“Um, no you’re not,” he replied. “You will always be four feet tall in my mind.” He handed me several boxes. They were heavy and clanked.
“I bought them all drones,” I told my brother.
“Amateur. These are DIY medieval wind chime kits with swords and pieces of armor,” Jonathan said as I helped him carry the boxes into the house. “My girlfriend made them. She is both artistic and evil. They sound horrific.” He grinned.
Ding-dong!
I peeked out the window. Too bad I didn’t have any curtains in the house because my two oldest brothers saw me.
“Open the door,” Jack, the second oldest, shouted.
I sighed and unlocked the door.
Jack and Owen were arguing as they walked into the grand foyer.
“I just think you need to get them something wholesome,” Owen was saying.
“Puzzles are extremely wholesome.”
“Not puzzles about prisons of the ancient world.”
“You would totally do that Alcatraz puzzle if you were twelve,” Jack retorted.
“I bought them all books,” Owen the oldest said. He set the box down in the living room next to the others.
Kringle sniffed the packages.
Jack looked around the house and whistled. “You really had it bad for that girl.”
Owen shook his head. “Leave him alone; he’s grieving.”
“He should be celebrating!” Jonathan said, opening one of the boxes to look at the books Owen had brought. “He dodged a multibillion-dollar bullet.”
“Look on the bright side,” Jack said to me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and leading me back outside to his car, which was also stuffed with boxes. “You just learned a very expensive lesson for free!”
“For the record, I never liked Hensley,” Jonathan stated.
“No one liked Hensley,” Owen said matter-of-factly and handed me several boxes from his own trunk.
I was irritated. “Well, I liked her. And you all never treated her that nicely.”
Owen and Jack exchanged a look.
“She was a lot like Mom,” Jack said gently. “It never was going to end well. I know you’re hurting—”
“I’m not,” I snapped, grabbing the box from him and throwing it on the ever-growing mountain of packages.
“And you all need to wrap your presents. I’m selling this house, and the photographer is going to come in the next week to take sales photos. It can’t look like a hoarder house.”
“Aw, you can’t wrap these for us? You already have wrapping paper. Might help take your mind off of things,” Jack asked.
“Owen,” I complained to my older brother.
“I think we can all tackle this if we work together.”
“Family bonding time!” Jonathan yelled, throwing Jack a roll of wrapping paper.
Three presents in,and it was painfully obvious that we were all in over our heads.
