The Season of Us by Holly Chamberlin

Author:Holly Chamberlin [Chamberlin, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Gincy was stirring soup on the one working burner on the stove. Tamsin was setting the kitchen table for lunch, folding the napkins into rectangles, not triangles. Ellen, showing a welcome interest in the upkeep of her home, was rubbing at an invisible spot on the edge of the sink with a sponge. Well, it was invisible to Gincy, but Ellen swore it was there and was applying a good deal of elbow grease to it. Tamsin had been glad to know that “elbow grease” was just an expression, though she had told her mother she still couldn’t understand how hair would have gotten into a bucket.

Tommy was in the living room setting up the artificial Christmas tree. It was the same tree the family had when Gincy and Tommy were small. Gincy was surprised it hadn’t disintegrated long ago. Maybe, she thought, it was made of some super material that would outlast them all, even if that meant spending its final century in a landfill.

Her brother appeared now in the doorway of the kitchen, holding something spindly, green, and faded. “I’ve got one extra branch,” he said. “I can’t figure out where it goes. Dad never had a branch left over when he put up the tree.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t matter,” Tamsin said. “Anyway, he had lots of practice.”

Tommy stared down at the branch in his hand, as if he weren’t quite sure how it had gotten there, and then propped it against the wall in a corner of the kitchen and joined the others, now gathered at the table.

“Grandma,” Tamsin asked. “What made you marry Grandpa?”

Ellen frowned. “What a silly question. I was in love with him, of course. Why else would I have married the man?”

Tamsin turned to her mother. “That’s why you married Dad, right, Mom? Because you loved him.”

“Yes,” Gincy said. “And because I liked him. You can love someone but not really like them very much.”

Is that how I feel about Mom, Gincy wondered. I love her, but I don’t very much like her? But how can you like or dislike someone if you don’t really know her? Sometimes, Gincy thought, Ellen Gannon seemed like a complete stranger. She thought of the Bible in her mother’s bedroom. More than sometimes.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Virginia,” Ellen said in that dismissive, definitive tone Gincy knew so well. “If you love someone, of course you also like them, end of story.”

Tommy slurped his soup. “Sorry,” he said.

When the soup bowls and plates had been cleared, Gincy brought tea and cookies to the table.

“I know the cookies look kind of weird,” Tamsin said. “I guess I’m just not used to your oven, Grandma. But they taste okay, I promise.”

Tommy, who had already consumed two, nodded and gave his niece a thumbs-up.

“That oven is whacky,” Tamsin whispered to Gincy. “Did you hear the noise it makes when it’s heating up? It’s like it’s crying or something.”

Gincy hid a grin and glanced across the table at her mother. Now seemed as good a time as any to bring up a difficult subject.

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