Authors: Chantilly White
Going for stealth, Melinda moved quietly down the wide, curving staircase, hoping to avoid as much attention as possible.
Intent on their own agendas, no one took any notice of her.
She kept her footsteps steady and soft, and for a moment, as everyone scurried about their business, the front room emptied of people. The only motion came from the twinkle lights and a few battery-operated spinning ornaments on the giant Christmas tree gracing the bay window at the front of the house. She had a clear path to the haven of her mother’s kitchen, until—
“It lives!”
Damn it.
“Shut up, Rick,” Melinda said, narrowing her eyes as her cousin rounded the corner and zeroed in. She stopped on the bottom tread with a frown as he bounded forward.
Richard Carlisle leaped the back of the living-room couch, his outrageously long legs stretched out as though the sofa was a track hurdle, then dropped to one knee before her, sweeping an imaginary hat off his head and giving an elaborate bow.
“Your majesty,” he intoned in regal voice, “your humble servant lives only to serve and wishes to thank you for gracing us with your—”
Melinda leaned forward, placed the palm of her hand against his bent head, and shoved, knocking him sideways. “Save it for the stage, fool.”
Rick rolled dramatically onto his back, legs and arms waving in the air like a stranded blond turtle.
“Help!” he warbled. “Your worship! I’ve fallen and I can’t—Hey!”
His words choked off on a snicker as the dogs streaked around the opposite corner and spotted one of their favorite playmates on the floor. They jumped in with joyful barks, squashing Rick’s stomach and covering his face with enthusiastic doggie kisses.
“Hey, Buddy, how’s it—
oof
—down, Baxter!”
“Good boys,” Melinda said, clapping her hands to egg them on. “Get him.”
“Well, well, look who’s out of her cave.” Coming down the stairs behind her, Rick’s older brother, Danny, nudged her out of the way, suitcases tucked under both arms. “Done sulking?”
He stopped beside her to survey Rick’s flailing limbs.
“Leave her alone,” said Christian, the youngest of the three Carlisle boys, trailing Danny and equally burdened with luggage.
Christian blew a lock of blond hair out of his eyes and frowned at his oldest brother. Then he winked at Melinda and trudged past her and Danny on the wide base of the stairs. Stepping around Rick and the tussling dogs with a wordless shake of his head, he continued on his way toward the front door.
Ignoring Christian, Danny whistled to get Rick’s attention. “Come grab some of these suitcases, moron.”
“In a minute,” Rick said, his arms full of fur. “Can’t you see these guys are starved for attention? Aren’t you,” he said to the squirming dogs. “Yes, you are, all this running back and forth and no one playing with you, poor fellas.”
Rick descended into a stream of pathetically lame dog-baby-talk while he rubbed bellies and noses and sent Baxter and Buddy into throes of doggie delight.
Melinda and Danny exchanged a glance full of the sort of disgust one can only share with a fellow family member.
“Mom!” Danny called in the tattling singsong voice of a five-year-old. “Rick’s not helping!”
“Don’t call her, I was attacked,” Rick protested, struggling a bit beneath the weight of the dogs, still laughing. “Look at these vicious—
ack
.” He broke off to wipe away the slobbery licks raining all over his face. “Vicious animals. Quit it, Baxter, you got me in the mouth.”
“Stop Frenching the dogs and grab a load, man,” Danny said, aiming a kick at his middle brother as he finally followed Christian out the front door.
Though their father, Uncle Allan, had the same dark hair and blue eyes as Melinda and her mother, her Carlisle cousins had inherited their Norse-god statures and chiseled good looks from their mother, whose real name was Petronilla but everyone called Aunt Pat if they wanted to live a nice long life with all their limbs attached.
All three boys were well over six feet, muscular, blond, and blue-eyed. American-born Thors. They looked enough alike to be mistaken for triplets at a distance, though Danny and Christian’s sandy-blond hair was waterfall-straight, while Rick’s was a curly mop.
Melinda adored them all, though she and Rick had an extra deep bond, having spent most of their youth ganging up on—or losing to—the other two.
The front door closed behind Danny and Christian just as Aunt Pat swung into the living room, her arms full of ski jackets bound for the waiting cars, and a frown aimed at her middle son.
“Richard Dean Carlisle, quit fooling around with those dogs. Your Uncle Stan needs help loading the skis.”
From beneath the dog pile, Rick snapped his mother a smart salute. “Aye, aye, Captain, my Captain.”
Aunt Pat turned her back on him. To Melinda, she said, “I think your mom was looking for you,” then she moved on toward the front door. Over her shoulder, she yelled, “Rick!”
“Captain!” he shouted back. Then, more quietly, “Slave driver.”
“Put the dogs in their pen first,” Aunt Pat added, “and I heard that.”
She sailed outside, slamming the front door behind her and sending the jingle bells on the Christmas wreath hanging on it ringing merrily.
With a smirk for her cousin, which he answered with crossed eyes and a stuck out tongue, Melinda finally descended the last step. She made her way into the relative quiet of the kitchen where her mother worked, alone for the moment, mustering the meal together like a professional caterer preparing to serve a large group of unruly savages.
Which was about right.
“Finally,” Karen said, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist. Brandishing the salad tongs in her other hand, she pointed to the bread board, where four loaves of French bread sat already sliced and waiting. “Just mix up the spread, slap it on, and get them in the oven, please, then help Jake and Wendell finish setting the tables. I think they were having a sword fight with the candlesticks.”
“Everyone’s a slave driver,” Melinda said under her breath.
“What’s that, honey?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said, starting on the garlic spread.
Though her heart still weighed heavily in her chest, her lips bowed up at the corners. Immersed in the utter chaos of pre-vacation family life, it was impossible to hold on to the black cloud she’d been sailing under the past two days.
Jon Bon Jovi belted a Christmas rock ballad from speakers hooked to her mom’s iPod while Karen sang along, badly off key, and finished tossing the salads. Melinda joined in on the chorus, shimmying to her mother’s side to share the salad-tongs-turned-microphone for the big finish.
Everything inside her seemed to loosen and settle for the first time since Christmas Day, and a genuine smile bloomed fully across her lips.
Though it was shy of six o’clock, night pressed firmly against the windows over the kitchen sink. The sun had set while she’d been holed up in her room, but everything in the kitchen was bright and warm and full of the comforting scents of home-cooked foods, now a rare luxury Melinda missed wholeheartedly when she was at school.
Karen shifted to the stove to stir the truly staggering amount of spaghetti sauce bubbling in a giant pot.
“Are you sure there’s enough?” Melinda teased.
“Haha,” her mom said. “You’ve seen these people eat. Besides, I made extra to take with us for dinner later in the week.”
That, too, was a homey tradition. To keep costs down on the annual trip, each family took responsibility for several group meals—breakfasts and dinners—which they served family-style in one of the three condos they shared. Lunches were usually grabbed in the main lodge as people came off the mountain for a break from skiing. Karen’s spaghetti and meatballs was a group favorite.
Once she’d dealt with the bread, Melinda grabbed a giant salad bowl in each arm and headed for the dining room.
The large, formal table was set, somewhat haphazardly, for twelve, though Jacob and Wendell were nowhere to be seen. A festive trio of Christmas centerpieces ranged down the middle of the table, their fat red candles already lit.
From the adjacent family room, a widescreen TV blared the soundtrack of an ’80s movie through the dining room’s twinkle-lights-and-garland-bedecked archway.
An ancient card table, its scarred surface covered with a festive tablecloth, sat at the foot of the similarly-adorned formal table, in the middle of the arch between the two rooms, set for four to round out their party of sixteen.
Melinda made a mental note to snag a seat with three of the guys at the smaller “kid’s table” where she’d be less likely to suffer through an interrogation about Mitch by any of the other women.
With her brother Zach once again absent, and since Melinda and Jacob didn’t have additional guests attending the trip this year—thanks to that bastard Mitch backing out—there was an even split between adults and kids—eight each.
The fact that all of the kids were now legal adults meant little when it came to dividing up the party. The kids would always be the kids, even when they were in their forties with kids of their own.
However, there was only room for four at the kid’s table, and although none of them really cared where they sat anymore, snagging those seats had become something of a game.
Setting the salad bowls in the middle of the big table, one on each end, Melinda straightened the place settings, then moved through the arch and crossed the family room to stare out the back sliding door.
Buddy and Baxter were in their pen in advance of everyone sitting down to dinner. It spanned the length of one side of the property, giving the dogs plenty of room to frolic. An enormous barn-style doghouse sat on their own covered patio where they could escape the elements, along with a plastic kiddie-pool to laze in during the blisteringly-hot desert summers.
Melinda frosted her breath on the glass door and drew a heart inside the fog, then wiped it away.
Summer’s heat seemed a long way off. The lawn lay dormant and crisp beneath a light layer of frost, crisscrossed with the dogs’ paw prints. She tapped on the glass, and Buddy barked in response before chasing after Baxter, who had their favorite tug-rope dangling from his mouth.
No one else was in sight.
The backyard stretched for nearly an acre beneath a clear, star-studded sky, the grounds well-lit thanks to the landscape lighting her mother had installed herself. The many shade trees, her mother’s beloved rose bushes, and assorted shrubs reached toward the stars with winter-skeletal arms, waiting for spring to green them up again. They wove in and around artfully designed pathways and river-rocked beds of indigenous cacti, including a few majestic desert sentinels—the spearing Joshua trees.
California’s drought conditions would play havoc with the yard again this year, yet somehow her mother always managed to keep it looking gorgeous.
Her parents owned the local nursery, and Karen also hired herself out for landscaping jobs, so their yard served as both a testament to her mother’s first love—gardening—and as a living advertisement for the family business.
An above-ground pool, covered for winter, took up a portion of the back half of the property, along with a wide deck and plenty of chairs for sunning. Bright-orange California poppies would blanket the ground around the pool in summer, and evergreen California junipers clumped along both sides of the back fence.
Melinda liked to lightly crush ripe juniper berries in her hands and inhale the scent. Aunt Pat used a different variety of the berry—actually not a berry at all, but a seed cone—in some of her favorite recipes, which had been passed down in her family for generations.
Some people found the desert climate too harsh, too dry, too brown, and it could be, for sure. Especially when the winds blew—burning hot in summer or freezing cold in winter—which was most of the time. It wasn’t a lush, tropical paradise by any stretch of the imagination, and they had their share of nasty critters—rattlesnakes, scorpions, and more. But life in their small town of Pasodoro was everything Melinda wanted and loved.
It was home.
“Dinner’s ready!” Her mom’s voice sounded from the kitchen.
Instead of heading straight for the table, Melinda rested her forehead against the sliding door, her gaze focused on the oasis of the yard.
Beyond their fence line, the Mojave Desert rolled toward the foothills fronting the San Bernardino mountains, visible now only as a deeper black against the night sky. During the day, the desert would spread wide for miles, plentifully dotted with houses, yet somehow still barren-looking.
Melinda exhaled slowly, rubbing her forehead against the chilly glass.
Eventually, she would forget that Mitch ever swam in their pool, or played with Buddy and Baxter on the lawn, or kissed her under the shade trees.
Wind-tossed piles of tumbleweeds mounded against the outside of the fence, waiting to be swept along with the next strong gust. Her memories of Mitch would be like that someday. Dust-dry and easy to blow away with a breath.
She hoped.