Addison Forbes Montgomery was not nervous. She didn't do nervous, especially related to meeting people. Throughout her life, she'd been wowing everyone from horse show judges to ladies garden clubs. In those cases, she'd let them appraise her, dared them to find fault, and when they couldn't, they'd move on. She'd be free to escape, albeit long after Archer delivered a few courteous, later flirtatious, lines and disappeared. But her goal here was different. She didn't want to make a good impression and continue on with her day. She didn't want to let people make assumptions based on her appearance, and them use them to her advantage, advantage like she had over years of debate club. She didn't want to stand out, or to be overlooked. She needed to fit in with her boyfriend's sisters. Fitting in wasn't her strongest suit.

"We don't actually have to use the bell," Derek said, and the note of amusement in his voice was all she needed to jab the index finger of her kidskin glove against the button. She took a breath, stealing herself to face Mrs. Shepherd. So far, she'd managed to avoid meeting the woman on the other side of the city, and the phone calls that always ended with a gentle "Yeah, Ma, love you much," no matter what had come first.

The door opened, revealing Mark Sloan in a Santa hat, a candy cane dangling from his mouth.

She pivoted to glare at Derek, shoving his hand away from her waist—As if she needed him to balance her! Her heels took up far less real estate than his clunky, Maine wilderness-rated boots.

"I told you he was family."

"Archer calls a whole horde of lacrosse players 'bro.' Did you see them gnawing drumsticks at our Thanksgiving Day table?"

Derek shrugged. "There were a lot of people there."

He had a point. If it hadn't peen an Event, he would've had to put a ring on her finger to get an invitation. Sloan snickered.

"DEREK!" A figure barreled down the narrow stairs behind Sloan. Addison stepped back, and her foot hit dead air. Sloan caught her arm while she kicked for purchase. "Fifteen years of tap-dancing," she muttered. Meanwhile, Derek had braced and caught the body now wrapped around him with hardly an omph.

"Three years of hockey," Sloan returned. "And seventeen of her."

"That's Amy?"

The girl lifted her head off of Derek's shoulder, but continued to cling to him. "My name is Amelia." The glare in her heavily-lined eyes said bitch. "Der, can you please tell Mom I'm too old to be bribed into going to church?"

"Nope. I want my Christmas presents."

Amy—Amelia—sighed.

"Amelia Jean! Did you put on your shoes?"

Addison did a double-take at the red and white striped socks she'd missed below the military jacket and acid-washed jeans.

"There are record highs today, Ma!"

Derek angled the girl toward Mark who swung her into his back while Derek grabbed their overnight bags. Neither of them looked down. Derek's mother bedamned, this girl was the key to being accepted here, and she wasn't going to make it easy.

Addison wasn't sure she'd ever been among this many brunettes. Her hair had always made her stand out, but hadn't been this aware of it since junior high. Every cousin, the husbands, and, of course, all four sisters had the same dark hair. Amelia was the only one Addison could've picked out of a line-up, and she'd disappeared.

Addison didn't have to be able to tell them apart to know they were brilliant and shrewd. Their conversations moved incredibly fast, and topics ranged from the deeply serious to incredibly superficial. Also jarring for Addison was that the couples didn't stay attached at the him, but the men didn't ditch them, either. Derek had been a labrador at her family's Thanksgiving, but one word from his mother had him in the kitchen. She didn't realize Sloan was gone too, until he and Amelia reappeared, their arms full of bowls.

"Time to get strung out!" Amelia announced.

"Oh, Amy. Didn't you just make a fuss about not being a child?"

"You're a third fetus, Nanny."

Before the pregnant sister could respond, Sloan thrust one of his bowls at her. "C'mon, Nan, we all know you've been knitting blankets just like Granny Shepherd taught us. Put those magic fingers to use!"

"Like this?" Nancy flipped him off. Somewhere in the exchange, Derek returned and plopped down cross-legged in front of Addison, then ushered her downward.

"What are we doing?"

"Garlands," he said, like that was an explanation. Then, Mark put down two of his bowls.

"She on your team, Shep?"

"We're all Sheps, Slow-one," a sister said, popping a dried cherry in her mouth.

"Yes, Lizzie, dear, we all know you kept your name," the third one—so, Kathleen. Kate. Kath? She'd heard both—said, primly. Sort of. None of them were as prim as the WASPs who frequented Bizzy and The Captain's dinner table, and ti was a relief.

"Stick with me, kid," Derek murmured, and drew Addison in, replacing his lips with popcorn at the last second. There was the sweet guy she knew.

She did plan on following the direction. For the first round of the relay, she sat watching him and Nan string cherries along pre-measured lengths of dental floss. He finished his, a signal for Kath's husband Jeffery to start. He kept breaking pieces of popcorn, and Addison's hands itched to grab the needle from him.

"I'm a dude! I don't have dainty hands. No offense," he added.

"Some taken," Liz's husband said. Derek snickered. We don't like Jeffrey, Addison noted.

Across the floor, Sloan was tagged in. He didn't seem to notice. Amelia strung like the cherries were beads on a necklace, and Ian-Liz's-Husband started his popcorn, while Mark strung a single cherry, and then took a mouthful of popcorn from Nan's bowl.

"Oh, come on." Addison got to her feet and crossed the ten steps to him, then kicked at him with the toe of her nylons. The Captain would be appalled. "You're out. Move." She took his seat so quickly they ended up hip to hip, but she didn't need elbow room for this.

"She can't do that!" Amelia protested. "She can't just switch sides!"

"We're still ahead, Ames," Derek said.

"That doesn't make it fair!"

"Life's not fair, babe," Nan said.

"You think I don't—?"

"We all know," Liz said. "So calm your tits , she's already done it."

Nan jabbed a needle through the kernel of her popcorn. Amelia's groan was one Addison thought you might lose the ability to produce at twenty, but then she sat forward, readying herself for the game to come back around.

Once she'd noticed Amelia's hands, Addison couldn't miss how much they moved. While she was talking; while she wasn't. They played with her clothes, her hair, Derek's hair, when he didn't acknowledge her climbing into the empty chair behind where he sat on the floor. (Addison hadn't been cleared to touch the hair until they'd been official for two months.)

She didn't blame the kid for fidgeting; no one was engaging her. Once Addison found herself in a conversation between Nan and Liz about all the terrors she'd picked up on, assisting in labors right after your stick turned blue—"they're so into it. You'd they'd be judicious with the scissors"—and Amelia made a gagging sound.

"Could you not?" Nan snapped, without turning to her sister.

Addison raised an eyebrow. "It is gross."

"But I just want attention. I'm too young to know what a vagina is."

"Mother Mary."

"She was probably, like, fourteen, you know. She was just smart enough to be like 'nah, Joseph didn't rape m—mph!'" Amelia flailed to yank Sloan's hand from her mouth.

"Come down to the basement and hustle me, Pippa Candy Cane Stockings," he said, pulling her toward a door that must've led to the basement.

"He's a going to give her beer, you know," Liz said.

"She's older than you were the time I pulled your puke-covered ass in a window. Mark will look out for her."

Addison looked to the basement door again. She couldn't see through it, but she thought the Mark Sloan down there must be totally different from the first year thorn in her side. "Why's he here?"

"Mark? He's Mark."

"Nicely detailed, Elizabeth."

"Mark's the puppy Derek brought home and hide under his bed for a week in first grade. I'm serious, Mom and Daddy didn't know he was sleeping here. His parents were on a business trip; he told the babysitter they'd made 'alternative arrangements,' and he pretty much never left. Better?"

"Uh-uh." Nancy made a wiper motion with her finger. "You skipped that he was your first—"

"Boyfriend! And it was one-sided. Mostly. On his part!"

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much."

"Methinks you didn't protest much when it was your turn."

"I was an intern, there weren't many options!" Nancy protested. Addison had heard similar exchanges from girls in her lectures, and she really didn't get it. Mullets just didn't do it for her.

Addison theorized that her family's traditional dress-for-dinner Christmas Eves were rooted in a time when their forefathers had gone to some sort of church service, but it was nothing like eating at Shepherd house prior to leaving for Mass. Mrs. Shepherd deposited a huge pan of lasagna on the kitchen counter, announced that anyone who wasn't ready to leave at nine-thirty would lose a present for every five minutes they delayed, and headed out with another pan. People pounded up and down the stairs with bread in one hand, suitcases in another. Liz ate at the sink, taking a curler out with each bite.

"It's a free-for-all," Derek said, scooping lasagna. He put the piece onto the plate she'd just picked up. Had Archer ever served anyone?

As they sat down in the kitchen. Amelia came through, passing by the pan to get a bowl from the drainer. She banged it onto the counter, dumped Kix into it, splashed milk over that. Once she'd clinked the spoon into place after her first bite, she stole Derek's garlic bread.

"That shit looks like what Nan's gonna puke up tomorrow."

"Amy!"

"Mom's gone. And, I'm sorry, but if something makes a member of the familygag, maybe it shouldn't be served on a family holiday."

"So sorry we can't always cater to you," Liz drawled. "Maybe we shouldn't have fed you."

"Maybe you shouldn't have had to." Amelia's hands started tearing the crust off of the bread. "There's latchkey-kids and there's letting your kid develop a food aversion!"

Derek sighed, and turned to Addison. "When Dad died, a lot of our neighbors brought food. We got about eight 'secret' lasagna recipes, and that was something Lizzie and I could make. Apparently, we should've mixed in Hamburger Helper more often."

Addison was the only one focused on Amelia, and likely the only one who noticed her face fall at apparently.

"You've told her about Dad?" Lizzie asked. "Wow, trés serieuse."

"Has he told you about Michael?"

"Amelia!"

"Amy!"

"Amelia Jean!"

Addison had forgotten how many other people were within earshot, and every last one of them had shouted a variation on Amelia's name in exasperation. It was more similar to a debate tournament than anything else that day had been. She put her hand on Derek's shoulder. She'd never felt his muscles so taut. "He has, actually. We stopped by the nursing home on the way here."

The kitchen must've seemed huge when their parents moved in, with one child. In the silence, it became the most cramped room Addison had ever been in.

Sloan was the first to react, continuing to plop a second scoop of lasagna onto his plate as he said, "Damn. What size ring do you wear, Montgomery? I'm gonna have to be the one to tell the jeweler while he sings to them."

Could he take nothing seriously? She started to glare at him; but then she noticed that she wasn't the only one having that reaction. Liz crossed the room to smack him with the back of her hand, Ian rolled his eyes, Nancy hid a smile behind her hand. Only Amelia and Derek stayed focused on each other.

Addison narrowed her eyes at Mark. He winked at her. Ass. She turned back to her boyfriend in time to see the look he shot his sister, and she squeezed his shoulder.

"I can't believe you," he said, low enough to keep it from traveling, judging by the way Nancy leaned in. "I've been ignoring your possessive little sister bit all day, because Addison might as well know you're a self-absorbed little snot. When you manage to ruin someone's life, it won't be an accident. It'll be negligence."

"Save the lecture." Amelia's fingers were still working the single, long piece of crust. "You're not Dad."

"No, but I can tell you that he'd be disappointed that you're such a self-absorbed little shit."

"Good thing I don't let my life revolve around impressing a dead man." Amelia dropped the knotted piece of bread onto Derek's plate, and then jerked her cereal off the table furiously enough to splash milk onto the table.

Derek slumped, and Addison moved closer, letting their hips touch as she kneaded knots out of his shoulders.

"She's insecure," Liz commented. "Soon, she won't be the family baby, anymore. Speaking from experience, it's traumatic."

"You remember being nine months old, Betty?" Mark asked, earning him another middle finger. That could be a good game. Drink every time a Shepherd flips Mark the bird. You wouldn't get totally plastered, but it'd be steady. If she got a next year, she'd suggest it to the other in-laws.

Derek didn't look at any of them, but he took Addison's hand off his shoulder and brought it to his lips. "Sorry about that," he muttered.

"She's, not your responsibility," Addison pointed out, trying to match his volume. His eyes went blank, like he'd been called on to speak about reading he hadn't done.

"Of course she is. She's my little sister," he said with a shrug.

Archer wasn't a bad big brother. Whenever anyone teased her about being a soulless ginger, or about her braces, he'd come to her defense. She couldn't imagine him saying that with the same layer of meaning. She wasn't sure she'd want it. She didn't need to be taken care of

Amelia probably thought the same thing.

Things only got more hectic from there. Derek went upstairs to change, and Addison dug out her makeup bag, hoping that she could find an empty corner to refresh herself in, if not a bathroom. She'd just started into the hallway downstairs when the door ahead of her opened an inch and then shut again. With a gasp, she jumped backward.

There didn't have to be anything untoward going on, but if there was, she wasn't putting herself in the middle of it. Not yet, anyway. Not until she knew if she needed to be collecting cards, and if she did, what she should do with them. Kathleen came out first, shutting the door with both hands and leaning against it. That pose might not have meant something to hide in comedia dell' arte, but it'd definitely become performative in the interim. Then again, Addison felt herself relax within seconds of seeing Kathleen exhale and continue in the opposite direction along the hall. About thirty seconds later, she was followed, not by Jeffery, but Sloan. He turned in Addison's direction.

She didn't run. She exeunted herself quickly from the situation. She needed fresh air, anyway. Not wanting to start opening doors she wasn't sure about, she went out the front, and almost fell over Amelia.

"Jesus, who's after you?"

"Sloan. I mean, Mark. Not me. He's not…."

The teenager eyed her, and ashed her cigarette onto a slush-covered flowerbed. "Oh, he has an eye on you. He's all about my brother's sloppy seconds. Derek gives up, Mark swoops in. That's why he hangs out with me." She really was very seventeen.

"You think Derek has given up on you? He has old exams with problems he's still working on."

Amelia snickered, and then with a second side-eye added, "I solved his Rubix cube."

"And he speaks to you?"

This time her laugh was real, Addison could tell. It similar to a Liz's, but quicker, and louder. Like she couldn't wait to be noticed. "It took a while. He'd just been staring at it since he took it out of his stocking. Mark distracted him, and by the time he caught me I was clicking the last cubey into place! He said it was contaminated after that."

"How old were you?"

"I dunno, nine, ten? He would've gotten it. He just takes ages to do, you know? If you're expecting a ring soon—"

"I'm not expecting anything. I don't have any reason to be a gold digger." Dark eyebrows rose. "What? It's true. My brother's going to inherit, but I have a trust. It's a simple truth. I'm also going to be a doctor. It'll be fun to spend the rest of my life with your brother. Seems like it's also going to be pretty interesting. I thought he was a lot easier to figure out than he's proven to be."

"Mark acts like trouble, but don't let it fool you, Derek's the idea guy."

Addison smiled. She hadn't known Mrs. Shepherd long, but she recognized when someone was quoting their mother.

"So." Amelia leaned one foot against the stoop. "You're not squeamish."

"No."

"And you realize my opinion is the one that matters here?"

Interesting. She was talking big, but on some level she knew her brother hadn't given up on anything. "I do."

"How do you feel about needles?" She pinched the top of her ear.

"Ha! Sweetie, I will take you to get your cartilage pierced by a professional, how's that? You are your brother's blindspot, but he isn't blind."

"Nan could get me antibiotics. Kath, too."

"One of them could stick a needle in your ear. Why haven't they done it?"

"Because they know how Mom reacted to Kath piercing her navel. She had sort of an ashram phase. It was weird."

"She doesn't seem like the type." Addison watched from her periphery as Amelia stubbed out the cigarette. She was looking down either side of the street like a predator, on the prowl for something more interesting. "I really don't know what to expect tonight."

"Are you Jewish? It's cool. Half our school speaks Yiddish." Our school, Addison noted. Even though Amelia would've never attended a school at the same time as one of her siblings for the past five years.

"I'm a WASP, heavy on the 'was.' Is it all in Latin?"

"Vatican II, baby. That's, like, ten years before I was born. There's a lotta call and response."

"Rhubarb-watermelon, got it."

"Say what?"

"You don't know the rhubarb trick?"

"Is it dirty?" Amelia wiggled her eyebrows. It was an odd thing to look in her eyes knowing the scent of cigarette smoke was masking that of alcohol, but that this kid absolutely hadn't gotten any closer to dirty than medical books and eavesdropping on her siblings. Addison absolutely did.

"It could be, if you want. It can mean whatever you want. If you mutter the words rhubarb and watermelon whenever you're in a crowd, it just sounds like background noise."

"What, like, rhubarbrhubarbwabber…rhubarber…watermelonwatermelonrhubter… I can't even do it! That's hilarious. I'm never saying 'and also with you' again."

"It doesn't work like that. It has to be one of those times when no one really knows what they're saying," Addison advised.

"Like the Pledge of Allegiance," Amelia said, slyly.

"Isn't your mom Navy?"

"Sure. Ask her about all the guys who died in 'Nam, some time. She's a nurse. She works with vets. We, like, respect the troops, you know? Just, both our folks went in because it was an opportunity, not out of patriotism. That's the thing about it all. No one knows what they're saying."

"It all?"

"Yeah! Religion, patriotism, all of it's just searching for someone to tell you what to do. It's a crock. The virgin stuff, and I mean…have you ever thought about the lyrics to Silent Night? 'Holy infant, so tender and mild?' What, are they gonna eat it?"

"Don't they?"

"What?"

"Eat of my flesh, right?"

"Oh my…." Amelia's laughter cracked through the background noises of the Manhattan streets, which became background noise faster than Addison would've ever assumed on a Christmas night in Connecticut. "We eat the baby. So tender and mild. Eat the heavenly piieeeces!"

She was still breaking out into giggles twenty minutes later, when other Shepherds began to come outside. More than one of them opened the door and starting to bellow "Ame—" before cutting off when they saw her standing there with Addison, and each time, Amelia squared her shoulders and said, "I'm not going along, you know," or "I should get out of here."

She never did.

"I thought you were going to Katrina's house," Nancy said, as Peter guided her down the steps. It sounded almost like a suggestion to Addison, and she wondered if stalling the teenager had been the wrong call.

She looped her arm through Amelia's anyway. "Nope! She's my interpreter."

"Manducatis reubarbarum!"

"Eat the rhu—"

"Hey, you're here!" Derek's lips on Addison's made her realize she'd never freshened up her makeup.

"You let her wander," Amelia said. "She's mine now. That's how hand-me downs work."

"I'm older than you," Mark said. He was wearing a suit. Addison hadn't thought he knew what a suit was. There were record highs, but walking toward the Gothic-style cathedral, with Derek's hand in hers, and his sister on her arm, she could've sworn she smelled snow on the polluted air. What the Shepherds had been saying about the make-up of the neighborhood had her expecting to stand out in the sanctuary, even before she'd started rhubarbing her way through the Mass, but every other row seemed to contain a red-head.

She had hated the days when Archer would tease her by saying she was Addis-on Wonderland, but this night was a little like that, and a little like The last day pop Wizard of Oz, and it didn't feel nearly as strange as she thought it should.l