Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Amy
By the time we hit the front steps, the air smells like garlic, sage, turkey fat, peppermint, and coffee.
It's Christmas bliss.
Every light in the front windows is on. The wreath on the door is twice the size it needs to be and shedding glitter onto the welcome mat. An icicle clings to the eaves directly above Hamish's head and I tug him closer.
"Looks cozy," Hamish says, squeezing my hand.
"Temporarily quiet," I tell him. "Rule of thumb: If someone is crying, it's fine. If no one is crying, that's when you worry."
I push the door open without knocking.
Heat and noise slam into us. The TV is yelling football from the living room. Christmas music blasts from the kitchen. Pots clank and appliances beep. Someone laughs too loudly. And over it all:
"SKIBIDI TOILET! SKIBIDI—"
"TYLER!" Carol shouts at her younger son. "We talked about this! No Skibidi Toilet at Christmas!"
"You're so six seven!" Tyler yells back.
The front hall is the usual December fire hazard: garlands on the banister, red bows on anything that holds still, light-up reindeer that shouldn't be indoors and look like they're made of asbestos from 1957.
The hall table is buried under mail, cookie tins, and a ceramic nativity scene.
Baby Jesus has a scratch ticket tucked under him.
The living room is full but not overstuffed.
The sectional sags in the middle. This year's tree leans to one side, branches overloaded with preschool macaroni ornaments old and new, glass baubles, and some kind of ornament representing every year since 1989.
Tinsel covers the whole thing, mostly in tangled clumps.
We'll never have a tree featured on someone's Instagram feed.
The sideboard groans under pies, cookies, fudge, and bowls of nuts. A glass bowl contains Jell-O, pretzels, and marshmallows, layered in a gustatory dare.
"Amy!"
Mom rockets out of the kitchen wearing a candy cane apron, cheeks flushed, dishtowel over her shoulder. She smells like butter and adrenaline.
"My baby!" She crushes me in a hug that could crack ribs. One hand goes straight to my stomach. "My baby is having a baby."
Heat climbs up my neck.
"Hi, Mom. Nice to see you, too."
She holds me at arm's length, eyes shiny, gaze bouncing between my face and my midsection like she expects a bump to appear in real time.
"You look tired," she announces.
"That's just my face," I say.
Hamish steps in and she drags him into the hug.
"Hamish," she says, voice wobbling, "you made me a grandmother."
"You're already a grandmother!" Carol points out as she sets a newly wrapped present under the tree.
"I meant, of Amy's children."
"Amy deserves most o' the credit," Hamish says modestly. "I just showed up at the right moment."
"Shoes off. Don't step on the wrapping paper. Or the Legos. Or Ellie." Finally letting us breathe, Mom waves us into the living room.
"I'm not on the floor, Grandma," Ellie says, appearing at my side. Her leggings are striped like candy canes and her green dress is covered in glitter. "Look! Mom said I can have two cookies if I don't lick the couch this year."
Shannon sits in an armchair, mug in hand, watching her. Declan is nearby on the sectional, relaxed in that uptight way he has, as if not being in a suit makes him somehow uncomfortable. His experienced eyes follow Mom wherever she goes, waiting for her next scheme. He lifts his mug toward us.
"Welcome to the Christmas soft open," he says. "The understudy cast."
I do a quick headcount. Mom. Dad. Carol. Shannon. Declan. Kids. Hamish and me.
It hits me: I can see actual carpet.
"Where is everybody?" I ask, and Shannon sighs.
"Amanda booked some ridiculous Bavarian Christmas for Andrew and the twins. Markets, lights, snow, matching scarves. Pam's along and sending twelve group texts a day about the itinerary."
I picture all of them unleashed on an unsuspecting Germany.
"And James?" I say.
"Hawaii," she says. "For 'work.'"
From the kitchen, Mom calls, "Agnes and Corrine might swing by if the senior shuttle's running. If they show up, someone hide the rum. And the scratch tickets."
"And ma arse," Hamish murmurs.
Dad, wedged into his usual corner of the sectional with the remote, snorts.
"Can't hide scratch tickets from Agnes. Woman could spot a two-dollar Win for Life from orbit."
A hand clamps on my arm. Carol appears beside me, eyes wide.
"Do you see it?" she whispers.
"See what? The fact that we're missing half the usual circus and it's still loud enough to trigger noise ordinances?"
She tips her chin toward the far corner of the sectional, and that's when I see her.
B.
Just the letter. Not Bea, not Bee. Carol's told me all about her.
B.
Pink hair in a precise bob. Giant red plastic glasses that make her eyes look cartoon-huge. Black T-shirt covered in white dragons. Cargo pants. Heavy boots planted like she's ready for an evacuation drill.
She's wedged into the corner of the couch, not touching anyone, but her gaze tracks the room in short, sharp sweeps. Anyone who glances her way gets a quick assessment through those enormous lenses and a tiny tightening of her mouth, like she's silently grading us.
Jeffrey is pressed against her side, trying not to look completely besotted. He leans in so she can whisper in his ear. Whatever she says makes him smirk.
Carol's grip tightens.
"That is B," she breathes. "Jeffrey's girlfriend. She won't talk to anyone. She just... stares and judges us."
"I like her," I say. "Anyone who wears dragons to a Jacoby Christmas has backbone."
"She hates me," Carol says. "She's glaring at the tree. Don't you think glaring at the tree is a sign of hating me?"
"It might just be hating the blinking elf bulbs," I say.
"Declan," Carol hisses, locking onto him. "You grew up with brothers. You understand teenage boys. You need to talk to Jeffrey."
He goes pale. "No."
"Someone has to have the talk," she insists.
"He brought a girl to Christmas. They're sitting so close.
I can't do it, I'm his mother, I'll die.
You have to." Watching my oldest sister fall apart like this over a teenage girl being with Jeffrey is deeply satisfying.
Carol's so jaded, so "been there, done that, seen it all and it all disappoints me" that this is refreshing. I like it.
Like it a lot.
"You want me to give your son a sex lecture, at your parents' house, on Christmas?" Declan blinks. "Absolutely not."
Shannon is trying not to choke on her coffee.
"You owe karma something," she tells him. "This might cover part of it."
"Hard pass," he says. "I'll fund his first company. That's my jurisdiction."
"I'm with him," Hamish murmurs, leaning toward me. "Sex lectures are a job for parents and hard-boiled health teachers."
"Not. Helping," Carol mutters.
Tyler bursts into the conversation, nearly colliding with Hamish's bad knee.
"Uncle Hamish! Skibidi Toilet killed Jesterzilla."
Hamish looks at me like he's been handed a bomb.
"Is that English?"
"Barely," I say.
Tyler takes a breath, words firing out.
"Skibidi goes 'skibidi dop dop dop yes yes' and the cameramen with speakers and—"
"Tyler," Carol snaps. "No Skibidi today."
"Jesterzilla and Skibidi - "
"Go help Grandpa with the scratch tickets," Carol orders.
Tyler gives Carol a blank stare, a look he has often, then grunts but zips away to the coffee table, where Dad is stacking little booklets of lottery hope. Declan smirks at them. Billionaires don't buy scratch tickets.
Before I can say anything else, Mom appears in front of me.
"How are you feeling?" she demands. "And don't say 'fine.' Fine is what you say right before you faint."
"Great," I say.
Mom narrows her eyes. Shannon and Carol close in automatically, flanking her, sensing chum in the water. In seconds, I'm surrounded by the pregnancy tribunal. Hamish hovers just behind me, hand on the small of my back.
"Really feeling," Mom insists.
"I feel amazing," I say. "I slept. I ate breakfast. I walked across the driveway without needing a nap. Glorious."
"What week are you, again?" Shannon asks. "You should be hitting morning sickness. Mine with Ellie started at six weeks."
"I had it with both boys for months," Carol says, nodding, and Mom lifts her chin.
"I couldn't even look at food some days."
They trade quick horror stories, all queasiness and fainting and living on crackers, then look at me like it's my turn.
"Any nausea?" Shannon presses. "Smells bothering you? Weird tastes?"
"Nope," I say.
Their faces drop in unison.
"None?" Mom says. "No fatigue? No headaches?"
Three sets of eyes staring at me, breath held, waiting for me to be miserable? They're disappointed when I tell them I'm fine.
So what choice do I have but to torment them back?
"Well," I say softly, sadly, pouring it on thick, "there is one thing."
"I knew it," Carol hisses as I gesture for them all to come closer, playing it up. I sigh, long and sad, channeling Eeyore.
A well-timed swallow makes Shannon's eyebrows draw down, and she gently touches my arm in sympathy.
"Poor you. I remember, it's all so hard."
I nod, scrambling to find something so wretched and horrible, they'll leave me the hell alone.
"Is it bad?" Mom asks, eyes gleaming. Clearly, the more horrible my symptom, the more excited she'll be. Decades of her inappropriate bullshit with Dad and all the oversharing flips through my memory bank, and suddenly, I know what I'm going to say.
"Um, I don't know. It's kind of private." I look away as if embarrassed.
Bullseye.
I could not have upped the ante more if I'd announced loudly that "Die Hard" is not a Christmas movie.
Hinting at a concerning pregnancy issue and then calling it private is peanut butter in a mouse trap. For Shannon, tiramisu in bed. Dangling a dysfunctional artist with a five-inch tongue and no income in front of Carol.
Mom's central nervous system is now in full fight-or-flight mode.