Page 16 of The Woman in the Hollow
Hazel watched me for a moment before shaking her head. “She didn’t tell you she invited me, did she?”
“She didn’t. When did she?”
“Two days ago.”
“At the garden center?”
“At the grocery store. She, uh, took a lot of offense to the contents of my cart.”
“What was in your cart?”
“Well, the grocery store has this giant wall of all these fresh pre-made—”
“Yep, I can stop you right there,” I said, nodding. “She once opened my fridge and saw I had a bunch of those protein shakes and smoothies from a subscription plan.”
“What’d she do?”
“Demand I end the subscription and started making them for me weekly instead. Eventually, I had to start making them just to stop her from making them.”
“Completely defeating the convenience of premade ones.”
“You’re starting to understand my family.”
“Dante!” my mother called. “What are you doing? I raised you better than this. We don’t leave guests standing at the door.”
“I was greeting her.”
“You greet someone while inviting them inside,” she insisted, pushing past me to wrap a one-armed hug around Hazel. “I’m so glad you could make it!”
“I’m sure you made it sound like she had a choice,” I said, my voice so low that only Hazel could hear as my mother pulled her inside. She shot me a little smirk.
“What is this? I told you that you didn’t need to bring anything.”
“I know. But it felt wrong not to bring something. So I made some brownies.”
“You made them?” my mother asked, delighted.
“Yeah, I mean, the contents of my shopping cart aside, I do know how to cook and bake.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. You are a busy working woman. Of course you don’t have time to make your own meals every night.”
“Who is that?” August, my youngest brother, asked as he moved in beside me.
“Hazel. She works at the garden center. Mom is trying to hook us up.”
“So you need this more than he does,” Traveler, August’s wife, said as she came up with a whiskey for him, but handed it to me instead.
“Thanks, Trav.”
“She’s pretty.”
“She’s gorgeous. But she works for me. We all love Dom, but the Halloween season would have been a complete disaster without someone like Hazel to pull it all together.”
“We can’t wait to come check it out on family night,” Savannah, Nino’s wife, who was hanging nearby said. “The kids have been nagging us about seeing it. All their friends have been there already.”
“Just a couple more days,” I said. Given how much business we were getting, it was kind of killing me to have to keep the place closed to the public for one night. But we all agreed that it would be safer for everyone if we controlled the crowd.
As a whole, the families stayed safe because we were careful to keep Family business as far away from them as possible. But it was rare that every member of the family got together with the kids. If someone was looking for a chance to strike and cause the most damage, that was the kind of event for it.
