I turned at the familiar voice, and threw my arms around my cousin David. He lifted me off the ground, squeezing tight. At sixteen, he was the closest cousin in age to me, the middle of threeboys. He was the only Barbanel to alter our ubiquitous glossy brown curls and currently had them dyed dark violet. “How was the wild night alone in Golden Doors? Meet any ghosts?” He waggled his brows. “I hear Tyler Nelson stayed the night.”
“It was entirely innocent.” We headed upstairs so he could dump his things in the room he’d be sharing with his younger brother, Oliver.
“To your utmost regret, I’m sure.”
“Are you kidding? I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“What’s wrong with you, then?”
I flopped down on one of the twin beds covered in a green-plaid duvet and groaned.
“Ah.” Realization dawned on David’s face. “I forgot Isaac’s coming.”
“Don’t say a word,” I warned him. The idea of my family knowing about any of my crushes killed me.
He pantomimed zipping his lips shut. “He gets his own room, you know. Ethan’s with Noah.” Ethan was David’s older brother, and I wasn’t too surprised by the setup. Grandma would consider Isaac a proper guest, which meant he’d get plenty of space.
And if Isaac had his own room... With all the family here, it could be hard to find a private space. But maybe...
I’d never been alone in a boy’s room before. I’d never even seen Isaac in casual clothes, just the nice slacks and button-downs he always wore when I ran into him at events. Now I pictured himwearing a simple T-shirt and sitting on his bed and saying,Hey, Shira, come in.
David interrupted my daydreams, making a face at the other bed. “Maybe I should bunk with you and Miri.”
“We’ve got Abby with us.” Abby, interestingly, did not count as a proper guest, but I wasn’t sure if that was because Grandma had accepted her into the fold or because the adults wanted to make it hard for Abby and Noah to hook up. “And Oliver’s not bad.” David’s fourteen-year-old brother would rather wander the grounds, dreamy-eyed and lost in his own head, than cause any trouble.
“He’s going through a Billie Eilish phase, god help me.”
“Excuse me, weloveBillie Eilish.”
David pointed to himself. “This part of ‘we’ loves Billie Eilish in small doses. Also, he keeps jerking off to her.”
“Ew.” I held up a hand. “I don’t want to know.”
As David unpacked, other cousins routinely barged in. Noah wanted me to show Abby the room we’d be sharing; eight-year-old Kate needed help untangling a necklace; fourteen-year-old Miriam and twelve-year-old Gabe wanted me to settle an argument; Oliver drifted in to lie on his bed. Warmth spread to every nook and cranny of my body.Thiswas what Golden Doors was, a gathering of all the people in the world I loved. This was what made the holidays special.
“Kids!” Uncle Jason shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “Come help with dinner!”
Downstairs, I joined the latke-making crew. Noah and Abby grated potatoes and squeezed water from the shreds—my least favorite task, given how the starchy liquid ran in rivulets over your hands and dried out your skin. Aunt Liz tossed McIntosh chunks into a pot with hefty doses of cinnamon, sugar, and lemon juice, their heady and sweet scents perfuming the air. At another burner, her husband tossed a slice of onion into a thick layer of oil, waiting for tiny bubbles to froth over the translucent sliver before sliding in latke patties.
I was about to start chopping more onions when Grandma swept by. “Shira, come along.”
I trailed in her wake, feeling a surge of pleasure at being chosen. “Where are we going?”
“I brought fresh flowers from Boston. You can help me arrange them. I want everything to be perfect when my brothers arrive.”
It was a big deal, Grandma’s brothers and their wives coming for Hanukkah. The Danzigers lived in New York and usually hosted their own celebrations—which we occasionally attended—but Grandma’s brothers had never come to Nantucket before. Why would they, when they had their own kids and grandkids in New York?
The adults had freaked out when they’d heard the plan. They thought Grandma’s brothers, who owned stock in Barbanel, wanted to convince Grandma to give them her shares. And the adults thought Grandma might, if she was mad enough at Grandpa. Personally,Iwas freaked over the idea that Grandmamight be mad enough at Grandpa she’d help wrest control of his company away from him.
We entered Grandma’s sunroom, a large, rectangular space off the east side of the house. Plants hung from the ceiling and grew in pots around the room. In one corner, she had a table of carefully tended orchids, which all seemed to thrive at her touch and her careful regimen of sunlamps and water. I loved this room, so uniquely Grandma, elegant and clean and minimalistic. The light in the room changed with the seasons: in the summer, Nantucket light felt rich and golden, like you were soaking up Kerrygold butter, but winter light felt crisper and sharper, capable of shattering at any moment.
I perched on a green settee and watched Grandma sort through her flowers. White roses and white lilies. Belladonna delphiniums, the dusky purple-blue of the darkening sky. Blue hydrangeas, the flower a staple of Nantucket. A basket of white carnations, half of which the little and middle cousins would dye tomorrow by sticking them in water with blue food coloring.
She handed me the roses, and I started slicing stems diagonally, knife biting through and into a wooden board. Grandma had told me that when she first came to Golden Doors, her favorite part was the sprawling gardens behind the house: all flowers and a rose garden, which bloomed each summer in a cascade of color.
“Are you excited for your brothers to get here?” I asked.
She glanced up. Her eyes were hazel, unlike the deep brownof the rest of the family. “ ‘Excited’ is not, perhaps, the word I’d use.”
