Page 9 of Christmas Past
But even though we might have been able to move through time, we couldn’t do anything about the course it would take.
Seth and I made our way over to the mercantile around three-thirty. We’d decided that hanging out in the bungalow was probably the safest bet…not that we minded whiling away the hours with some more indoor activities…and we found Molly already bustling around her home, preparing for the evening’s festivities. The apartment felt smaller than I remembered from our brief visit the night before, but it was warm and inviting, filled with scents of cinnamon and nutmeg.
“Oh, wonderful, you’re here!” she said, and wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron. Her face was bright with an energy I hadn’t seen the previous evening — the kind of happiness that I knew must have come from the surprise of having the whole family together for the holidays. “Devynn, would you mind helping me with the bread? I always make an extra loaf for Christmas Eve, but I need to get started on the roast.”
“Of course,” I said, even as I inwardly prayed I’d be up to the task. A domestic goddess I was not, but I hoped having Molly right there to offer advice would save me from any massive blunders. “I’d love to help.”
As we worked side by side in the cramped kitchen, she shared stories about Seth’s childhood that had me laughing despite my underlying worry about our precarious situation. There was the time when he was ten and had tried to use his newly manifested translocation gift to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf, only to materialize halfway inside the pantry wall, his legs dangling comically while Henry had to carefully extract him.
“He was stuck there for twenty minutes,” Molly said. Her eyes twinkled at the memory, although I had a feeling she probably hadn’t been quite as cheerful back when it had happened. “Henry was so worried about hurting him that he dismantled half the pantry shelf by shelf. And Seth just kept saying, ‘I can get out myself, Dad!’ and trying to blink away, which only made things worse.”
After that, she told me about an incident when Seth was twelve and Charles had convinced his little brother to help him “reorganize” the mercantile’s inventory by moving everything to the opposite side of the shop. It seemed the reasoning had been that doing so would make the store look more interesting, but it had created utter chaos when customers couldn’t find the items they needed, and Henry had to take time out from an already busy schedule to put everything back in its proper place.
“Charles was always the instigator,” Molly said with a smile. “But Seth was also willing to go along with his schemes. He idolized his big brother, you know. He would have followed him anywhere.” Her expression sobered, and she paused, a pepper mill idle in one hand. “I think that’s partly why what happened between them this summer hurt him so badly.”
I concentrated on kneading the bread dough and did my best to keep my expression neutral. “They’ll work it out,” I said, even as I hoped I wasn’t being overly optimistic. Something about Charles McAllister had always set my teeth on edge.
Molly picked up the roast, now properly seasoned, and set it in a big cast-iron pan. “I hope so. Seth’s always been so determined — even as a little boy, if he set his mind to something, there was no stopping him. But he doesn’t hold grudges, not really. He just needs time to process things.”
Yes, that sounded just like Seth, so I nodded…even as I wondered if this was the one time when he actually would find it difficult to forgive.
The rest of the afternoon was pleasant enough, though, with more cheerful anecdotes and preparations for the evening meal. Molly showed me the family’s collection of Christmas ornaments, each one with its own story. There was the delicate glass star that had belonged to Seth’s grandmother, the wooden angels that Henry had carved during his and Molly’s first Christmas as a married couple, and the slightly lopsided clay ornaments that Seth and Charles had made as children.
“Seth was so proud of this one,” Molly said, holding up a lumpy clay reindeer that was missing one antler. “He was six, and he worked on it for hours. When it came out of the kiln at the schoolhouse, he ran all the way home to show it to us.”
As she spoke, I found myself studying her face, trying to memorize every detail. I’d met Molly McAllister in the past, of course, but we hadn’t spent enough time together for me to truly know her as a real person. Now I could see where Seth got his determination, his friendliness, and his love of family. Molly was slight and slender, a few inches shorter than I, and didn’t seem like someone who could have borne two such tall sons, but she had a spine of iron.
As five o’clock approached, however, my stomach began to knot with apprehension. I’d been dreading this reunion between the brothers ever since we’d decided to make this trip. Seth had told me some of what had transpired between him and Charles before that near-fatal encounter at the mine shaft — the bootlegging, the pressure to take over more responsibilities than Seth should have had to shoulder on his own.
The way Charles had used family loyalty to manipulate him into taking risks he otherwise never would have even contemplated.
And I couldn’t forget how Charles’s actions had led directly to me being shot, to the desperate time jump that had changed both our lives forever. Seth might have forgiven his brother, but I wasn’t sure I had. Every time I thought about that moment as Lionel Allenby’s bullet lodged in my gut…the pain and terror and the certainty that I was going to die…a burst of rage would flash through me all over again.
Still, I knew I needed to put all that aside if I was going to get through tonight.
Charles arrived right on time, with Abigail on his arm. She looked pretty much the same as she had the time I’d encountered her right before her twenty-first birthday, with pale blonde hair knotted low on her neck, although today she wore a dress of soft blue wool that somehow managed to make her seem even more fragile, rather than the lacy white summer frock she’d had on during our first meeting. Her pale eyes seemed to survey her surroundings with a kind of distant regard, as if her thoughts were somewhere else entirely.
“Seth,” Charles said, his voice too neutral. “Mom told me you were back.”
The two brothers stood facing each other in the living room, and I could practically see the tension crackling between them, sharp and hot as the sparks flying in the hearth.
“Hello, Charles,” Seth replied evenly. “I’d like you to meet my fiancée, Devynn Rowe.”
At those words, Abigail’s pale eyes widened dramatically, and her gaze darted between Seth and me with something that looked almost like envy. I remembered then how he had been her first choice, how she’d wanted him to be her consort, even though the universe clearly had different plans.
Hopefully, she wasn’t still carrying any kind of a torch for him, or this evening might turn out to be even more awkward than I’d feared.
Charles’s mouth actually fell open for a moment before he managed to recover his composure.
“Miss Rowe,” he said, his tone stiff. “A pleasure.”
“Likewise,” I replied, although we both knew that wasn’t entirely true.
Molly, bless her, jumped into the silence before it could get too awkward. “It’s a wonderful surprise, isn’t it? Our Seth, engaged! And at Christmastime, no less. Come, everyone — let’s sit down to dinner.”
We all headed into the dining room, which felt even smaller with all of us crowded around the table. Although I did what I could to concentrate on the wonderful food, the undercurrents of tension at the table made every bite difficult to swallow. Nothing Charles said could exactly be called hostile, and yet something in his tone and the sideways, almost irritated glances he sent in his brother’s direction told me he was less than thrilled that we were there. Seth did his best to ignore the little jabs and instead complimented his mother on the food, but I could tell from his ever-tightening jaw muscles that he wasn’t happy, either.
To be honest, I didn’t even know what Charles’s game was. He’d been there at the mine — he’d seen me get shot and the two of us disappear. Sure, he’d probably been a little stumped about what had actually happened, just because in general, Seth’s gift wasn’t strong enough to teleport two people at once, but maybe he’d thought in that moment of extremity, his brother’s translocation talent had strengthened enough to send us both somewhere else.
