Chapter 1: Ella
My older sister Jane glared at me, her dark eyes menacing in the glow from the fire. “Let me tell you a story. It starts like this,” she said. “‘Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for the megalomaniac four-year-old whose irresponsible aunt fed her twelve candy canes before dropping her off.”
I grinned, hoping to lighten the mood. “I don’t think that’s how it goes.”
She shook her head, black hair brushing her shoulders. “It does in this hellish version.”
Behind her, Willow, the niece I was an irresponsible aunt to, roared in jolly incoherence. I slanted my eyes toward her and nearly choked. She’d somehow managed to strip naked in the three minutes since we walked through the door, the light brown skin with golden undertones she inherited from Jane now on full display.
What was it with kids her age being allergic to clothing?
Jane caught my expression and turned to follow my gaze. Together, we watched Willow grab the end of the garland that adorned the staircase and take off at a dead sprint. The festive decor pulled loosewith surprising violence. Twine snapped. Twigs splintered in half and scattered small, stabby pieces of bark all over the living room carpet.
“Sweet Jesus, no,” Jane said.
Willow’s long black hair whirled behind her as she raced toward us. The greenery she clutched in her tyrannical little fist left a mess of pine needles and winterberries in her wake that would be a pain in the ass to clean up.
I am never going to live this one down.
As she neared, I caught a familiar tune through the madness and realized that she wasn’t incoherent, but scream-singing a badly butchered version of a holiday classic.
“Jangly balls! Jangly balls!”
Oh, God.
Where had she even heard that?
Jane and I reached for her as she ran past, but she managed to evade us, twisting and ducking like a running back at the peak of their game. Sensing freedom, she dropped the garland and fled down the hallway, her singing replaced by a sinister cackle that was unsettling coming from a four-year-old.
I turned back to my sister. “In my defense, I didn’t know she could reach the jar I hid the candy canes in.”
Jane pointed at me and opened her mouth, but before she could launch into what I’m sure would have been an epic telling off, a distantthudcame from the back of the house. It sounded like Willow had literally just bounced off a wall.
“I will get you back for this,” Jane told me before hurrying off to save her sugar-addled daughter from herself.
“I’m sorry!” I called after her.
She flipped me the bird and disappeared down the hall.
I sighed. What a disaster. I loved spending time with Willow and was usually pretty good with her. Today had been an off day. One I’d pay for. Knowing Jane, it would take me weeks to convince her to let me babysit again.
A pocket door slid open in my periphery. Cropped blond hair peeked out from it, followed, slowly, by the head of my brother-in-law.
“Hey, Dave,” I said.
He glanced around the room like he was searching for threats. The lights from the nearby Christmas tree sparkled in the reflection of his black-framed glasses. His gaze landed on me, expression flat. “Go now, Ella. While you still can.”
Anotherthudechoed through the house, followed by Jane’s raised voice. Dave gave me a meaningful look and slid his office door closed.
I muffled my laughter as I made my escape. Jane wouldn’t thank me for it right now.
Outside, the winter wind whipped the freshly fallen snow into a flurry. It spiraled into the spill of fluorescent white shining from the rear floodlights and coalesced into the arctic version of a dust devil. The direction of the breeze shifted, and the mini snow tornado split in two. For a brief moment, it was like I walked past a pair of enchanted winter sprites twining around each other at an Antarctician ball. I could almost hear Jack Frost playing the ice pipes in the distance as he urged them on.
A heartbeat later, the wind died down, and they fell back to the ground, inanimate once more.
I smiled as my boots crunched over the freshly shoveled walkway. Evergreens crowded the driveway, their boughs weighed down by today’s snowfall. The steam from my breath hung in front of my face before drifting up and away. I tilted my head back to watch it dissipate.Above me, stars ripped through the velvety expanse of the night sky like a shotgun blast.
I loved winter. It was my favorite season – a time to gather, to hunker down with friends and family while storms raged outside. Afterward, everything was so clean and bright. It made it easy to ignore, if only for a little while, all the troubles of the world.
