“I had things to do. That’s how it works when you have a job.”
The jab hurt. Darby forced herself to ignore it. “Aren’t you in between movies?”
“It doesn’t mean I don’t have work. Or a life.”
It was more than Darby could say for herself.
“Anyway, I’m going to be stuck with you enough just sharing a room,” Erika added, each word chipped from ice.
The same room they’d always shared. Every time they returned to it, it felt smaller.
Her sister’s words drove away the last of the happy-happys from earlier. Darby dug her toothbrush out of her toiletry bag and slumped down the hall to the bathroom. Coming home had been a mistake.
Chapter3
Baking cookies together had always been a family tradition, and when Darby was a kid, she’d loved it. Mom always saved out a few to decorate tastefully, but for the most part gave both her and Erika free creative rein. Erika had the artistic eye, and while Mom was an equal opportunity praise-giver, Darby had known whose cookies she liked best.
As the sisters grew up it began to feel like Mom preferred everything Erika did—from the high school play she’d done the set designs for to those stupid cookies. Darby had written an essay her last year in middle school that won first place in a school-wide competition (“Anyone Can Be Beautiful”), and Mom had framed it, which had been great validation.
And then tucked it away somewhere, never to be seen again.
“For safekeeping,” she’d said. Who knew where it had wound up?
And so, somewhere along the way, Erika went from the little sister Darby told fairy tales to and tried to carry around to the pest who was always eavesdropping on Darby’s conversations with her friends. And to the one Mom liked best.
Of course, Mom liked Erika best as they got older because Erika never gave her grief. That had been Darby’s job. As the oldest, she was the trailblazer, fighting for later curfews and earlier dating privileges. Two years younger, Erika could do no wrong. Darby had been the prettier one, but Erika had been the good girl. Darby had been clever, but Erika had been adored. The sliver of resentment burrowed deep and festered. Not that Darby ever acknowledged it. Young girls weren’t that skilled in self-analysis. Neither were grown girls, it seemed, as there’d been little enough of that on her last visit home.
Here it was—time to bake cookies again—and Erika would, of course, outdo Darby. Well, good luck with that. Darby watched the Food Network. She knew a thing or two now.
“I thought, in addition to our rolled cookies and snowball cookies, we could make bar cookies,” Mom said when Darby and Erika reported for duty. “I found a great recipe that has a shortbread base and uses raspberry jam and white chocolate. I think you’d really like that one, Darby Doll,” she said, using Darby’s old nickname.
“It does sound good,” Darby said.
“How about you make those and the snowballs while Erika and I work on the sugar cookies?”
So Erika and Mom would work together with Darbyrelegated to the bar cookie corner. “I can help decorate,” she said.
“Of course you can, if you want,” Mom said.
“Because you’ll do it so much better,” Erika added in her snotty sister voice.
“I didn’t say that,” Darby shot back.
“Now, girls. No squabbling. It’s Christmas,” Mom said, smiling at both of them.
“Sorry,” Erika muttered.
“Sorry,” said Darby, although she had nothing to be sorry about. Well, not at the moment, anyway.
“How your grandma would have loved this,” Mom said later from her post at the kitchen counter where she mixed frosting as Darby put a pan in the oven.
Another reason Darby hadn’t been all that thrilled to come home. It wasn’t the same without Grandma. She’d been Darby’s biggest fan. It had been Grandma who told her she was the prettiest girl in Eagledale, Grandma who told her she could be anything she wanted to be when she grew up—maybe even the next Danielle Steele. Mom had just told her to clean her room and be nice to her little sister.
Like you were so abused,she scolded herself. She hadn’t exactly suffered growing up.
Mom raved over how lovely the bar cookies turned out and gave Darby’s snowball cookies a thumbs-up, but Erika’s frosted trees and bells and snowflakes were works of art. She could have her own Insta following. Cookie queen, successful career woman—Erika had it all going for her. And here wasDarby, going . . . nowhere. She’d always thought she was so special. Was she going to be one of those people whose best years were behind her before she even hit thirty? It was a humbling thought.
One of Erika’s friends called, and she left to meet her for lunch, after assuring Mom she’d be back in plenty of time to help decorate the tree later. Then it was just Darby and Mom, sitting down for a cup of coffee before starting lunch.
