Page 90 of A Lucky Shot

CASS

St. Claire Family Chat

What am I bringing to the cabin? Smores stuff and wine?

Suzie

Shit, we’re out. Hubs and I are bringing the kids to Edmonton to visit his folks this Christmas.

Oh, no prob

Davie?

Davie

going to my girlfriend’s

Haha

Looks like it’s just us mom & dad :)

I get a whole bedroom to myself!

Mom

Oh sweetie we booked a week in Palm Springs when we heard everyone was going to be away this Christmas!

I’m here

We just thought you’d be busy on set

Sure!

Have fun everyone!

Merry Christmas!

CHAPTER TWENTY

JOSH

“Darling!” His mother’s adenoidal voice brashed over FaceTime. “It’s been forever! Did your bollocks freeze off yet?”

Josh twisted his mouth to hide his smile. “Still here, last time I checked.”

“Your father’s upstairs. Hang on. David! Get your arse down here! Josh is on the phone!”

It was fine. Eardrums were overrated, anyway. His father’s face crowded into the frame seconds later, forcing his mother to share the screen, and their matching smiles beamed back at him.

“We can’t talk long, sweetie,” his mother continued in the thick Australian accent that hadn’t faded in the almost forty years she’d lived in Canada. If anything, Josh was convinced she hammed it up to charm her clients. “Your father has a client meeting in Burnaby, and I’ve got a showing in West Van.”

A simple thing like an impending statutory national holiday wouldn’t derail business, as usual.

Despite a reckless youth spent in the southern sun without SPF, his mother’s skin remained smooth, her few laugh lines making her look joyous instead of tired, her hair so resolutely black, Josh wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t colouring it.

He dreaded the day his mother would tip into old age overnight like his grandparents had. One day, thick heads of black hair and the complexion of teenagers; the next, wispy white fluff held back by full face visors with wrinkles cross-hatching their skin.

His father’s age had crept forward in measured steps every time he saw him. The salt-and-pepper in his hair advanced at a stately pace until it turned a fully lustrous white by the time Josh had graduated university. The last time they’d had dinner as a family, his heart squeezed when he noticed his father had begun to stoop, just a little, and for the first time Josh could see the barest thinning on the crown of his head.

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