Page 2 of The Holiday

With mock severity, Sunday reaches over and pinches his arm. “You’re on salad duty,” she calls out over one shoulder, walking barefoot through her house. But the sight of a figure on her doorstep stops her cold: it’s Peter, and he’s standing there awkwardly, holding a bottle of wine in one hand.

“He’s early,” Sunday says.

Banks stops behind her, sighing loudly. “This should be interesting.”

With a deep, fortifying breath and a nod, Sunday walks over to open the door.

Ruby

Ella is waving a stick of burning incense around her tiny shop three days before Christmas. She’s wearing a long necklace with a clutch of tiny, tinkling bells, and as she moves, the sound fills the air like wind chimes.

“You know I never used to believe in this stuff,” Ruby says. She’s come to Doubloons and Full Moons with Harlow and Athena, and even the act of doing so is indicative of how much she’s changed since moving to Shipwreck Key.

“You definitely didn’t,” Athena says. She’s spinning a small rack of beaded earrings that sits on the front counter, and as she does, Harlow is looping a glittering scarf around her neck, watching her own reflection in the mirror that Ella has hung on the wall.

“Mom, when did you get so quirky?” Harlow asks. She turns to look at them, and the ombre chiffon of the scarf looks soft next to her rosy features and blonde hair.

Ruby laughs. “I don’t know if I would call myself quirky, per se, but I feel like the older I get, the more open I am to possibility. Just in general.”

The girls exchange a look, and Ella sets down her incense.

“Let’s go into the back room, shall we?” Ella clasps her hands together and her rings clink, metal against metal.

In the small space at the back of the shop, Ella sits in her yellow brocade chair, plumping a pillow that she places on her lap. “Sit, sit, ladies,” she says, sweeping a hand around to indicate the other chairs that she’s crammed into the pocket-sized room.

Harlow and Athena take the folding chairs, leaving Ruby the other upholstered one. There’s a warm citrus scent coming from the candle on the shelf, and Ella has a tiny corner table that’s laden with succulents in various shades of green.

“I love seeing you all here together,” Ella starts, looking at each of them in turn. “I think the fact that you’re spending Christmas here with your mother is wonderful, girls. You’re both grown, and you probably have other things you could be doing, but spending the holidays on Shipwreck Key is a real gift to her.”

“And to us,” Athena says. “We love being here. If I could find something work-wise that was entirely remote, I’d do it from here.”

“You know,” Ella says, leaning forward and reaching for Athena’s hand, which she takes and flips over so that she can examine her palm as she talks. “I think that’s in your future, darling. You’ve been doing a lot of work on yourself, but you’ve also really been here for your mother the past couple of years, and I think it’s important to let you know that it’s nearly your turn.”

“Nearly?” Athena’s eyebrows lift.

“Yes, nearly.” Ella frowns at Athena’s palm and runs one finger along the lines that are etched there. “Sometimes you have to believe that it’s your turn before the universe takes over and gives you everything you deserve.”

Athena’s eyes scour Ella’s face worriedly. “What is it that you think I deserve?”

Ella pauses and thinks. “Love. Happiness. Peace. Forgiveness—for yourself and for others.”

Ruby watches her older daughter as Ella tells her these things. She knows that Athena has struggled with so many things these past few years, not least of which is forgiving her father for dying. Well, not just dying, but taking his own life in order to avoid a truly horrible death at the hands of a relentless disease. In addition to that, she’d had to accept that he’d had a mistress in another country, as well as a son they hadn’t known about. Ruby wants to reach over and gently tuck Athena’s hair behind her perfect ears; she loves her girls so much that it’s sometimes physically painful to watch them navigate the world and go through things that she’d rather they never have to experience.

“Okay, I think I understand that,” Athena says. She tucks her own hair behind her ears—almost as if she could read her mother’s mind—and looks right at Ella. “But it’s definitely me I have to work the hardest to forgive.”

Ruby holds herself back, ignoring the urge to butt in and tell her daughter that there’s nothing about herself that she needs to forgive.

“Athena,” Harlow says, bumping her sister’s knee with her own. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She’s casual when she says it, but there is real concern in her eyes as she looks at Athena. “That guy didn’t deserve anything from you, and he certainly doesn’t deserve you thinking about him now.”

Harlow is referring to Diego Santana, one of Athena’s coworkers at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. She’d made the fateful decision to accept a date with Diego, who she’d found attractive and interesting, only to find out (after losing her virginity to him) that he was scheduled to get married the very next week. Athena has beat herself up endlessly for that already.

“I think there’s love in your life now,” Ella goes on. “Maybe someone you already know, but you aren’t even aware yet that he’s going to play a larger role in your life.”

Athena and Harlow look at one another, each lifting one eyebrow in question.

“Elijah,” Harlow says knowingly.

Athena huffs. “Elijah and I are undefined.”

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