by Amy DeMeritt
“Well, in that case,” I lift one of her arms up over my shoulders and wrap an arm behind her, “come on, Granny, be careful, its slick out here.”
She laughs hard and playfully smacks my shoulder as she pulls back. She looks at Madison, who has her cellphone out and is grinning. Mrs. Carter laughs and hides her face.
“Oh, you brat! Are you recording this?” Madison laughs and nods as she lowers her phone. “I got it all. It was very cute.” Mrs. Carter pouts and Madison laughs and wraps her arms around her. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Come on, this old lady is cold.”
We laugh and grab our bags to follow her inside. We shed our jackets and shoes in the entryway so we don’t track snow through the house and Shannon and I follow Madison to sit on the sofa in the living room. Mrs. Carter shakes the snow out of her hair and shakes the chill out of herself.
“You girls want some coffee or cocoa to warm up?”
“Cocoa would be great, thanks, Mom.”
She smiles and nods as she leaves the room. Mr. Carter comes in and takes a seat in a recliner across from us.
“So, you move into the new apartment in a couple weeks, right?”
“Yes, the first week of January.” He nods and looks at Shannon. “Susan and I discussed it, and we’re going to start transferring what we were spending on dorm housing to Madison’s account to help with the apartment. Madison told us you won’t allow them to work to help with bills so that they can focus on school.”
“That’s really appreciated, but…” He smiles and shakes his head. “We would have spent the money anyway. This isn’t us trying to keep a hold on Madison or anything. We accept and respect that Madison is growing up and becoming an adult. But while we’re helping her with college, we want to do this.”
“Ok, thank you. I’m sure that will help ease her mind. They keep trying to fight me on getting jobs.” He laughs and look between Madison and I, lingering a little longer on me. “I imagine Kayla is the worst in that fight.” Shannon laughs and looks at me with an affectionate smile. “Yes, she hates not bringing home the bacon.”
They laugh and I stick my tongue out at her and cross my arms with a pout.
“Ok, girls. Here you go.”
Mrs. Carter comes in with a tray of steaming mugs of cocoa. We each take one and thank her. She smiles and leaves for a moment to return a minute later with two mugs for her and Mr. Carter. While I take a sip of my cocoa, I look around and smile. The doorways are edged in green pine garlands speckled with fake snow and red berries. The table tops have nice Christmas village scenes or Nativity scenes on them, and I can just make out a small sliver of the large Christmas tree in the doorway of the family room.
“I like how you decorated for Christmas.” Mrs. Carter smiles, but then frowns and stares at her mug in her hands. She says, “Thank you,” without looking up.
I glance at Mr. Carter and he also looks down, not meeting our eyes. I hand my mug to Madison and stand up. I kneel down in front of Mrs.
“What’s wrong?” She shakes her head and quickly wipes at the tears in her eyes. I take her mug and set it on the table next to her so I can take her hands in mine. “Look at me.” She looks up and gives me a small smile. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Will we see you on Christmas?” I smile and nod. “Yes, as long as a crazy blizzard doesn’t come through and cover us in a couple feet of snow, we’ll be here. I’m sorry we couldn’t come over for Thanksgiving. I really wanted to, but I kind of injured myself and no one would let me walk.” She smiles and relief washes over her face. “Ok, good. Thank you.”
I smile and give her a small hug before handing her mug back and walking back to the sofa.
“Where’s Jacob and Ashley?”
“Last minute Christmas shopping. I sent them a text to let them know you’re home. I don’t know when they’ll be back, so you may miss them before you leave.” Madison nods and takes another drink. “Where’s Sam?” Madison smiles at her mom. “Probably at Kayla’s or her own house. Her flight came in yesterday.”
“Oh, why don’t you have her come over for lunch? Then you can all just leave together when you have to go to Kayla’s.”
Madison smiles really big and quickly hands me her mug so she can pull her phone out. Her mom and dad smile and laugh a little at Madison’s excitement. Madison giggles a couple times while she texts with Sam.
“Ok, she’s on her way and she said thanks for the invite.” Mrs. Carter just smiles over the edge of her mug as she takes a sip of her drink. “I guess I’ll start working on lunch.” She stands and I stand as well, making her smile. “Can I help?”
“Trying to spend more time with me?”
“Well, that was our deal, wasn’t it?”
“Ok, you can help.”
I follow her to the kitchen and we place our mugs by the sink. After we wash our hands, she opens the fridge and starts pulling out ingredients and handing them to me to set on the counter. She grabs a couple cutting boards and knives and sets them up next to each other on the counter.
“Do you know how to butterfly chicken?”
“No, but I can learn.”
She smiles and opens a package of chicken breast. She shows me how to butterfly the chicken breast while she explains, and then steps back and quickly washes her hands. I step forward and take another piece of chicken from the package and try to copy what she just did. She watches over my shoulder, and when I finish, she rubs the top of my back for a moment.
“Good job.”
“Thank you.”
While I butterfly all of the chicken, she starts slicing a block of cheese into thin rectangles and then folds deli sliced ham around a couple slices of cheese. When I finish with all of the chicken, I wash my hands and the cutting board and knife. As I turn back to dry my hands, she pulls out two large cookie sheets.
“Can you stuff each piece of chicken with the ham and cheese? I’m going to make the breading mixture.”
“Sure. This is a pretty fancy lunch. What’s the special occasion?” She laughs a little and playfully bumps my shoulder like Madison does. “My girls are home.”
I smile really big and wrap my arms around her from behind for a moment, before I release her to do the job she gave me.
“Should I just put them on the cookie sheets after I stuff them?”
“Yes, please. So, I hear you’re going to be in a dance competition in the spring.”
“I am.”
“That must be exciting. Where will the competition be?”
“There’s three rounds to the competition. The first round is a video submission. If they like our video, then we’ll be invited to compete in a huge live competition in New York. We have to have the video submitted by March 1st, then the live competition will be in May. We’ll present a choreographed piece and then the top three dance crews will have to come up with a free style dance on the spot in a huge dance off. Whoever wins the dance off, will be featured in a music video for a major R&B artist.”
“That sounds intimidating – having to come up with something on the spot. How are you going to work on the dance with the troupe while you’re at college?”
“We’ll have to do a lot of sessions through video chat to make sure I get the choreography down, but I’ll also have to fly out to meet with them to record the video and then practice the new piece if we get invited to New York.”
“Where will you meet to practice?”
“Probably here, or Philly. One of the girls in the group has a dance studio in Philly that we may meet up at to practice. But my parents finished our basement as a studio for my sister years ago, so we may just do it there so we don’t have issues with parking in the city. We’re supposed to have a few group sessions at the house while we’re home to start working on some of the choreography for the video submission.”
“If you win, when will you do the music video?”
“August. We’ll have to be on location for a couple weeks
to learn the routine and then film the video. We won’t know till after the competition where we have to go. It could be anywhere in or out of the country.”
“Wow. So, you might have to go to an island or someplace amazing to film?” I smile and laugh a little. “Yeah, it’s possible.”
“Will you go alone?” I’ve finished stuffing the chicken and washing the cutting board and knife, so I lean against the counter to watch her work on the breading. “I’d prefer to take at least one of the girls with me, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. If we win, we’ll find out all of the details and then I can figure that out.”
“I didn’t realize how big of a deal this is. It would be very exciting if you win. I’d like to see you dance, aside from the snow dancing we did when we got home.”
I smile and rub the back of my neck nervously. Madison hasn’t told her parents about us starting the dance channel, because she was worried about how they’d react to the wolf dance.
“Well, I could show you a video, but I don’t want it to upset you.” She freezes and turns to look at me. “Why would it upset me?”
“We recorded it after our last visit here and it holds a lot of symbolic meaning.” She frowns. “About me?” I smile and shake my head. “About anything that threatens my girls and our way of life.”
“Can I see it? I promise I won’t get upset.” I nod and push off from the counter. “Let me get my laptop. You can see it better on there than on the phone.” She smiles and quickly turns to wash her hands.
As I’m digging my laptop out of my bookbag, there’s a knock on the front door, and Madison comes running out of the living room to answer it. She flings open the door and jumps in Sam’s arms, making her laugh and stumble backwards off the stoop and they land in the lawn. I stand in the doorway and watch with a happy smile on my face. Mrs. Carter joins me and just watches as Madison bends down to kiss Sam while the snow continues to gently fall over them. After a minute or so, Madison pulls back smiling and looks down at Sam with a big smile. Sam laughs and pulls her back down into another kiss. When Madison pulls back a second time, Sam runs her fingers through Madison’s hair and holds the side of her face.
“Did you miss me or something?” Madison giggles and kisses her lips again. “I did. Did you miss me?”
“Like crazy. My ass is getting wet and frozen. Can we get up now?”
Madison laughs and pulls Sam up. She helps Sam dust off and their already big smiles widen when they turn and see Mrs. Carter and I watching in the doorway. Sam looks at me with a huge smile, so I offer Mrs. Carter my laptop.
“Would you mind holding this for a minute?”
She smiles and takes it from me. I step out onto the stoop and Sam hops up to throw her arms around me. I lift her off the ground and spin her around a few times. As I set her down, she pulls me into a kiss that makes every bit of chill I feel from the cold winter air leave my body. Heat climbs up my chest and neck and makes my brain go foggy. She leans into me more and I stumble backwards some. I can feel her losing control, so I quickly pull back so we won’t scare Mrs. Carter with too much physical affection. Sam smiles and stares in my eyes.
“I missed you. Where’s my other…” Sam turns towards the door and smiles really big. “There she is.”
Shannon has joined Mrs. Carter in the doorway and smiles really big as Sam stares at her like she’s the best thing she’s ever seen. Sam releases me and playfully pushes me away as she reaches out for Shannon.
“Come here, baby.”
Shannon laughs a little and steps outside to hug Sam. They share an intense kiss, but Shannon quickly pulls back when Sam leans into her too much like she had done to me.
“You girls are something else.” We look at Mrs. Carter and she’s actually smiling. “It’s amazing how you all light up when you are with each other. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s beautiful.” I smile really big and step back inside to wrap her in my arms. She laughs a little and rubs my back. “Come on, all of you. It’s too cold outside to leave this door open.”
After Madison changes into a pair of dry socks and Sam has shed her jacket and shoes, we go to the dining room so I can setup my laptop for Mr. and Mrs. Carter to watch our dance. Just before I push play, I take a deep breath, silently praying they don’t get upset.
When the video ends, Mrs. Carter looks at me with her mouth slightly hanging open. She doesn’t look mad; she looks impressed.
“You have an amazing talent. All of you. Was that your sister dressed as the wolf?”
“Yeah, that’s Sara. She helped me work out the choreography.”
“It’s a very powerful dance. What are you going to do with it?” I blush and look down for a moment, unable to meet her eyes to tell her the truth. “We, uh, started a channel online. That was our introduction video.”
“Wait, this is on the internet? How many people have seen this?” She suddenly looks upset and is staring at Madison. My heart starts racing, anticipating a blowout. “A lot.”
“How many is a lot?” I pull my phone out and check the stats for the video since I just showed them the video from a file on my computer. “It’s been viewed almost seven million times since we put it up two weeks ago.” Her jaw drops. “Are you mad?” She looks at me and her face softens and she shakes her head. “I’m just surprised my daughter didn’t tell me. I would have preferred if she had more clothes on as well.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. We didn’t want you to think it was directed at you.”
“Kayla is trying to share the responsibility of the decision not to tell you, but that was my decision. Things were just too rocky with us still and I was worried about this making things worse.”
“I understand. I’m really trying to do better.” Madison smiles and hugs her mom. “I know you are and I can’t tell you how happy it makes me.”
“Do you have any more videos?” I nervously rub the back of my neck again and Mrs. Carter looks at me with a curious grin. “Are they worse than this?” I laugh and nervously rub the back of my neck. “Well, I can show you one of them, but you probably wouldn’t want to see the other.” Her eyes get big and she looks at Madison, who is blushing bright red. “Ok, if Madison is blushing, I don’t want to see that one.”
I laugh and nod. Madison pulls her phone out and brings up the robot dance I did with Sam when we picked her up from the airport just before Halloween.
“Wow, that was really amazing. I’ve never seen something like that before. What’s your major in school?”
“It’s up the in the air right now. I’m a biology major at the moment, but I’m considering changing it to psychology.”
“What? Since when?” I look at Sam and she looks confused. “Since last night.” I try to give her a look that says I want to discuss it later, but she doesn’t seem to understand, or doesn’t want to. “I thought if you gave up biology, you were going to focus on dance. Where did psychology come from?”
“It just came out in discussion last night. I’m supposed to be helping make lunch right now. Can we talk about it later?” Sam looks a little agitated, but she nods once. “Ok. Do you need help?” Mrs. Carter looks between Sam and I and shakes her head. “We’re almost done with the prep work. You can relax in the living room with the others.”
After I put my laptop away, I follow Mrs. Carter back to the kitchen. She puts the chicken in the oven and then we start working on the salad together.
“You should pursue psychology.” I look over at her and she’s looking down at her cutting board, but she looks up at me and smiles. “Your dealings with us was part of that decision, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but not the sole reason for it. You’re not the only difficult person I’ve dealt with.” I smile and she laughs a little. “Well, I guess that could be a positive spin to my horrible tantrums – they may have helped you find the right path you’re supposed to follow.”
“You know how businesses frame their first dollar made?” She looks at
me with a curious grin. “Yes, why?”
“When I open my practice, I’ll have a picture of you framed as my first major tantrum thrower.” She laughs really hard and shoves my arm, making me stumble away. “You really love teasing me too much.”
“You love it.” She laughs and bumps my shoulder as I step over next to her. “Stop making me admit how much I like you.” I laugh hard and she looks at me with a big smile.
After we finish with the salad, she has me set the table while she sautés some zucchini. I fill glasses with ice water and then help her bring the food out to the table. As I set the platter of breaded chicken down, she smiles and wraps an arm around my shoulders. She kisses my cheek and looks in my eyes for a moment.
“Thank you, Kayla.” I smile and turn to look at her. “For what?”
“For giving me a second chance, but also for showing me that I’m not losing anything by allowing my little girl to grow up. I’m starting to see how much I’m going to gain from this, and it makes me very happy. I can’t believe it’s already been almost five months, but I’m so glad you fell in my daughter’s lap.” I smile and wrap my arms around her. “I’m so glad you decided to give us a second chance and allowed me into your heart and family.”
I hear the sound of a picture being taken and we pull apart to see everyone in the doorway watching us and Madison has her phone up. Her mom laughs and shakes her head.
“You are a brat with that phone today. You know I hate my picture being taken.”
Madison just grins at her and slips her phone back in her pocket.
“Lunch looks great. Are we ready to eat?” Mrs. Carter nods and pulls a chair out. “Yes, you can all sit.”
Chapter Twenty-One
By the time we’re leaving Madison’s parents’ house, there’s over six inches of snow outside and everything has really iced up. Sam came in my dad’s SUV, but she doesn’t feel comfortable driving in this much snow and ice, so I’m driving with her sitting up front with me. It’s been a few hours since it was brought up, but the instant we’re pulling out of the driveway to drive to my house, she asks how psychology became an option as a college major change. I explain to her how Madison came home upset about a conversation with her mom, and that I called Mrs. Carter to diffuse the situation.
