Page 58 of Falls From Grace
The rest of the day crawled. The three of them only took up one small corner of the big dining table, but they all played their parts in making things merry. When Savannah put Tucker down for his nap, she stayed and cuddled next to his soft, warm body for a while, immensely grateful for the love she did have in her life.
That thought was what stirred her to go back downstairs where Lane was sitting on the couch, an old Christmas rom com playing quietly.
“I never get this stuff,” Lane said after a while as they sat and watched together. “Does Christmas really look like that for some people?”
On screen, a large family of attractive white people in neat sweaters were dining around a loaded table, laughing and smiling, clearly all adoring each other while beautifully tasteful Christmas decorations lit the scene.
“It’s not how I’ve ever experienced it,” Savannah agreed. Once, when she was a kid, her mom had served up yogurt as a Christmas treat. There’d been barely any food in the house for weeks, but she’d hoarded it so they’d have something special. Neither Savannah nor her younger siblings had mentioned that she’d kept it so long that the yogurt had spoiled.
She considered Lane beside her, the basic facts she knew about their life.
“Do you ever talk to your family?” She wasn’t sure if this was out of bounds, but Lane only shrugged, their eyes on the television.
“Nah,” they said. “Not since I was thirteen.”
Savannah’s heart ached a little.
“Well, thank you,” she said, “for being here with me. Fucking Christmas, you know?”
“Fucking Christmas,” they agreed.
Chapter Twenty
Brynn stared out the tiny window of the plane. She thought of the flight she’d taken to Nashville, not the unspeakable luxury of the private jet so much as the press of Savannah’s body alongside her own, Tucker nestled warmly in her lap. She blinked back tears. She wondered if it would have made a difference if she’d just said it then, turned to Savannah and told her, I made a stupid mistake, Noah and I are just friends, please understand how much you mean to me. She could only imagine Savannah’s face falling, but maybe, if-
It was useless to try to rewrite things.
To her immense surprise, her little brother Stephen was at the arrivals gate to meet her. His tall, rangy frame had filled out and instead of the little nerd she still thought of him as, he looked like the adult, physician and dad that he was. She tried to noogie him anyway.
“Little bro.”
“Middle sis.” He hugged her. “Man, it’s good to see you.”
It was nice to have a warm welcome and they chatted easily enough on the drive to her parent’s home. The ease was due mostly to Brynn keeping up a stream of questions about his job, his wife and his young daughter, and trying not to mind that his return questions were sparse and non-specific. She kept her own answers vague anyway.
She followed him through the door and was greeted in the entrance hall by her mom, who hugged her uncharacteristically tightly.
“My baby girl,” her mom’s voice sounded thick. “It’s good to have you home.”
Her mom looked put together as always, her thick dark hair where nary a gray dared to show its face, her features kept carefully smooth with subtle surgical nips and tucks and a skilful application of Botox. Her eyes were the same as Brynn’s - dark and expressive - and Brynn caught a flicker of worry in them as she held her daughter at arm’s length to examine her.
Brynn knew she could make things easier on herself by making the effort to dress less casually and more femininely, but the stubborn streak within her wouldn’t let her deviate from her favorite jeans and flannel for her trip home. She was pretty sure her mom was wearing Chanel. For once, however, her mother didn’t comment on her appearance.
“Hello, Brynn.” Both her parents were tall, but her father was, at sixty-eight, still a towering presence, with his neat salt-and-pepper hair and gray eyes surrounded in stately lines. Her father was never a hugger and so Brynn was completely taken aback when he pulled her into a stiff embrace.
“Hey Dad.” Honestly, was someone dying?
The living room was tastefully decorated with a large Christmas tree and beautiful wreaths hanging in the picture windows, looking out on the lush, neatly tended garden. Waiting to greet her were her sister Anna, both her siblings’ spouses and the three kids who were beautifully dressed but currently looking to be engaged in all out war as they squabbled over a small set of toy squirrels. Stephen stepped in to sort it out so Anna could come and give her an awkward hug hello. It was Anna who Brynn found most intimidating; her older sister was a younger, more disapproving version of their mother, and the most likely to deliberately show Brynn up.
“Still the same old Brynn.” She smiled thinly as she looked Brynn up and down. Anna was - on vacation, at home, with family - wearing an outfit that likely cost about three times the price Brynn would get for her car. Her hair was expertly styled, and Brynn detected a new, intense smoothness between her brows. Anna was a Marshall through and through: never show a chink in your perfection.
“Sweetheart.” The commanding voice came from an armchair by the window and she suddenly realized her grandmother, Thea, was watching her from just out of the action. Thea was almost ninety, but her posture remained ramrod straight, her bearing regal and her eyes piercing in her small, soft, wrinkled face. Brynn walked over, intending to bend down and kiss her cheek, but Thea had already struggled to her feet. She felt like a frail little bird in Brynn’s embrace.
Thea was in every functional way the head of the family. Her father’s mother was an early pioneer as a woman in medicine and had reached heights previously only reserved for men. She was the driving force for every member of the family to study medicine and it had been Thea that Brynn had feared most when she dropped out of med school. She’d stayed away from home for three years, battling for her sobriety and trying to find her way without her family’s meddling.
When she had finally faced home, it had been as miserable as she’d expected, only as it turned out, Thea had been the least explosive. And yet - in the face of her father’s anger, her mother’s blind insistence that she must return to complete her studies and her siblings’ discomfort at someone not toeing the party line - it had been Thea’s quiet disappointment that had stung the most.
Now, feeling the frailty of the elderly lady, Brynn worried that she would die disappointed with her. Thea, though, was smiling at her.
