“What do you think you’re doing, sending random strangers to my place?” I snapped.
“You’re …” Sarah paused before she scoffed, excusing someone around her. “What are you doing at home? You were supposed to be out of town until at least the fifteenth.”
“If you thought I was going to stay in some stupid rehab?—”
“Rejuvenation retreat. It’s basically a free vacation.”
“Vacation.” Now, I was the one about to scoff. I paced back and forth, ignoring the sharp pain that spread from my hip down to my knee.
“Phantom pains mostly,” the doctor had told me, though they felt real enough.
I tripped over my pulled-apart duffel bag and dirty clothes that hadn’t made it to the hamper and swore.
“Yes, a vacation gladly paid for you by your caring sister. Only you would turn down massages and mediation, Aaron.” Sarah sighed. “I pulled strings to get you in.”
I thought enough on my own. I didn’t need meditation time to contemplate my life.
“You’re supposed to be easing back into daily life.”
I wasn’t talking about this right now. Like I was some traumatized civilian.
“Why is there someone in my house?” I repeated slowly.
“I was about to call her back. Please tell me you didn’t scare the girl off. She sounded squirrelly on the phone.”
I was getting the same impression.
“She’s not a stranger. The place I hired came highly recommended. Her name is Poppy, I think? She’ll be overseeing the final touches of the place you’re apparently living in,” Sarah informed me.
Too little, too late.
“Final touches? This place needs a freaking overhaul with how it was left,” I told her.
Her highly recommended place was trying to pull a hack job here without anyone to look over the place.
“You’re kidding.” My sister dared to sound shocked.
“There are no showers. I had to give myself a sponge bath in the sink.”
“I’ll look into it.” Of course she would. “We need to get it ready for the holiday.”
I rubbed the space between my eyebrows. “The holiday?”
“Yes, Aaron, the time of year with lights and presents and Christmas cheer.That holiday.”
Every minute my sister remained on the phone, the more exasperated she sounded. I could always tell by the way she started to mutter to herself, thinking that the person she was frustrated with couldn’t hear her.
Luckily, I was skilled in ignoring it.
“You won’t come to our place?—”
“I’m not coming into the goddamn city.”
“So, we are coming to you to have a good ol’-fashioned Christmas in the mountains,” said Sarah. “That includes not getting lead poisoning from whatever is in the paint there from when it was built in the 1800s or whenever it was.”
“You plan on licking the walls, sis?” I asked. “The place is fine.”
“No, it’s not. It’s falling apart. It’s been falling apart for years. If my kids are coming, they’re going to have a nice Christmas there. It could be nice, and so, yes, I hired someone so that I wouldn’t have to deal with all the logistics. I have enough to deal with on my own. You weren’t supposed to be there to notice.”