Winter White (35 page)
Yes, but using a spoon
, she thought. She stared down at the mixing bowl as it continued to slowly whirl around, lifting and folding the dough. She needed to learn to relax. Maybe now that she’d stepped down from running the Butterflies, she finally would. “Okay, I guess one lick won’t kill us,” she told Kellen, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “Next step. I already put some flour on the counter, so we can roll the balls and they won’t stick.” She gestured to the pile of white powder scattered about in front of them.
“Sometimes I add some granulated sugar to the dough, so I put some of that on the counter too.”
“For someone who is a neat freak in the art studio, you are a disaster in the kitchen.” Kellen looked around at the huge mess Mira had created. Flour, sugar, Hershey’s Kisses, and kitchen tools were everywhere. Some of the flour had even fallen onto the floor.
“I don’t like to look for anything once I’ve started,” Mira said, sniffing. Mira’s mom would kill her if she saw this, but thankfully her mom never left the front yard when her dad was hanging Christmas lights. Her mom always worried that he would fall off the roof. “I like to be prepared when I bake,” Mira went on, trying not to grin. “I’m not the type of person who runs around the room saying, does anyone have a fine-point brush?” She imitated Kellen’s voice. “I can’t find mine. Have you seen my brush?”
“Hey, I always have my supplies with me. I just don’t always remember where they are.” Kellen picked up some of the loose flour and tossed it in her direction.
Mira gasped. “You’re making a mess!”
“You’ve already made a mess,” Kellen said, and tossed more flour at her.
Mira started laughing. She picked up some flour and tossed it back. Soon, flour was flying everywhere, and a haze had settled in the air between them, making Mira want to
sneeze. “You’d better help me clean this up, or I won’t ask you to the club for our holiday get-together,” she threatened, even as she threw more flour at him.
Kellen started throwing Hershey’s Kisses now. “Oh no! Anything but that! I just live to wear those penguin suits.” He picked up an egg and gave her a mischievous grin.
Mira threatened to clock him on the head with a wooden spoon. “Don’t. You. Dare.” Kellen put the egg back in its carton. “Good boy. Now you come with me. Or if you want, you can join us there on New Year’s Eve instead,” she suggested. “They do a countdown, and we have a DJ and…” At the words
New Year’s
, Kellen’s face darkened.“They do a champagne toast, and we have all sorts of raffles, and they hand out cool party masks….” Kellen put down the flour and walked to her side of the kitchen island. Something about the expression on his face made her anxious.
Kellen looked down. “I have been putting off telling you this, but…”
“You hate New Year’s, don’t you?” Mira guessed. “A lot of people do. That’s okay. If you don’t want to go out, we can stay in and hang with your parents, if that’s what you’re doing.” Did she just offer to leave her new black velvet dress in the closet and sit on a boy’s couch? She must like Kellen more than she’d realized.
He gave her a small smile. “That’s not it, although your
offer is pretty cute.” He wiped a smudge of flour from her cheek. “The truth is, my dad was on the phone with work all morning. Remember how I told you his job situation wasn’t good?” Mira nodded. “Well, it looks like if he wants to keep his job, then we have to move to Detroit.”
“Detroit?” Mira said breathlessly.
That is far.
“His company is moving their headquarters there in January,” Kellen explained. “It looked like they were going to keep some departments here, but now I don’t think that’s happening.” Kellen’s face was strained. “He said he’s going to look for a new job here, but it’s still pretty bad out there, so I’m not getting my hopes up.”
“But that would mean you have to move,” Mira said even though it was obvious.
“Yeah,” Kellen said quietly, looking down at their hands. “I’d have to move. Sometime in the next two months if it happens, which doesn’t give us much time.”
Mira wasn’t sure how to react. She could feel her chest rising and falling in time to the mixer she had forgotten to turn off before their flour fight. Her cookie dough was probably soup now.
Connor walked in and gasped. “Mom is going to kill you when she sees this!”
Mom can yell all she wants
, Mira thought miserably. The boy she had fallen for was moving thousands of miles away, and this problem was one Mira couldn’t fix.
Aunt Maureen’s color slowly returned to her face as Izzie’s dad and Hayden descended the ladder. When they reached the ground, they stared at their handiwork.
“All we need now is to test the lights, and then you can call everyone outside for the opening ceremony,” Izzie’s dad said.
“Opening ceremony?” Izzie repeated.
“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “I like the whole family to be here when I light the Christmas lights for the first time.”
“He pumps Christmas music in from his iPod and everything,” Hayden explained. “The whole production gets cheesier every year. One of these days, we’re going to get written up in the papers for having the most Christmas lights in Emerald Cove.”
“I’d rather get written up in the papers for that than any of the other stuff they’ve been writing,” Aunt Maureen mumbled.
Izzie’s dad put his arm around her. “Hopefully that is all behind us now. I’m putting a new campaign manager in place who is going to crunch my numbers and see if we can get back in this thing in time for the primaries. If not, then we bow out. Either way we’ll be okay.”
Ever since Izzie became part of this family, politics had played a part and cost them a price. She didn’t know what
their lives would be like without a campaign going on. Then again, she worried darkly, what was going to happen if her dad did become a U.S. Senator? It was too much to wrap her brain around.
“I’ll go inside and get Mira and Connor,” Aunt Maureen said.
“Did I miss the annual Monroe Christmas light ceremony?”
Izzie turned around and grinned. Brayden was walking up their front path.
“You know about the Christmas lighting, too?” she asked.
“The whole town knows,” Brayden said.
“See?” Izzie’s dad said proudly. “People really like our holiday display. Come on, Hayden, let’s get ready to fire it up.” Hayden shook his head and walked off to test the circuit breakers in the garage.
“Your family’s lights are famous for their power surge,” Brayden whispered in her ear. “Once the Monroes light up, I can barely power my laptop.”
“Cute,” Izzie said. “Very cute.”
Brayden shrugged. “I know I am. People tell me that all the time.”
Izzie punched him in the arm. His orange parka took the hit for him. “How did you get here, anyway? I don’t see your Jeep.”
“My mom dropped me off,” Brayden said. “She said to tell
you hello.” Izzie gave him a look. “Seriously. She is anything but impolite.”
“True,” Izzie agreed. “Still I can’t believe she dropped you off.”
Brayden wrapped his arms around her, and instantly she felt warmer. “She knows she can’t fight it. We’re together now, and that’s not going to change.”
“Is that an official statement?” Izzie asked. “Because maybe I should call the press and…” Brayden drowned her out by kissing her softly. She could get used to that. “That will work, too.”
“Good.” He started to kiss her again, and she closed her eyes, thinking about his warm lips.
“Is it safe to come out now?” Connor interrupted. Izzie and Brayden pulled apart. “Mom said to wait till you stopped kissing.”
Aunt Maureen was standing in the front doorway with a tray of hot chocolate and cookies. She smiled apologetically. “I didn’t say that…. Okay, yes, I did. I always tell Hayden and Mira not to, um, you know, in front of him.” She coughed. “Cookie, Brayden, dear?”
“Thanks, Mrs. Monroe.” Brayden took one from the tray and side-eyed Izzie. “These look great.”
She needed permission to kiss? Izzie wasn’t used to having so many people have an opinion on her dating life before. The rules of dating that came along with family seemed to be
very different from the rules that came with living with her grandmother.
“Bill! We’re all here!” Aunt Maureen yelled. “Come get your hot cocoa!”
Kellen and Mira appeared on the porch behind Aunt Maureen. They were both holding hot chocolate, but they were staring hollowly into their marshmallows. They looked like they were in a trance. Something seemed off between them. Brayden walked over to talk to Kellen, but Mira still just stood there.
“You okay?” Izzie asked her, appearing at her side.
Mira nodded. “Fine.”
“Are you sure?” Izzie asked again.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Mira said, her voice cracking, “if you don’t mind.”
“Okay,” Izzie said. She grabbed her sister’s arm and squeezed it through the heavy down coat she was wearing.
Mira smiled at her sadly and squeezed Izzie’s arm, too. “Thanks, Izzie.” They stood there quietly, holding on to each other, as they watched Hayden walk over with a large extension cord.
“Everyone ready?” he asked, looking like a little kid with a very expensive toy.
“Yes, please! I’d like to go inside, already,” Aunt Maureen said, rubbing her arms.
“Okay, here we go,” their dad announced. He plugged the
extension cord into an outlet on the house, and the darkening late afternoon sky instantly lit up like a giant firecracker. The whole family cheered. Mira was the quietist, Izzie noticed.
“Whoa, that really is a lot of lights,” Izzie said to Brayden, who laughed.
“You ain’t kidding. See what I mean about my laptop losing power?” he whispered.
“What do you think, Isabelle?” her dad asked. He looked so pleased with himself.
“The house looks great,” Izzie told him.
He put an arm around her shoulder. “Good. I bought several new strands of lights, and I added that giant Santa sleigh on the lawn over there, and a lighted tree on the back porch that you can see from the family room.” He hesitated. “I wanted everything to be perfect this year.”
“Why is that?” Izzie asked.
He smiled at her. “This is your first Christmas with the family, and I want you to always remember it.”
Izzie didn’t want to get choked up in front of all of them. “I’m sure I will.”
“Excuse me? Is this the Monroe residence?” Izzie heard from behind her.
Her dad looked up, and Izzie felt him stiffen. She looked back to see who was there.
Mom?
Her heart felt like it was in her throat as she stared at what had to be a ghost. A woman in jean leggings and a brown leather jacket who looked exactly like her mother was walking toward them.
But it can’t be my mom
, Izzie told herself rationally. The woman standing in front of them looked exactly like Izzie remembered her mother to look with her long brown hair and her bright green eyes. She couldn’t be her mom, yet the resemblance was uncanny.
“Zoe.” Bill said the name so softly that Izzie thought she’d imagined it.
Zoe? That’s the name Grams called me that day in the nursing home.
She felt ringing in her ears.
“Hi, Bill,” the woman said. Her eyes focused on Izzie. Her smile was so warm, Izzie could swear she’d seen it before.
“You can’t just show up here, Zoe,” Bill said, sounding short. “You should have called.”
The woman sort of laughed. “Called? After all these years? No, I’m not here to talk to you. I’m here to see Isabelle.”
Izzie’s heart fluttered wildly as the woman stared at her. Zoe smiled softly, and Izzie felt chills. That smile was her mother’s.
“Isabelle, I’m your mother’s younger sister,” she explained, and Izzie felt as if her heart stopped completely, if that were possible.
My mom didn’t have a sister
, Izzie thought.
Did she?
2 Pages TK
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