Page 56 of Snowed In
“This is the hardest part,” he promises. “Once we get through this, we can get through anything.”
He’s clearly never been to my mother’s parties.
It’s only twenty minutes to his house, and as we drive through the village, I see a few new additions to the otherwise usual handful of homes, offices, and shops. The old phone box on the main street is apparently now a Wi-Fi hub. The gardens in front of the school now given over to rewilding. There’s a new café where the old shoe shop used to be, and the corner store has been taken over by a chain, the peeling signs replaced by digital displays urging me to play the lotto and buy three boxes of chocolate for the price of two.
Eventually, Christian pulls up to a sprawling white farmhouse that looks annoyingly familiar, even though I’m sure I haven’t been here before. If you’d told me to draw a picture of Christian’s house, I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but now that I’m here…
I get out, looking at Christian over the roof of the car. “I think I used to knit hats for your sheep,” I say, and he grins.
“Apparently. In this family, you’re known as the knitting girl.”
“I am?” I ask, unable to hide my delight.
“According to my dad at least.”
“He remembers?”
“He does.” Christian shepherds me toward the house, and I feel lighter as I try to picture his father, but all I can remember is the sensation of rough hands lifting me over a fence, of someone helping me pet the small animals on the other side.
“Ready?” Christian asks.
“If I say no, can we leave?”
He laughs and pushes open the front door to reveal a long, narrow hallway with a staircase right in front of us.
I don’t know why I expected the Fitzpatricks to be lining up like the von Trapp family or something, but I feel better when we’re met with nothing but silence. Silence and…mess.
We barely take a step inside before we’re met with our first obstacle, two suitcases taking up most of the hallway. Shoes and coats are strewn everywhere, but thankfully Christian doesn’t just throw his over the banister like the others, instead hanging it carefully up before doing the same with mine. Shopping bags stuffed with presents sit by the door, probably waiting to be brought somewhere, and everywhere I look screams Christmas. The miniature manger on the hall table, the green and gold tinsel adorning the stairs. The house even smells like the holiday, with the scent of sugar and cinnamon wafting from the kitchen. After the serenity of my home, it feels like pure chaos.
I kind of love it.
“Please tell me you made that,” I say, pointing to a faded child’s drawing of several stick figures trapped in a glitter snowstorm.
“That looks like Hannah’s creation. I was more of a numbers kid. Though there’s definitely a stocking I made somewhere. Sewed it myself and everything.”
“You sewed?” I ask, and he points at my face.
“That?” he says. “That impressed look? Look at me like that all the time, and we’ll be fine.”
“I want to see the stocking.”
“It’s probably by the—”
“Christian.”
We turn our attention upward as someone appears at the top of the stairs.
She’s vaguely familiar, and I realize with a start that she looks just like Christian’s friend from the pub, which means this must be Molly, Andrew’s girlfriend. She’s pretty, with long blonde hair and a blinding white smile. She’s also tiny, barely coming up to my shoulders as she hurries down.
Christian grins at her as she does, and I stand there awkwardly as she throws herself into his arms.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.
She pauses on the bottom step, rising up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Hey, stranger.”
“Hey, yourself,” Christian says. “Molly, meet Megan. Megan, Molly.”
We smile at each other, and I try not to do the jealous-girl thing because you’re not supposed to do the jealous-girl thing, and I definitely shouldn’t do the jealous-girl thing because, hello, fake relationship, but I can’t help but notice how very put together she is even though she’s obviously jetlagged. Her makeup is light, her hair curled, and she isn’t wearing a spot of color on her, which has me second-guessing the bright red and green I picked out for her sweater.
