Julia squeezed. “Look at me, not the window.”
Reluctantly, Vic dragged her gaze away from the snow and met Julia’s eyes.
They were steady. Kind. A little amused, because it was Julia and she could find humour even in a slowly unfolding logistical crisis, but not mocking.
“This is not a disaster,” Julia said. “It’s a… complication.”
“Complications are pre-disasters,” Vic argued.
“This is Scotland,” Julia said. “They’ve been doing Christmas in the snow longer than you’ve been alive. We have an entire army of staff who’ve handled worse. And your schedule is very good. You built in buffers. Remember?”
Vic thought about the contingency sections she’d painstakingly added. Weather disruptions. Power outages. Spontaneous royal tantrums, adult and child alike. She had mitigation strategies for all of them.
She just… hadn’t really believed they’d need them.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I did.”
“And you’re not doing this alone,” Julia said. “You have me. You have Mr. Patel. You’ll have Alex, who has somehow made ruling a country look like a group project. You have Erin, who can probably wrestle a turkey out of a snowdrift if it comes to it.”
A reluctant smile tugged at Vic’s mouth. “She would, wouldn’t she?”
“She absolutely would,” Julia said.
Hyzenthlay slid off her chair and padded over, slipping a hand into Vic’s. “And you have me,” she said. “I’m very good at making things up when things go wrong.”
Vic’s throat tightened.
“Yes,” she said hoarsely. “Yes, you are.”
She looked down at her daughter, then back at Julia, and something in the panicked whirl of her thoughts settled.
So the caterers might be delayed. So the snow was heavier than forecast. So the reindeer might end up stuck halfway up the A9 and the pigs in blankets might never see the inside of the Balmoral ovens.
The core of what she wanted for this Christmas—for them to all be together, as a messy, ridiculous, complicated, beloved family—was still possible.
She could work with that.
She straightened, drawing herself up to her full, not-very-impressive height.
“Okay,” she said again, but this time it sounded different in her own ears. “We adapt. We improvise. We… cook.”
Julia’s eyes widened slightly. “You cook?”
“I am fully capable of following a recipe,” Vic said, slightly affronted. “Probably.”
Hyzenthlay bounced on her toes. “Can I help?”
“You can stir things that are safe and count marshmallows,” Vic said. “Right. New objective: prepare for the possibility that we are doing Christmas dinner in-house. Step one: find apron. Step two: locate kitchen staff and apologise in advance. Step three: call Alex and update her before someone else does and she worries.”
Julia squeezed her hand once more before letting go. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “You are not negotiating with Mrs. MacLeod solo.”
“That sounds like you don’t have faith in my conflict resolution skills,” Vic said.
“I’ve seen your conflict resolution skills,” Julia said. “You tried to bribe the triplets with chocolate to get them to stop climbing the bookcase.”
“And it worked,” Vic pointed out.
“For three minutes,” Julia said dryly.
