“No. Maybe. Temporarily. Toni’s visiting for Christmas,” Dee said, and there was a note in her voice, not like his mother’s, but not... right.
“That must be nice,” he said.
“Well, itis. Only I wasn’t expecting her, and Glenda was upset, because I was supposed to go with them on vacation tomorrow—the Nortons. So now I’m not working for them anymore, and Reeti offered to let us stay here for a while.”
She paused to draw breath, her arms around the carton, her gaze on his, her face open. Expectant.
I’m not working for them anymore.
So he was right about the plant. She’d been fired.
How did she do it, blurt everything out like that? Walking around with her feelings exposed, her heart naked... It made him uncomfortable. Like he should offer her his jacket or a blanket or a drink or something.
He gestured to the box in her arms. “Is that everything?”
“There’s more on the sidewalk.”
He frowned again. “You shouldn’t leave your things out on the street.”
“Reeti says this is a very safe neighborhood.”
Whatever he said next would sound like mansplaining. He waited until she passed him and then went down the steps, propping open the security door with a box while he moved the second suitcase and the duffel inside. Then he hefted the carton—books, by the weight—and carried it upstairs.
The door to Reeti’s flat was open. Dee was standing motionless in the middle of the living room, a flush in her cheeks, her lips tight. Her sister was nowhere to be seen.
“Where do you want this?” he asked.
He watched as she pulled herself together. “Oh. Thank you! Um. Over there?”
He set it down against the wall, where she wouldn’t trip over it.
Her smile flickered. “Thanks. You really don’t have to...”
But he was already moving, going down for the rest of her stuff, driven by a desire to help, to ease that look off her face. When he returned, Dee was setting the plant by a window.
“That’s a cactus,” he said.
“A Christmas cactus.” She angled it to get the light. “It blooms at Christmas.”
He eyed the green drooping—stalks? branches?—dubiously. “That’s rather optimistic of you.”
She touched a fat pink bud. He felt it, that single, delicatefinger, like an electric shock. “Rather.” She slid him a small smile. Mimicking him, he realized with another spark. “I thought it would make it feel more like home.”
Her attempt to make a home, to make a holiday, out of so little, wrenched something inside him. He didn’t have any plants in his flat.
He cleared his throat. “Where’s your sister?”
Dee glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Toni’s not very happy with me right now. I want her to call home. She didn’t tell our aunt she was coming here.”
“It’s Christmas. She’s your sister,” Tim said. “Your aunt will understand.”
Or not.
No-surprises management worked well enough at the office. Tim expected his team to communicate clearly, to inform him of what was going on, good and bad. But that was business. This was family. Her family.
“It’s not just Christmas. Toni wants to drop out of KU.” Dee sighed. “She didn’t tell Aunt Em that, either.”
“The gap year.”
