Page 23 of Back Home For Christmas

“I think I have a right to be a little judgmental in this case,” I said. “She literally tormented me throughout high school. What do you see in her?”

“You don’t know anything about me or Aubrey. You have been gone for years and when you are home, everything is about you. You think you aren’t judgmental, but you live by these weird standards that you made up and only you know. And anyone who doesn’t meet them, you write of entirely,” he said.

“I love the top tier deflection happening here.”

“I do not have time for this. Can you please just let it go and finish the damn booth?” Darren asked.

“Is everything about making money and being the family big shot?” I asked. “I’ll get the booth done. I don’t need this Mr. Bossy-pants vibe you’ve got going on.”

“I am not being bossy. I am being realistic. You are running out of time, and it doesn’t seem to matter to you at all,” he said. “I know this is just a little holiday distraction for you, but it matters to me.”

“Of course, it matters to me.”

“Because you need to show up Jay? Yeah, I know. Everything is about you,” he said.

“What the fuck? Where is this coming from?” I asked. “I have always put my all into the Christmas booth. Why are you being such a jerk about it?”

“I am just…under a lot of pressure,” he said, scrubbing his hands down his face.

“What kind of pressure?” I asked. “I thought everything was going great. You took the store online, and according to Mom and Dad, it’s created miraculous growth.”

Darren deflated before my eyes with a slump of his shoulders and the dip of his head. “Mom and Dad don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t know what?” I asked. He looked up then, studying my face. “What’s up?”

“I need you not to tell them. Unlike the Aubrey thing, this is actually important. I am going to tell them, but only when I have good news to cushion it.”

“What is going on? Can you just tell me?”

“The shop isn’t doing well.”

Chapter Sixteen

“I borrowed too much money, that I haven’t been able to pay back,” he said. I stared at him with wide eyes, trying to reconcile my amazingly successful brother with this sad, struggling man he described. “I just wanted the store to be something bigger than the holiday shop in a tiny beach town. I borrowed money for the website, marketing, expansion into more products and different markets.”

“Why? The shop has always done fine. Was it struggling or something?” I asked. This was a side of my brother I had never seen before.

“Not exactly, but it was really just enough to get by. Mom and Dad deserve to retire, and I worried that they would never have the means to with the shop pulling in the figures it was doing. And…” I could tell he wasn’t sure if he wanted to say the next part. “Mom and Dad always put so much pressure on me. They always had this idea that I was some sort of genius, and then I ended up back home, working on the store. I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

Wow. I blinked several times. I had never thought about the kind of pressure Mom and Dad had put on Darren or its effect on him. I was always too busy feeling sorry for myself. I always just assumed he loved being the favorite. Maybe being the fuck-up had its benefits.

“But do you think the holiday street fair will be enough?” I asked.

“I just want something to show that I am not a total screwup. I want one success even if it is small.” His words reflected exactly what I had been feeling, and the revelation that Darren and I had more in common than I thought was strange, to say the least. “Anyway, I know you are pissed about Aubrey and Jay and the store, but Aubrey has been the only person around. She listens and supports me, and I hope, when you are done being mad, you can try to get to know her. I don’t think she is the same person she was in high school.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“I appreciate that,” he said. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself then. Darren and I weren’t big on sibling closeness, so it just felt kind of awkward. I nodded and walked past him to get to the supply closet. At least I knew I wouldn’t find him making out with Aubrey this time. Still, I opened the closet carefully, bracing for some new surprise.

When there wasn’t one, I gathered the stuff I wanted, packed away carefully in plastic bins. Suddenly, I viewed it with different eyes. The stupid contest between Jay and I didn’t matter so much. We had to sell more this season than any past years. I wished I could focus on myself, the paper I was supposed to be writing, my own future, but instead all I could do was worry. Despite Darren’s assumption, I cared a lot about the shop and our parents. I finished grabbing what I needed and went back outside.

“What do you mean, Darren?” Mom said. She was using her strained, fake calm voice that she normally only reserved for me. Oh shit, did she somehow find out about the loans? I thought.

“It slipped my mind. I thought Jay was managing the booth, and I didn’t put the order through,” Darren said.

“What’s going on?” I asked, dropping my bins in front of the booth where mom stood in her long red wool coat that made her look like Mrs. Claus. Jay stood behind her looking uncharacteristically concerned while Darren looked downright frantic.

“Your brother didn’t order enough of the chocolate for the hot cocoa,” mom said. Every year, we gave out free hot cocoa that surpassed every other booth on the street. It was a recipe that my mother and father kept so tight-lipped, even I hadn’t been privy to it, but I did know my mom insisted on some fancy chocolate that she bought from a specialty candy shop three towns up the shoreline.

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