Page 2 of Miss Humbug
My skin boiled. “It’sMarlowe.” But the fight gave out at the sight of my oldest brother, Ashe.
His large, country-man body enveloped me in a bear hug. “You’ll always be the family baby.”
I took the hug. I didn’t hate the hug.
He assessed me. “You look like a corporate Heidi Klum.”
“Heidi Klum is blond. And a million feet tall.” As a brunette notably shorter than a supermodel, we looked nothing alike.
He rolled his eyes. “Okay,dressedlike. You better have jeans and boots because the Hollys are going out tonight after whatever Grans has in store for us. You wear those clothes and people will think they’re up for audit.”
Cropped black pants and classic heels were suddenly too chic? Maybe it was the tailored jacket over a silk cowlneck blouse. “Look, Iown jeans.” I scoffed but lost the war to hide my smile. “You look like you can bench press a tank. What do you do? CrossFit?”
“More like barn-fit.” His chuckle caused creases around his eyes. He had a whole ten years on me, but he never seemed to change all that much between my visits. He took my suitcase without asking and I followed him through the side door. “Come on in. The kids are dying to see their cool aunt from California.”
The warm air hooked me into its embrace and dotted it with a kiss on the cheek, laced with old familiar guilt.
I had nieces and nephews who knew me mainly from video calls. Those and UPS packages filled with what the parenting blogs claimed were the most in-demand gifts of the season. When you couldn’t be there in person (or were possibly unwilling), piles of presents kept you close in mind.
Old polished wood and a hint of cinnamon wafted from deeper in. The house was the kind that just couldn’t be recreated, and nobody would these days with all the open floor plans. Dozens of rooms all closed off from each other, with an oblong kitchen that didn't lead to a mega family room like modern houses. As a kid, I loved having so many little spaces to close myself into. The parlor, a large dining room, a library, an office, a butler’s pantry, and a living space near the back of the house with a bay window overlooking the valley and a farmland of trees in the distance.
A cluster of familiar faces appeared.
“Mar-Mar!”
“Auntie Marlowe!”
Little arms reached for me as a soft arrow shot from a plastic bow and knocked me in the arm. Ashe’s wife, Cara, came in for a hug, while my other brother, Shawn, gave me a head nod from across the room, not expending the effort to peel his folded arms apart. Built stocky like Ashe, Shawn stood half a foot shorter than our older brother but made up for it in attitude. We got alonggreat.
My oldest cousin Rafe, a ginger-haired over-achiever, nodded to me in greeting. Where my brothers excelled at wisecracking and rough housing, Rafe seemed born to wear a suit and tie. Even as a kid his clothes stayed way too clean. His wife Brianne typed on her phone at a frantic pace, no doubt firing off orders to one of the many community board groups she belonged to. I didn’t take her lack of welcome personally. She was one of those perennially busy people. Busy people got out of things like holiday dinners and whatever else I faced this weekend. All to say I admired Brianne and needed to learn her ways.
Rafe’s younger sister Riley greeted me with a friendly smile. She was closest to me in age among my siblings and cousins, but still four years older. Riley had a chip on her delicate shoulder after her now ex-boyfriend left her to raise their daughter alone.
More children appeared from darkened corners. In all the calamity, my gaze landed on our summoner: Grans. She stood by the bay window looking over the side yard that sloped toward the neighboring tree farm in the distance. For a lady in her early eighties, not much slowed Grans down. And for whatever did slow her down, she had people for that.
As she shifted toward me, shadows cast witchy angles across her features. “Welcome home, Marlowe. We’ve been waiting.”
If her welcome sounded ominous, it was because it was ominous.
The mailed invitation ran through my mind again, short and to the point in a lovely serif font on eggshell, mid-weight cardstock.
Emmaline Holly respectfully requests your presence at 21 Hollybrooke Lane for Thanksgiving dinner.
Then, in my grandmother’s handwriting:
This isn’t a suggestion.
Love, Grans
My grandmother never pulled rank. She could have for years, and I would have come back in an instant. In all our exchanging of greeting cards and phone calls, she never played the guilt card. She never verbally bemoaned my absence. She regularly offered understanding for my excuses for missing holidays, birthdays, and other family milestones.
I’d called as soon as I’d received the invitation. I hadn’t visited in a couple years, but I wasn’t a total monster. Was she…I’d dared to ask, ill? She knew how sensitive my siblings and I were about family fatality.
“Your presence is expected,” had been her response when I’d asked if she was okay. “I miss you, Marlowe.”
“I miss you too.” And I did. That homesick feeling usually wasn’t enough to derail my momentum to drop everything and travel halfway across the country for a turkey dinner.
Until work derailed on its own. Derailed—ha. More like the train tracks ended at a cliff’s edge. My career’s momentum crash-landed into unemployment.
