2017 - 3 weeks before Christmas

Michael was excited. He was ecstatic. It was the first year he was going to have a birthday party with an actual friend invited. Technically the party was going to be at Ethan's house; the other boy was being invited to a party at his own home, out of consideration for his allergies. But it didn't matter to Michael. It was going to be a real birthday party, not just something with Mama Constance and Father Jeremiah.

As the day drew near the little boy could barely contain himself. He danced about the house. He could hardly sleep at night. Then the day before his party was scheduled to happen he heard Mama Constance scream. He abandoned his writing lesson to find her.

She was downstairs in the mud room, standing at the deep freezer. So was Father Jeremiah. They had found Michael's collection in their search for birthday ice cream.

"What is this?" Mama Constance yelled. "What have you done to my freezer?"

She grabbed a paper cup full of rubbing alcohol from the freezer shelf and staggered over to the boy, slipping in her heeled mules. She shoved the cup in Michael's face. A lizard's head bobbed about in it.

"I want to be a veterinarian," he said.

"So you cut up animals and put them in my freezer?!"

Jeremiah started grabbing the other little cups and plastic bowls from the freezer. He threw them away without looking closely at the contents. Some he couldn't avoid seeing, like the whole baby bird with the intestines trailing out of its bloated belly.

Michael started to cry. "I needed patients..."

She flung the cup on the floor. The lizard head bounced and rolled away. "This is not what good little boys do, Michael!"

Michael cried harder and tried to retreat but she was too fast. She grabbed his arm and dug her manicured nails in. He squealed in pain and fear.

"Constance-" Jeremiah said.

"Not now, Father," she growled. "This is between me and my good little monster."

She dragged the boy out of the room. Jeremiah had to follow. He had to intervene, again, though for the first time he wasn't entirely sure he should. But he did.

She couldn't beat the boy. She couldn't isolate him. So she canceled the birthday party instead.

Michael would have preferred a beating.

...

Violet sat in the downstairs window seat listening to her mother play the cello. Outside the day was gray, colorless; uninspired. Even the clouds were an indistinct smooth gray blanket overhead. Nearby the Christmas tree sparkled and a fire blazed in the hearth but neither gave any real warmth to the girl. She sighed and traced her finger on the glass.

"I miss weather," she said.

"I don't miss having to defrost the car," Vivien said as she played. "Do you remember that? Having to get up an extra half hour early to shovel out? It was always so dark and cold."

Violet gave a half smile. "It was a pain," she agreed. "But I liked the snow at night. Everything was so quiet. Peaceful." She looked back out to the dull view of the yard. "What I wouldn't give for some snow now. The kind that just hides everything. "

Vivien stopped playing and set her instrument aside. She moved over to join Violet. She put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. There wasn't much comfort she could give so she just stood there, feeling her daughter's mood.

"Do you want to bake some Christmas cookies?" Vivien asked after a while.

Violet smiled and put her hand on her mother's hand. "Sure, mom."

She didn't really want to but she knew it would make her mother feel like she was helping.

Moira and Joshua, in his baby carrier, joined them in the kitchen. Violet arranged the cookie cutters in a row along the island in front of her, each waiting its turn to slice into the dough. She collected a few bottles of sprinkles and lined them up behind the cutters then she watched the older women prep and roll the dough.

"Do you remember your dreams?" she asked no one in particular.

Both of the women glanced at her. It was Vivien who spoke first.

"Sometimes," she said. "Usually just bits and pieces. Like last night? I remember being in a small park or yard or something. It was fall. There was a building somewhere nearby. That's all I can remember."

Moira patted her hands with more flour. "I don't remember my dreams. I'm not sure I even have them anymore."

"I think I'm usually like you, mom," said Violet. "But lately it's like... They're more intense. Or something. I don't know. It's weird."

"What have you been dreaming about, honey?" Vivien prompted. She peeled the wax paper back and checked the dough before pushing it toward her daughter.

"Depressing shit," Violet said. She tugged the wax paper that held the cookie dough closer. "Like... I'll be hanging with my friends back home or something and suddenly they're all just gone. Or I'll be looking for you and dad and I can't find you anywhere. In one dream, I was back at school and there were people all around but nobody would stop and tell me where I needed to be. And I forgot my locker combination."

Vivien felt guilty as she read all kinds of personal messages into those dreams. "I'm sorry, Violet. We should have never... never moved."

Then Violet felt bad. "You had no way of knowing what was going to happen."

Vivien gave her a tiny smile and moved over to the sink to wash her hands. Violet picked up a star-shaped cutter and pressed it into the dough.

"We were so close to getting out of here," said Vivien wistfully.

Moira ran the rolling pin over her sheet of dough. "So were many other souls who're trapped here, Vivien. I think the house can sense things like that."

Vivien dried her hands and went back over to the center island. "You're probably right." She looked around the room, wondering if the house could hear and understand what they were saying. "It does seem like the harder you try to get out of this place, the stronger it holds you."

Violet picked up a snowman next and pressed it into the dough. "Maybe the secret to getting out is to not try."

"Even if you got out, it would call you back," Moira said, fatalistic without meaning to be.

Joshua started to fuss. Since Vivien had her hands clean she lifted him and cradled him close in the crook of her arm. He still fussed but he didn't get any louder about it.

"This sheet is finished," said Moira.

"Help me cut the shapes?" said Violet. She nudged a few of the cutters toward the old maid.

Moira picked up a Santa face. "When I was little I used to help my aunt make gingerbread men at Christmas," she smiled. "I never cared for the taste but I loved to make them with her."

"I never had gingerbread," Violet said.

"Yes, you did," said Vivien. "Don't you remember? They gave out those cookies on sticks after the winter sing-a-long in your sixth grade year."

"That was gingerbread?" Violet made a face. "God. Those were like hockey pucks. Well. I sure won't miss that now that I'm dead."

It was a grim thing to say but the way she said it made them all laugh.

...

Tate, in normal teen form, brooded in the shadows just outside the kitchen door. Watching the charming scene had stopped being fun several minutes ago and his mood had flat-lined.

He wanted to be in there with them helping make the cookies, not watching from the outside. He wanted to show Violet how creative he could be. He wanted to feed her bits of cookie dough and he wanted Vivien to smile at him like she smiled at Violet. He wanted Moira to just go away. He didn't like her because she didn't like him.

He watched as they got done cutting shapes. They put the cookies into the oven, set the timer and left the room to take the baby to his play gym. Tate entered the kitchen then and poked at the dough scraps left on the counter. He scratched 'I Love You Violet' into one big piece then immediately smashed it. She wouldn't want to see it.

Suddenly angry, he went and wrenched the knob on the oven, setting the temperature 150 degrees higher. The cookies would be ruined. It only gave him a sliver of satisfaction. Very little seemed to please him lately. Michael's canceled party only added to his bad temperament. Leave it to Mama Constance to find a way to crush two generations of hope at once.

He left the kitchen and poked about in the hall. He passed by the sitting room on his way to the stairs and heard arguing. He peeked in and saw Chad and Patrick. They were over by the Christmas tree that the three of them had put together. Tate was too late to get the gist of the argument because Patrick was already heading toward the doorway.

"Do what you want," Pat said over his shoulder. "I seriously don't care."

Chad rolled his eyes, shook his head and turned back to the tree. Patrick brushed by Tate when he left the room. The teenager fell into step behind him.

"What was that about?" asked Tate.

"Nothing," the brown-haired man said irritably. "He says the tree's imbalanced. Apparently we put the decorations on wrong. It's throwing off the alignment of the universe."

"What, he wants to do the ornaments over?"

Patrick paused at the foot of the stairs. "He wants to do everything over," he said. "He says it's all off-balance. He can do it himself. I did it once. I'm done."

"I know you can do it more than once before you're done," said Tate, rocking on his heels.

Pat eyed him then glanced back toward the sitting room. Then he looked at the youth again. "Yeah, well, that's something to keep between us."

"That's the best place to keep it." Tate's smile was inscrutable.

In the weeks since Halloween, Patrick had struggled with guilt and unwholesome desire. A lot. Fresh from dealing with Chad's OCD, he wasn't in the mood to play guessing games with Tate's intentions. He hooked a finger in the teen's hip pocket and tugged him closer. "You're asking for trouble."

Tate let himself be pulled. "Maybe I like trouble." His smile inched wider. After the day he'd had, he couldn't resist pushing someone else's buttons. Especially if it meant trouble.

"Yeah," Pat looked him up and down. "I think you do. Why don't we go see how much trouble you can handle?"

"Bring it," said Tate. There would be no backing down. He'd wrestled with his own issues after Halloween but he tended to dwell in the moment: What would bother him later meant very little in the now.

"My room," said Patrick.

"Race ya."

Tate disappeared, foregoing the stairs. Pat smirked and disappeared after him.

Author's Note:

Oops. At some point I accidentally overwrote this chapter with one from another fic I had going at the time. Sorry about that! I'm sure that was pretty confusing if you weren't familiar with the other one. Anyway, I finally caught it and fixed it. On with the show!