a/n: it's beginning to look a lot like christmas (aka like my the house of my childhood, no more finals, and the shenanigans of my seven-year-old-brother.) thanks for sticking with me. it's been a long few months. please review, tell me about yourself, tell me what i'm doing right or wrong. you're the best, and they make my day. -inez
"i have
what i have
and i am happy
i've lost
what i've lost
and i am
still
happy
-outlook"
rupi kaur
The house was the same as it had always been; slightly-cracked white paint, sweeping wrap around porches and all. It was a sort of timeless staple that made it like every other main street house in small town Southern America.
Cammie loved it all over again immediately. It was everything that was opposite of New York—everything that the city hadn't been. Warm. Welcoming. Quiet. A ladder stood next to the eves of the second-story deck, colorful bulbs half-hung.
Joe was standing out in the yard, staring up at his work. He didn't turn as her headlights cut across the front yard. He didn't even move when she got out and slammed the door.
Her steps were slow, cautious across the yard, and she thought that this was getting ridiculous—there was no way he could still be contemplating finishing the lights or calling it a night. His golden retriever trotted over to sniff her hesitantly; the last time Cammie'd been around, he'd been a puppy.
"Looks good, Joe."
He grunted his agreement, or his disagreement. He was impossible to read; he always had been.
"Why don't you call it a night? It's dark. The last thing you need is to fall off a ladder and break your neck. Then what would mom do?"
He huffed, attempting to be amused, just to please her. He was good at that. "I'm a chief investigator at the FBI. I think that I can handle hanging up Christmas lights."
Cammie thought back to a few years ago, a colder November when he'd said the same thing, then slipped off the icy ladder and dislocated a shoulder. He'd popped it back into place himself, but in her mind, her point still stood. Joe wasn't getting any younger.
She told him as much, and he scoffed.
"You'd best head on inside. Your mother's been expecting you."
She wasn't blind; she was smart enough to know when she'd been properly dismissed.
As she walked up the front steps, she heard him moving the ladder further down to put up more lights.
It was good to be home.
The house was stiflingly warm, as always, and it smelled of burning pumpkin pie.
"Ma! Take your pie out!"
She kicked off her frosty shoes—maybe it was colder in Virginia than she first thought—and shrugged her puffy jacket off, winding her scarf around its hook on the coat rack.
Walking down the hallway was like walking through a time-warp. Everything was the same—the old hardwood creaked in the same places, the same pictures hung along the walls, the same echoes sounded off of the plantation-high ceilings.
She wondered how long she'd have to stay here before the ghosts really started to catch up with her.
The kitchen hadn't changed either. Its high white cabinets and wooden countertops were just the same. The antique appliances were still shiny, like new. There was a tiny Christmas tree in the windowsill over the farmhouse sink, twinkling with tinsel.
This kitchen was always Cammie's place of escape throughout her first eighteen years of life.
She had the strange feeling that this time around, eight years later, would be no different.
"Don't worry, I've got it," she called out to her mother, who was probably putting up the Christmas tree in she and Joe's room, completely forgetting about any sort of pie.
The oven wasn't smoking yet, which was a miracle in and of itself. The pie that she pulled out of the oven was more yellow than pumpkin-colored, and Cammie wondered, yet again, at how terrible her mother was at cooking, when her grandmother owned a bakery and Cammie had made extra money in the city by decorating wedding cakes on the side.
She sifted through the cabinets, coming up with an extra can of pumpkin and a can of PET milk, icing down water and cutting butter into flour as quickly as she could, smiling at the Christmas music drifting through the vents from downstairs, humming along to Martina McBride.
The dog—what was its name again?—trotted up, sniffing at her legs like he wasn't quite sure what to think of her, then flopping down a foot away from her feet with his bone, content to keep an eye on this stranger who'd invaded his humans' house and was now taking it upon herself to save Thanksgiving.
Cammie searched in vain for a rolling pin—they'd had one years ago, but god, it had been so long. Finally, she gave up and tore the paper off of the can of pumpkin. She was anything if not an expert at making do.
As she rolled out the dough, she thought about a man in a Carhart jacket, tucked over a flannel shirt. About bright green eyes. About the blue eyes and the crisp, tailored suit jackets that she'd just run from. Maybe she shouldn't have driven through the square. She should have known better. This town was too small.
"If you roll that out any harder, you're gonna alert the whole house to your scheming."
Cammie jumped, the can clattering on the cabinet. It wasn't her mother, it wasn't Joe. Then she whirled.
"Abby!"
The older woman was leaning up against the island, smirking and looking as beautiful as ever.
"That's Aunt Abby to you, squirt."
Cammie couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out, couldn't help the way she both loved and resented the woman standing in front of her, looking perfect in a ponytail and a puffy vest. She made duck boots look classy.
"I'm twenty-six years old. That's older than you claim to be. I think that gives me right to call you what I want."
Abby's smirk widened into a full smile, and she pounced, gathering her niece up into a hug, flour and dough-covered hands and all.
"Cammie," she squeezed a little harder, a squeeze that made Cammie catch her breath and fight a sudden stinging sensation behind her eyes. "It's good to have you home."
Cammie squeezed back, thinking hard on the last time she'd felt so safe, so loved, as tonight, with a grumpy Joe and an absent-minded mother, and an aunt who still smelled like Chanel and nutmeg, just as she always had.
"You've been baking too, I presume?"
"Well, the difference is that I was supposed to," Abby pulled back, tucking a piece of Cammie's car-wilted hair behind her ear. "We begged Rachel to leave it all to us this year, told her she was too busy with the schools' Christmas programs and all."
Cammie laughed, turning and continuing to roll out her pie crust. "Of course, she'd never listen."
"Well, no, but it seems you've got it all under control here."
Abby whisked over to a cabinet, grabbing two wine classes and a bottle of cabernet.
"Wine?"
"Always."
It was good to be home.
They worked in silence, Cammie braiding the pie crust and Abby putting on a pot of vegetable stew, both humming along to the music and chuckling at the occasional explicative that floated in from the front yard.
Joe clattered in, frosty-nosed and flustered, looking even more cross than he had when Cammie had arrived. The dog bounded up, excited to see his father.
"Down, Cavan."
Of course. He'd named the dog after that cartel he'd shut down. How could she have forgotten? It was such a Joe thing to do.
"Something smells good. Did you tie Rachel up to keep her out of here?"
Abby snorted, then swatted him away as he started poking around, attempting to stick a spoon into the stew, peering over Cammie's shoulder at the roll dough she was working on the countertop.
"Jesus, I'm glad you're both home."
"Joe!"
"I thought that I was going to die of starvation there for a bit."
Cammie tried her hardest not to chuckle, but it was there, in the shaking of her shoulders, in the wink Abby sent her when she thought Joe wasn't looking.
"I've got a job for you," Cammie declared. "You need to dispose of this pie before Mom realizes that the good one isn't the one she baked."
"What? That's ridiculous."
"No, that's being a good daughter."
"See?" He pointed a finger between the two of them—the scheming stepdaughter and sister-in-law. "This is why she hasn't learned to cook. People always come behind her and fix things when she isn't looking."
Not that anyone was fooled—Joe was an expert at fixing things when Rachel wasn't looking. Like fixing her up with his best friend—Cammie's dad—when Joe was in love with her the whole time. Or like picking up her pieces one by one, year by heartbroken year, after Matthew died.
Joe was an expert at fixing Rachel. Ask anyone in Roseville and half of the members of the FBI.
"Did you straighten the angel on the tree this year?" Abby asked knowingly.
Joe just grumbled and grabbed the pie, heading out the back door with Cavan in tow.
Thirty minutes later, Cammie was trotting up the stairs, wondering what her mother was doing to have not noticed all of the commotion down below. Dinner was ready, and as much as she loved Abby—really, she did—she just needed a hug from her mom.
There were some things that she never grew out of.
"Mom?" She stuck her head into Joe's study, that had previously been her dad's. The stereo was still playing Dean Martin, and touches of her mother were everywhere—the Christmas tree in the corner, the Nicholas Sparks books on the heavy oak shelves alongside Joe's Stephen King thrillers, the cozy afghan thrown across the cozy chair in the corner.
Cammie wanted to sit in the chair, snatch a book off the shelf, and snuggle up under the blanket to the smell of fresh-cut evergreen. She wanted to pretend like she'd never have to leave, to fall asleep and be woken up to the smell of earl grey tea on the lampstand beside her—to the sound of Rachel and Joe flirting while folding clothes in their bedroom.
She shook her head, switched off the stereo, and closed the door as she left.
Rachel Morgan was sound asleep on the master bedroom's huge bed, hair spilling out around her like a chestnut halo. And she would hate this, in the morning—having missed Cammie's grand return, having not been able to greet the prodigal daughter with a feast.
But Cammie's mom wasn't thirty anymore, though she probably still looked it, and Cammie could see the dark circles under her eyes, hear her deep breaths, sense how tired Rachel was.
It hit her, all at once, in a tsunami wave of guilt and sorrow.
Ten years ago, today, Cammie's father had died.
How had she forgotten? How had she not known the moment that she'd woken up? How had she not sensed it, an ache in her bones that had appeared long before the this every other year since the accident?
Ten years.
Cammie knew better than anyone that, new husband or not, her mother didn't need to be woken up and reminded of that.
Some days just never got easier.
They ate stew around the breakfast nook table, Joe like a starved man, Cammie carefully, the roof of her mouth burnt, the rolls tasting like paper.
She'd forgotten. She'd been so wrapped up in her own worries that she'd forgotten.
Abby glanced between the two of them, wondering who—if anyone—was going to say something first.
It would be her. It would always be her.
"Matthew loved this stew."
Joe and Cammie just nodded, not even looking up from their bowls.
"Remember, he used to give Cammie a glass of red wine with it and say 'You can't appreciate the flavor without a good cabernet, no matter your age.'"
Joe chuckled, but it was a hollow sound.
"Such a law-abiding agent, he was."
They sat for a bit longer, Cammie pretending to eat, Abby prattling on, attempting to fill the empty air with something, and Joe eating more than his fill, then rising abruptly, intent on finishing the lights, even at eight at night.
No one argued this time. Maybe he needed a distraction, too.
Cammie followed Abby back to the kitchen, scrapping her leftovers into Cavan's food bowl and making a new best friend in the process. She slumped to the floor, back against a cabinet, and petted the fluffy dog, ruffling his ears and scratching his belly.
Abby puttered around, cleaning up dishes, putting the leftovers into Tupperware, wiping the flour off of the countertops.
"Don't think you're fooling me for one second, Cameron Anne," she grumbled suddenly, wiping the water off of plates and placing them back into the cabinet.
"What do you mean, fooling you?"
"You drove home."
Cammie rolled her eyes, feeling like a teenager again, and wishing for an excuse to delay this conversation to any other day.
"Yes, and it was a long drive."
"Mmhm."
Abby kept drying, busying her hands, making excuses to stay until Cammie finally cracked, the way she always did around her aunt after a glass too many of wine.
She'd been set up.
She hated Abby.
"I thought it would be good to drive. My car doesn't see the road enough these days."
"Yeah? I'm surprised it sees the road at all, with the shape it's in."
That much was probably true—the Volkswagen that Matthew had bought her for her sixteenth birthday had been ten years old then. It was twenty now, and had nearly three hundred thousands miles on it.
"Yeah, well, Josh was a good enough mechanic."
Abby's grip slipped, and a cabinet slammed, making both Cammie and Cavan jump.
"Jesus, Abby."
"He knows how to work on cars? In thousand-dollar suits?" Abby sounded like she wanted to laugh, but then caught herself. "Was a good mechanic?"
"Well, I guess he still must be. He learned from his grandpa. Surprising, I know, but they didn't always have the money, you know." She gave Cavan one last scratch behind the ears and stood, brushing his shedding fur off of her black leggings. It was time to deflect.
"How does Mom keep the floors clean with you, Cav?"
"Uh uh uh." Her aunt wasn't being fooled—not in this. "Back up the gravy train. What's this about was and must be?"
"The gravy train? Abby, that phrase is solely reserved to embarrass one Zachary Goode, and only on Thanksgiving Day."
"Zachary Goode is using past tense verbs as well."
Cammie shook her head, reaching for the broom in the mudroom, not wanting to think about what Abby meant by that.
"Why'd you drive, Cam?"
She wouldn't look up—couldn't, or she'd probably finally loose the tears she'd been holding in all day.
"I just needed the time to think. Plus, it was cheaper."
Abby scoffed. "With gas prices in New York? No way."
"I bought gas in Jersey."
"Still."
They were at a standstill, and she could feel Abby's eyes on her, watching and noting her every tell. Sometimes it really sucked to have so many family members in law enforcement.
"I left."
She didn't have to elaborate. Abby knew her well enough to know what she meant.
"What about your job?"
Cammie swallowed hard.
"I quit."
"What about Josh?"
She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood.
"You know, Abby, can we not do this tonight?"
Her knuckles were white on the broom handle, and Cavan was up, pacing, recognizing his new friend's unease.
Abby was there, taking the broom from her, pulling her close, rubbing her back. Cammie realized that the tears had started to fall.
"Of course, squirt. We have all the time you need."
Cammie wasn't sure if any amount of time could ever be all the time she'd need. But this, standing in the kitchen of her childhood in the arms of one of the people she loved most in the world—this was a start. Maybe someday, she'd be brave enough to step out on her own again. But today wasn't that day, and she needed this, Abby, her house, her mother sleeping upstairs, Joe cursing outside, to ground her. To remind her of who she once was, so that she could figure out who she was now.
New York City would not break her. No, not now, not a thousand miles away in a kitchen smelling of non-burned pumpkin pie and beef stew.
Well, maybe it would. It had. But she could—would—be put back together again.