Page 41 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
“Eew,” said Paisley, wrinkling her nose.
“Don’t worry, nobody’s going to really stink,” Sunny assured her. “Everyone move over to the dining table.”
The game was really the vintage one ofOld Maid, but she wasn’t about to cast aspersions at any single ladies out there. She liked her game title better, anyway. After all, nobody wanted to pair up with someone who forgot to de-stink the old pits.
Everyone gathered around the table as she dealt out cards she’d already sorted into pairs. Except, of course, the party pooper, who disappeared off down the hall. A moment later Sunny heard Arianna’s bathroom door shutting.
The game went quickly, and then the kids helped themselves to more punch and cookies, while Sunny went to see if she could lure the girl out. Not groveling, just...groveling. The door to the guest bathroom was still closed. Maybe Bella had climbed out the window and was now out looking for another party to poop on.
Sunny hovered by the door. Should she knock and ask if Bella was okay? No. Molly was right. She didn’t need to feed the monster.
She was turning to leave when the monster spoke, the vitriol seeping out from under the bathroom floor. “I hate her.”
Big news flash, Sunny thought bitterly. Still, it was a knife to the heart.
But what came next was even worse.
9
“She stole my dad. If it wasn’t for her, Mom and Dad would still be together.”
Sunny blinked in shock. Now she wasn’t just the evil stepmother, she was also a home-wrecker? Where did Bella get that idea?
Not hard to figure out. Tansy, of course. The Weed struck again. More than anything Sunny wanted to bang on the door, demand Bella open it and listen to the truth. But the girl wouldn’t. Truth was whatever her mother told her.
“We’re leaving,” Molly called to Sunny. “See you later.”
Sunny swallowed hard, nodded and moved down the hall to where Molly’s crew were donning coats.
“Remember what I told you,” Molly whispered as she hugged Sunny.
Molly’s advice was great for simple teen misbehavior, but this... How to deal with this?
It explained so much, even her mother-in-law’s attitude. Tansy must have poured her lies into Travis’s mom, Jeanette’s ears as well.
“We need to leave, too,” she said to Arianna. What she needed was to slap sense into Tansy. Of course, there was one need that would go unmet.
Anger propelled her back down the hall—anger not directed at her stepdaughter but at the woman who had dumped this misery on them simply out of spite.
“We’re leaving,” she said tersely and banged on the bathroom door. Great. Listen to her. She did sound like the wicked stepmother. It looked like bitchiness was contagious.
Bella opened the door and glared at her.
“Maybe someday somebody will tell you the truth, but it won’t be your mom,” Sunny said, trying to keep the anger from bleeding into her voice. “Get your coat. I’m taking you home.” Something Sunny was starting to accept her house would never be.
The ride back to Tansy’s house was a tense and silent one with Sunny at the wheel as chauffeur and the two kids in the back. Dylan sat with a stocking full of chocolate hearts and gift cards, happily clueless. Bella was scowling and Sunny was fuming. Good thing Travis had gotten sick and asked her to take the kids back to Tansy’s a day early. She didn’t think she could have coped with trying to create a happy family breakfast the next morning.
They pulled up to the house and Dylan got out, said a careless, “Bye,” and started up the front walk.
“I hate you,” Bella spat, and hurled her present at Sunny’s head before getting out of the car.
The box connecting with the back of her skull was nothing compared to the knowledge of why her stepdaughter hated her. She had no idea how to correct that mistaken impression. And she shouldn’t have said anything. She’d only made matters worse.
She held it together till the car door slammed shut and Bella stalked off after her brother, held it together until she was at the end of the block, then she set the tears loose and howled all the way home.
She was still crying when she walked in and found Travis right where she’d left him, on the couch under a blanket with a box of tissues and a half-consumed glass of orange juice on the coffee table in front of him.
At the sight of her, the sleepy smile left his face and he said, “Oh, no. What happened?”
