“Where are my manners?” she asked. “Come in, come in.” We didn’t need the formal invitation—we’d been in the house before—but we nodded politely and stepped inside, pulling the door closed behind us.
My mother reached out a hand for our coats, then deposited them on a wooden coat stand by the door. “We’ve given Pennebaker the night off since the family’s all here, so just make yourselves at home.”
I found it remarkable she’d arranged a dinner for so many without him. It either meant she’d cooked, which would be unfortunate, or she’d hired in the food. I crossed my fingers for the latter.
My mother smiled and clapped her hands together as she took in our ensembles, at least until she saw the galoshes on my feet. Her smile faded quickly.
I held up the straps of the heels in my hand. “Don’t worry; I brought backups.”
“Whew,” she said. “I was afraid you were going to ruin that dress with those shoes. If we’re calling them that. Plastic mud clompers, more like.”
She disappeared into the hallway while Ethan chuckled beside me.
“Plastic mud clompers,” he repeated.
I made a vague sound, using his body as a brace while I traded galoshes for pointy-toed stilettos. When the trade was done, I’d gained three inches in height. Still not enough to be at eye level with Ethan, but a good deal closer.
My mother appeared again with champagne flutes in hand and gave one to each of us.
I took a heartening sip before noticing the goofy expression on my mother’s face.
Please do not glamour my mother, I silently requested.
I have no need to glamour, Sentinel. I’m naturally this charming.
I kept the commentary to myself.
We followed my mother into the house as five children—three boys and two girls—ran past us, toys in hand.
“My nieces and nephews,” I explained.
“And Elizabeth is expecting a third. We’re just in the sitting room,” she added, and we followed her through the front of the house to the main living area.
As we made the journey, I found a house utterly different from the one I was used to. I knew my mother had planned to redecorate—she’d been moving out the old furniture during my last visit. But the change was remarkable. The architecture was still the same—concrete, like the exterior—but she’d brought in furniture and décor that made it feel warm and inviting, not the cold and clinical shell it had been before. No small feat for a concrete box of a house.
The sitting room, especially, was completely different, now full of rugs and brightly colored furniture, ten-foot plants, and a bevy of family portraits. And on that comfy furniture lounged a bevy of Merits.
“Merit!” squealed the youngest in the family, the nearly two-year-old Olivia, my sister Charlotte’s daughter. She was adorably dressed in a green velvet dress that matched her mother’s, her hair in pigtails that poked from each side of her head.
She ran haltingly toward me and held up her hands, clenching her fists, demanding that I pick her up.
“Hello, Miss Olivia,” I said, putting my flute on a nearby cocktail table and propping her onto my hip. “You are so heavy! How did you get so heavy?”
“I grow,” she said simply.
“I think you weigh as much as your mother does.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment to me, little sister.” Charlotte, wearing a green sheath, her dark hair cut into a short, pixie cut, kissed my cheek. “How are you?”
“I’m good. And it looks like Olivia’s good.”
“I’m two,” Olivia said, holding up the requisite number of fingers.
“That is really old,” I said. “You’re a big girl now.”
Olivia nodded gravely, then took a shy peek at the man who stood beside me. Charlotte was much less subtle.
“Oh my God, you are gorgeous!” Charlotte exclaimed. She had a cocktail in one hand and, suddenly, Ethan’s arm in the other. “I told her to nab you while she could.”
Ethan beamed at me. “She nabbed,” he said, apparently delighted by the familial attention.
“Maybe now she’ll finally trust that I’m right about everything,” Charlotte said. “She had a very difficult time with that growing up.”
“She still has a difficult time with it. I’m nearly always right, and she seems to forget that fact rather often. It’s unfortunate, really.”
“I bet,” Charlotte said.
“Where’s Major?” I asked. Major Corkberger was Charlotte’s heart-surgeon husband.
“On call, of course, as usual. He’s a surgeon,” she added to Ethan, as if the news was confidential. Ethan nodded politely.