Five of Us at Christmas, But They Only Got Four Cookies novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Five Years

Emmett, the brother thrown out of her wedding, meets her at a diner, gets the bakery's order in writing and offers a spare room over his boat shop at three hundred a month; Zoey texts from a friend's phone that their mother lands on the 18th.

"Joanna?" the man said. "Are you still in their driveway?"

I looked at the garage door in front of my bumper.

"How do you know that?"

"Because you've never driven off angry in your life, and you're calling a number you were told to call five years ago." He said it gently. "Go to the Lakeside Diner on Route 6. I'm forty minutes away. I'll be there before the pie."

"I don't even know what you look like."

"You'll know me," Emmett said, and hung up.

I started the car.

In the mirror the kitchen window glowed yellow, and nobody stood in it.

The Lakeside Diner had a plastic Santa on the register and a coffee pot that had been on since morning.

I took the back booth and ordered tea I didn't drink.

Emmett came in out of the dark at twenty past four, and I knew him at once.

He was Bryce's older brother, a head taller than Bryce, with a work jacket and sawdust on the cuffs.

His hair was red, cut short, going gold at the temples.

I had seen him once, at my wedding, for about five minutes.

He had come in late and stood at the back of the hall.

Two of Dorothea's ushers had walked him out before the cake.

He slid into the booth across from me and put his hands flat on the table.

They were big hands with old white scars across the knuckles.

"You kept it," he said.

I set the napkin between us.

The ink had gone soft, but the numbers were clear.

"Why did you give me this?" I said. "You didn't know me."

"You were the only person in that room who looked at me when I walked in," he said. "Everyone else looked at my mother."

"And you thought I'd need it."

"I thought a woman who looks at the man being thrown out will get thrown out herself some day." He rubbed his thumb along a scar. "I'd rather have been wrong."

I told him about the box, and he did not interrupt once.

When I got to the note he closed his eyes for a moment.

"Four only," he said. "The fifth is just helping out."

"That's what she read out."

"Do you have it in writing?"

"I heard it on the phone. In front of everyone."

"Everyone will say you misheard." He took out his own phone and slid it to me. "Call her back. Ask for the order confirmation by email. Ask nicely."

The bakery woman was kind about it.

She said she remembered the call, and that she had thought Mr. MacIntosh sounded in a hurry.

Two minutes later my phone buzzed with a PDF.

I opened it on the table.

Two boxes. Two delivery dates. The note was typed in the comments field exactly as she'd said, and the five names on the second box were listed one under the other.

Emmett read it upside down, then right way up when I turned it.

He didn't say anything about the fifth name.

He looked at the date on it and put the phone away.

My own phone lit up on the table.

Dorothea.

Bryce is very embarrassed, dear. Come home tonight and we'll say no more. We were all tired.

Below it, a second one.

I've put your half of my cookie in a napkin for you.

I turned the screen face down.

"She's good," Emmett said.

"She is always nice to me."

"I know," he said. "That's how she does it."

The waitress brought me a slice of apple pie I hadn't ordered.

Emmett had.

I ate two bites and found that I was starving.

"I'm not going back tonight," I said. "I want that clear. But I'm not leaving them, either. Zoey is thirteen and Milo is ten, and I'm the one who packs their lunches."

"Then don't leave them," he said. "Leave the house."

"Where would I go?"

"I have a spare room. It's over the shop, in Huron, on the water. It has a door that locks from the inside."

I should have said no.

I said, "I'll pay rent."

"I don't charge rent."

"Then I'm not coming."

He looked at me for a while.

"I charge a boat three hundred a month to sit in my yard," he said. "That's the going rate."

"Three hundred. Through the holidays, and not one day longer."

"Not one day longer."

"No favors. No rescuing me."

"I'll do my best," Emmett said, and I almost smiled.

He paid the check, and I followed his truck's taillights up Route 6 into the dark.

I was unpacking a borrowed toothbrush in his spare room when my phone buzzed again.

A number I didn't know.

The first text said: it's wren. im on a friends phone. dont tell dad i wrote.

Then, quickly, three more.

Mom lands the 18th.

Grandma says you'll be gone by then.

She says were having the five of us again.

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