Page 84 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

You could always see the Marlins game playing clear as day from the driveway, or the street, or evendownthe fucking street, because our house was one that every car drove by, every family walked past with their stroller after dinner, and every kid in the neighborhood stopped at to whistle me and my sister out the front door.

My father spent any time that he wasn’t at work outside in the yard, talking to neighbors, holding the sprinkling spout of our hose over his azalea bushes, and nitpicking the way I mowed the lawn that week. He said it was an outward representation of how people viewed us as a family, and nobody would want to invite theLumpy-lawn Casadosto potluck.

He was kidding, but my father inadvertently prepared me for bootcamp by regularly instilling me with the fear of missing out on pigs in blankets and seven-layer bean dip.

After he died, I mowed the lawn once a week, religiously, exactly the way he would have wanted it done, and I kept the bushes trimmed and watered, and tried to make small talk with Mr. Santana across the street.

When I joined the Army I wasn’t home to do the work myself anymore, but I hired a guy and paid him every week from wherever I was, sometimes months in advance, to cut the grass for my mom so she never had to do it herself. Part of me thought she would take it upon herself to keep up the landscaping because by then it had been almost six years since we’d lost Dad, but I knew deep down that much like the garden that she’d let perish, it was the same stitched wound.

Now, reminding her not only of my father, but of me being gone, too.

So my heart dropped like lead into my stomach as I pulled into the familiar, white stone driveway of the home I was raised in to see the front yard perfectly dressed. Black mulch, trimmed hedges, the flowering plants bright and dappled in moisture as if they’d just been watered.

I stood outside the dark wooden door on the front step, assessing the home like I’d somehow accidentally ended up at the wrong one.

The gutters were different, replaced from the rusted, splintered metal I’d last seen hanging over the windows to a brand new, sturdy white finish. My eyebrow furrowed and I scratched at my short beard.

There was no way my mother replaced the gutters herself. Or even thought to do such a thing.

Mantled just below the roof at the corner of the house, something else caught my eye. A…security camera?

“Are you just going to stand outside all afternoon?” My sister's voice crackled to life, but she was nowhere in sight. I stepped back, nearly falling off the top step onto my ass. The doorbell started blinking with a blue light as Adriana’s laughter drifted out of it.

“I had to make sure I was at the right house,” I grumbled, putting my eye as close to the little camera on the console as possible.

“Ugh. Creepy. Get inside, Ma told me I couldn’t eat until you got here.”

“Is that any way to treat your brother?” I pouted. “No loyalty.”

The door sprang open and Addy stood there with her arms crossed over her cream-colored sweater. A scowl looked adorable on her long, thin face, especially as her pink cheeks lifted defiantly.

“Give me a hug.” I grinned, stepping over the foyer and pulling her into my open arms.

I was a full foot taller than my sister, so I rested my chin on the crown of her head as I looked around the living room. All my military headshots were propped up in a line on the old oak bookcase next to the television, a very proud, ominous shrine that made it seem like I was more a figment of my family’s past than a living, breathing piece of it that just happened to live half an hour down the interstate. Mom didn’t drive, she never had, and Addy was as busy as I was. I didn’t blame them for the distance any more than I blamed myself.

“I like this.” I pulled at a few strands of Addy’s hair that were cobalt blue against her naturally dark roots. “Trying something new?”

“Malia did it. She’s experimenting with stuff at the salon, and I’m her guinea pig.”

“How’s Malia?” I asked, making my way down the hallway toward the smell of garlic and lemon. I stopped short, my fingers drawing a line down the wall curiously as I noticed the burnt orange shade of paint I’d always known was now a cool, neutral gray. “Did you paint?”

“She’s good.” Addy pushed me along, skirting over my question. “She’s having dinner with us, actually. She’ll be here soon.”

I pinned my sister with a knowing, enthusiastic expression. “Christmas Eve dinner? That’s pretty serious.”

The heel of her palm dug into the place between my shoulder blades and pushed me forward into the kitchen with more force than necessary. “It’s not even Christmas Eve.”

“One day off,” I argued. “I can’t believe the boss is making you work tomorrow.”

“EMTs are necessary,especiallyon holidays.”

I knew my sister better than anyone. We spent years attached at the hip, doing our homework across from one another at the kitchen table, sharing a bathroom as teenagers, hanging out with the same groups of friends throughout high school.

After Dad passed it was like pulling the threads of an already tight knot tighter. The bond was so strong you’d never be able to loosen it.

When all the girls in her grade started dating and going to the school dances with the boys in her class while Addy wanted nothing to do with it, I knew something was different. She wasn’t interested in dressing up, or doing her hair every day, and couldn’t care less about the boy band taking over every other girl’s bedroom walls. By the time we were seniors I was sending warning glares down the hallway at any guy that dared to look at her twice, but my sister was more interested in who I was bringing home.

Mom, on the other hand, couldn’t be more oblivious. She’d hounded Mateo for months before he met Tally to take Adriana out to dinner, never realizingMateowasn’t the one opposed to it.

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