Chapter Thirty-Five

Michaela

 

This morning…is this what it’d be like being with Lincoln, or were we only like this in the bubble of Harry’s house? Was he sweet and playful because this was new?

I wished I knew him more in real life before this week. Moira had talked about guys that were one way with a girl, another way with their friends and family, and I vaguely remembered seeing that in high school, too. Abby was great, but that was only his mom.

So much had happened in only a few days and I appreciated his support. His distraction. But I could only loosen my restrictions about home if he didn’t ask for more than I was giving now. Between the estate and other things, a relationship would pull too much of my focus.

That was a decision for Sunday, though.

He beat me downstairs, loping down them with easy athleticism. Before I stepped off the last riser, he picked me up by my waist and set me on the ground floor. I shook my head.

“What can I make for you, mademoiselle?”

“First, your French accent is atrocious. Second, your mom left pancake batter in the fridge.”

“Ooo.” He pushed the kitchen door open.

Something I could cook for myself perfectly fine, but he was already grabbing a griddle and oil, familiar with his mother’s kitchen. Deferring to his eagerness, I hopped up to sit on the counter and watch. “Now’s your chance to prove those alleged cooking skills.”

“You doubt me still? These pancakes can be plain, blueberry, or chocolate chip.” He opened the batter jar and stirred it while the griddle warmed. “What was your favorite breakfast as a kid?”

“Strawberry crepes, before I was old enough to know ‘fancy’ wasn’t a synonym for ‘best’. Mother had the nanny make me proper meals, so I didn’t get a taste of cereal until my first sleepover.”

He dripped oil on the steel and it popped. “What was that first forbidden taste?” A smear of oil on the griddle, then he poured the batter.

One large circle with two smaller ones attached.

“Mickey Mouse?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you’re thirty?”

“Says so on my driver’s license. Answer the question.” He pointed a spatula at me.

“Honey Nut Cheerios. I know, not much of a gateway drug. My first school camp exposed me to the rest—Fruit Loops, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms…”

Bubbles started appearing in the surface of the pancake batter.

He flipped Mickey with ease. “What’s your weakness now?”

“Who says I have one?”

Lincoln rolled his eyes at my stall. With the first pancake almost done, I opened the plate cupboard and grabbed two. He took one from me.

“Even gluten-free people eat cereal.”

“Fine…if I don’t make oatmeal, I like Frosted Shredded Wheat. Moira gets a big box from Costco.”

A pitying sigh. “You’ve been so very sensible. Good thing you met me.”

He winked.

“That’s still up for debate.”

“Ouch.”

Mickey went on the plate, got a drizzle of maple syrup, and handed to me.

Mmm, freshly hot.

We ate our way through the batter jar, then loaded the dishwasher.

“Told you I could cook,” he said, closing the machine.

“Well, pancakes aren’t rocket science. And Abby already made the mix.”

He tugged me in and kissed me. Breakfast tasted so good on him, I let the kiss go on a few seconds longer than intended.

When we parted, he smiled. “Such a brat. Let’s get to your boxes.”

In the basement storage, all the decorations came out of nice cases—probably Abby’s doing. Every so often, we got a catalog in the mail that included Christmas storage with boxes with dividers for ornaments and cases for wreaths and wrapping paper and lights.

We grabbed the empty ornament boxes and returned to the living room.

Which had the biggest tree. “We need a ladder,” he said.

“If there isn’t one downstairs, Thomas will have it in the garage.”

He left me to search and I started where I could reach. Harry wasn’t a fancy theme guy and while he loved Christmas, I suspected he left the actual decorating choices inside the house to Abby, with the artfully placed lights and bows that complemented the room.

This tree, no surprise, held commemorative ornaments from Colonial Williamsburg throughout the years my family had been here. Grandma always hung the personal family decorations on the tree in the library—the classic separation of public and private.

The ornament boxes had trays that lifted out so they were sorted biggest on the bottom and smallest on top, so I had the trays spread on various surfaces when Lincoln returned with a standard ladder.

“Thomas’ maintenance supplies are very neatly organized.”

“Yep. I couldn’t think of better caretakers for the property.”

“Want me to set this up now?” He turned the ladder upright and set its feet on the floor.

“Let’s put away what’s reachable first.”

“Okay.” He leaned it on a wall out of the way. “I used to help Mom decorate when I was a kid.”

“Yeah? Here?”

He grabbed a replica of the colonial governor’s house. “On a weekend, yeah. Decorations started here after Thanksgiving.”

“That’s right. My grandmother had always done so. Harry was more flexible.”

“How many Christmases did you come to Virginia?”

I paused with a red cardinal in my hands. “All of them until Grandma died. At least, all I remember. I can’t tell you what Mother did before I was three.” The cardinal went in the slot next to his mate. “I always wondered why we didn’t do Thanksgiving with family like other kids did, until I was old enough to figure out my mother wasn’t on the best terms with her parents and only came to Christmas—”

I shook my head.

He leaned around the tree. “Came for what?”

I shook my head again. “Shouldn’t speak ill merely from my perception.”

“Don’t stop being honest now.”

Sighing, I relented. “She put on an act whenever we visited my grandparents. ‘Mommy!’ ‘Daddy!’” I mimicked her tones. “The same way she wanted to be perceived in public. With how she acted after they died, I think she only fulfilled the obligation to get presents and stay in the will. In my earliest memories, the vibe was different in the room depending on whether she was in it or out of it. Grandma and Grandpa and Harry and I would be having fun, then she’d come in and the atmosphere was…strained. Everyone would try to carry on, but…”

“I’m sorry.”

I shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“Do you know what caused the distance?”

“She’s horrible?”

“Michaela, no one’s born rotten.”

“Maybe.”

He laughed like my answer surprised him. “Harsh.”

“She never showed me the slightest bit of genuine affection, Lincoln. What else am I supposed to think?”

“Maybe she doesn’t know how.”

I scoffed. “Everyone else in the family does.”

“I’m not defending how she hurt you. All I’m saying is there are probably layers to the story you don’t know. I recorded with this blues artist once and marveled at how he could tell so much truth in a four-minute song. He said it came from digging deep into how all people tick, especially the ones that don’t make sense to us right away. My Psych 101 professor was a practicing therapist and said the easiest patients he had were the ones that were willing to be honest about who they were and what they saw. They made me a better songwriter.”

“If my grandparents were going to mess up a kid, wouldn’t it be the older one?”

He held his hands out. “I don’t know what went down. But I’m pretty sure holding onto the anger that’s clear in your voice when you speak about her isn’t good for you.”

My therapist after Jonny died would agree.

But there were moments where anger was all I had and being pissed off was more productive than being sad. Hey, it was an official part of the Five Stages of Grief.

I sighed. “Being here has stirred some stuff up,” I said more quietly. “I last saw Harry in person when I was fourteen.”

“You feel she robbed you of time.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“She couldn’t keep him from you when you were an adult, though.”

I jerked my head up. “That’s—”

“I’m not talking about your finances. You don’t think, if you told Harry you missed him and wanted to see him, he wouldn’t have rushed to you as soon as he could? Brought you here? There are nuances to every story, sweetheart.”

I knew. Also knew I didn’t want him to see me for a long while.

Then it got easy to only talk on the phone, send cards, or e-mail a pic or two.

Control the narrative.

Always thought I had more time.

Still in my hands was a stamped metal pineapple.

“Did you ever hear about how pineapples went from being a fruit of kings to a symbol of hospitality?” Lincoln said, startling me out of my guilt. “Once, they were accessible only to royalty because importing them was insanely difficult and expensive. But by the 1700s, Southern colonists were growing their own. In 1770, Virginia Governor Baron de Botetourt ordered sixty-five pineapples for several banquets he hosted in order to keep business relations strong between the colony’s planter class and the British Crown. The imported pineapples cost him a lot, so his gesture was meant to be seen as a peace offering. But, we know how the Crown continued, so growing pineapples in hot houses became an act of defiance. The post-war pineapple then became a symbol of an attainable individuality and fierce independence in the new nation, which morphed into an example of Southern hospitality displayable by the common man.”

I set the ornament in a slot. “Your father would be proud.”

A sideways smile. “Well, he’d tell it with many more details that would dictate to you the whole history of the damn fruit, but I can relay some decent Cliff Notes. Like the pattern on a pineapple’s skin is a Fibonacci sequence.”

“A what?”

“A sequence in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones.”

“Oh.”

“That’s from my Accounting degree.”

I chuckled. “But do you remember what it means in practicality.”

“Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four…do I need to go on?”

“No. Show off.”

He grinned and resumed pulling ornaments off the tree.

An expensive artificial tree.

Grandma’s tree was always real, which explained why it hadn’t been in the den this week. Abby wouldn’t let it stay once it dropped a ton of needles.

We worked until we got hungry, finished the stir-fry leftovers and cherry cobbler, then the tree was down to light strings.

“Let’s slide it out from the corner so we can walk all the way around to unwind.”

He grabbed the rug the stand stood on and pulled while I kept the tree from tipping.

The light strands went on reels that then went in a storage case. Abby had started at the top of the tree and wound down, so I got up on the ladder and pulled the strand out of the branches until he could reach it. Ladder back out of the way, then we stripped the tree.

Aside from that, there was a lit garland on the mantle and little Christmas knickknacks on tables and pillows on furniture.

Room by room, until all traces of the holiday had gone.

It felt good to get this done for her and Thomas, but also sad.

“You okay?” Lincoln asked. Ever perceptive.

“Yeah. The Christmas season ending is always a little sad, you know?”

“I do.” He hugged me with one arm, then set down the box he carried to the storage room. Our last trip to the basement. “Don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

I checked my watch. “Four o’clock.”

“Ah, linner.”

“That’s not a word.”

“Sure it is,” he said, grinning. “Combination of lunch and dinner, defined as a time that’s too late for one and too early for the other—unless you’re eighty. Let’s see what Mom’s got in the kitchen.”

“The pre-prepped stuff in the fridge is gone.”

“But her freezer is always stocked.”

In the kitchen, he opened the freezer door of the cabinet-faced unit. Then the fridge. I hopped up on the island counter. He soon found things he wanted and went to work.

While he cooked, I pondered Mo’s question. Are you better with or without him?

Despite the weight of Harry’s death and all it meant, I’d enjoyed the week so far and that was specifically because of the hot drummer feeding me chopped vegetable pieces and tossing me sweet smiles. Easy to write us off as a bubble fling, but now…the more time I spent with him, the easier it was to imagine him doing the same things for me in L.A.

Which maybe wouldn’t be bad.

If he could go at a pace I could handle until—possibly—I was ready for more than fun.

We had a pleasant meal in the breakfast nook, in no hurry, watched a comedy, and then I told him he couldn’t stay the night again.

“The funeral is tomorrow and your suit isn’t here.”

“I can change before the event.”

“Maybe, but your mom will probably be back in the morning and I don’t want—I need my head in the game to deal with my family.”

Frowning, he stared at me, then softened and kissed my forehead. “Okay. I understand. The service is at eleven, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t have to kick me out at seven tonight.” The sparkle was back in his eyes.

I rolled mine. “I guess not.”