Wedding Bells in Christmas by Mason Debbie

Author:Mason, Debbie [Mason, Debbie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction / Holidays, Fiction / Contemporary Women, Fiction / Romance / Contemporary
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2015-05-26T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Vivi woke up from her nightmare in a cold sweat. She rubbed her hands over her eyes in an attempt to erase the image of her sitting chained to a desk, writing an obituary—her own. There’d been one line on the screen. A shadow blotted out the early morning light as she sat up, turning to see a huge crow sitting on the ledge of the bedroom window. She’d never seen one that large before. Maybe it wasn’t a crow. Maybe it was a raven. And wouldn’t that be the perfect way to start another day in Christmas.

Not only had she dreamed of her imminent demise, she now had the harbinger of death staring in at her. The bird gave the familiar caw of a crow and flew off. At least it wasn’t a raven. Now all she had to do was stop eating before bed to take care of the nightmares.

But as she pondered the symbolism of the dream—one line on an otherwise blank screen equaled no accomplishments, no significant other, no family, while being chained to a desk represented a dead-end job she hated—she realized the quart of chocolate ice cream she’d eaten before bed hadn’t triggered the nightmare. No, it had been her late-night stalking of her brother’s and sister’s Facebook pages.

Her brother, Finn, had just been awarded an assignment with Time magazine in Iraq, and her sister, Brooke, had announced her engagement to the VP of her father’s prestigious law firm. Unlike Vivi’s, their obituaries would be filled with their many accomplishments. She berated herself for the thought. She had to stop her nightly forays onto their social media pages. It was turning into a bad, and a depressing, habit.

It had started out innocently enough—once a year on their birthdays. Then slowly it had gone to once a month to once a week to, well, daily. She’d simply been curious in the beginning. Then those small insights into their perfect family had become an addiction.

She’d never actually met them, but she’d seen them once. Fourteen-year-old Finn had been playing basketball with a bunch of his friends the day she’d walked up the tree-lined driveway to their colonial mansion. While twelve-year-old Brooke played Barbies under a big oak tree with her friends. Vivi had been seventeen at the time.

Her father had already been dead six months by then. Her grandmother, doubling up on pain meds for the cancer ravaging her body, had unwittingly given Vivi enough information to track down her birth mother. Vivi’d taken a bus to Greenwich, then hitchhiked to Round Hill. Ten minutes after knocking on the door and being shown in by a maid, Vivi went home the same way. Her mother had stood in the doorway, making sure she didn’t interact with Finn and Brooke. Afraid her oldest child would bring her perfect world down around her diamond-studded ears.

She could have; bigamy was a felony. But she wouldn’t do that to Finn, who’d watched her walk away with a concerned look in his eyes, or Brooke, who’d waved good-bye with a sweet smile on her angelic face.

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