Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

In an ideal world, she wouldn’t have spent Christmas morning slightly drunk, but this, clearly, was not an ideal world.

She had managed, somehow, to come home the night before and behave like some semblance of a normal human being. Ava and Kit had been too caught up in the Christmas Eve festivities to ask too many questions about Charlotte’s suspiciously red eyes. There had been the last-minute flurry of gift wrapping, of making a dessert for the following day, of—much to Charlotte’s dismay—a forced viewing of It’s a Wonderful Life , which on the one hand was terrible because it was the longest movie ever made, but on the other hand at least viewed Christmas through about as cheerful a lens as she did, which had always been a point in its favor.

Given the length of the movie, she hadn’t gone to bed until late, though, mercifully, she’d been able to sleep until a humane hour this morning, because Alice—say what you liked about her (and Charlotte had said plenty)—had one enormous factor in her favor: She was a baby , which meant that she didn’t know it was Christmas .

Charlotte was certain that in future years, she’d be awoken by a mercenary cackle at five a.m., but this year, blessedly, the demon baby slept until seven.

“I think you’re being a bit melodramatic,” Charlotte said, as Ava literally kissed the floor upon finally wandering into the living room that morning.

“I’m not,” Ava retorted, wincing as she climbed back to her feet—it was one of the least-graceful motions Charlotte had ever seen her sister make. “Just wait until you have a baby.”

“Pass,” Charlotte said without missing a beat.

“Probably a good call,” Ava said, although her face did brighten at the sight of Kit wandering into the living room with Alice in his arms; he was wearing a pair of pajamas in a matching print to Alice’s onesie. It was pretty adorable. Though—

“Did you not get the matching-PJs memo?” Charlotte asked her sister, gesturing at Ava’s pajamas—a silk tank-and-shorts set that, knowing Ava, had cost at least $300. It was completed with a pink silk robe. She looked significantly more glamorous than anyone had a right to look before eight in the morning, but she was decidedly not completing the picture of a family in matching Christmas harmony.

“I got it, and I ignored it,” Ava said, lifting her nose. “I accidentally logged into Facebook last year at Christmas—”

“How do you accidentally log into Facebook?” Charlotte asked skeptically.

“It wasn’t an accident,” Kit said cheerfully. “We were arguing about whether her last boyfriend before me was fit or not—”

Charlotte closed her eyes. “I don’t think I want to hear this story anymore.”

Kit was undeterred. “—and so she had to log in to prove to me that he was, which was wonderful because it was how she learned that he’d converted to become a Mormon—”

This had taken an unexpected turn. “I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “He what now?”

“—and had four children and they all wore matching Christmas pajamas.”

“It was harrowing,” Ava said with a shudder. “But then I did a bit of digging, since I was already logged in, and discovered absolute hordes of boring people I used to know who are now happily married and popping out offspring—”

“Like you,” Charlotte pointed out, in the interest of fairness.

“—and this matching-pajamas thing seems to be some sort of plague. You cannot imagine how many people do it.” Ava crossed her arms. “So I refuse to participate.”

“Mum will be disappointed,” Kit said, “since she’s the one who bought them for us.”

“She won’t,” Ava said serenely. “Because I gave the pair she got me back to her, and she’s going to wear them instead.”

At precisely this moment, there was the sound of a key in the door, the door opening, and a cheerful “Happy Christmas!” trilled from the entryway. Simone and John appeared in the living room a moment later, both wearing matching pajamas of their own, with Simone brandishing a bottle of champagne in her hand.

“Bubbles?” she asked brightly.

“Please,” said Charlotte.

From that point, the morning became a bit of a blur: there was a round of mimosas, then the absurdity of a bunch of adults sitting with bated breath as an unimpressed baby played with a ball of wrapping paper rather than any of the gifts that it had been used to wrap. There was a Christmas lunch, and a round of charades, and Christmas crackers—one of the few Christmas traditions that Charlotte actually enjoyed, since she liked to wait until someone was deep in conversation and then pull a cracker directly next to them, just to see them jump.

But throughout all of this, there was a constant whine of misery humming just below the surface for her—one she didn’t want to think about, to consider too carefully, scared of what it would tell her. About herself, about Graham, about what she might feel for him.

Might have felt , she corrected herself mentally. Past tense.

But she didn’t believe this, really.

She thought she was doing a decent job of hiding this, since no one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary, but it turned out that Ava had just been choosing her moment to strike.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Ava asked without any warning that afternoon as she and Charlotte were loading the dishwasher. “You look like you’re going to a funeral. I know Christmas isn’t your thing, but this seems extreme.”

“I do not,” Charlotte objected, scrubbing at a particularly stuck-on bit of food on the plate in her hand.

“Oh my god, you don’t have to wash the dish first ,” Ava said, plucking the plate out of her hand and sliding it into a free spot in the dishwasher.

“It helps to loosen up the tough spots!” Charlotte said; this was a rehash of an argument they’d had at least twenty times in their adult lives, but it was comforting in its familiarity, like a favorite—if slightly annoying—pair of shoes.

“Do not try to distract me, Charlotte Rose Lane,” Ava said severely, crossing her arms and leaning against the counter. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Charlotte hedged, then quailed under her sister’s narrow-eyed gaze. “I had a fight with Graham,” she confessed reluctantly, trying not to be offended when Ava’s face brightened at this news. “Why do you look happy about that?”

“Because,” Ava said, “it means you like him.”

“We fought, and are possibly never going to speak to each other again, but you think this is a good thing for the relationship?”

Ava waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll make up—but the fact that you’re this upset about it means that you really care about him. Which, to be clear, I definitely knew,” she added, sounding extremely pleased with herself.

“Well, maybe save the smug self-congratulations until you know what we fought about,” Charlotte said grimly, before giving her sister a brief rundown of the argument with Graham.

Annoyingly, by the time she was done, Ava was frowning thoughtfully, rather than seething with righteous indignation, as Charlotte might have hoped.

“So,” she said slowly, adding a scoop of detergent to the dishwasher and closing the door, “you’re mad at him because of something his sister did?”

“No!” Charlotte hung a dish towel on its hook on the wall and turned to face her sister, leaning her hip against the counter. “I’m mad because he pretended not to know who I was, and never mentioned the fact that his entire reason for getting to know me was because of Christmas, Truly .”

“Hmm,” Ava said, pressing the button to start the dishwasher and then crossing her arms over her chest. “I think that’s what you’re really mad about.”

“What?”

“ Christmas, Truly . Not Graham.”

“They’re completely connected in this situation.”

Ava shrugged. “Sort of. But the problem here isn’t really Graham, who, from what his sister said, seems to have gone out of his way not to do anything manipulative or creepy in this whole series of events. The problem is that you are so insanely touchy about Christmas, Truly .”

Charlotte, ridiculously, felt this accusation like a blow to the chest. “I think I have cause to be touchy.”

Ava sighed impatiently. “I’m not denying that the fallout from that Variety article was a bit intense, and I don’t blame you for being freaked out by it. But you’re blowing this out of proportion, because you’re mad that you’re more famous for that movie than you are for your art.”

“I’m not—” Charlotte began heatedly, but Ava wasn’t done yet.

“Remember when you were interviewed for that article about your stationery line, and the headline called you Tallulah?”

“Vividly.”

“You complained about it for months.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did . You were joking, sort of, but you also mentioned it a lot. Because that movie is a sore spot, and you haven’t fully sorted out how you feel about it, and the way those feelings are all tied up in the way you feel about Mom and Dad.”

“Ava, what the hell.” Charlotte felt like her sister had transformed into a different person, even as she stood there before her.

Ava exhaled a frustrated breath; her long hair was loose, she was still wearing her bathrobe, and there was a smear on her neck where Alice had gotten a bit overly enthusiastic in trying to share some of her mashed avocado, but she looked imposing for all that—a reminder, in case Charlotte needed one, that Ava had spent the entirety of her adult life commanding the attention of sold-out theaters.

“Charlotte. I love you, and I know Mom and Dad are… difficult.”

“Easy to say when you’re the one who’s done exactly what they wanted you to do with your life.”

Ava let out a laugh—a sharp, biting laugh that Charlotte hadn’t heard from her sister in a long time, since the worst fights of their teenage years. “Yes, please imagine how easy it is to try to create your own career in theater with Mom constantly breathing down your neck. Imagine how easy it is for your first major role to be in a play that Mom wrote —and of course she had plenty of notes on my performance.” Ava sighed. “I’m lucky, I know that—I’ve obviously gotten a huge leg up in my career because of Mom, and I’ve had a much easier time of it than most people. But there are definite negatives that come along with it. So don’t think that you’re the only one who ever fights with Mom and Dad.”

Charlotte was shamed into silence; she knew that her sister and mom fought sometimes, especially during the early years of Ava’s career, but she hadn’t spent too much time thinking about it—they were four years apart in age, just enough for them to each be very much caught up in their own lives. Ava had gotten her own apartment when Charlotte was still in high school. She wondered how many of the dynamics in their family, as she remembered them, weren’t entirely accurate—the recollections of a child.

“None of this is really the point anyway,” Ava said, more gently now. “I know that it’s annoying to be incredibly talented, to be successful in your career, and to have people still bring up one thing that you did when you were a kid, twenty years ago—but come on. Hollywood is impossible to break into, and you were basically handed a role. Do you know how many people would kill for that—how many people I know, how many of my friends, would commit murder for the chance to be in a movie like Christmas, Truly ? And it’s not like you haven’t benefited from it—that movie is the reason you were able to start your own business, without asking Mom and Dad for help. It’s the reason you’re able to more or less ignore them and do whatever you want. It gave you a leg up, just like Mom gave me a leg up. It’s let you spend your adult life doing the thing you really want to do. So maybe… be just a little grateful for it?”

Charlotte had never thought of herself as ungrateful, exactly. She wasn’t so self-centered or oblivious as to be unaware of the fact that her position was incredibly privileged, and that most people couldn’t start a creative business in one of the most expensive cities on earth at the age of twenty-two. But still, whenever she’d done something that alluded to her Christmas, Truly fame—that article that Ava mentioned; the film screening yesterday, even—she’d viewed it as an unpleasant necessity, a way to get some benefit from an experience that she hadn’t enjoyed. But maybe this was the wrong way of thinking about it.

She didn’t have to like the movie… but it was one small moment in her life that had enabled a lot of other, great ones.

And suddenly, she did feel a little bit grateful.

“Thank you,” she said to her sister now. “You’re right, and I have some things to think about.”

Ava nodded, pushing off the counter to come over and give Charlotte a quick, fierce hug. “Don’t think too long. Because I’m guessing there’s a handsome Englishman who’s currently having an absolutely miserable Christmas in his fancy old house.”

“Join the club,” Charlotte muttered, reaching for a clean glass and turning on the tap. The problem, she thought as she filled her glass, was that everything Ava said made perfect sense… and yet. She couldn’t shake the knee-jerk impulse she had to recoil at the thought that Graham , of all things, was tied up in Christmas, Truly too. She’d wanted this one thing for herself.

And she didn’t know how to move past it.

Sometime later, their parents called. It was late in the afternoon by that point—not surprising, given the time difference—and Ava grimaced at the name on her phone screen when it lit up, waving it at Charlotte to catch her attention.

Charlotte groaned. “Please, no.”

“It’s Christmas—we have to!” Ava tossed her mane of hair over one shoulder, straightened as if bracing herself for battle, and answered. “Hi, Mom and Dad! Merry Christmas!”

“I didn’t know her voice was capable of reaching that pitch,” Simone said in an impressed whisper to Charlotte.

“It’s all that training for the stage,” Charlotte whispered back. “She has incredible vocal range.”

“Yes, Alice is right here,” Ava said now, in response to whatever their parents had said on the phone. She waved a hand at Kit, who was balancing Alice on his knee while trying to eat a sizable portion of Christmas pudding at the same time. He blinked at her, then proffered the baby, who Ava accepted. “Alice, do you want to say hello to Grandma and Grandpa?” Alice obligingly made some incoherent babbling noises, and then tried to tug Ava’s necklace off. Ava paused, frowning, for a long moment as she waved her offspring in Kit’s direction and listened intently. “Mom, Alice is six months old; she can’t actually speak .” Another, longer pause. “I think that’s an unreasonable expectation of a baby, frankly.” Yet another pause. “Let’s let her learn English first before we start worrying about teaching her French.”

Charlotte blinked at this, suddenly wishing that she were privy to both ends of this conversation—not an emotion she regularly experienced when it came to her parents. However, in a true case of “be careful what you wish for,” at that precise moment Ava said brightly, “Did you want to talk to Charlotte? She’s sitting right here!”

Charlotte frantically waved her arms at her sister, offering a cartoonish grimace in case her meaning wasn’t already clear, but Ava pointedly ignored all this and merely brandished the phone at her.

Shooting her sister a look that promised retribution at some future date, Charlotte took the phone. “Hello, parents,” she said, trying not to sound too weary already.

“Charlotte, do you know that I was asked about you at a party the other day?” her father asked without so much as a “Merry Christmas” to ease into things. “It was at Tom Gallagher’s, and I ran into one of his old production partners, who wanted to know if there was anything they could do to persuade you about the Christmas, Truly reboot.”

Charlotte counted to five before replying. “No, Dad, I think I made myself perfectly clear earlier. I’m not an actress, and I have too much work to do these days, anyway.”

“Do you?” Her father sounded mildly surprised. “All those watercolors on Instagram keeping you busy?”

She took a slow breath; her instinct, previously, would have been to flare up and argue—they’d certainly spent enough Christmases doing just that, at whatever far-flung location they’d happened to land on that year.

Now, however, her earlier conversation with Ava crossed her mind, and so she took another breath, counted to three, and simply said, “Yes, they are. I actually have a meeting in New York next month with Perfect Paper—they’re interested in me potentially designing a special line for them.” She wouldn’t ordinarily have mentioned something like this to her parents until the contract was signed and it was a definite reality, because confessing that it didn’t work out later on would be absolutely insufferable, but it was Christmas and she was feeling… well, she wasn’t quite feeling like herself.

“That’s nice, honey,” her dad said, sounding a bit surprised—and also a bit distracted—but also genuinely, mildly impressed. Charlotte frowned. Had he had a stroke? “You’ll have to let us know when it’s on sale—your mother has taken it into her head that we need a pool house, and I’m sure some wallpaper would look nice.”

Charlotte frowned. “You don’t have a pool.” This had been a point of much discussion when they’d bought the house in LA; her mother did not believe in getting her head wet unless absolutely necessary, and so their backyard was occupied by a large patio and garden instead.

“Well, she hurt her knee traipsing around that farm in Vermont with the young man she met there, and her doctor seems to think that some low-impact exercise would be best going forward, so we’re getting a pool.”

“Well,” Charlotte said, blinking. “That’s nice.”

“So you’ll let us know about your wallpaper, then?” her dad continued, still sounding vaguely distracted; she could hear her mom’s faint voice in the background, presumably occupying half of his attention. “And your mother says you could come see it, once it’s installed.”

And Charlotte realized, astonished, that this was a peace offering from her parents. So, too, was that email from her mom’s friend, looking to commission her. If she stopped looking for the insult in everything they did, she could see it better—the intent behind it. They weren’t thrilled that she hadn’t done what they wanted her to do with her life; they likely never would be. And everything this year with the Christmas, Truly reboot had only reopened that old wound.

But this… this was them trying to salve it.

If she took the offer.

“I’d like that,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Excellent!” her father said brightly. “And perhaps, when you’re in town, if you wanted to swing by Tom’s office to take a meeting—”

“Nope,” Charlotte said cheerfully, without missing a beat.

Her dad sighed. “I guessed you’d say that. You really should reconsider, though, Charlotte—Tom sent us a very nice fruit basket for Christmas. Think of the pears you could be eating!”

“I can buy my own fruit, Dad,” Charlotte said, but then, miraculously, the most incredible thing happened: she wanted to laugh . She couldn’t stop herself imagining the expression on Graham’s face if he overheard even a fraction of this conversation, and the urge to laugh was almost impossible to suppress. Her parents were absurd, but they were hers, and she was stuck with them, and they were going to continue behaving like absolute lunatics even from eight time zones away, so she may as well get used to it, and stop letting every single thing they said work its way beneath her skin.

“I suppose,” her dad agreed, a bit mournfully, and Charlotte, suddenly, was gripped with the wildest desire to throw him a bone.

“Hey, Dad?” she asked.

“Yes?”

“If you wanted to send me some pears… I wouldn’t hate it.”

There was a long pause, and then, softly, her dad said, “I think I’ll do that, Charlotte.”

And Charlotte really believed that he would.