Kate scowled. This just proved that she shouldn’t be involved with anyone, even Hannah. They had only been spending time together for about a month, and already Robbie was giving her shit about it.What the heck.
Kate yawned so wide her jaw clicked. Suddenly, exhaustion overwhelmed her. The combination of getting up at five in the morning to move supplies over to her stall at the Mistletoe Market, plus the rich dinner paired with a beer, and finally her brother’s third degree had worn her out. She walked upstairs to where her mother was adding freshly laundered towels to the linen closet.
“Mom, I’m going to bed.”
Her mother turned toward her and squinted. “Everything alright? I usually look forward to our late-night prep before the big day.”
“I’m sorry, I’m exhausted. I had to get everything ready for the Mistletoe Market.” Kate hadn’t told her parents about buying the building. If something happened and she couldn’t come up with the down payment, she didn’t want her parents to feel bad for her.
“Go ahead and get some rest. I’ll have plenty for you to do tomorrow, and I need you to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. There are twenty pounds of potatoes that need peeling.”
Kate’s eyes widened, “Twenty pounds? How many people are coming this year?”
“Did you read my emails? All my sisters and brothers plus their kids and grandkids.”
“Wow,” Kate said, “It’s going to be a Thanksgiving for the ages.” Her mother smiled broadly.
Kate couldn’t help but smile at the gleam in her mother’s eyes. She knew her mom was happiest when she had a house full of people and had to use a calculator to figure out how to upscale the recipes. A quick thought flashed in her mind. Her mom would love Hannah. She stomped that thought out and gave her mom a quick hug. “Wake me up as early as you want.”
“Six it is.”
“Perfect.”
Kate released her mom and went into her room. She put her phone on the charger, as it was about to die, and crawled under the covers. Even with the extra blankets, it was cold.
Chapter Twenty-five
Hannah had splurged on a can of expensive cat food. It was organic turkey and gravy. Smoky scarfed it down in record time, and then she gave him a couple of cat treats for dessert that she’d gotten from Kate’s shop a couple of weeks ago. They were little orange acorn shapes. Smoky had eaten one right away. Now he was batting the second acorn around the kitchen. Hannah had started the day with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She’d gotten a small pot roast from Diamond’s Grocery Store right before closing on Wednesday night. They were out of all turkey options, including the tofurkey, which Hannah had been willing to try. After the parade was over, she checked her phone for any missed calls, and then she took it and put it on the charger furthest from her.
Hannah knew that scrolling social media today would be a terrible idea. She envisioned post after post of aesthetically pleasing dinner tables, families enjoying dessert together, family versus family football games. Even though she knew on somelevel that no one’s family was perfect and any picture that made it onto Instagram was carefully curated and filtered to show the poster’s life at its best, holiday scrolling was nothing but FOMO for her. She seasoned the pot roast and put it in the pan with potatoes, carrots, and celery. She set the timer for ninety minutes and cleaned the rest of her place while she waited. Her mouth watered as the smells from the stove took over her home.
Ninety-minutes later, she checked the temperature, and it was done. She pulled out the roast, and after letting it rest, she began slicing off a piece. Her knife had a hard time cutting the meat; it must have gotten dull. After what seemed like ten minutes to her, Hannah sat down at the table. Again, the meat was hard to cut. While her stomach growled, she ate a forkful of her long-awaited dinner. She chewed and she chewed, and then she managed to get the piece down with a big gulp of water. Why wasn’t the roast melting in her mouth like the pot roast she’d had at her godmother’s last Christmas? Hannah pushed away her plate of food. She really didn’t feel like trying to eat the tough meat, and she didn’t want to die on Thanksgiving after choking alone. Her stomach churned, and she thought she might throw up her meager dinner.
Tears pricked her eyes. There was no way around it. Today sucked, and she couldn’t think of any way that it could get worse. She looked at her watch. It was too early to call Brandee. She needed a friend right now, but the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt Brandee and Luc’s first Thanksgiving.
Unsure if it was possible to salvage her meal, she dumped everything into the trash. Then she felt bad about wasting food. She shouldn’t have even tried to make it. She should have just made a batch of peanut butter cookies. And since she was still starving and sad, what could be better than cookies right out of the oven? She pulled out eggs, peanut butter, and sugar. Hannah preheated the oven and began mixing the three ingredients. Inno time, the batter was ready, and she scooped dough onto the pan and added the signature fork marks that just made the cookies taste better.
As soon as the timer went off, she took the cookies out of the oven and used a spatula to put some on a cooling rack. The rest she put on a plate, and once she’d made herself a cup of tea, she went back to her couch and put on the Hallmark channel. One of her favorite iterations of Christmas movies was when a woman moved from the big city to a picture-perfect small town nestled in the mountains. Hannah loved the idea of living in a small town in the mountains in a cozy cabin, so this was a perfect distraction. She scarfed down the plate of cookies, and soon her eyes were heavy. She curled up under a throw blanket that was covered with cats and dogs dressed like Santa. The slow pace of the movie lulled her to sleep.
It was dark outside and in her apartment when she woke up. It was also late November, so the darkness could mean it was five in the afternoon or midnight. She stood up and stretched. She looked at the cookies on her counter, enough to take a plate of cookies to work tomorrow and still have some left over.
Her phone rang like an old-fashioned telephone. That was the ringtone she’d assigned to her parents. She paused for a second; did she want to talk to her parents? Most of her said no, but there was a small part of her that hoped without any reason that this conversation would be different. Maybe this time they’d be sober. She unlocked her phone and answered.
“Hello,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Hi, daughter. Long time no talk.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. Her mother wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t talked to them since Father’s Day. At least her mom wasn’t slurring her words. A minor miracle. She didn’t hear background noise, which was unusual for a call with her parents on a holiday. “Hi, Mom.”
“How was your Thanksgiving? You know you could have come home, right? You haven’t been here for Thanksgiving in years.”
Hannah paused. The last thing she wanted to do was tell her mom how pathetic her day had been. Now that was a word that also described her sad little pot roast. Pathetic. “It was quiet.”
“Sounds like you spent it alone when you could have driven up here.”
“I wasn’t alone.” Hannah said, deciding Smoky counted as her dinner partner.
“Sure. Whatever you say.”
