Page 81 of The Fiancée Farce
“Our first Christmas card. I like that. We’ll have to find atemplate with enough spots for the whole family. Wedefinitelycan’t leave Bitsie out,” Gemma said. “One year—I must’ve been about... fourteen?—she sang that god-awful song about some poor boy buying his dying mother shoes. ‘The Christmas Shoes’? An awful, morbid song, and somehow Bitsie managed to make it worse with her caterwauling. Of course, the encore involved her upchucking fruitcake and eggnog all over the floor.”
Tansy cringed. “That’s horrifying.”
“You want to talk about horrifying?Horrifyingwas when Isabel, my father’s second wife and my stepmother for all of two minutes, sang ‘Santa Baby’ while wearing totally sheerMrs.Clauslingerie.”
“Oh my God.” That sounded scarring.
“Did I mention she was seven months pregnant with twins at the time? Or that she gave Victor a lap dance in front ofallof us?” Gemma grimaced. “No amount of therapy can help me get over that.”
Brooks had mentioned twins the night of their engagement party, when Tansy was hiding behind the curtain, but she hadn’t realized whose twins he was talking about until now. “I didn’t know you had siblings.”
“Brothers. They’re ten. You might’ve seen them at Tucker’s wedding. They were the ring bearers.” Gemma smiled softly, looking fond. “They’re too young for Victor to have completely poisoned them against me, so they still think I’m cool.”
“And here I was, thinking you were an only child.”
“Might as well have been.” Gemma’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Seeing as I’m old enough to be their mother.”
“Well, if the Christmases at your house are always so eventful, maybe we should postpone the honeymoon for a few weeks,” Tansy joked. “I might like to see it.”
“I beg you.” Gemma let her arms fall theatrically behind her head. “Spare me,please.”
“I don’t know.” Tansy’s stomach hurt from trying not to laugh. “You make it sound awfully appealing.”
“Awfullysomething.” Gemma laughed. “Holidays have been miserable for almost as long as I can remember. My aunt’s antics, while entertaining, are hardly what I’d callredeeming.”
Maybe it was a turn of phrase, but—“Almost as long as you can remember?”
Gemma nodded. “When my parents were married, Christmases weren’t awful. Weren’tasawful. They divorced when I was ten.”
Gemma scarcely ever spoke of her mother. Were they close? “And you never spent Christmases with her?”
“Not after they divorced.” Gemma shook her head. “Not until I was in college.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Most kids I knew whose parents were divorced alternated holidays or spent part of the day with one parent and the rest with the other.”
“Not me.” Gemma dipped her finger into her wine and ran it against the glass, making it sing. “My mother had signed an ironclad prenup. See, they got married because she was pregnant with me. Only twenty, not even graduated from college, and Victor was thirteen years her senior. She didn’t know what the hell she was doing, what she was signing, what she was agreeing to. She was scared and starry-eyed, and no one gets married expecting to get divorced, you know?”
Almostno one.
Fiancée to divorcée in two years. It sounded like the name of a bad reality TV show airing on TLC.
God, there she went again, putting the cart before the horse. Why couldn’t she just enjoy the here and now? Live in the moment?For the first time in a long time, everything in her life was coming up roses, and here she was, borrowing trouble. Stupid brain.
“My mother, she never told me why they split up or why I only got to see her for a few weeks every summer. Even after everything Victor put her through—an awful marriage, a worse divorce, a messy custody battle—she didn’t want to speak ill of him to me. She wanted to let me form myownopinions. Leave it to Bitsie to spill the beans after having too much to drink. I was fifteen.” She scoffed out a laugh. “It certainly explained a lot. Like why she hadn’t stopped my father from shipping me off to boarding school. I just thought she didn’t want to see me. That she didn’t care. She did. She always had. It was Victor who didn’t. Victor who couldn’t care less.”
Gemma sniffed hard, then laughed, a high, stilted sound. “Wow, Jesus, didn’t mean to get all heavy.” She set her glass down, nudging it out of reach. “Maybe I should’ve stopped after one glass, like you. I swear, I don’t normally get this morose when I drink.”
“No, you just sing heavy metal Christmas anthems.”
“Ugh.” Gemma buried her face in her hands. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Hardly.” Tansy laughed, trying to lighten the mood, not for her sake, but for Gemma’s. She wouldn’t want her pity, and Tansy had a feeling she wouldn’t welcome an overt display of sympathy, either. “Not until I see it for myself.”
“I hope you’re patient, because you’ll be waiting alongtime. Aforevertime. Never,everwill I do that again,” Gemma swore, shaking her head. “Not even if you gave me all the schnapps in the world.”
“Hmm.” Tansy narrowed her eyes, pretending to think. “What about bribery?”
“Well, that would depend.” Gemma’s eyes lit up with interest.
