Page 33
Merry Christmas, Brooke.
“Did you say Not-A-Cat?” Izzy tugged off her boots and put them by the door. “As in the cat that belongs to the Careless Witch? I loved that series when I was a child. Which is your favourite? I think mine was Tripalot and the Thanksgiving Turkey, although I lost my copy, sadly.” Her smile dimmed briefly.
“I like that one. In the car I was reading The Careless Witch Loses Her Broomstick. It was my mummy’s.” Elsie studied her cautiously. “Did you just arrive?”
“We did. I’m Izzy, and this is my friend Jason. We had an accident. A bit like the Careless Witch, only not so funny.”
“We had an accident, too,” Elsie said. “Daddy drove into something. He and Mummy were shouting in quiet voices.”
There was an awkward silence.
Matt glanced at Brooke, but then Izzy grinned.
“I’m not surprised. Driving in this weather makes people tense and then they sometimes shout, not always in quiet voices. I bet everyone out there driving tonight is shouting about something.”
Brooke wondered if there was ever a time when Izzy wasn’t positive.
Why was she the only one who seemed upset about this? Everyone else seemed to be treating it as an adventure.
Brooke’s eyes stung. She was so tired. But it seemed she had to be the practical one.
“The real question is if we can’t get to my parents’ today, then where are we going to stay? If we can’t get to my parents’, we can’t get anywhere else, either.”
The weather didn’t care that it was Christmas. The weather didn’t care that her mother was, right at that moment, glancing at the clock and trying Brooke’s phone. The weather didn’t care that she’d made meticulous plans to make sure the girls had a brilliant Christmas.
There was a prolonged silence as everyone considered the gravity of the situation and their lack of options.
Mabel had been silent for the past few minutes but finally she spoke.
“Perhaps it’s time we all faced reality. The storm isn’t going to clear in the next few hours no matter how much we’d like it to. Even if by some miracle it stops snowing tomorrow and the sun starts shining, which is unlikely, it will take time to clear the roads. This little corner of Vermont often gets cut off. It’s not unusual, and I don’t remember ever seeing a storm as bad as this one. And I’ve lived here for a long time.”
Brooke felt hope drain out of her. “So what are we going to do?”
Everyone was silent and then Mabel stood a little straighter.
“It looks as if we’ll be spending Christmas together.”
There was a brief pause and then Izzy clapped her hands.
“Well!” She beamed at the children as if they’d all won the lottery. “Isn’t that the most exciting thing ever?”
10
Mabel
It was hard to tell who was most stunned by her announcement, herself or her guests.
Brooke’s shoulders sagged. Even Matt, calm until this point, looked shaken.
Mabel sympathised. She felt both exhausted and shaken herself, but she didn’t believe there was any point in hiding from reality.
And the reality was that they were stuck together, and the only person who seemed happy about it was the latest arrival, Izzy.
The enormity of the situation engulfed her.
All these people in her house. Strangers. She didn’t know them. They didn’t even all know each other. And children. Elsie. Eight years old.
It was as if she was being shown a glimpse of a parallel life. A life she couldn’t have. A life she’d lost.
