I Want You Back (Want You #1)(110)
I’d lived my entire life clueless about family holiday expectations. My folks and brother showed up wherever we were playing Thanksgiving week because there wasn’t a break in the hockey schedule. Since the rest of my family would be scattered—Ward and Selka, Rowan and Calder, Walker and Trinity and their son were traveling to Detroit to watch Jensen play; Annika would be on the East Coast for Axl’s back-to-back games; my uncle Monte and aunt Priscilla, Ash and Dallas would be with Priscilla’s family down South—that left my immediate family. Now my immediate family included Lucy’s sister, Lindsey, their mother, Jill, and her companion, Benny. So bighearted Lucy had invited everyone to our place for the big meal. A meal that she passed off to me when she had to deal with both Lennox and Annika being gone from LI at the same time.
My mom volunteered to help, but dammit, I had my pride. I’d been taking cooking classes for a few years. How hard could it be? Plus, I had Mimi as my trusty helper.
But we ended up staying late at Lakeside on Wednesday night, and by the time we returned from the grocery stores—which had taken two hours because who knew all the stores would be that busy?—it was after eight P.M. and we hadn’t cracked open a single can for pumpkin pie.
The kitchen disaster started when Mimi dropped an entire bag of flour on the floor from counter level.
We burned the pies, filling the kitchen with black smoke that set off the smoke detectors.
A can of whipped cream spontaneously blew up in the refrigerator.
I realized I didn’t have a pan large enough to roast the gigantic turkey, and the turkey was still mostly frozen.
We forgot to buy potatoes. How had that happened?
Lucy came home to find me and Mimi sitting on the kitchen floor, eating raw chocolate chip cookie dough for supper because that was the one thing we hadn’t fucked up.
Did she lecture me?
Nope.
Did she sigh and take over food prep?
Nope.
She grabbed a spoon and joined us.
In that moment, my life was absolutely perfect.
In the hour following our cookie dough binge, Lucy called five shelters, found the one that needed volunteers, ordered an astronomical amount of food from a dozen different carryout places and hired a delivery service to pick it up and drop it off in the morning.
Our family dinner plans changed. The guests who thought they were dining with us ended up helping us serve food at the shelter. Then afterward, we had everyone back to our place for pizza, ice cream, homemade cookies and games. We’d ended up with extra guests—Gabi, whose parents were in Tampa with her sister Dani as she prepared for the Olympics; Simone, who had no family; Martin and Verily, my former neighbors from Snow Village; Flynn, one of the coaches at Lakeside, and his wife, Suzie; and a surprise visit from my Lund cousins from Duluth, Zosia and Zach, who were flying out of Minneapolis the next morning for a fishing vacation in Florida.
Everyone said it’d been the best Thanksgiving they could remember and they couldn’t wait to do it again next year.
A family tradition had to start somewhere, and for once I’d been a part of starting something.
Sunday afternoon we got to meet the newest Lund when we dropped a meal off for Lennox and Brady. Seeing JW . . . I got a little melancholy. I hadn’t been around during Mimi’s baby years and hated that I’d missed so much.
And Mimi, who’d declared “I never want you to have another baby” earlier in the month, completely changed her mind upon seeing her new baby cousin. She announced she’d break the pinkie promise she’d made with Calder that they’d run away if either Lucy or Rowan got pregnant.
Kids. Never a dull moment with them.
The other good thing that came out of the visit to Lennox and Brady’s was meeting Lennox’s best friend Kiley, who was a counselor and a social worker. Lucy spilled her guts to Kiley about the other counselor’s diagnosis of Mimi, which spoke volumes of how much it’d bothered her, because she never brought strangers into our business. Kiley said she’d be happy to observe Mimi in a couple of different social situations and give us her honest opinion.
Soon after, we helped Kiley out with a holiday party for the kids in her program. She attended one of Mimi’s hockey games and a practice, plus she and her husband and their toddler daughter had dinner with us. Lucy and I were relieved when Kiley assured us that Mimi was exactly as she appeared: a kid adjusting to changes in her life and using that to her advantage—just like any other normal kid. To show our gratitude for Kiley’s help, I gifted her vouchers for both Lakeside and the bowling alley for her program so she had options for the kids’ activities.
Nails skated down my arm, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Whatcha thinking about so hard, Daddy-o?”
I glanced at Lucy, lying in bed next to me. “If the next four weeks will be as busy as the past month.”
“The holidays are their own kind of crazy. Add in December being birthday month for Mimi, and I’m facing end-of-the-year wrap-up at LI . . . for us, December is extra crispy crazy.”
“Extra crispy crazy?” I smiled at her. “You’ve got fried chicken on the brain.”
“Can you blame me? My brain is fried,” she admitted with a yawn. “I mean, Mimi’s birthday party requests weren’t excessive; the build-your-own-cupcake station is getting to be standard birthday party fare. But where on earth did she get the idea for fried chicken and waffles? And a mashed potato bar?”