Page 13 of You Can't Ruin Christmas

Chapter Seven

It’s eerily quiet in the recording studio before I start turning on all my equipment. This one small room of the loft has been soundproofed just for this reason, and it’s crazy how silent the silence can actually be. My own heart beating is deafening. My breathing, too. Most of all, I can hear my own thoughts, and hear how my mind is neurotically stressing over everything. I always try to take a moment to use the stillness to calm down and meditate before starting work.

When my phone buzzes, I look down to see a text message from Sven.

“Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday. Are we cool?”

I kind of roll my eyes and ignore the message. I locked my door this morning so that I couldn’t be awoken by his drill-sergeant whistle. I heard him knocking on my door around the time we would normally work out, but I just pretended to be asleep. I mean, I’m not exactly mad at him—but I am really embarrassed.

I just don’t think he should be coming into my bedroom whenever he wants if we aren’t really bedroom-friends, you know? It’s fine if we had a weird moment, and he doesn’t really think of me that way, and it was just a mistake in the heat of the moment. Maybe I misinterpreted some signs, or maybe I was just hellbent on moving on and getting a rebound.

But somehow, I don’t think this was a rebound.

Because I’m more upset about losing Sven than I am about losing Sebastian, and I never even reallyhadSven. I guess the idea of what we could have had was really enticing for a moment. But I’ve already experienced enough of a broken heart lately, and there’s no way I’m going to take a chance on trusting Sven and getting close to him if he can’t make up his mind.

“Yeah, we’re cool,”I type back to him.

“Are we going to the gym today? I have a surprise for you.”

I roll my eyes again. Unless the surprise is that he’s going to stuff my stockings properly, I have work to do. Like a grown up.

“Maybe later,”I text back, before turning on my microphone.

The sound of my voice fills the small room, crisp and clear. I only pause to take a few sips of water as my throat becomes dry. I am enjoying the job, and enjoying the story when my phone rings, abruptly jerking me out of the zone. And ruining the sentence I was in the middle of recording.

Groaning, I am hoping it’s not Sven as I pick up the cell. But it’s my sister.

I scratch my cheek nervously as I stare at the display.

It’s theothersister.

Eve.

She is kind of a major loner, and has no concept of how to perform basic human interactions. I don’t think she has called me once in the last five years. Plenty of text messages and emails—she is a writer, and she enjoys writing—but the situation must be life or death for her to actually use the antiquated medium known as the phone call.

There are a million worries flooding my mind as I answer. “Eve?”

“Hey, Mary. There’s a bit of a problem, and I need you to fly home earlier than planned.”

My heart skips a beat. “What’s going on? Are Mom and Dad okay?”

She pauses. “Well, Mom is fine. But you know how she confides in me, a little more than you guys, right?”

“Yes,” I respond slowly. “Because you’re the only one who doesn’t freak out and spill her secrets and cause a major panic in the whole family.”

“Well, this time I’m freaking out and spilling her secrets,” Eve admits. “I just hope you can keep a lid on this and keep Clara from panicking. I know she’s under a lot of stress at the ballet company, and I am worried that if we tell her, she won’t be able to complete the rest of her performances.”

“Eve, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”

“Dad is just having some memory issues. He just got confused and wandered out in the snow a few times, in the middle of the night. Barefoot. Mom barely caught him in time.”

My pulse quickens, and I stand up in my recording studio, knocking my chair backwards. “Memory issues? Like… Alzheimer’s or dementia?”

“I don’t know, but I need you to go home and find out. Maybe slap a GPS tracker on our father. She thinks he was going out to fix up the Christmas lights—you know he’s obsessed with improving the display every year. But he somehow got confused. I would go home myself, but I’m just… dealing with a situation at the moment. Kind of a crazy situation. So I can’t leave Alaska until I’ve sorted that all out.”

“What kind of situation?” I ask her. “What could be more important than Dad?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, Santa’s sleigh crashed in my backyard.”

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