Page 26 of A Merry Mountain Christmas

She smiles slightly. “You’re right. And anyway, it’s coming down. It’ll look beautiful.” She pauses, but I can tell she has more to say. Those little strands of hair dance under her knit cap. “I wish I could see it once it’s decorated.”

“Maybe Harry can keep sneaking you out.” Reaching over, I tuck the hair back into her cap. “It can be a whole thing.” I can’t interpret the look she’s giving me from behind those glasses. I only know that I like it more than I should. “Of course, your six boyfriends wouldn’t like it.”

She laughs. “I’m pretty sure there’s only one or two who would care.”

“Jonah?” I ask innocently, but in my chest, there’s an unhappy burn. She’s thinking about Marcus probably. Pretty boy Marcus with his millions. How am I supposed to compete with that?

You’re not, dumbass.

“You know, your grandmother and Harry made me keep Jonah around,” she says, lifting a finger to her lips as if I might feel compelled to share gossip.

I scowl. “Doesn’t surprise me to hear my grandmother did that, but Harry’s getting the shit chores at the house tonight.”

She laughs in apparent delight. “It’s okay. They’re right. Having characters like him around will make the show interesting. It’ll make more people watch, so more people will hear about Leto’s Hands.”

“Excuse me?”

She shrugs. “It’s the nonprofit I work for. Leto’s Hands.” She makes a face. “My mother always says they might as well have called it Leto’s Handouts. Leto is the Greek goddess of motherhood.”

“I may not have gone to college, but I’m not stupid,” I say, even though I’ve never heard of Leto or her hands.

She frowns. “I never implied you were. A lot of people don’t know what the name means.”

“So maybe you should rename it.”

The wrinkle between her brows smooths over. “Maybe. But if they were going to do that, they probably should have gotten to it before I had it written into my contract that I get to mention it at least once every episode.”

A laugh escapes from me, because fuck, my grandmother must hate that. “What does Leto do with her hands?”

She gives me a chastising look. Okay, fair enough.

“It’s a nonprofit that helps single mothers,” she says.

I’m tempted to ask what drove her to work at such a place, because when people seek out a calling like that, there’s usually a specific reason that compelled them to. But to my surprise she offers up the information without being asked. “My nanny when I was a little girl. She was a single mother. Her daughter is Olive, my best friend.”

I study her for a moment, letting this new information slip into place. Kennedy Littlefield isn’t anything like I thought she would be.

“You ready to watch a tree come down, Kennedy?”

She smiles at me. “Yes. If I had my phone, I’d even take a video.”

“I’m glad it got locked away in phone jail.”

Her pretty, tinkling laugh is my accompaniment as I make the last few strikes to the trunk. Well, that and the faint echo of a pretty shit version of “Santa Baby,” which I can never listen to without thinking of the dance my mother did at a town party when I was nine, and she was trying to make the then-police chief into Husband Number Four. She’d crowded us kids into the corner and told Bryn not to let us leave her sight. Bryn was Type A from the womb, and she’d kept us all organized, a snack plate each, but she hadn’t been able to crowd out our vision.

That sour thought is in my head as I take those final strokes. Still, there’s a certain satisfaction inside me as I watch the tree come down, the smell of pine sap wafting into the air as it thumps to the ground. The knowledge that I’ve done something special for my sister, something she’ll appreciate. The knowledge that Kennedy is probably watching.

I turn to her, and sure enough, she has a look of wonder on her face.

“You’re used to having other people cut your trees down for you, huh?” I ask as I prop the axe against the trunk and strip off my work gloves. I could wear them to move the tree, but I don’t like the way they feel on my hands.

She glowers at me. I deserve it.

“Sorry, that was a shit thing to say. I was trying to make a joke.”

“It’s okay.” She makes a face. “The truth is, I’ve never had a real Christmas tree. My parents have this famous Christmas Eve party. Or at least they like to think it’s famous, but the trees are never real. They’re these super convincing fakes that they spray with pine scent. My mom wouldn’t want to get needles all overthe floors, even though she wouldn’t be the one cleaning them. But it’s just not the same.”

I have to laugh at the thought of people spraying fake trees with pine scent because they’re neater. “No, I suspect it’s not,” I tell her. “What do they do at this famous Christmas Eve party?”

---