“Dad, Luke punched me!”
“I did not!”
“Is anybody bruised?”
“No!”
“Yeah huh!”
“Well, only little bitches bruise!”
“Noah, just punch him back. And don’t say ‘bitch’ in front of your cousin, she probably doesn’t like it.”
Piper arrived at exactly the right moment to garner snotty sneers from all three of Russ’s preteens. As chivalrous as her uncle likely thought he was, making her the barrier to their new favorite swear word definitely shot her all the way down to the bottom of the cousins-we-tolerate list.
“Make sure they don’t draw blood.” Uncle Russ elbowed the oldest of his three just before they chased one another up the stairs and into the house. Then he pulled Piper and Presley into a rib-shattering hug, the smell of Old Spice and teriyaki jerky on his jacket filling up her senses.
After trading warm enough civilities, Presley took Russ to help with the tree, and Piper and her father watched from the porch. “How’d it go?” he asked, hesitation there as he watched Russ pull a knife from his pocket to start sawing at the ties.
“Pretty good. Doctor Dog might need to take a look at Presley’s shoulder though.”
The Scottish terrier in her father’s arms perked up at his name with a muted yip. He was still looking rather dapper wearing the plaid sweater she’d wrestled him into that morning.
“I’m sure he’ll prescribe lots of licking and a hefty dose ofget over it.” Her father smirked, eyeing Presley who looked to have no trouble as he hauled the tree from the truck bed, but his amusement fell away just as quickly into another far-off stare. The lines around his eyes as he squinted into the brightness of the snow were a little deeper, and the patches of grey in his hair had almost taken the auburn completely over.
“You should really come with us next year.”
He took to petting the dog to evade the invitation. “Deb’s whole side just got dropped off.” He turned to the open front door and dropped his voice low. “And she hasn’t dumped that idiot husband of hers yet.”
Piper sucked her teeth and grinned. “Why would she? Luis does every single thing she asks, and he’s smoking hot.”
“Oh, come on, Pippy, don’t say things like that to me.” Her father’s nose crinkled in exactly the way she expected, but if he was going to keep declining to take part in Christmas merriment, the least he could do was suffer the reminder she was an adult. “I just think it’s weird that you have an uncle who’s younger than you.”
“Russ’s last wife and I went to high school together.”
“She was still older.”
A ruckus rose from beyond the open front door—someone was excited or injured, it was hard to tell—and Piper’s eyes widened on the darkness within, waiting. It would be mostly fine, she was almost certain, because it was mostly fine every year, in the end, as long as she stuck to her schedule. But before it could end, it had to begin, which meant her foot had to cross the threshold.
All that Piper knew about magic was that it didn’t really exist, so she certainly wasn’t aware that thresholds were as liminal as any other border, including those that housed enchanted groves. Crossing such bounds always meant change, though it could be as simple as making one’s stomach feel funny, or as complex as having a curse laid upon one that could only be broken by true love, which, really, were two profoundly similar things when it came right down to it.
“Come on, everyone wants to say hi.” Her father gave her a gentle push inside, and a flurry of commotion descended upon Piper like a flock of seagulls on an abandoned bagel. Aunt Deb’s jubilant shouting filled the foyer, her husband, son, and very pregnant daughter-in-law crowded around, and there were tight hugs, slippery boots, and too many suitcases strewn haphazardly about. Then the whirlwind of family was gone, and Piper found herself standing alone with not one buttwotoddlers in her arms.
One screamed and one laughed, the sounds indistinguishable but equally ear shattering. Being the only childless woman left in the family too often meant babysitting duty,for practice, someone would inevitably say and make her ovaries twist up in silent rebellion. Piper was spouseless too, which the MacLeans took even more offense to, the only difference being that when they began in on those complaints, there wasn’t a temporary husband to saddle her with, a thing she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved about or not.
Rarely do characters know the genre of the book they’re in, and almost never are they aware of the tropes. Piper MacLean was no exception to this rule.
“Who wants a treat?”
Despite she’d used the voice normally reserved for the dog, Piper’s littlest family members understood, and their shrieks turned cheerful. She made a beeline around the stairs and into the living room where she’d filled a massive jar with cookies the night before. There were only two ricotta cookies left, and they weren’t as fluffy as her mom’s, but they’d do.
Piper politely abandoned the babies with the first family member she could find just in time to watch the spruce be dragged into the room. She grit her teeth as water sloshed out of the stand she’d set up that morning in preparation, and needles rained down when the ties holding the branches were cut, but even Piper was able to momentarily ignore the mess as the boughs fell into place. An earthy smell filled up the room as it was steadied before the picture window, the snowy forest behind. It really was The Tree.
A pop broke the silence, and Aunt Deb cackled as she held up a bottle of wine. “Who wants a glass?”
Piper used the ensuing ruckus to slip away and gather supplies, scurrying around the others to clean up the water and needles, and then returned to the entryway to rearrange the suitcases. There was another puddle of tracked-in snow that needed to be sopped up on hands and knees, and Piper set to it until the front door opened and nearly cracked her in the head.
“Oh, honey, you don’t need to kneel, it’s not like I’m the queen.”
