For a dangerous second, Ridge didn’t speak. Then he socked Christian in the jaw.
There was no reason now for Ridge to punch Christian, nor was there a reason for Christian to punch Ridge in retaliation. But this was good. To know Ridge and to never have been punched by Ridge was to miss out on the full Ridge experience. Christian needed that sock in the jaw, because he needed to sock a Ridge in the jaw.
‘Ah,’ Ridge cried, as he slammed into the floor.
Christian shook his hand, wincing at the pain. But still—he’d kept his feet.
‘Clara James deserves a much better man than you,’ he told Ridge.
‘Maybe,’ Ridge replied. He spat blood onto the floor. ‘But we both know that man is not you.’
Seventeen
The next morning, George shook his Uncle Christian awake. George explained that he didn’t want to wake Christian, but that Grayson was on fire and that maybe Boxer had eaten the Relic.
Christian tore out of bed, wearing nothing but nothing, and threw himself into the hall, down the stairs, and into the living room, where the Relic was hosting a seniors’ crochet class.
Seniors are not inherently good at crochet, the Relic explained to Christian as he stood there stark naked, but they have time and patience and a love for underprivileged children. The same underprivileged children who would receive crochet blankets—the crochet blankets these seniors were making now—for Christmas this year. The Relic did not think it appropriate for Christian to burst into her seniors’ crochet class naked, because these children had so little and yet deserved so much, like blankets not made in the vicinity of naked people, so would he mind putting on some clothes?
‘So, we’re not supposed to be naked?’ Mr. Miller said. He was eighty-five years old and currently in the process of removing his shirt.
‘No,’ Christian called out, and then he ran from the room.
Clothed and embarrassed, he returned to the living room five minutes later to apologize and also to find out what George was talking about. It turns out that Grayson was on fire, because he’d taken to crochet very quickly and had already made a small blanket, and that Boxer had eaten the Relic—the gingerbread Relic Clara had made with the Gs the night before.
The Relic wanted Christian to grovel. Her hair was scooped into an extra tight bun—it made her look as though she’d had a face lift. ‘Several of these seniors are on heart medication, Christian. Just what were you thinking, bursting in here naked?’
‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ he replied.
‘So, you tore off all your clothes and accidentally sprung naked into the middle of my seniors’ crochet class?’
‘Yeah,’ Christian said. ‘That’s pretty much exactly what happened.’
The Relic straightened up and looked sharply at her great nephew. ‘You are excused, Christian.’
Christian inhaled slowly. He didn’t want to snap at the Relic. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Now.’
Christian left the living room and trudged into the kitchen, where he found Clara leaning against the kitchen island.
‘How do you feel this morning?’ There was a smile on the corner of her lips.
‘Awful, thanks.’ Christian rested his head on the kitchen table. Then he sat up all of a sudden. ‘I need coffee. You want one?’
‘Thanks.’
He made two lattes and offered one to Clara. ‘It has peppermint syrup,’ he warned.
‘I know it has peppermint syrup. You made it.’
‘Okay, but aren’t you excited to know why there is peppermint syrup in the latte?’ He wasn’t angry about the Relic. He was almost happy now. ‘Aren’t you desperate to know why there is peppermint syrup in the latte?’
Clara slumped even harder against the island. ‘I am beside myself.’
‘It’s the day before the day before Christmas!’
‘That’s not a thing.’
‘It’s Christmas Eve Eve!’
‘No.’
Christian frowned. ‘Did we accidentally switch personalities in the night?’
‘I mean, it seems the only logical explanation.’
‘Ding dong! The Ridge is dead.’ Christian was thrilled. So that’s why he wasn’t stewing on the Relic. He’d only just realized.
‘Ugh—don’t mention him.’ Clara rubbed the bridge of her nose.
‘Good coffee?’
‘It tastes of nothing but peppermint. But it’s—yeah, kinda great. Hey, do you wanna build a snowman this morning?’
Christmas people were content with peppermint, like Christian, and snow, unlike Christian. He hated snow. He thought it about time everyone stopped pretending that snow was great instead of a monumental disappointment. He tried to tell Clara, but she didn’t want to hear this. She wanted to hear that he was grabbing carrots and raisins for the snowman’s nose and eyes.
‘Fine, I will build a snowman with you,’ Christian said, ‘but could you leave the room first? I’m going to eat all of these gingerbread things and I would feel better if you didn’t watch me.’
Clara seemed as though she wanted to say something, then shook her head. ‘There is no shame in eating twenty-two gingerbread men and seventeen gingerbread snowflakes, Thornton.’
Her phone chirped now. The message seemed vital. She stood, all bright, hungry eyes, and yanked Christian into the hall. Clara had needed to yank Christian into the hall, despite not wanting to, of course, because she needed his help. No, the inn was not on fire, and yes, Holly and the Gs and Boxer were also not on fire, thank goodness. But apart from that, Clara didn’t have time to elaborate. She’d like to know if this was okay with Christian, if she could explain on the way?
‘On the way to where?’ Christian said, shouldering his coat. He hadn’t even eaten one gingerbread man.
‘To Mrs. Sprinkles.’
Christian racked his brain. ‘Wait, do I know her?’
Clara shook her head again. ‘She’s new in town.’
‘How new is new?’
‘She’s lived here for fourteen years.’
‘That’s not really new, then, is it, James?’ Christian said with a snort.
‘It is for Mistletoe. By the way, Mrs. Sprinkles has cats.’
‘How many cats?’
‘Just—cats,’ Clara called over her shoulder as she scrambled into a sleigh. ‘I hope that’s fine. Holly said you don’t love cats.’
That wasn’t true. Christian loved cats, but everyone in his office loved dogs, and he was worried that if they judged his preference for felines, he’d be seen like less of a man. He didn’t feel like less of a man for giggling over the photos of Jennifer’s new tabby, of course, but Miles—who else!—would weaponize his love of cats. So Christian preferred dogs, and after he spent the day preferring dogs, he went home and preferred cats. He just preferred cats in secret, between the shadow and the soul, as the Pablo Neruda poem goes.
He didn’t even tell Holly about his love, so fearful was he that she’d accidentally spill his secret on a visit to New York with the Gs.
‘Clara,’ Mrs. Sprinkle said. ‘Thank goodness.’
‘How can we help, Mrs. Sprinkle?’
‘I can’t get my computer to work.’
Clara paused. A shadow crossed her eyes. ‘So, this isn’t a Christmas emergency?’
‘I don’t know what happened. Everything just stopped loading.’
‘That’s terribly annoying, Mrs. Sprinkle. But I’m Mistletoe’s Christmas consigliere. I take care of Christmas related problems.’
‘Can’t you take a look?’ Mrs. Sprinkle wrung her hands together.
‘Of course,’ Clara replied, though Christian could see she felt a little disheartened.
On the way to the study, Mrs. Sprinkle asked about Clara’s hair, because she really wanted to talk about her own hair, how she’d dyed it brown and then styled it with special mousse from California.
‘It looks great,’ Christian said, and Mrs. Sprinkle beamed. She liked men
more than women, and let Christian touch the antiques in her living room.
‘Those are the ashes of Henry,’ Mrs. Sprinkle told Christian. ‘My old cat.’
‘It’s a nice jar,’ Christian said, because he did not know what else to say.
Mrs. Sprinkle took Christian’s arm. ‘You wouldn’t mind getting me a peanut butter and honey sandwich, would you?’
‘I’m not sure that’s wise,’ Clara said.
Yes, Christian had put metal in a microwave, but he could still open a jar of peanut butter. He could still make a sandwich.
‘It’ll be fine,’ Christian replied.
Except a minute later, when he opened the peanut butter, the lid spun out of his hand, flew across the room, and knocked the jar with Henry’s ashes onto the carpet.
Once, say, in the mid-‘90’s, Christian had a science teacher who made him, twelve-year-old Christian, actually care about science. The teacher—Mr. Henderson—took them outside one morning to toss a Frisbee, and as they tossed the Frisbee, delighted to escape the classroom, he explained to them the forces of lift and drag.
Lift is the force that allows the Frisbee to stay in the air—and lift is born from two different kinds of pressure: high and low. The air above the Frisbee travels faster than the air below the Frisbee, thereby creating low pressure above the Frisbee and high pressure below. The pressure difference gives the Frisbee, yes, lift. Christian still didn’t understand what drag did. But then, he didn’t understand all that lift stuff either.
So, really, it wasn’t Christian’s fault that Henry’s ashes ended up all over the carpet. We should blame lift and probably drag, he told Clara. We should blame the things which allow something that shouldn’t fly to fly, like the Bernoulli principle. The Bernoulli principle explained all this speed and pressure stuff. They should blame the Bernoulli principle too.
‘I was also in Mr. Henderson’s class, Thornton.’ Clara said. ‘Mrs. Sprinkles’ computer is working again, by the way. I just needed to restart it.’
‘Then she’s got nothing to complain about,’ Christian said, edging backward away from the ashes and toward the door.
On the way back to Milleridge, Christian’s phone rang. It was the Relic. She wanted to complain about Grace. How could Grace ask for saxophone lessons? This is what the Relic wanted to know. Or this is what the Relic would have wanted to know if she had wanted to know anything about Grace, which she did not.
Christian gripped Clara’s arm as the Relic continued to hiss about Grace. She’d never heard of anything so ridiculous as saxophone lessons. He was tempted to reply that next term Grace’s school wanted her to take up an instrument, and really, why not saxophone?
Instead he kept his mouth shut.
The Relic told him she had a plan. She would smile and listen to Grace’s tantrum, so that she could demonstrate how a proper woman was supposed to act. ‘Holly is poisoning that girl,’ she added.
Christian made up an excuse and got off the phone. He felt on the edge.
‘You don’t need that,’ the Relic always said to Grace. This was not how she spoke to Grayson, George, or Gus. Just last week she’d said to Grayson, ‘Of course, you can have dirt bike lessons next summer.’ The Relic didn’t believe that Grayson deserved only what he needed. After all, who needed dirt bike lessons? It was just that Grayson’s desire for dirt bike lessons was the entire conversation. You want it, kid? It’s yours.
But Grace? She had to prove her desires were not frivolous. She had to become a scholar in her own wants. Christian half expected the Relic to tell Grace she needed to write a paper, cite references, attend conferences. She had to provide proof that yes, she really did want what she said she wanted—and she had to provide proof that what she wanted would enhance her life. It wouldn’t surprise Christian if the Relic needed a certificate from Grace’s (male) doctor and letters of recommendation from Grace’s (male) teachers to say that, yes, this girl could be trusted to know what she desired.
It was ridiculous, this attitude, and once you noticed this attitude, you could not unnotice this attitude. The way women were shamed when they operated from a place of want instead of need. Christian hadn’t quite understood before now that the world allowed men to have desires, but a woman was allowed only needs. Sure, a husband could spend money on tinting windows and upgrading tires, but if his wife wanted new shoes or perhaps a dress, she was selfish and, what else? Narcissistic? Frivolous? Vain? Indeed.
This was how the world also treated Holly, too. Why did she have wants? Why couldn’t she have thick, sturdy needs? ‘You don’t need to dye your hair,’ people told her. ‘You don’t need to wear heels.’ ‘You don’t need to fill your lips.’ No, but maybe she wanted to fill her lips! Maybe she wanted to look like a fish! ‘You don’t need make-up.’ No, but maybe she liked spending a little bit of time on herself in the morning! Maybe she enjoyed the meditation of blending her eyeshadow, the craft of winging her eyeliner. Maybe she could live without constant scrutiny for five minutes, thanks!
Now Christian thought about this, everything started to click into place. Neither Christian nor Holly had been good at school. Yes, they had been wealthy, which meant the rules were not so much rules but faint guidelines. But still, their parents wanted successful children. And so, they bribed Christian and Holly. They paid them fifty dollars for every successful school term. Then their mother would take them to the mall to spend the money. But the way they were allowed to spend this money, the way Christian’s desires were trusted and Holly’s desires were not, staggered Christian.
The doll Holly wanted was out of stock. So Holly found a better, cuter doll—a doll based on the character from her favorite show. Their mother looked into her daughter’s eyes, and she decided Holly did not really want what she said she wanted. Her mother looked at the doll, which Holly had not spent the morning talking about, and said, ‘You can think about it.’ (Christian was never told to think about it.) ‘And then we can come back next week,’ she had added.
But what nine year old can wait a whole entire week? No, Holly wanted something now. She’d done well in school, which was the deal, and now she had fifty dollars in her tiny hand and she wanted her prize. So she bought a large book that she didn’t want, because their mother had decided that yes, a book was sensible.
Christian found himself growing more and more irritated-and it wasn’t just motion sickness from the sleigh.
Holly was kept so small throughout her childhood that she didn’t yet know she could expand. She didn’t yet know that society conspired to make a woman mistrust her desires, that the things she was denied as a child led directly to the things she denied herself as an adult. She didn’t yet know that all the love she was withheld when she was young led directly to all the love she withheld from herself now that she had grown, the way all paths once led to Rome.
‘I don’t want to go to the inn,’ Christian said, all of a sudden.
Clara rubbed his back. ‘Do you need to throw up?’
‘Yes, but also I want to go home.’
‘You’re already home,’ Clara replied.
‘No,’ Christian replied, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. ‘To Garland Street. To Thornton Manor.’
It was important to see the manor. It belonged to him, after all—not to Holly, who was the oldest, because she was also a woman. Christian used to think about signing the manor over to Holly. After the Relic died, he’d go to his lawyer’s office—first, he’d hire a lawyer—and using a Mont Blanc, he’d sign over his childhood home. He would put down the pen, he would shake his lawyer’s hand, and he would inch toward the exit, taking the Thornton family legacy with him.
But sometime after he turned twenty-five, around the age he started playing squash and a little golf, the thought of signing away Thornton Manor soured. Yes, it was unfair to Holly. He knew she had earned Thornton Manor. He knew she deserved more than an awful father who valued Christian more simply because he was Christian, a boy. He knew that h
e had the power, when the Relic died, to right at least one of the humiliations Holly had suffered. But he wouldn’t. He was too selfish.
This was something he wanted to get into, fixing his selfishness, figuring out how to quiet his hunger. This isn’t who I am, Christian thought as he searched for the manor’s keys in his pocket. This is who I was. Holly deserved better. He remembered their childhood. They were collected in a black car and shuttled around by stone-faced chauffeurs. He’d thrived on the freedom, but the freedom had strangled Holly. She needed rules. Perhaps this was why she toed the line when it came to the Relic. She was searching for parental love, after all these years.
The sleigh passed through the black gates of Thornton Manor. Before the Relic sent Christian to live with Hunter, before the Relic sent him to live in that antiseptic house, she’d considered asking Hunter to move into Thornton Manor. Christian never found out why she had changed her mind.
Now he stepped out of the sleigh and pushed open the heavy doors of the manor. He remembered the office was in the west wing, because that’s where important people talked about important topics, Christian’s forefathers felt. Christian didn’t care for business. Still, he felt a pang. Maybe it was guilt, or maybe something sharper—ambition. Once Mistletoe was to be his kingdom. Lately, he could do with a kingdom. He could do with a crown.
‘Clara, would you hold my hand?’ he asked gently.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
They walked hand in hand through the manor. Christian thought about the end of their relationship and what might have happened if the relationship had not ended. Namely: marriage and babies. He thought about how life’s journey isn’t so much straightforward as sideways, how you take one step forward and end up three steps to the left, and how he needed to find a way to be okay with this, which felt impossible.
Christian spent so much time living in his imagination, mainly because in his imagination Clara had said yes, and that’s why this felt mostly impossible, this whole sideways thing. Sometimes in his imagination, she still said no, but his imagination made that fine, too. Because they didn’t break up after no. Because he didn’t leave after no.
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