“Always chaotic. My cousins, my aunts and uncles, my grandparents—we’d all squeeze into a house with a single bathroom and hope for the best. What I remember is the laughter. Someone was always laughing.”
Harrison couldn’t remember much laughter growing up. Amy’s description of a holiday sounded wonderful. Like something he would always want to be home for.
It really didn’t matter what they talked about; they seemed to agree on so much. The fun of ugly Christmas sweaters, for one, because God knew one stick-in-the-mud could ruin that vibe. The need for more dip selections in country grocery stores. The overmarketization of the holiday season. Once, Harrison had been caught up in a rain delay in the United Kingdom and had watched a few hours ofLove Island. He and Amy would have been a hit—they each gave good banter, which, at least onLove Island, was a mark of how good a relationship was.
When they finished the meal, Harrison began to clean up. Amy triedto stop him, but he insisted. “You weren’t cleaning anything, remember? I took that to heart.”
“My God, you are going to make me melt all over the kitchen floor. I’ll put away the leftovers.”
As he washed a few dishes, he told her about the opportunity in Scotland. How he could fly out and work for a few days, but that he didn’t feel like sitting on a plane for hours with his knee. Frankly, at that moment, with the rain coming down again, and the temperatures sliding colder, and the lights twinkling, he didn’t feel like ever leaving this lake house.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland,” Amy said idly, and Harrison thought he would love to be the one to take her. His next thought was that it was strange he would even think it, given that he hardly knew her. But in a way, he did know her. He knew her in a way that was innate, something just existing in each of them that the other subconsciously recognized. Two people from the same era.
The kitchen cleaned, they decided to sit on the covered porch. They wrapped themselves in the blankets they’d bought. They sat in side-by-side chaise longues, under a single heat lamp, watching lights twinkle across the lake. They talked about books and television. Harrison said he rarely watched TV. Amy said her TV was mostly used for video games that her brother and oldest son played.
At some point, he reached across the arms of their seats to rescue the tail of her blanket from falling in a puddle of water. When he lifted the end of it up and placed it on the seat next to her, his fingers brushed hers. He left them there, touching hers. Amy glanced at him from the corner of her eye, and Harrison felt an immediate pull between them. His eyes slipped to her mouth. She turned to him, her lips slightly parted, and he could tell, he could justseeit, that she was feeling the pull between them, too. He curled his fingers around hers, and he opened his mouth to speak, to say something like maybe they should get under one blanket for warmth, but they were suddenly startled to their feet by a loud crash.
And then Duchess began to bark.
They stared at the windows, then at each other. Harrison groped around for a club—a natural instinct—and finding none, grabbed a tiki torch.
“What are you doing?” Amy whispered.
“What if it’s an intruder?” he whispered back.
“Are you going to hit him with a tiki torch?”
Harrison looked at the tiki torch.
“Maybe we should call the cops.”
“You think they could get someone out here before we are murdered?” Harrison whispered.
“I think we’d have a better shot with the police than a tiki torch,” she whispered back, and made a move in the direction of the door.
“Wait—where are you going?” Harrison asked, reaching for her arm.
“I’m going to see what happened.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll go first.” He pulled her behind him, then opened the sliding-glass door. He moved forward, still clutching the tiki torch, because no matter what she thought, he figured it was better than nothing. He stepped cautiously inside. Amy grabbed onto the back of his shirt, pressing against him and bumping into him, making it a little hard to move.
Duchess, somewhere inside, stopped barking for a moment. And then started again.
“Where is she?” Amy whispered.
Harrison looked around, wielding the tiki torch. And then Amy said, “Oh.”
“Oh? Oh what?” he whispered frantically, twisting around to try and see her.
She let go of his sweater and pointed. “Oh, that.”
11
By this point, Duchess had detected Amy’s presence, and came bounding across the room with a thing in her mouth. Behind her was a toppled, four-foot nutcracker, lying face down. At his feet were dozens of small dark things.
“What is that?” Harrison asked.
“A dead nutcracker,” Amy said, and stepped out from behind him as Duchess barreled into her leg, dropping whatever she held in her mouth. Amy loved her dog, but her timing could not have been worse. She picked up the dropped item. “It’s a Santa,” she said, and turned it over. It was a round figure of a Santa, about three inches high, with oversized black boots. Her finger brushed against an indentation, and the boots began to move, as if they intended to march Santa right on out of there.
