This Christmas by Olivia Miles

Author:Olivia Miles [Miles, Olivia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rosewood Press
Published: 2019-10-07T18:30:00+00:00

Tess’s car pulled into the driveway just as they were setting the nutcrackers on either side of the fireplace. Carrie was sure to leave a few in the box for Phoebe to set out, along with some of the less fragile parts of the porcelain village that Tess had collected over the years.

“Hurry up and hide the boxes!” Carrie cried, and she and Jules scrambled to close the containers and run them upstairs to the attic. By the time they began their descent, they could hear Tess’s voice in the kitchen, instructing Phoebe to set her wet mittens on the radiator in the mudroom to dry.

“Do we tell her or let her walk in to it?” Jules whispered.

“Let her discover it herself,” Carrie decided. She pulled Jules back against the wall. “We’ll wait here.”

The wait was longer than she expected. Tess not only had to set all of Phoebe’s things out to dry (apparently Phoebe had decided to make a snow angel while Tess unloaded the groceries) but then put all the groceries back in their proper place, and with a kitchen as large as hers, this seemed to take much more time than it took Carrie to cram all the processed food into the only cabinet that wasn’t being used to house dishes and glassware.

She was just about to toss up her hands when she heard Phoebe scamper into the living room, and then heard the gasp emerge from her mouth. Carrie rested a hand to her heart and gave Jules a look. They’d brought their niece a moment of joy. They’d done the right thing.

Carrie waited expectantly for Tess to come into the room.

“Mommy, Mommy, come look!” Phoebe cried.

“What? What is it?” Tess’s voice sounded alarmed, strangled and tight and almost…fearful, if Carrie didn’t know better.

She and Jules hurried down the rest of the stairs just as Tess walked into the room. “Surprise!”

Tess’s eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open, but she wasn’t smiling, and the tears that seemed to be building were definitely not tears of happiness.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Phoebe was saying as she ran around the room.

“How could you do this?” Tess’s jaw set as she turned on her sisters. Her eyes were stony and demanding.

Carrie blinked, at a loss for words. “We wanted to give you some Christmas cheer,” she explained, only, saying it like this, now, she realized that she had messed up.

“Cheer?” Tess looked at her with disgust. “When did you become so insensitive, Carrie?”

“It was my idea too,” Jules cut in. She tried to set a hand on Tess’s elbow, but Tess pulled back quickly, muttering under her breath as she ran up the stairs.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Carrie said, looking at Jules, waiting, she realized, for her sister to disagree with her, to say that she needed her. Wanted her.

But Jules just gave her an injured look and then let Phoebe take her by the hand to wind up a music box.

Carrie looked up the stairs, her heart fighting with her head, wanting to run up to Tess’s bedroom more than anything and knowing that she couldn’t.

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