She shook her head. “No. He broke the peace months ago.”
We stood in the bitter breeze, watching Bodri chase a rogue fly, barking at it.
Her petite frame suddenly jolted, and she pointed to Fia’s vegetable patch. “The sprouts will be lovely and sweet after this frost.”
Mum had asked if she could use some of the vegetables Fia had planted. Originally, I had told her no and let whatever grew rot.
But I couldn’t watch her hard work go to waste.
Even if I hesitated, I didn’t want to trespass on her garden.
But her nagyi smiled at them, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening.
“You want to pick some?”
“Harvest, Zoltán,”she corrected with that soft smile.“You’re the one who’s been looking after them while she’s gone. Use the correct terms.”
I laughed again,and we got to work breaking them off the stems until our fingers were numb.
They wouldn’t go well with the soup, but we could use them for dinner tomorrow. Imre was big on tradition.
Nagyi was having none of it. She got straight to work, trimming the ends, peeling the leaves, and washing them. Mum watched her with a slight frown, more confused than anything, and when Imre went to protest, she threw them down in the sink. “We are having them with our soup. If you all refuse to go and pick up my granddaughter, if you all refuse to grow up, I will have her here in whatever form I can.” She lifted a spatula. “You don’t have to have them, but you will let an old lady do whatever she wants.”
She had truly woken from her nap and chosen violence.
Everyone returned to silently decorating the tree, and my brother and I went back to ignoring each other, though I couldn’t stop my top lip from curling on the odd occasion I saw him through the branches of the tree. So nonchalant. So at peace.
So innocent.
Then it slipped, and he looked haggard, his expression one of pure misery. Mum called us for dinner, and his expression shifted, a bright, overcompensated smile on his face as he turned to her. He was better at faking medical results than Christmas cheer.
Nagyi placed the steaming dish of sprouts in the middle of the table, and the same spatula she’d threatened us all with scooped a healthy amount onto her plate. She loaded it again and stared at us all in turn until everyone hesitantly agreed.
I offered her my plate before she even looked at me.
We ate mostly in silence, just the horrible slurping sound of my family drinking their soup.
Benedek wolfed his down and then rolled his sprouts around the plate, right into the bowl that sat there, like he was playing some fork football.
“You not going to eat those?” I asked.
The room stilled. Mum placed down her spoon. It was the first thing I’d said to him.
I was already reaching over, but Nagyi put her hand on mine, stopping me from stealing them.
“The polite thing to do would be to eat them,” Nagyi said. She gestured to the three empty seats we reserved every Christmas. “I’m sure it’s what your grandfather and father would have done. My husband would.”
My head dived to stare at my plate, to hide my bulging eyes.
She hadn’t chosen violence — it was war.
But she was right. Simon Farkas would never have refused a little old lady’s sprouts on Christmas Eve.
“You should be grateful you have the food on your plate and the family around your table.”
“Mother,”Imre warned.
My mum waved him off, but it was my words that halted our evening. “You should be grateful there isn’t another empty chair.”
