Page 1 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

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MARLOWE

“Why are you holding that bag?”

Adevious smile grew slowly across my face as I grabbed a handful of mini marshmallows and dangled them over the baking dish. Looking Mike dead in the eye, I let them go, cackling when his lips flattened in annoyance.

“You’re ruining it,” he huffed.

Then I spread them evenly over the top and popped the whole thing in the hot oven, closing the door with a little bump from my hip. “I believe you mean I’mimprovingit,” I replied with a wink. “You’re welcome.”

He groaned, dragging his feet towards me like a whiny toddler, grabbing me around the waist and digging his nose into the crook of my neck. “You know how I feel about these midwestern recipes. Can’t we have one Thanksgiving free from all this?”

Normally I would argue against his pretentiousness, but I wasn’t in the mood. I shrugged him off and set the timer. “If you didn’t want to eat sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, you shouldn’t have proposed to a girl from Wisconsin. We can do whatever you want for Christmas – tapas, Korean barbecue, curry… your choice. But please leave me my ‘midwestern recipes’ for today.” My voice cracked despite my attempts to sound playful and I turned my head before he could see the tears forming in the corners of my eyes.

His expression softened and he pulled me back into his broad chest for a hug. “I’m sorry. I should have realized this year would be hard. Go ahead and put marshmallows on whatever you want, I mean it. Marshmallow cranberry sauce, marshmallow stuffing… ooh, marshmallow Brussels sprouts!”

I snorted, wiping my cheeks with the back of my hand and getting back to work.

It had been only a month since my mom died from a stroke, joining my twin brother who had passed away in a car accident almost eight years ago. All I had left was a dad I hadn’t seen since my fourth birthday. I was officially family-less.

Except for my fiancé, of course.

Aside from his dislike of marshmallows, Mike was the perfect guy. We had met at a networking party three years ago in Palo Alto, when I had been in the middle of my grad program.

There I was, stuffing another lamb slider in my face, when a pair of violet eyes had found me from across the room, accompanied by a devastatingly handsome smile.

Mike was a software developer working at a startup like all of the other tech bros in the room, but had managed to have a whole conversation with me where he hadn’t mention cryptocurrency once. Instead, we had talked for hours about our shared love of travel and our favorite books and movies. We had left the event early to get more drinks at a nearby wine bar, and then we had ended up spending the whole weekend together, mostly in his bed.

We fell fast, we fell hard, and we had stayed that way.

I had moved into his condo in San Francisco six months later, and this summer during a trip to Mexico he had proposed.

We were planning on getting married next spring, but hadn’t set a date yet because we couldn’t agree on the type of wedding to have. He wanted to do something quiet and intimate, like city hall and a dinner with a select group of friends.

I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but Mike came from a large family, with quite a few brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins out in Florida where he had grown up. I was looking forward to finally meeting all of them and celebrating together. The only one I’d seen so far was his mom, and that had just been from me awkwardly waving in the background of their occasional FaceTime chats.

He insisted his family wasn’t that close and didn’t need to come, but Mike hadn’t gotten to meet my mom before she died – she had lived in Milwaukee, where I was born and raised, and the timing had never really worked out.

While we were building a life together here in California, I didn’t want him to forget his roots and regret not seeing his family more often like I did.

Thanksgiving might have been a good time to finally meet them, but with everything that had happened, we decided to celebrate at home with just the two of us this year. Travel was too expensive and too hectic anyway, so we’d opted on making way too much food by ourselves, then getting high and gorging on the leftovers for the whole weekend while rewatching theLord of the RingsandHarry Pottermovies. It certainly beat spending thousands of dollars to catch COVID on an oversold flight.

Mike poured a glass of wine and handed it to me. “Here. Why don’t you go relax? All that’s left are the mashed potatoes and gravy, right? I can take care of that on my own.”

I gave him a kiss. “And the rolls. They just have to be heated for about five minutes.”

Mike faked an exasperated sigh. “Now you’ve gone too far…”

The couch called my name, and I snuck a piece of cheese from the charcuterie board we’d been grazing from all afternoon. After plopping down on the oversized cushion, I was about to search for a new baking show my friend Esther had recommended when my phone rang. Normally, I ignored numbers I didn’t know but I recognized the Wisconsin area code.

Curiosity got the better of me and I answered. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this Marlowe Linden?” a man asked.

“Yes, this is she.” If this was a telemarketer, that was pretty low to call on Thanksgiving.

“I apologize for disturbing you during the holiday. My name is Oliver Alderwood, I’m with the Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire. Are you the daughter of Mr. James Linden?”

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