A Christmas Dinner on Marshall Street (The Hills of Burlington Book 5) Read online

“They took off a couple of days ago,” Morgan said as he wandered around the small room. He’d only been here a handful of times. He would have preferred one of his sisters or his other brother to handle this but had decided in the end it was up to him. Both of his sisters were still too angry about the situation. He couldn’t count on either of them dealing with it in a way that would have any beneficial results. His other younger brother was in many ways of the same mind as Blair. He hadn’t gone to the lengths of idiocy that Blair had and in some ways by seeing in black and white the results of what Blair had done gave him a view of the path he was heading down. Morgan had no doubt that Lucas would make his own stupid mistakes. He was all but certain he would. But he also believed Lucas wouldn’t roll his fingers across his keyboard blindly without considering the implications of his words. At least not in the way Blair had.

  “So you’re just heading out there on your own?” Blair asked.

  “You could too,” Morgan said. “If you don’t want to make the drive on your own you can tag along with me. I think Lucas may head in that direction if he can get off work. I have no idea what the girls are doing.” In truth, while he was relatively close to both his sisters he had no idea what their plans were. All of them had been totally thrown off by the unexpected announcement from their parents that they were going elsewhere for Christmas. They shouldn’t have been surprised though. Not after what went on last Christmas. They had Blair to thank for that. At least that was his view on it. He didn’t give a fig what the others thought.

  “I wasn’t invited,” Blair said quietly.

  “Neither was I,” Morgan said without hesitation. He steeled himself against feeling sorry for his youngest brother. “None of us were but that doesn’t mean we can’t go. You know Mom and Dad as well as the rest of us, Blair. We’d be welcomed even if we ended up sleeping somewhere on the floor. You should know better than to think otherwise.” Even as the words came out of his mouth he realized that was part of the problem to start with. There was still quite a bit his youngest brother didn’t know and in some cases because of that, didn’t know better.

  “I’ll think about it,” Blair said. But he knew the likelihood of making the drive to Burlington was slim.

  “You should,” Morgan said steadily. He kept his gaze on his brother. Waited for him to meet his eyes and when he finally did he held them with his own. “Don’t you think that’s the least you can do?”

  Blair let out a long breath. He’d been expecting this for a year. But he hadn’t thought it would be Morgan. He could easily see it being one of his sisters which would have made it easier in some ways. Nothing could prepare him or make what was to come easier with Morgan.

  “If you’ve got something to say, Morgan, just say it.” Blair turned and walked over to his refrigerator. His brother might not want anything to drink but he did.

  “Just tell me one thing,” Morgan said, took a steadying breath as he worked to rein in his temper, then continued. “Would you have said to Mom’s face what you wrote on her social media page?” He let the silence simmer. After a few minutes he moved as if to leave having decided his younger brother couldn’t come up with an answer for the simplest of questions.

  “No,” Blair said quietly, knew if he didn’t his older brother would continue right out the door. “No, I wouldn’t have.”

  “Then why in God’s name did you post it on her social media page for anyone and everyone to see?” Morgan slashed his hand in a low arch, quieting the words he could see on the cusp of being spoken. Knew without having to hear them what they would be. He struggled with his temper knowing once unleashed they would both regret it. “It doesn’t matter if her page was open to all and sundry or limited to the small number of connections she has on there. The issue is why would you do such a thing if you admittedly wouldn’t say the same to her face? What were you thinking? More importantly, were you thinking at all?” He turned and paced over to the window. He’d come here in the hopes of talking some sense into his younger brother. The last thing he wanted was for his temper to get away from him. No matter how much Blair might be deserving of it he knew it wouldn’t do anything to resolve what had simmered in their family too damn long.

  “I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal, at least not until…”

  “Until Mom deleted the entire thread? What was she supposed to do, Blair? Your little rant didn’t just attack Mom, it did the same to everyone else connected to her who posted something positive…something in agreement with her. In going against her the way you did, you essentially dished all her friends and relatives who agreed with her. How was she supposed to feel?”

  Blair let out a long breath and said what was in his mind. The way he saw it, what purpose was there at this point in picking and choosing his words. “I didn’t think of it that way until just now.”

  “But that’s not really the point, is it?” Morgan said. He knew he was pushing. He didn’t just want his brother to get it, he wanted him to regret it. “All Mom did was post one of her short little deals about what Christmas meant to her and how happy it made her.” He stared hard at his brother. “I get you waving your hands across your magic keyboard and thoughtlessly posting something on one of your friend’s pages. I personally wouldn’t do it. I happen to think more of my friends than that. I sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you did on Mom’s page. Hell, I still have a hard time believing you did.” He took in a long and deep breath. “You took her simple good wishes to her friends and family and made it into something she didn’t deserve. Not from you, not from anyone. You trivialized it and worse, you politicized it. I didn’t…couldn’t understand why you would do it then and I still don’t.” He sighed. It was the damn truth. He still didn’t have a clue what might have motivated his brother. But he’d said what he came here to. Now all he wanted to do was get on the road. He had a long drive ahead of him and the sooner he got going the quicker he’d get there.

  “I’ve got to get going,” he said, his voice low. He knew it probably sounded the same way he felt…worn.

  “Okay,” Blair followed him to the door.

  “I can wait if you want to grab some things and come with me.”

  “It would probably be better if I hung out around here.” But he was suddenly tempted. More so than he would have thought.

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Morgan said. He was never going to see thirty again and he was suddenly feeling every single one of those years. “I can’t think of anything that would make Mom happier than if you were to show up and make this Christmas one that would put the last one in the shade.” Knowing nothing else he said could or would move his brother at this point, he gave the idiot a quick hug then made his way out the door and down the short hallway to the stairs.

  Once he was back in his car, Morgan shot a quick glance up at Blair’s apartment as he began the turn that would lead him out of the parking lot. He wasn’t at all surprised to see his brother standing at the window. Out of a long held habit and in the hope he’d given him something to think about, he hit his horn and lifted his arm out the window for a quick wave. When he caught the sudden movement in the window he knew Blair had seen his farewell…and waved in return. It gave him hope.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “It looks beautiful,” Carrie said as she took a step back for a better view of the large Christmas tree filled with sparkling lights and now also heavy with hundreds of ornaments.

  “It really does,” Fran said as she walked up to stand next to her. They’d all gathered at the Marshall Street house to decorate the tree that Cade and Court had set up earlier in the day.

  “This is exactly where my mother and father set up our tree every Christmas Eve,” Charlie said from where she was sitting next to Casey. “We could hear them from our rooms,” she said quietly as the memories flowed more easily than they had in the past. She knew it helped that she was surrounded by family who understood their importance.

  “I’m surprised all of you staye
d in your own rooms,” Casey said as she handed her aunt another cookie from the plate they’d brought in earlier for everyone.

  “Oh, but we didn’t,” Charlie said with a hint of a smile on her face. She missed her sisters dearly but the memories of all they had shared throughout their lives now brought her quiet joy as they hadn’t been able to before…when the loss of their presence in her life had been so new and like a sharp-edged knife pressed against her soul. She looked around the room. Thought of how pleased her sisters would be to know their daughters as well as her own had come together and made their homes here. Not just home in Burlington. But with each other, more like sisters themselves than the cousins they were. She let out a quiet sigh. And she knew in that moment as surely as she knew the moon would gaze down upon them all from its place in the heavens…they did know. How could they not?

  “Whose room did you usually end up in?” Carrie asked her mother as she watched the play of emotions pass over her face. But she didn’t see the sadness that had for so long accompanied her mother’s memories.

  Charlie smiled as she looked at her daughter. “In one or the other, I’m not certain there was ever any thought to which of our rooms we ended up in. It didn’t really matter as long as we were together.”

  Casey leaned over and laid her head on her aunt’s shoulder where it had always been welcomed for as long as she could remember. “Mom used to tell us about how you would get up on Christmas morning and race down the stairs. That no matter how early you were up your mother and father were always down there first…waiting for you.”

  “They were,” Charlie said, her voice soft with the memories that still hurt but no longer broke her heart in two. “And not just waiting for us but wide awake and such happy smiles on their faces. We were so blessed.”

  “You were loved,” Mary said quietly.

  “Oh, yes. We were and felt it in everything our parents said and did. Considering all the trouble we used to get into I’ve come to admire their perseverance as well. It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “It’s hard to think of any of you being troublemakers,” Fran said as she leaned against her husband. She looked over at Carrie when her spurt of laughter filled the room. “What do you know?”

  “I know my mother,” Carrie said not bothering to disguise the amusement in her voice. “It’s not difficult at all for me to imagine how she was as a child.” She gave Fran a knowing look then turned to include her other cousins in it as well. “And all I have to do to paint Aunt Leslie and Aunt Miri into that picture along with her is to remember how the four of us used to be when we were kids. We may be all staid and proper now but back then we were something of a handful.”

  “I’ve never been staid and proper in my entire life,” Casey said but her laughter spilled over as she winked at her husband.

  “I can vouch for that,” Pete said easily returning his wife’s look. “Half the time I catch the kids up to some sort of trouble she’s involved,” he said shaking his head at some of his own memories. Ones he wouldn’t trade away for the world. “More often than not she’s in the lead, and usually the instigator of their antics.”

  “I can believe that,” Carrie said. She looked over at Mary and Fran. “Remember when she convinced us there was treasure buried in Nanno’s backyard because she found a couple of quarters in the dirt? Had us digging holes all over back there until our fathers came out. We were lucky they couldn’t stop laughing over it otherwise we probably would have been grounded again.”

  “They thought it was funny because it was your father who buried the quarters out there in the first place to keep us busy,” Mary said dryly looking in Fran’s direction. Their Aunt Charlie’s brother-in-law had been a frequent visitor along with the rest of the family. His sense of fun had been well known. As was his stanch belief that if you laughed it negated the ability to punish.

  “Daddy knew how to keep us busy,” Fran said with a smile. She eased away from Cade and walked over to sit next to her aunt. “He loved our visits here so much.” She leaned against her aunt knowing how much they both missed the man she spoke of. “He used to say he was lucky to have more family than he had time to visit.”

  Charlie closed her eyes and let the good memories in. Her husband’s brother had been a fine man. Almost as good a man as her Jason. “I can still remember when your father and Uncle Jason claimed they could get the new swing set I bought for you kids up and ready to play on in a couple of hours.” She looked over at Pete’s groan. Casey’s husband had three children from his first marriage and as such was nobody’s fool. “I imagine you have an idea of how this story goes?” she said and the twinkle of laughter in her voice went all the way to her eyes.

  “I do, indeed,” Pete said. “Casey bought a new one for the kids last summer. She figured with my little helpers it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “I figured wrong,” Casey said as she studied her fingers as if the answers to all the questions in the universe could be found there.

  “Yes, well so did Jason and Fran’s father,” Charlie said. “I can still remember looking out my kitchen window through the course of that morning. And there were all you kids, sitting there quietly, waiting for the miracle you probably figured it was going to take to see something resembling a swing set.”

  Carrie felt her husband’s arm slide around her waist. Felt his quiet laughter at what they all knew was coming. This was a story that had been told many times over the years by all their mothers. And each time they heard it, it was like hearing it for the very first time. “Your father was wonderful at a lot of things but this wasn’t one of them,” Carrie said as she gave Fran a knowing look. “And it isn’t surprising, he and my father were two peas of the same pod, so to speak,” she said pleased at the laughter she’d been able to draw out of her cousin.

  “Remember the looks on their faces when Jake and Jack came through the back door?” Fran asked, laughing at the memory. The sudden arrival of Casey and Carrie’s older brothers couldn’t have been coincidental by any stretch of anyone’s imagination but it had changed the gloomy atmosphere within moments.

  “I thought our fathers were seriously considering kissing their feet,” Carrie said dryly. “I’m not certain they cared about being showed up at that point.”

  “Obviously the two of them had been given their instructions,” Casey said as she gave her Aunt Charlie’s hand a knowing squeeze. “They walked right over and began studying the directions and got to work.”

  “That in itself was a task considering Dad and Uncle Jason had pieces of the swing set spread out all over the yard,” Fran said. She could still see it when she closed her eyes.

  “It was that all right,” Carrie said, remembering how their fathers had become the stewards in charge of making sure each step was completed as detailed in the pile of papers they themselves had anguished over. “In large part, we ended up with that swing set because of our brothers.”

  “I think it was all those years of messing around with their Legos and Errector sets,” Mary said thoughtfully. “None of my brothers except Dave were any good at them and he was even younger than we were then.” She gave her aunt a knowing look. “Come to think of it, that could be why none of them showed up to help.”

  “Honey, I love your brothers dearly. But not a one of them knew a screwdriver from a wrench.”

  “Odds are, they still don’t,” Mary said dryly in such a way that it sent the rest of her cousins and their husbands into peels of laughter. Each knew her brothers and understood both the literal and figurative meaning behind her words.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Court said once he could talk again. “Dave has damn near renovated that house of his all by himself. Once he had someone come in to take care of the major electrical and plumbing work, he got unbelievably territorial about the place.”

  “You’re right, of all of them, he most definitely knows the difference between the two,” Mary said with obvious pride in her younger brother
. “But back then while we were waiting to see if the magic swing set was ever going to materialize, because honestly that’s what we were thinking that it was going to take…magic,” she said with a wink at her aunt before continuing. “Dave would have loved to have helped but he was only what, four or five at the time?” she asked, looking at her aunt for her memories from that long ago time.

  “About that,” Charlie said knowing the age didn’t really matter. It was the shared memory of something special that did.

  Fran looked around the room, took in all the happy faces as she thought of how the conversation had begun. Then she looked at the Christmas tree they’d all just spent the last hours decorating. She looked back at her aunt. She had so many wonderful memories because of her…because of the family she was a part of here in Burlington. “Aunt Charlie,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, sweetie,” Charlie said, turning to the only daughter of her husband’s brother.

  “All the wonderful memories you’ve shared with us of when you were growing up here with your parents…” she let her voice drift off, nodded slightly towards the tree, waited until she saw the understanding in her aunt’s expression before she continued. “I can’t help but believe your mother and father would be happy to know you and your sisters,” she closed her eyes for a moment. She missed her father and uncle so much. Especially at this time of the year that the two of them both loved so much. When she opened them again she saw the shared sense of loss in both Carrie and Casey’s eyes as they waited for her to finish. “And not just them but Daddy, Uncle Jason, and all our uncles, how they made those same kind of wonderful memories for us to have and share with our children. Just as you’ve shared yours with us.” She watched as her aunt stood up, shaken but strong as she’d always been even when she’d retreated from all of them for a time. Then in the space of mere moments she was held close, held tight as she remembered from her childhood. And the same scent of lilacs as she smelled now would forever be entrenched in her memories.