Five of Us at Christmas, But They Only Got Four Cookies novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Taking Myself Out

In front of the neighbors Joanna removes every photograph of herself from the Parma house while Bryce admits the children's mother is coming on the 18th; Dorothea orders Emmett off the porch, and Milo looks at his red hair and says, You have my hair.

Emmett's spare room had a window over the water and a bed that smelled of cedar shavings.

I slept four hours and woke to the sound of someone sanding a hull.

He had left coffee on the stove and a note on the counter in square capitals.

I CAN DRIVE. OR I CAN WAIT IN THE TRUCK. YOUR CALL.

I called it at ten.

We drove to Parma in two cars, mine in front, his behind.

It was the first Saturday of the holiday season, and every house on our street had a wreath.

Two neighbors were raking leaves into the same pile and watching my car turn into the driveway.

I parked, took a flat cardboard box from the back seat, and walked to the front door.

Emmett stopped his truck at the curb and stayed in it with the engine off.

The door was unlocked, which meant someone had been waiting for me.

Bryce was in the kitchen in yesterday's shirt.

Dorothea sat at the table with her tea and a plate of toast.

"Joanna, dear," she said. "I'm so glad. Sit. Have something to eat."

"I'm not staying," I said. "I came for my things."

Bryce stood up. "Jo, come on. You've made your point."

"I haven't made one yet."

I went to the refrigerator.

It was papered with pictures, held up by magnets from every beach we had driven to.

There was Milo with a fish. Zoey in her soccer uniform. The four of us at the pumpkin patch last October, me in the middle with a child on each arm.

I took down every photograph that had me in it.

I stacked them in the box face up so no one could say I'd torn anything.

"What are you doing?" Bryce said.

"Taking myself out."

"That's ridiculous. That's the kids' fridge."

"Then they'll want pictures of the people who stay," I said.

In the living room I lifted our wedding portrait off the mantel.

The wall behind it was a lighter square, a clean place where the paint had never seen the sun.

I took the Christmas card from last year off the bookshelf, and the picture from Milo's school play, where I held the flowers.

Dorothea followed me from room to room, saying my name in a soft voice.

"Joanna. Joanna. You're upset. Think of the children."

"I am," I said.

Bryce caught up with me at the foot of the stairs.

"You said five of us," I told him, before he could speak. "At dinner. Tell me which five."

He looked at his mother, then away. "You, me, the kids. Mom."

"Then why is she on a list for the eighteenth?"

His face went still.

"She's their mother, Jo," he said. "She's flying in to see them. She hasn't seen them in five years. I couldn't say no."

"You could have said it to me."

"You'd have made it hard."

It was the most honest thing he'd said in a week, and he said it without a trace of shame.

"I'm making it hard now," I said.

I went upstairs.

Zoey's door was closed, and I did not knock.

In our bedroom I took my coat, my laptop, my mother's recipe cards and the green stocking I had knitted with a J at the top.

When I came out, Zoey was standing in the hall with her phone against her chest.

She was thirteen, and her eyes were red.

"You said you'd never leave," she said.

"I said I'd never leave you."

"It's the same thing."

"It's not. I'm going to be forty minutes away, and I'll answer every time you call."

"Grandma says people who leave don't get to call."

I set the box down on the carpet so I could hold both her shoulders.

"Your grandmother can say what she wants. I'm telling you the number hasn't changed."

She did not hug me.

She did not step back, either.

I picked the box up off the carpet and went down.

On the way down the stairs I met Milo coming up.

He had bed hair and a drawing of a sailboat in his fist.

He looked at the box under my arm, at the photographs, and at the green stocking, and his chin crumpled.

"Are you taking Christmas?" he whispered.

"Only my stocking," I said. "I'm leaving everyone else's."

I made it out to the porch with my chest tight and my eyes dry.

The neighbors had given up pretending to rake.

Emmett was standing at the foot of the steps with his hands in his jacket.

He had gotten out of the truck after all.

Behind me the front door opened wider, and Dorothea's voice came out into the yard, clear and sweet and loud enough for the street.

"Emmett MacIntosh. Get off my property."

"I'm waiting for Joanna," he said.

"After what you did to your father? You are not welcome within a mile of this house."

Nobody moved on the lawn.

Emmett didn't say a word in his own defense.

He only looked at her for a moment, and then he came up one step and took the box from my arms.

"Thank you for waiting," I said.

"Take your time."

Milo had pushed out onto the porch behind his grandmother.

He wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at Emmett, at his face and the red hair going gold at the temples.

The sailboat dropped out of his hand.

"You have my hair," he said.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend