Except they don’t exist.
“Um, I’ll have to work on that. I’ve been so busy with my manuscript?—”
“Do you use email, Mrs. Darling?” Fletch asks.
“I told you to call me Monique and of course. I’m active in the local community groups and Alisson down the hall signed me up for a dating app.”
I nearly choke on the air in the room. “Dating?”
“Online matches are all the rage. Real love connections are made in cyberspace.”
Is she onto us? She can’t be.
“What about Dad?”
She snorts. “He loved three things: his work, his wood shop in the basement, and you.”
Why isn’t she in the equation? Why am I?
She looks from Fletch to me and then, as if seeing something I don’t, she confesses, “Our relationship had faded long before you were born. We just lived together because, well, what else would we have done with that big old house?”
“But what about the thing you said about real romance?” I ask, recalling my first visit when I’d arrived back in the area.
“We all tell ourselves stories, Bree.”
Fletch’s statement about love comes to mind. I suddenly feel sorry for my mom and my version of my parents’ story splinters by the second.
But then my mother’s expression softens as she picks up a glass ornament from the box. “These were your grandmother’s. I’d forgotten about them.”
“I bet she loved Christmas,” Fletch says.
Mom nods, a distant look in her eyes. “I did too, once upon a time.”
Also, news to me. I’m not sure whether to be shocked and resist how all this new information conflicts with what I thought I knew or allow it to fill the gaps and make sense of the incongruences that made my childhood so lonely.
Fletch laces his fingers through mine. Bubbles bounce under my skin where our skin connects.
His defense of me when my mother was pointing out her observations about our contrast floods back. He sees me in a way no one ever has.
As we help her decorate the small tree, I find myself studying Fletch and how present he is—not checking his phone like many modern men and not with his nose in the newspaperlike my dad. Fletch is a full participant in life—even if he’s sometimes cocky and tries to charm everyone from the gal at the front desk downstairs to my mother … to me.
The man would never remain in a lonely relationship in a house that was falling apart around him. His expressive, animated demeanor highlights my more reserved nature. His height creates sweet moments where I have to look up at him during conversations—like now, as he passes me a star for the top of the tree, our fingers brushing. He doesn’t pull his hand away and his knuckles dance toward my wrist. The warmth that flows through me makes me think that somehow we’re right together, even though we’re so different. Or maybe I’m just getting my wires crossed and thinking of Lorna and Drake.
CHAPTER 13
FLETCH
“Gingersnaps,”Bree reads from our baking station assignment sign in a tone that suggests she’s using the word in place of another one, like she’s replacing an expletive.
I add, “They’re classic and straightforward. We can do this.”
The Clarkson High School cafeteria has been transformed into a holiday baking headquarters for the pageant bake sale fundraiser. Each station is dedicated to a different Christmas cookie, with ingredients provided and laminated recipe cards propped against mixing bowls. The air smells of vanilla, cinnamon, and a strong spirit of competition—or maybe that’s just me.
I use deodorant and aftershave, but my cologne is best described as the scent of winning. Maybe that comes from having three brothers, but it’s just the way I am.
“This will be a piece of cake, or cookie, rather,” I say, reaching for the flour.
Bree intercepts my hand, sending a sweet jolt through me. “Not so fast. We need a strategy.”
