“We’re going to fix that,” my grandmother had said with a firm jaw and determined glint in her eye. Tilly—because god forbid I call her Grandma—was a force to be reckoned with. When she set her mind to something, it happened. And when she’d heard that I was planning to spend the first Christmas since my mom’s death alone, I’d practically seen the wheels turning in her brain.
Which was how I ended up sitting between all these gorgeous men with a bowl of popcorn in my lap and a life-sized cutout of a famous football player staring at me from the corner of the room.
“I’m not much of a cook,” I told Aunt Rebecca. “But I’ve always wanted to learn.”
She wasn’t technically my aunt, but I’d learned early on that the Wildes and Marians played fast and loose with familial endearments. I kind of liked it. I’d never had aunts or cousins, so it was fun to try it on for once. Trying it in a setting like this, though, was a bit like taking a toddler’s training wheels off and dropping him in the Tour de France.
She smiled and nodded. “It’s tough when you work as much as you do. You’ll need to make an effort to take some time out for yourself. Tilly said she worries about you. It’s one of the reasons she was desperate to go away instead of hosting the reunion in California. Not that I would have minded visiting you down in Monterey. It’s so beautiful there.”
I ignored for a moment the strange concept of Tilly worrying about me. Rebecca was right about my work schedule, and it wasn’t the first time someone in the family had mentioned it. There had been several special occasions the Marians had invited me up to San Francisco or Napa for that I’d had to decline because of a work commitment.
I hadn’t realized that being the marketing director for a regional orthodontics chain would require such long hours, but I’d been wrong. The only reason I’d been able to take time off for this trip was because I’d appealed to my bosses’ old-fashioned sense of family obligation.
But the overworking I’d been doing lately was also due to my need to take on some side projects to pay off debt my mom had left behind. The extra work was definitely a contributing factor to my stress levels peaking right now. I’d come into this trip to Aster Valley already exhausted and overwhelmed, so being among this many new people put me over the edge.
“I think I’m going to turn in early,” I said to Rebecca. “Unlesss…” I glanced over at a card table in the corner of the room, where my grandmother was playing cards with Harold, Irene, and Granny. “Unless you think that might upset Tilly? I don’t want her to think I’m avoiding everyone or being antisocial.”
Rebecca’s expression softened, and she leaned over to pat my arm. “She’ll understand. Everyone had a long day of travel to get here. Don’t forget, she and the girls came yesterday with Dante and AJ and stayed at AJ’s parents’ house. I’m sure that’s the only reason she’s still up. If she’d traveled today with the rest of us, she’d probably be heading to bed early, too.”
I thanked her and stood up, hoping to sneak out of the room as if I was just wandering to the men’s room. The last thing I wanted to do was bring attention to myself, especially since I seemed to be the first adult to call it quits.
As I headed toward the door, though, laughter broke out in the corner of the room, and my eyes strayed toward the card table again.
I’d only known my grandmother for a year or so, and I still didn’t know what to make of her. Sometimes when she smiled or lifted her eyebrow in a snarky way, she looked so much like my mother that I couldn’t help but love her. Other times, though, my feelings were… more complicated.
We’d done the ancestry DNA test because one of my mom’s bucket list wishes after learning of her terminal lung disease had been to find her birth parents. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to happen when we’d gotten our DNA matches, but I definitely hadn’t been prepared to have Tilly ignore my mom’s attempts to reach out for weeks and weeks.
When she’d finally come around, which had only happened after I’d tracked down Grandpa Wilde and he’d convinced her, Tilly had explained to my mother and me the whole story of how she’d come to put my mother up for adoption. Hearing about her unplanned pregnancy at age eighteen by a young Harold Cannon—long before he’d become a senator and fathered a United States president—and how her family had sent her off to a home for unwed mothers and taken her choices away, it was hard to resent her for any of the decisions she’d made in the past.