Page 101 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
“What! Mom, you hardly know this man.”
“Don’t go into panic mode. I told him it was too soon.”
“Good. You shouldn’t be rushing into anything.”
It was all Molly could do not to laugh. She’d said those same words to her daughter...right before she learned Ava was pregnant. Rushing appeared to be a family trait.
“I’m not, but we are getting serious, so you’d better start getting used to it.”
“Fine, it’s your life,” Ava snapped.
“Yes, it is, and you’d do well to remember that.”
Molly had gotten so accustomed to living in a romantic dead zone that she’d failed to notice how lackluster her life had become over the years. But the luster was back, and she wasn’t about to give it up.
CHRISTMAS
IN JULY
20
Pregnancy added a level of sweetness to Sunny’s life that no sour teenager or chilly mother-in-law could steal. Which was a good thing, since she was going to be stuck camping at Steamboat Rock in Eastern Washington with them for the Fourth of July.
Riding over the mountains in the truck with the kids made for cozy family time with Bella her usual sullen self and Dylan all bouncy and full of predictions of rattlesnake sightings.
“Rattlesnakes?” Sunny said weakly.
“Don’t worry. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” Travis said. “They’re easy prey for predators like hawks, so they try to stay out of sight.”
“Yeah, but they still bite,” Dylan said. “Remember that movie, Dad, where the girl got bit by the snake and almost died? She had to have her arm cut off. What would you do if you had to have your arm cut off, Sunny?”
“She’d beat you over the head with it,” Travis said irritably. “Enough already. No one’s gonna get bitten and people don’t die from a snakebite.”
Sunny was already researching on her phone. If they didn’t die, it looked like they’d want to, judging from some of the pictures she saw.There will be no snakes. This will be fun.
A new definition of fun. Her family’s idea of camping had been road trips and motels. With pools. But Travis loved hiking and the great outdoors so now Sunny did, too. Or would, once they graduated from tents to campers.
Ah, there was nothing like sitting around the old campfire at night trying not to barf at the smell of roasting hot dogs, she thought on day two while her father-in-law told ghost stories and her mother-in-law ignored her. The nausea part of pregnancy wasn’t as sweet as the rest of it. At least the kids seemed to be having fun. They’d kept busy all day and now were happily stuffing themselves.
Jeanette stopped ignoring Sunny when, after the marshmallows came out and the fire was dying down, Travis told her they were expecting a little marshmallow of their own. She suddenly looked at Sunny as if seeing her for the first time. Of course, she was only seeing Sunny as a baby barge, soon to deliver a grandchild, but it was a beginning.
“How lovely,” Jeannette cooed. “Are you going to want to know the sex of the baby or wait to be surprised? I always think it’s nice to wait and be surprised,” she continued without waiting for an answer. “And those gender-reveal parties are silly, if you ask me.” Not that anyone had. “Of course, we’ll have to have a shower.”
“Congrats, you two,” said Harry, following his wife’s lead.
“Thanks, Dad. We’re excited,” Travis said, and put an arm around Sunny’s shoulders.
Yes, they were, and it was as close to a happy-movie moment as a woman could get, sitting there by the fire with her husband’s arm around her, looking forward to the birth of their first child. Love, love, love.
And then it was on to scene two, a romantic end to the night...in a tent, sleeping on the ground. Not really Sunny’s idea of romance. Though Travis had agreed to at least bring an air mattress for them.
“It’s been a good day,” he said as they left the rest of the family around the campfire and made their way back to their tent.
“It has,” she agreed.
Dylan had spent the day pranking her at every turn, first by using paper clips to seal their tent flap in the morning, locking them in—when she had to pee!—and then jumping out from behind a tree and scaring the tar out of her when they were hiking that morning. That, after pretending to see snakes, had been the final straw and Travis had told him in no uncertain terms to knock it off.
“I was just having fun,” he’d protested, and Sunny had believed him.
