Naturally, it was Gunnar's idea. Something he came up with on the tour bus about fifteen minutes from them finally being back in Nashville again. Later, Scarlett wouldn't even be able to recount how it went from casual conversation about what they were going to do over the short break from the tour to them planning a party at Gunnar's house on Christmas Eve. In truth, she probably agreed because she didn't really want to do anything for the holiday. It would be her first without her mother and even though their relationship had been - well, what it was, they'd always mailed each other gifts. And on Christmas her mother would call and they'd talk, or rather, Scarlett would listen as her momma prattled on about this and that, updating her on all the latest gossip in Natchez. This year would be different. And she didn't particularly feel like spending all of her few precious days off with her uncle either. It'd be his and Rayna's first Christmas together in God only knew how many years and Scarlett didn't feel much like being the fifth wheel of the Jaymes/Conrad/Claybourne family. And, if she were completely honest with herself, she didn't feel much like spending the holiday with Caleb either. At least not if they were going to be arguing like they had been every other time she came home from the tour. So when Gunnar started rambling on about a white elephant gift exchange she found herself nodding. And then wondering how it became more desirable to spend Christmas with her two exes and their roommate than with her boyfriend.
"Awesome," Gunnar stood, swaying a little as the bus came to a stop. "Invite Caleb and I'll ask Erin if she wants to come." He gave her that familiar lopsided grin before ambling towards the door.
"Uh, sure," she muttered, watching him walk away. "One big happy family."
Of course Gunnar came up with a ridiculous party idea, made even more so by the theme of the white elephant exchange. All gifts were to be from the As Seen on TV brand. Gunnar announced his plans at breakfast the day after he'd gotten home. "Gag gifts," he said excitedly.
Will thought it was a great idea and invited Kevin straightaway and then volunteered to barbeque, regardless of the weather because, as he put it, "it ain't Christmas without a slab of ribs."
Avery was decidedly more unsure about the party. "You don't even have a tree."
"I'll get one today," Gunnar shrugged. "Me and Will."
I don't know," Avery said. "It'll be Cadence's first Christmas."
"Yeah, and who better to spend it with than people who love her?" Gunnar said around a mouthful of cereal.
Gunnar and Will easily overruled his objections and went ahead with the party plans and he had to admit that Gunnar had a point, but his daughter would only have one first Christmas. Ideally, Avery would have liked for her to be spending it at her house with her parents, but that seemed highly unlikely. Despite having gotten an invitation from his parents to travel to Ohio for the holidays, he had chosen to stay in Nashville. He'd briefly thought about inviting Juliette to go to Ohio with him, but squashed the idea, knowing it would be awkward for everybody except their daughter. He hadn't been home for Christmas himself since his freshman year in college and he couldn't imagine sitting in his grandparent's house visiting relatives he hadn't seen in years with his almost ex-wife and infant daughter by his side.
He suspected Juliette wasn't doing anything for Christmas since it wasn't her favorite holiday, especially with Emily out of town to visit her family. Juliette had once told him she hated the holiday and had recounted several stories from her childhood explaining why she flat out refused to celebrate it as an adult. He remembered wanting to wipe the pain from her eyes along with her tears when she told him about Christmases with no gifts and more times than not, no food.
Their first Christmas together, she'd been suffering a resurgence of morning sickness that lasted most of the day. Her holiday meal had consisted of toast and gingerale and his a ham sandwich. They'd snuggled up in bed and watched a Law & Order marathon until they both fell asleep. They were newlyweds and lying in bed beside her with one hand on her belly while their daughter shifted under his palm; he couldn't have cared less about tradition and gifts. This year, the second of their marriage, he wasn't even sure they'd be seeing each other.
He had insisted that Emily be the one to take Cadence to visit her mother at the treatment center the first few times, but after she hinted (strongly, multiple times) that he should drive up and see Juliette, Avery relented. He had to know if it was real, if Juliette had really changed. At that point, several weeks into her postpartum depression treatment, he had almost no reason to believe she was faking, but he'd learned the hard way with Juliette that what was real and what he hoped for weren't always congruent. However unlikely, if she'd only admitted she was sick in an attempt to get back in his good graces, it was time to proceed with their divorce no matter what agreement he'd made with her. He and Cadence couldn't stay with Gunnar forever and as far as his finances were concerned, he couldn't wait any longer for Juliette to spin the news of their divorce to her advantage.
So the fourth time the baby was to visit with her, he drove up himself. For most of the hour long journey, he'd gripped the steering wheel so tightly his hands cramped and he had to force his fingers to relax. He was trying to prepare himself for the worst, whatever that might be. He glanced in the rearview to check on Cadence, but for once his daughter slept soundly in her car seat, one arm flung over her head in a position that was completely Juliette. Seeing his daughter at peace eased his mind a little and he considered what Emily had reported to him about Juliette's steady progress. She could be okay, he thought, allowing a spark of hope to germinate in his mind. Juliette being okay was the best possible outcome for Cadence, regardless of what happened between the two of them. For his sweet baby girl, who despite everything was happy and friendly and absolutely the best thing he'd ever done in his life, he hoped that Juliette's recovery was the real deal and not another game she was playing.
Her eyes flooded with tears when she saw him standing in the doorway of her room instead of her assistant. Cadence, who had woken up from her nap when he got her out of the car, immediately started kicking her feet and smiled around the two fingers she was gumming when she saw her mother. He set the carrier down on a table and stepped back so Juliette could unbuckle their daughter and pick her up.
"Hey, Cady Jo. How's my baby girl?" Juliette placed kisses on the baby's face and forehead. She tucked the baby into her side and turned her attention to him, wiping away tears before she spoke. "Thank you, Avery. For trusting me with her."
It turned out that he was the one who bailed that time. Halfway through the session, he'd excused himself to step outside in the hallway. He couldn't sit there watching Juliette play patty cake with Cadence on the stiff couch in her room at a treatment facility with a therapist supervising her interactions with their baby. It wasn't fair. It wasn't how things were supposed to be.
He drove the hour back to Nashville, silent tears streaming down his face with their daughter in the back, babbling to herself, making noises that sounded dangerously close to "mama."
From that day on, he hadn't really been able to consider their divorce without feeling like an ass. It didn't seem fair to press her about it when she was at the treatment facility working on getting better and so he put it off. And then when she finally returned to Nashville, he found himself still unable to bring it up though he knew they needed to have the conversation. Eventually, she was the one who mentioned it, saying that she would agree to do whatever he wanted. To that, all he could do was nod. He didn't know. He wanted his family back. He wanted to not feel the gaping loss of everything that had been the two of them. He wanted his wife, whole and healthy and beautiful. He wanted certainty that she wouldn't crash again, burning him to ashes in her wake.
Of course Gunnar had called her the day after they got home, asking her to bring something sweet for the party. And Scarlett agreed to do it because she had nothing else to do while waiting for Caleb to come home from work. She'd already cleaned the house from top to bottom and then cleaned some more, until her fingers were raw despite her yellow gloves and she had gotten a little woozy from the smell of bleach.
She thumbed through her momma's handwritten cookbook, looking through her cookie recipes. It was one of the only items she'd really wanted to get from her mother's house when she and Deacon had sorted through her mother's things. Baking with her mother was one Christmas memory that Scarlett cherished. She'd been 10 and her mother had been fresh off the farm that year and as close to normal as she would ever be. They had baked batch after batch of cookies, both of them pinching off pieces of dough and popping them in their mouths when they thought the other wasn't looking. Her mother had laughed at their broken gingerbread men and they sang Christmas songs and danced around with kitchen, dusting the floor with spilled flour and sugar. They'd also made thumbprint clues, which were Scarlett's favorite cookies of all. She remembered pressing her thumb into the balls of dough and her mother filling the holes she'd made with strawberry jam.
"You don't ever want to put too much into it," her mother had said. "Too much and it'll be out of balance. Not enough and you'll just feel cheated. Just enough. Always just enough."
That year had been so much better than any other Christmas Scarlett had ever had at home. The next year, her mother spent the entire holiday complaining bitterly about the new album Rayna had just come out with and how she could have had a real shot back in the day if she hadn't been saddled with a baby. Scarlett gave her a wide berth because her momma could be mean and handsy when she wasn't happy, only to apologize or shift blame later. She'd spent most of her teenage holidays with Zoey's family and although they were wonderful and made sure she was always included, it was embarrassing to be the only non-family member at their house on Christmas.
It was a relief to go off to college and spend Christmases on campus. That first year she was single and had gone to Nashville to visit her uncle for the holidays, but by her sophomore year it was her and Avery eating Chinese take-out in his dorm room.
As soon as they got their first apartment, she'd started baking cookies for Christmas like she had with her mother years ago. Avery had always been partial to her gingersnaps, even though she knew his real favorite were the elaborately decorated sugar cookies his mother carefully wrapped and mailed to him in a care package every year. Scarlett thought Mrs. Barkley had missed her calling as a baker and she marveled over those cookies: Christmas trees with ornaments and tinsel, snowmen with red scarves and black hats. She knew she couldn't compete with those so she made the easier gingersnaps for him, just regular drop cookies instead of gingerbread cutouts of men that usually broke off at the arms. She knew Avery wouldn't care about the shapes and he hadn't, and she noticed that he ate the cookies in pairs, one of hers and one of his mother's, until they were both gone.
Gunnar loved Russian tea cakes. The one Christmas they'd lived together and she told him she was baking, he specifically asked her to make them because they were the cookies his grandmother had made when he was younger. It was a rare thing for him to talk about his childhood and even though Scarlett had never made them before, she Googled a recipe and doubled it. It had turned out to be a good thing she'd made extra because Gunnar's entire face lit up when he saw the cookies and he almost choked to death on powdered sugar when he stuffed two cookies in his mouth at once. She'd had to jump up from the kitchen table and pound him on the back until his throat was clear.
Scarlett laughed at the memory and thought better of baking those again. It would probably be better for the health and safety of her bandmate that she made something else for the party.
She'd called Will to see if he had any preference and his response had been, "Anything with sugar, darlin'," which made Scarlett smile over the phone and look forward to seeing him again. She turned a page in the cookbook and considered her mother's recipe for chocolate chip, which were her uncle's favorite, but weren't particularly Christmassy.
She'd glanced at the counter, the bags of sugar and flour waiting on her to get started. Room temperature eggs, like mother said was best to use for baking. Vanilla, walnuts, and cinnamon.
It had been late the night before when Scarlett got home and Caleb had already been asleep when she slipped into bed. She'd made sure to wake up early so she could fix him breakfast. She was hoping to catch up on things but he didn't really ask her about the tour, only going on at length about his work in between chews and swallows. This or that surgery, patient such and such. She barely had time to mention the party and was surprised that he immediately agreed to going. The more he talked the less she felt like eating and by the time he left for work, she'd already pulled her gloves on to start cleaning. They weren't arguing, which was an improvement, but things between them were stale. Like the baking powder she'd tested on her tongue to see if it was fresh. Nothing there but an unpleasant aftertaste. And she didn't know how it had gotten to be that way or if it was even worth trying to turn around.
Hours later, she was still surprised he wanted to go to the party. She half wished - no, she did wish he would have said no. After Gunnar's call, she'd texted Caleb to ask what kind of cookies he wanted and he hadn't gotten back to her. She was still paging through recipes when her phone finally chimed.
"Don't care. Whatever you make is fine," the text read.
Scarlett glanced at the clock and sighed. It was past time to make a decision and she flipped the worn pages of the cookbook and ran her fingers over the partially faded loops of her mother's handwriting until she found the recipe she wanted.
By the time Christmas came around, Juliette had been back in Nashville for a few weeks. She was still going to therapy with Dr. Kitley and usually had Cadence at her house a couple times a week. Avery trusted her enough that she no longer needed to be supervised but usually, Emily would take the baby over and stay for a while. It was easier to let Emily deal with it and that's why Avery had allowed to her drop the baby off most of the time. Driving over and staying just long enough to unload the baby from the car somehow made him feel worse than he had when Juliette had left and he was taking care of Cadence by himself. It was easier to be angry when she'd been gone, avoiding them and partying and doing God knows what else while on Luke's tour. It was so much harder to walk in the house that they'd shared and see her every few days. That house was still technically his home even though he hadn't lived there in months. Most of his belongings were there and he still had a key though he rarely used it. Every time he walked inside he felt haunted and he honestly didn't know how Juliette could stand to live there alone.
She opened the door and he followed her inside, shocked to see the Christmas tree in the living room. Even though it was small tree, he imagined that Bo must have brought it in because he couldn't see Juliette wrestling with it herself. There were a few neatly wrapped gifts under it as well, and he assumed they were for their daughter and maybe Emily and Bo. He didn't say anything, but when he handed her the baby she told him the tree was for Cadence. "I wanted her to have one," she said, hugging Cadence to her. "Have one here."
He didn't respond to that because they both knew what she meant. Yes, of course Gunnar had a huge tree in his living room decorated like it should have been at Rockefeller Center and Cadence had several gifts underneath - really, a ridiculous amount for a baby. Realistically, Avery knew it shouldn't have mattered. Cadence was only months old and wouldn't remember any of it. But he hated that her very first Christmas was going to be that way, with two trees at two separate houses.
"It's nice," he said. "I'm glad you put it up."
He watched as Juliette lifted Cadence up in the air and brought her back down to rub their noses together. Cadence loved it, giggling around the two fingers in her mouth and opening her eyes wide when she was up in the air and closing them when Juliette brought her back down.
"Hey, Cady Jo." She lifted her in the air again and then sputtered when the baby's drool fell on her cheek. "Wow," she said, wiping her face. "You just drooled all over mama, baby girl." She looked up at Avery. "I think somebody's getting a tooth." She pulled Cadence's hand from her face to peer in her mouth. "You getting a tooth, huh?"
"I think she is," Avery said. He glanced at the floor and finally looked back up at her. "I'll be back around 5." He'd turned to go when she called his name. "Yeah," he said, spinning around to face her. She hesitated to speak and his eyebrows furrowed in anticipation of what she was going to say.
"I know it's not my day," she said. "But do you think you could bring her by for a little while on Christmas? Or Christmas Eve if…"
"I will," he agreed immediately and was surprised when she exhaled as if she'd been holding her breath. "You honestly thought I'd say no?"
"I wasn't sure," she said. "I thought you might already have plans or something."
"Actually," he said, the words spilling out before he could think to stop them. "Gunnar's having a gift exchange on Christmas Eve. You think you might want to come?"
A look of shock passed across her face and she glanced at the baby, who'd returned her fingers to her mouth, before looking back at him. "I - sure. I'd love to."
"All right then," he said with a nod. "I'll see you later."
She took their daughter's drool covered hand in her own and held it so they could wave together. "Bye-bye, Daddy."
He waved and quickly turned around, escaping outside before the ghosts of the house could pin him down.
Gunnar watched as Will pegged a nail into the wall. "I want to put it on the record that I think the mistletoe is a bad idea."
Will turned around and faced him. "Why? It's tradition."
"Dude, if Avery and Juliette get caught under that thing, the party will be over. And he'll probably blame me for it."
Will scoffed and turned back around, admiring his handiwork. "Nobody gets caught under mistletoe unless they want to." He glanced back at Gunnar's skeptical face. "Well, we could move it to-" he looked around and then pointed to the entryway of the kitchen. "Right there."
"No way," Gunnar said. "Everybody's gonna be coming in and out of the kitchen. Anybody could walk through there with anybody! I could end up underneath it with…" He trailed off and Will turned to fix him with a stare.
"With who? Kevin?" He barked a laugh. "You're not his type. And like I said, nobody gets caught under mistletoe unless they want to." He patted the sprig once more. "Now I gotta go see about these ribs." He slapped Gunnar's shoulder as he walked past. "This was a great idea, buddy. It's gonna be a great night."
"The party was a good idea," Gunnar muttered. He shook his head at the mistletoe. "That's gonna be trouble."