Read Online The Sister Season by Jennifer Scott - Free Book Online

“But this Christmas thing . . . seems like she’s trying really hard, you know? All the wine, the cookies, the tree. Did you get a load of how many poinsettias are on the sunporch? The woman’s gone Christmas crazy.”
    Julia shrugged. Her own house didn’t look all that different from Elise’s right now. Well, except that Tai would probably be working well into the night, like always, and wouldn’t bother to look up out of his research notes and syllabi long enough to turn on the timer. Nothing uglier than unlit Christmas lights, in Julia’s opinion, but Tai was oblivious to things like beauty.
    “It’s because of the grandkids,” she said. “She probably didn’t want them to spend the days before Christmas with the place all funeral-depressing. You know how proper Mom can be. Even in a tragedy.”
    Claire chewed her bottom lip. “I guess,” she said. And she turned and led the way up the steps toward the sunporch, which enveloped them both with its sticky warmth, the heavy scent of poinsettias pounding into the backs of their throats like exclamation marks.

Five
    E veryone was gathered in the kitchen by the time Julia and Claire ducked inside. Maya and Bradley were seated at the table, flanked by the kids, who had small piles of snack crackers scattered in front of them. Will was pushing crackers into his mouth, singing and chewing at the same time. Molly ate them daintily, swinging her legs under the table, every now and then pausing to glance up at the adults.
    Elise was standing at the stove, stirring a pot of something Julia couldn’t see from her vantage point, her back to the table. Eli was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed, his hair flopped over his forehead. Nobody was talking.
    “Wow, so serious in here. Who died?” Claire joked, and when Maya rolled her eyes and sighed, she blushed deeply. “Joke. Just a joke,” she said, but her voice was small, as if even she realized she’d crossed a line into poor form. She walked up behind Elise and draped an arm over her mom’s shoulder. “Sorry, Mom. It was a bad joke.”
    Elise looked up, a forced smile on her face. “It’s okay, Claire,” she said, and continued stirring whatever was steaming in the pot.
    Julia shrugged out of her coat, careful not to spill the cigarette pack onto the floor, and hung it on the hook next to the back door. She rubbed her dry, reddened hands together and looked from face to face. Something was clearly up.
    “What’s going on?” she asked.
    Bradley leaned to one side and pulled his BlackBerry out of his pocket, began tapping on it. Maya simply stared at the table, spinning a glass of water between her fingers and shaking her head disgustedly, a sardonic grin on her face as if her whole shitty life was one big poorly told joke and she’d just discovered the punch line.
    Julia moved to the stove and ladled herself a cup of wine, peering into the saucepan that her mom was stirring. Apples in butter and sugar and cinnamon. Her grandmother’s dumpling batter on the counter next to her. She was going to make Granny’s version of apple dumplings, just as she’d done for them when they were children. The smell took Julia back.
    Mom, that smells like Christmas,
she heard her tiny self saying.
I could eat it every day
.
    But if I made apple dumplings every day, they wouldn’t be special on Christmas,
she remembered her mom saying.
    She also remembered her mom flicking worried glances over her shoulder at the front door. Elise had always waited until their father was at the lodge Christmas party to make the dumplings.
Our little secret,
she’d told the girls every year.
A girls-only secret
.
    But somewhere along the line Julia had figured out the real secret: that her father didn’t like anything that might “spoil those girls,” that apple dumplings fell into the category of unacceptable indulgence, that Elise would have to deal with the repercussions of an unfair and unkind man if she dared to serve