About how the fruitcake shop isn’t doing well, and everyone’s denying it, and if they’d all pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and address the problem instead of blaming the Andersons for god only knows what reason, maybe they could find a solution that isn’t trying to destroythat gingerdead family.
Yes,gingerdead family.
It’s fucking stupid.
My heart’s doing its own thing that it needs to get over, and get over immediately.
If I do this—if I propose—suggestthis idea that’s growing louder and more persistent in my mind—it’s purely for the reason she already said.
I don’t think you’re the enemy.
Lorelei has to sneak around to have dinner with one of her oldest friends.
No one knows why our families started fighting in the first place.
Who cares what they did?
What I care about is that I have to hearalllllabout it. Every week. Like clockwork.
“You told them we’re engaged,” I say slowly.
“That we’ve been secretly dating long distance for the past year and we’ve decided to elope to Vegas next month,” she whispers.
“They believe you?”
She visibly swallows and looks away. “My mom had to take my grandma to the hospital to be checked for a heart attack.”
I stop pacing and spin to stare at her.“Holy shit.”
She flaps both hands. “She’s fine. My grandma, I mean. She does this all the time. She’s hadheart attacksover my uncle getting a fishing cabin, over her supplier raising prices for the first time in fifteen years, and once over the fact that she went all the way into the city to get a specific bedding set from Macy’s and they didn’t have it in stock.”
She bites her lip. “I mean, Ithinkthis is just like those times. My mom promised to text with updates. And she said I definitely couldnotride along for the trip to the hospital. But that’s why I know the neighbors aren’t home. Not the ones who would’ve seen me coming in the back, I mean. They’re having a meeting to discuss who’ll take over Grandma’s role for the Jingle Bell Festival if this heart attack is real. Which I’m nearly certain it isn’t. I think. I hope.”
I slowly close my own jaw again.
Amanda’s phone dings.
She pulls it out, looks down, and blows out the heaviest breath I’ve ever heard another human being blow out.
Her eyes water. Her chin trembles. And then she forces the fakest smile I’ve ever seen in my life as she flashes the screen at me. “See? She’s fine. It was just indigestion.”
Her voice wobbles, and I have to rub my own chest. “She had her heart checked lately?”
“Every time she supposedly has a heart attack. She has the arteries of a twenty-year-old. Good genes. Can’t be all the gingerbread she’s eaten over the years.” She’s forcing a cheerfulness about this like she wasn’t honestly terrified she’d given her grandmother a heart attack.
You can tell that the nonchalance about the idea of her grandmother having a heart attack is fake.
Considering some of the performances I saw her do in high school, this has to be hitting her hard.
Or she’s playing you,the ever-present voice ofpeople like Amanda Anderson don’t fit into lives like ourswhispers in my ear. With a side ofshe’s one of them gingerdead people.
I tell it to shut up.
Lorelei has always insisted that Amanda’s never been one ofthose Andersonswho likes to torment us, and I trust my sister’s judgment.
“At the risk of sounding like an asshole,” I say slowly, still weighing how much chaos I want to bring into my life for this trip home, “it’s fucking ridiculous for your grandmother to fake a heart attack over not liking someone you claim to love enough to want to marry. Especially someone she’s never met.”
Her eyes flare wide again, and her lips part before she slowly clamps them together.
