Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
I took Neil’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go see Mom and get this over with.”
When we stepped into the tiny, crowded kitchen, my mom was bent over a steaming sink, having just strained some boiled potatoes. She looked fabulous, as always, in wide-legged black trousers and a fitted, leopard-print cardigan. Her blonde hair—as fake as her nails and just as difficult to maintain—was perfectly straightened and held back from her face with a clip.
“I’m home!” I declared as she shook the last drops out of the huge stockpot.
She turned to face us, the corners of her eyes crinkling with happiness when she saw me. Then her gaze darted to Neil, and her smile did that telltale, split-second cessation of outward mobility, caused by an unpleasant shock she didn’t want to admit to. I’d gotten so used to it over the years. The I’m-freaking-out-internally freeze.
She hugged me, harder than absolutely necessary, and effused, “Honey, I’m so glad you made it! I was worried the airport would close down because of the storm yesterday.”
“It didn’t.” After stating the obvious, there was nowhere to go but introductions. “Mom, this is Neil. Neil, this is my mom, Rebecca.”
She put out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Neil. Sophie has had only good things to say about you.”
Turning to me with raised eyebrows, she said, “Not that she’s said a lot.”
“Yes, she mentioned that in the car on the way over.” He gave her what was possibly the most charming smile I’ve ever seen on him. Oh, baby. You’re wasting your energy. She already hates you.
My grandmother was at the stove. She looked over the shoulder of her red, bedazzled Christmas sweater. “Well, don’t hug me, for heaven’s sake. I only haven’t seen you for a year.”
“Merry Christmas, Grandma,” I said as I went to her with open arms.
I heard my mom ask, “So, Neil. What do you do?”
“I own two multimedia conglomerates, one in the US and England and the other based out of Reykjavik.”
“Oh. How nice for you.” My mom was going to die of a heart attack on the kitchen floor.
“Is there a lot of money in that?” my grandmother asked him, with all the tact small-town Michigan matriarchs generally displayed.
Neil’s eyebrows lifted, and he blinked three times, rapidly, before managing to answer, “I do all right.”
“It’s a wonder anybody’s doing all right these days, with those damn Republicans—”
“Ma!” my mother hushed her. “Nobody wants to talk about politics at Christmas.”
“I, uh, I brought a little something to contribute to the festivities,” Neil said, reaching into the shopping bag to pull out one of the bottles of 1996 Dom Pérignon.
He’d brought the Dom Pérignon because I’d suggested he not go overboard. My mother was going to eat him alive.
She took the bottle and turned it in her hands with a little nod. “This was very thoughtful of you.”
“We’ve got beer, too, Neil, in the cooler outside the door. Just don’t let all the heat out,” my grandmother called, her head in the oven as she peeled the tinfoil off the ham.
“I’ll chill this,” Mom said, taking the other bottle from Neil.
Grandma deposited a heavy bowl into my hands, and I gasped, juggling it quickly so as not to slosh gravy onto my coat. “Take that out to the table.”
I cast an apologetic glance at Neil as I moved past him, into the crowded dining room and out to the porch. As I went, I heard my grandma shoo him out of the kitchen.
It wasn’t a long journey with the bowl, but by the time I got back to Neil, he’d been cornered by my great-uncle Doug, who had an open beer in his hand despite the fact it was eleven a.m. on Christmas morning.
“You heard a dem gingerbread Oreos?” he asked Neil, taking a swig from his bottle.
Neil blinked and stammered, “N-no. That sounds horrible.”
“No, they’re a real ting,” Doug insisted, gesturing with his beer. “They were on the Channel Six news.”
“I’m sorry, did you say noose?” Neil spotted me, and his relief was visible. I should have warned him about the thick Yooper accent that ran in my family.
“Hey, Sophie!” Uncle Doug put out his arm for a half-hug. He was my grandmother’s youngest brother, sixty-five, and he’d recently retired from his job as a DNR officer. “Did ya hear about dem gingerbread Oreos?”
“That sounds gross.” I stood beside Neil and reached up to put a hand on his shoulder. It was as hard as a blacksmith’s anvil with tension. I hoped he’d brought his headache pills with him.
“They got ‘em down in Marquette,” Doug went on. “They don’t got ‘em at the Pat’s here, but I told Debbie’s sister, ‘you better save me some of dem gingerbread Oreos.’”
My aunt Debbie yelled from the living room that there was something wrong with their cell phone, and Doug excused himself. As he walked away, Neil muttered to me, “I feel like I’m listening to an alien language.”