Page 45 of Yours for the Season
“We don’t have any of those things in our house; don’t worry, kids,” Rob said, retaking his seat beside Naveed. His voice was hoarse from the hot sauce standoff, but he and Naveed had clearly trauma-bonded over their ordeal. Both Rob and her father drained their milk, Sameera noted. “If there were, I’d get rid of it right quick, little lady,” he assured Isra.
“This is a big house. An old house. And you know how much jinn love a nice dark forest, not to mention moving water, both of which surround Cooke Place,” Esa improvised.
“Esa,” Tahsin warned, but he ignored her.
“It’s true,” Calvin added. “Sometimes, late at night, I’ll hear people talking in a language I’ve never heard before.”
Wide-eyed, the children were starting to get scared. “Where do the jinn stay?” Daniyal asked.
“When it’s cold outside, they like to find a nice warm, cozy little nook,” Esa said. “Like a little shelf, where they can watch us, especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas.”
“You can tell it’s a jinni if it’s dressed in striped pants and a pointy hat,” Calvin added. “And it moves around the house, so you never know where it will turn up next. It likes to spy on little kids, in particular.”
Sameera’s parents looked confused, while Tom shook his head in amusement. “Are you talking about the Elf on a Shelf?” He tried to reassure the children. “That’s a holiday toy.”
“That’s whattheythink,” Esa said to Isra, indicating Tom and the rest of the Cooke family. “But we know better, don’t we?”
Isra nodded, eyes wide.
“Just watch out for the jinn,” Esa said, right as Tahsin, who had had enough of her son’s shenanigans, put him and Calvin to work clearing the table.
“He’s only kidding,” Sameera assured Abu Isra’s children, but she wasn’t sure they believed her. She wondered if her parents were regretting their impromptu dinner party. Maybe they would think twice next time before issuing a hasty invitation, or perhaps even listen to her.
“Never a dull moment with the Malik family,” Tom whispered beside her.
Esa and Cal set up dessert in the large sitting room. While the young men distributed plates and cutlery and arranged the fruit,kunafe, and baklava, joking and laughing like old friends, the rest of the dinner party claimed chairs and sofas. Sameera settled on a love seat, Tom beside her, and his warmth and smell instantly invaded her senses; it felt so familiar to her now, after only a few days. She realized she was leaning over to smell him, and forced herself to stop.
Which was when Isra jumped out of her chair, screaming and pointing at the bookshelf. “Jiiiiiinnnnnn!” she yelled, backing away.
The other children leaped to their feet and started screaming, too, until Esa heroically lunged at the bookshelf and grabbed the Elf on a Shelf, dressed in the usual striped pants and pointy hat, just as Cal had described at the dining table.
“I told you to leave my friends alone!” Esa yelled at the toy. “They’re well behaved all year around.” He leaned in close, pretending to listen to what the toy said. “You’re not sure about the little one?” He turned to three-year-old Ikhlas, his expression severe. “Do you promise to behave?”
Ikhlas nodded, eyes wide, before reaching for the toy. Esa held it away with a severe shake of his head.
“Okay, me and my little friend are going to take a little walk. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you again, okay?” Esa left the sitting room to applause from the kids, who were now convinced he was their hero.
Beside her on the couch, Tom was laughing into his hand. He leaned over to whisper, “Your brother is hilarious. If he wanted, he could rule the internet.”
A warm feeling suffused her. Esa had turned what might have been an awkward and dull dinner into a fun time, and had succeeded in charming everyone in the room. Tom was right—her brother had a gift, and she was proud of him for throwing himself wholeheartedly into whatever he did. A lot of that new confidence was due to Tom.
Tom had been so kind to her, to her family and Esa. He had encouraged her brother to run after his passion, and had helped him grow his audience using his own channel. Tom had also cheered her up twice today, first at the bakery and then at the guesthouse. It was growing more and more difficult to ignore her feelings for him. She gave his hand a quick squeeze. “Who wants morekunafe?” she asked brightly, and started refilling everyone’s plates.
Chapter Sixteen
Sameera stared at her phone. It was nearly 1:00 a.m., and she had been working steadily for the past few hours, ever since dinner concluded. She had finished the slide deck for her pitch with Andy. Now she was picking away at her files.Another two billable hours down, five million to go,she thought glumly.
Dinner had been ... nice. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she hadn’t felt embarrassed by her family’s antics. Almost as if admitting her feelings to Tom had somehow banished them. In a strange way, she felt more comfortable here in Wolf Run now, at ease with who she was, and it was easier to find her family’s foibles and quirks endearing instead of mortifying, if only because the Cookes had quirks of their own.
Tom found Esa’s jokes funny, and Rob had gotten into the spirit of things with the hot sauce throw-down, acting just as silly, playful, and competitive as her father. Even Barb seemed to appreciate her mother’s masterful kitchen takeover and had vowed to put more onions in everything.
It all felt ... easy. Lovely. Completely baffling. Was this what it would have been like if she hadn’t allowed Hunter into her life? If she hadn’t let his jokes and comments about her family, his constant criticism, interfere with the way she thought about everything? Except she knew it went deeper than that, to her own feelings of self-worth.
Even before Hunter had slithered into her life, she had felt a nagging, enveloping sense of her own difference, one that found little respite in her own family and community, or in the outside world. Her mother wanted her to be a perfectly poised success machine who was a credit not just to their family but to all Muslims in the country. The outside world required her only to be a producer and consumer, then to fade into the background, which was much easier to accomplish. Slowly, she stopped practicing her faith regularly. It was easier to exist as a lapsed Muslim rather than a struggling one.
With Tom, she felt like she could put her guard down, and simply exist as her confused, mixed-up, ever-striving self.
She opened the next file and tried to sink back into her work, to ride the wave of productivity she had been surfing all night, but her brain was fried. Her thoughts kept drifting to Tom in a loop.
