Peyton immediately stiffens, snapping his head up, his eyes crazed as he belts out, “No, Santa! Shut you mouph!”
Gretchen’s eyes bulge, and she wastes no time belittling Serena. “You should not let your children speak to adults like that.”
Sadly, even Serena cowers under her vicious backlash. “Sorry, Aunt Gretchen, he’s got a huge aversion to him.”
“Even so,” she says, eyeing Peyton with disdain before focusing on Serena and going in for the kill, “are you still a housewife wasting your degree?”
“Actually, I work with Thatch—”
Gretchen raises her hand, cutting her off. “A woman needs to make her own living, you know,” she eyes Thatch, “just in case.”
“We’ve been doing fine,” Thatch defends as the tension grows thicker, and I can see my mother’s temperature rising, red blooming in her face.
“How is Tennessee,” Dad cuts in, reading my mother’s posture as her left eye begins to twitch. “You start those renovations? Because I don’t know if you are aware, but Thatch here—”
“The project is finished,” she says, and I bristle, knowing the only thing Gretchen has more of than unwanted opinions—is money. While working on the porch with Dad, Thatch discovered his love for building and took classes learning how to draft blueprints before becoming a master foreman in construction. His talent is astounding, and the recent housing boom in Nashville keeps him busy. Together, he and Serena have created a pretty successful venture. It was an insult that she didn’t so much as reach out to Thatch when she decided to renovate her six-thousand square foot house.
“Cost me a pretty penny, too,” she digs as Thatch averts his gaze out of the window, his jaw hardening. Seeming satisfied with the reaction, Gretchen diverts her attention to my brother.
“So, Brenden, I hear you ventured out on your own in business? Not very smart in these times.”
“Actually, it was the best time,” he says before sipping out of his tumbler, which I know is full of Mom’s eggnog. The bastard is numbing himself while we’re forced to deal with Ursula the sea bitch and sobriety. “Business is good.”
“Until it isn’t,” Gretchen remarks snidely, wiggling to better fit in the recliner she commandeered from Erin while she was feeding Wyatt a bottle.
It’s then I feel Eli’s gaze home in on me, as it has several times the last half hour of interrogation.
“Should we exchange gifts?” I speak up.
“We’ll get to it,” Gretchen says dismissively in the way of a Queen addressing a peasant.
“And you,” she addresses Eli, whose smile lifts as she shifts all focus on him. “What is your purpose here?”
“Like you, I don’t have a family of my own.” His quick response and easy answer has my heart flinching. “So Brenden was kind enough to invite me.”
“He’s been a blessing,” Mom interjects, a slight warning in her voice.
“Good looking man, with a job, and still a bachelor at your age?” She scoffs. “You must be close to forty. Is there a reason you’re playing Peter Pan?”
“Pardon?” Eli feigns ignorance, though I know full well he’s baiting her to take the brunt of her malicious intent.
The slight lift of Gretchen’s lips is practically a metaphor for her rolling up her sleeves. I narrow my eyes. It’s one thing for me to call Eli out—we shared time together and a sexual past—but it’s another entirely for my intrusive asshole of an aunt to ridicule him.
“While I don’t have a family, these are my blood relatives. Where are your pare—”
“Bat!” I shout, and the entire family looks over to me as though I’ve lost my mind. Eli chuckles.
Smooth, Whit. Really smooth.
“Bat?” Mom asks, her brows fusing together.
“I thought I saw one,” I point out of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. “A bat. A giant, hairy, imposing, blood dripping from its teeth bat.”
“Ewww,” Gracie says, “I don’t like bats.”
Eli smirks at me as we exchange words telepathically.
No prisoners? He asks.
Off with her mol-ie head! I reply.
Want to go first? He asks, ever the gentlemen.
After you, kind sir.
He dips his chin in confirmation.
“You know, Gretchen,” Eli says, standing. “I was wondering if you had any advice on that. You know, being alone, all the time, with nothing else to do but observe the world around you. Whatever do you do to pass all your time…alone?”