been here for Thanksgiving in years.”
Hannah paused. The last thing she wanted to do was tell her mom how pathetic her day had been. Now that was a word that also described her sad little pot roast. Pathetic. “It was quiet.”
“Sounds like you spent it alone when you could have driven up here.”
“I wasn’t alone.” Hannah said, deciding Smoky counted as her dinner partner.
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
Hannah’s hopes that her mom hadn’t been drinking evaporated.
She wasn’t slurring her words, but she had that mean drunk tone.
Ugh, I wish I hadn’t taken the call. Hannah could just hang up the phone or say she had another call and wait until next year to talk to her mother.
However, the small part of her that still craved her mother’s time and attention kept her on the line.
“Anyway,” Hannah said, “How about you and Dad? Did you stay home, or did you go somewhere?”
“We went to the VFW. They had a buffet. I must’ve eaten something that didn’t agree with me. I had the runs and came home.”
“You probably had something with milk in it. You know you’re lactose intolerant.”
“All I had was turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and oh yeah, I had mac and cheese.”
“Aside from the actual turkey, everything you ate had dairy in it,” she said.
Her mother didn’t respond.
“Where’s Dad? Isn’t he there?”
“He stayed up at the VFW. I suppose he’ll be home at some point.”
Hannah sighed. “I’m sure he will.”
“Guess who else was up at the bar?” Her mother asked in a sing-song voice.
Hannah got that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, the harbinger of Chad. “Do I have to guess?”
“It was Chad.”
“Of course it was,” she mumbled.
“He bought a round of drinks for everyone in the place. I still don’t understand why you couldn’t work things out with him.”
Hannah thought back to the Christmas when Chad had gotten mad at her for talking too much at his work party.
He’d taken her purse and locked her out of the house.
She didn’t have her phone or the keys to the car, so she’d stood on the porch shivering and hoping every few seconds that he’d open the door and let her in.
But if she told her mom that, she’d say, Why didn’t you apologize?
I’m sure he was just stressed out because of his job.
Her mother kept choosing her abusive ex over her own daughter, all because Chad had a cute smile and unfortunate charisma. People were always falling for his bullshit. Hell, she got it; she’d fallen for it for long enough to wind up living with him and slowly losing herself in the process.
“I’m sure that we are both better off. He’s there and I’m here.”
“Actually…”
The bottom fell out of Hannah’s stomach. She felt hot, and her back began to sweat. Her legs went weak, and she plopped down on the couch. Hannah hated the visceral reaction she had to the mere thought of Chad somewhere in her life, even if it was just with her loser parents.
“Hannah, honey, are you still there?”
Smoky, who must have sensed her distress, hopped into her lap. She began petting him. “I’m here. What were you going to say about Chad?”
“He moved to Illinois! I guess he has a job out there.”
Her blood turned to ice. Sweat stopped trickling down her back as she struggled to breathe.
Of all the luck. When Hannah was nervous or excited, she had trouble not talking, and those emotional states caused a flood of words to rush out of her mouth.
But when she was scared, not only did her body freeze, her brain froze too.
She became incapable of forming words. That was probably because when she was with Chad, he’d crushed her voice.
She opened her mouth to speak, and nothing came out.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and then she asked, “D-did you tell him where I live?” Hannah crossed her fingers, hoping for once her mother had been on her side and kept her mouth shut.
“Well, yes. I told him you lived in Marley Creek. I don’t have your address on my phone, but I remembered you work at that witch shop, so I told him that. And you know what? Even though you didn’t leave on the best of terms, he was still interested in hearing how you are doing.”
“I bet he was,” Hannah managed to get out.
“What was that?”
“Never mind. What else did he say?”
“Nothing much.” Then she said in a sing-song voice. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he pops into that store soon.”