Fifteen
“I’ll be right back.” Ava slid from between the covers and tugged on brown wool socks she’d found in a drawer of her old dresser.
Behind her, she heard Mercy push up on an elbow, the sheets rustling. “Where’re you going?”
“To get a snack.” She was whispering, in the muted lamplight of her old room. Around them, the house was alive with a crush of sleeping relatives, and now that it was over – the whole thing finally over – she didn’t want to wake any of them. But her stomach was clenching in a painful way, and reminding her that skipping meals wasn’t an option with a baby on board.
Mercy made an exasperated sound through his nose. “Why didn’t you eat dinner?”
“I felt sick.” Which might have been hormones, or the stress of sitting across from her grandmother, who knew. “I won’t be long.” She turned to kiss him, hands braced on the mattress.
He pretended not to cooperate, frowning dramatically. Ava still couldn’t get over the sight of him half-naked in her old bed, with parental permission like this, and she giggled as she pressed her lips to his.
“You’re not cute when you sulk,” she told him, and slipped out of the room silently.
She could hear the snoring from the living room all the way down the hall. Tiptoeing seemed unnecessary, given the chainsaw effect of three grown men sleeping, but she did so anyway. Aidan was asleep on the sofa; as usual, he’d commandeered the best spot straight off. Tango, ever the pleaser, was on the loveseat, his legs hooked over the arm. Carter had a sleeping bag on the floor. The white lights of the Christmas tree caught the smoothest, youngest angles of their faces as they slept, giving them the look of little boys, and not hardened outlaws.
Ava smiled to herself, and kept moving.
There were candles lit in the kitchen. The three fat decorative ones in the center of a pine bough wreath burned inside a ring of narrow white tapers in silver holders. Ava could have sworn they’d all been blown out after dinner, but then she saw Maggie sitting on the far side of the table, golden in their glow, in her silk robe, a slice of cheesecake in front of her.
She didn’t look startled to see Ava. “There’s plenty of this left,” she whispered, gesturing to her plate with her fork.
Ava nodded, went to the counter to plate herself a slice, and took a seat beside her mother, close so they could talk quietly.
“I never get to eat dessert when it’s served,” Maggie said. “I’m cutting pieces for everyone and making the coffee, and then the plates are coming back and they have to go in the dishwasher.” Behind them, the machine droned and sloshed softly, proving her point. “And I never get to have any.” She forked up a big bite and stared at it, grinning to herself. “Somehow I convinced myself it’s worth the calories to come get some later.”
“It’s worth it,” Ava assured her, licking the edge of her fork. It was New York style, with raspberry compote spooned over the top. Homemade, because Maggie didn’t do store-bought anything.
“Your cookies are good,” Maggie said, “I already had one of those.”
Ava waved her fork. “I’m a long way from this, though.”
“You’re just getting started with your cooking. It takes a while, baby.” Her voice was like a gentle caress, like a hand pulling through the tangles of her hair.
Beyond the window, by the glow of the security light, the snow still fell, a total whiteout as it streamed from the heavens.
Maggie asked, “So what’s Mercy think of his first family Christmas?”
“Not much, I don’t think. None of that bothered him, Mom. I mean, it wasn’t fun, but he’s not one to get all excited about that kind of family drama.”
“Hmm, guess not.”
They were quiet a moment, forks clinking against their plates, as they reflected on the insignificance of Denise Lowe’s disapproval. They’d all lived through far worse.
When a shape appeared in the threshold, and held statue-still for a long moment, neither of them registered Denise for who she was. For a second, the robe-clad figure seemed a specter, and Ava was coiled in automatic reaction, before her grandmother took another step into the kitchen and the candlelight caught her beneath the chin and eyes and revealed her for who she was.
Maggie’s quick intake of breath said that she’d been startled too.
“I…” Denise hesitated, her features stiff. “I thought I might get a glass of water. I didn’t know anyone else was up.”
“Just the ghosts of Christmas Present and Future,” Maggie said, starting to rise.
Denise waved her back down, and walked to the sink. “I can get it.”
Maggie sighed as she lowered into her chair. “Of course,” she whispered. Then: “There’s cheesecake, if you want. We’re having some.”
It was shadowy along the counter, and Denise’s back was ramrod straight as she opened the cabinet, pulled down a glass. Ava couldn’t see what she did, only hear it, and she bit back a smile when she heard the soft sound of the cork pulling out of the wine.
Maggie lifted her brows and Ava shrugged.
When Denise came to the table, it was with a slice of cake and a half-glass of Chardonnay. There was a stiffness to her movements that wasn’t just the result of beauty queen posture lessons; her face was tight, her lips trembling, her gaze on the candles, rather than on them as she sat opposite Ava. She was nervous, like a girl on her first day at a new school, who isn’t comfortable having lunch with strangers.
Or, more accurately, Ava thought, uncomfortable sitting with those she’d been cruel to.
Even with her makeup washed off and her hair tied back, she managed to look regal. She was where Maggie got her own queenly bearing, though Ava didn’t tell that disturbing bit of news to her mom. Denise said, “The cake is very good, Maggie. Your grandmother’s recipe?”
Maggie and Ava traded disbelieving looks. It was unnatural and unsure, but it was still a compliment. It was a reaching out. People couldn’t sit around candles, Ava didn’t guess, and retain their shields for very long. It brought out their basic sides.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “I added the raspberries.”
Denise nodded. “Mother was always a wonderful cook. Much better than I’ve ever been.”
“You do better with savory dishes, Mom. MiMi was always the best with desserts.”
Denise looked startled, eyes going to her daughter. “Do you think so?” True curiosity, caught off guard by the praise.
“I do.”
It wasn’t a smile, but it was a pleasant expression that touched Denise’s face.
“Ava’s really coming along,” Maggie said. “With her cooking, I mean. She’s always been leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of us academically” – she rolled her eyes and Ava blushed – “so she’s determined to cook us all under the table now, too. She made the cookies for today.”
“Did you?” Denise’s gaze came to Ava. “They were very good.”
There was something penetrating about her grandmother’s eyes that made her want to squirm. Denise was looking at her, through her, like she was trying to detect some visible hint of the madness that had driven her to marry a biker and set herself on this path she’d chosen.
She stared at Ava a long moment, and in a quiet voice, said, “How far along are you?”
Ava almost dropped her fork. Her throat went dry immediately and she swallowed. “About fourteen weeks.”
There was no explosion, only a small, sad smile. Denise’s eyelids seemed heavy in the candlelight, her face tired and old. “Hmm. That’s why the sudden wedding, then.”
Maggie gathered a breath and Ava touched her mom’s foot with her own under the table. Let me handle this, please. I have to.
Ava said, “No. The wedding was sudden because we couldn’t wait any longer.” And we were running from a man hell-bent on killing Mercy, but who wants to hear that story? “I wasn’t pregnant then.”
“I see.”
But she didn’t. She never had and probably never would.
“His name is Felix,” Ava said. “He’s from New Orleans, originally. He loves Tolstoy and he likes when I read Shakespeare to him, and he cooks a mean stir fry.”
Maggie was watching her with open approval, Denise with something like shock.
“He’ll be thirty-six in a couple months, which means, yes, he’s a good bit older than me. And yes, he’s been around since I was little. But he’s my best friend, Grammie, and my husband, and I love him so much…and I won’t defend him to anyone, not even my grandmother. He’s here. I’m hoping you can get used to that.”
Denise sat back in her chair, eyes too large. Finally, she blinked. “Well, aren’t you growing up to be just like your mother?” It was said without malice. A simple statement of fact, and she picked up her fork again. “What did you do to these raspberries to turn them into syrup?”
Fifteen minutes later, after the candles had been blown out – Maggie hugged her close, stroked her hair; “My precious girl, you give ‘em hell” – Ava tiptoed back to her room.
Mercy was sitting up against the headboard, reading. He’d dug a paperback collection of Tennyson poems from her old stash and he put it on the nightstand when she entered and closed the door behind her.
His brows lifted. “Better?”
“Much.” Despite the running heat, the house was cold with the snow packed all around it, and she was shivering between taking off her robe and climbing back under the covers. “How can you stand to be shirtless?”
“I’m just hot, baby. C’mere, you wanna feel?”
She rolled her eyes, but burrowed through the covers to get to him. His skin was warm, the bone and muscle beneath a solid comfort. She snuggled against him, into the hollow he made for her beneath one lifted arm.
“You know what would make Christmas even better?” he asked, and there was a mischievous note in his voice that she knew too well.
“What?”
“If we did it in your dad’s house.”
She sighed. “That’s romance for you – ‘did it.’ I’m afraid doing it to stick it to my dad isn’t exactly a turn-on.”
“Fillette.” He twisted his upper body toward her, so he could put both arms around her, press her back against the pillows and blot out the lamplight with his shoulder. “I only ever want to love you because it’s you, and it’s me, and I can’t help myself.” He whispered against her neck in French and she felt herself melting.
His hand found her stomach and covered the growing swell of the baby. “How?” he asked, in a faraway, wondrous voice. “Just my little baby, and now you’re all grown up and having one.”
And he showered her with more French, and she was lost to him, as the snow rained silently against the window.