Sloane: Mixed Emotions Four Days Until Christmas

CAROLINE AND EMERSON WERE WAITING with bated breath as I unrolled the swath of papers in my arms.

Vivi ran through the dining room practically singing, “Thirty minutes until the Christmas Market! Aunt Em, I’m borrowing your sweater!” Seconds later, her feet pounded up the stairs.

“I haven’t seen her this excited about the Christmas Market since she was like six,” I said.

Caroline laughed. “I think it’s less excitement over the Christmas Market and more over who will be at the Christmas Market.”

“Kind of like her mother?” Emerson asked, bumping her hip with Caroline’s.

Caroline didn’t even try to hide her smile. “I’m not going to lie. It was a fantastic first date. No doubt about it.”

“So is he better in bed now, or when he was eighteen?” Emerson asked very seriously.

“Em!” I scolded.

“What?” she asked innocently. “It’s a valid question.”

“I have no idea,” Caroline said demurely. “Because I did not sleep with him either time.”

“Really?” I asked, shocked. Granted, I had no real concept of what grown-up people’s dating lives look like since I’d been with Adam since college and never really had a grown-up dating life. But I couldn’t imagine my sister sleeping with someone on a first date if, for no other reason, then because she was a germaphobe.

“Stop,” Emerson said. “For real?”

Caroline pulled her red pencil out from behind her ear and said, “Can we go over Sloane’s house plans, please? I don’t see how any of this is relevant.”

Now I was intrigued too, but, as Vivi had said, the Christmas Market was drawing nigh, and I needed everyone’s thoughts on the house plans. We were slated to present them to the Historical Association at their January meeting, and everything needed to be perfect. Even with Mom’s major connections, I couldn’t believe how fast the architect had gotten the drawings done. Fortunately, Caroline was fine to hang on to the lot until we got approval.

“Speaking of old flames…” Emerson said. “You guys are never going to believe this.”

I tempered my response because Emerson’s never going to believe this was often different from mine, and I would get super excited for nothing.

“Guess who called me last night.”

“Mark!” Caroline said.

I guffawed. The mere idea of Emerson’s ex-fiancé calling her was ridiculous.

“How did you know?” she asked.

“Seriously?” I said. “I thought you were kidding.”

“I totally was!” Caroline protested. “What in the hell did he want?”

Emerson scrunched up her nose. “Well, he wants to talk.”

“Talk?” Caroline spat. “Talk? What could he possibly want to talk about?”

I wasn’t sure what she was so outraged about. I mean, yeah, Mark had technically called off his wedding to Emerson, but it wasn’t like she hadn’t been having major second thoughts. It wasn’t like she wasn’t majorly in love with Kyle also, which was kind of a problem.

“What did you say?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I mean, I have to go talk to him. But do I tell Kyle?”

As if he’d heard, Kyle opened the front door and sauntered into the room, Keith on his heels. He planted a big, wet, slobbery kiss on Emerson and said, “God, I’d forgotten how beautiful you are.”

Keith and I rolled our eyes at each other, but, really, it was kind of sweet.

“Guys,” Keith said, “big apologies, man.”

“For what?” I asked.

“The drink order situation.” He pulled out a cup with my name on it and handed it to me. “That little fire messed up my list, but I thought it would be cool for everybody to try something new every day.” He was the definition of a California surfer dude. How he’d made it this long on the East Coast was a total mystery to me. “When nobody said anything, I thought you guys liked it.”

I squinted at him. Could that possibly be true?

Caroline looked embarrassed for him, and Kyle seemed a little annoyed. But you couldn’t be full-on mad at Keith. He meant well. Kyle slapped Keith on the back. “It’s all right, man. There’s a learning curve.”

Well, yes. That was true.

“I got it now, man,” he said. “I’m even putting names on your cups.” He snapped his fingers like he had invented algebra, not recycled a very, very ordinary solution to a problem.

“That is just great, Keith,” I said, not wanting him to feel badly.

Mom walked in, saying, “Oh! Yes! This is so exciting!”

“The coffee or the house plans?” Caroline asked.

“Both.”

Keith handed her a cup, and, because he was standing there, she went ahead and took a sip. A few drinks were casualties of this nicety every day. She looked very surprised. “This is a skinny vanilla latte. This is my drink.”

Keith snapped at her, “Yup. I’m delivering the right drinks to the right people now. It’s my new thing.”

I could tell Mom was really having to control herself to keep from laughing. “That is great news, Keith. Really big.”

I handed her a red pencil and pointed at the plans.

“We’ll get out of your way, ladies,” Kyle said.

“I want you to look at the plans later!” I called after him as he and Keith walked out the door.

“Will do!” he called back.

Caroline picked up the top sheet, having to spread her arms wide to do so. She shifted it this way and that and then said, “Twenty-six hundred square feet. Double front porches. Black shutters. It looks like the exact same house. Literally the exact same.”

I nodded and looked at her incredulously. “Well, yeah. Of course it is. We gave the original blueprints to the architect. He didn’t even charge us for a full set of plans, because they are basically the same.” I put my hands on my hips. “You know the Historical Association will only let us build something that looks identical on the outside.”

She dramatically tossed the sheet to the side and said, “Well, then, not much to look at there.” She looked up. “So, is Mr. I Have to Have My Very Own House okay with this?”

I rolled my eyes and Emerson rolled hers back. Sometimes it amazed me that Emerson was the actress. Caroline was every bit as dramatic.

I nodded. “He doesn’t care what the house is. He just wants to own it.”

Caroline gave me a thumbs-up. We had already been preapproved for a loan that would more than cover the house. And when we eventually bought the lot, we would make payments to Caroline each month, as she had asked us to. That way, it was less of a tax hit for her, and we didn’t have to come up with a down payment.

“Oh, I love the downstairs floor plan,” Emerson was saying as Caroline dissected it with her red pencil. “It’s totally perfect.”

I nodded. “Yeah. We can do anything we want inside, so we really opened it up.”

“You’re going to want at least a large door casing there in between the dining room and kitchen,” Mom was saying as she drew in the doorway in red. “This is way too open.”

“Oh! With antique pocket doors!” Caroline chimed in.

“Okay,” I said, pushing the paper toward them. “Y’all get that all straightened out.”

Emerson and I studied the second floor. “Do you really need three bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs?” she asked. “That’s a lot of bedrooms.”

I held her gaze for a moment and said, “Well, Em, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have quite a lot of family,” just as AJ flew by us with Preston and Taylor on his heels, a squealing Carter bringing up the rear.

Emerson laughed. “All this joy these families create, and my evil big sister doesn’t think I should get married.”

“Caroline!” I scolded. She was such a busybody, always trying to impose her opinions on everyone else. “If I’m not mistaken, you were the poster child for marriage. All you ever wanted was to get married.”

A look passed between Mom and Caroline that I didn’t quite understand. But it made me know that I should change the subject, so I said, “Do you think a Jack and Jill bath is okay for the boys to share, or do you think I should steal a little from these two rooms to get two en suites?”

Emerson bit the end of her pencil and studied, saying, “Well, a Jack and Jill is fine for families, but I think I’d rather have en suites, personally. Better for resale.”

“I think this will get approved, Sloane,” Mom said. “I really do.”

I looked up at Caroline, who winked at me nearly imperceptibly. Secrets, secrets, secrets.

And, speaking of secrets, I was about to get another one. Once I had wrangled the two boys into their coats, hats, and mittens—or, as Taylor called them, “glubs”—the whole family was off to the market, including Vivi, who was triumphantly sporting Emerson’s sweater. “I thought this was the good part about living in Peachtree,” Adam was saying to Mom. “You never need winter gear.”

Mom laughed. “The weather this year has been crazy. But you never know about the winter. Every decade or so we might even get a little snow.”

I was listening to them and keeping an eye on my two boys when Jack touched my arm and signaled for me to stop walking, like he had.

“Em!” I called. She looked back. I pointed at AJ and Taylor and she gave me a thumbs-up. When enough distance was between us and the others, Jack and I started walking again. “Your mom said the house plans look great,” Jack said.

I smiled. “They really do. I’m so excited. I hate it for Caroline, but this was our perfect Christmas miracle in some ways. I get to stay downtown, and Adam gets the land he wanted. And we get out of Mom’s house, which I have mixed emotions about, but I know it’s really the best thing for everyone.”

We entered the market. All the booths were filled with goodies, and there were twinkle lights absolutely everywhere. A bluegrass band played Christmas music in the middle of the square, and a teenage girl with a tray handed Jack and me small cups of apple cider. People were selling homemade jewelry and soap, stuffed animals and cards, vegetables and eggs, cookies and bread—anything that could be made or grown here was being sold, and I couldn’t wait to make baskets of Peachtree Bluff’s finest goodies for my friends—especially my best friend Mary Ann.

I missed the other military wives. No one else understood the lives we led. Being apart from our husbands, learning to rely on each other—and ourselves—for everything we needed, being strong in a way that civilians rarely had to be. I missed it. I missed them. I smiled over at Adam just as he picked Taylor up and put him on his hip, handing him a piece of cookie from a tray. But I wouldn’t trade this life we had right now for anything in the world.

I spotted Kimmy leaning down to hand AJ a candy cane—and Tyler, our seemingly ever-present Tyler. I don’t know what he said to Vivi, but she burst out laughing. And then they were walking off together. He was adorable. Too adorable. Caroline needed to keep her eye on that one.

Jack smiled at me. “I don’t want the others to know…” he started.

My heart stopped for a moment. Of everyone in the family, I was the worst at keeping secrets. Or I maybe I just hated them the most. And yet… I always seemed to be the bearer of them.

“I want to do something for your mom,” Jack said. “It’s a special Christmas surprise, and only you can help me with it.”

I eyed him warily, but when he told me his plan, I laughed.

There were some secrets I couldn’t live with, some I couldn’t bear. But this one? This one was pretty great. And, besides, with only four more days until Christmas, this was a secret even I could keep.