Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 145(@200wpm)___ 116(@250wpm)___ 97(@300wpm)
The Grinch…
I remember the cartoon about a grouchy green man who hates the holidays, but only vaguely. The last time I spent Christmas with my brothers and sister in the mountains, watching cartoons and frolicking in the snow, I was ten years old. That was when my father decided it was time for me to learn the family business and playtime for this Ratcliffe was through.
I haven’t frolicked a day since, and I’m not about to start now.
I held our family together after Dad ran off to Tahiti with Stepmom Number Four. Bran and Ashton were still in high school, and I stepped up to take temporary custody of my siblings. I was the one who ordered groceries, scheduled doctor’s appointments, and kept the business running smoothly. I was the one who funded both Elliot and Bran’s start-ups and Ashton’s six years of Ivy League University.
I learned to put foolish things aside in the name of taking care of my family, and I see no reason for that to change.
And no reason to budge from this bench…
The only thing worse than staring down this tree in the bitter cold would be staring down my siblings as they trim the tree in our home, where there isn’t freezing rain to keep the past frozen at the back of my mind.
I don’t want to think about all the summer vacations and holidays I missed, trailing my father around NYC, from warehouse to warehouse, while my brothers and sister retreated to the mountains with Gramps.
I don’t want to think about how much time I lost with the people who matter most or the fact that my grandfather singled me out in his will as “the brother most in need of a little home for the holidays.”
I’m not in need of anything—except another eggnog.
“You didn’t mind me working through Christmas when you needed money to launch your dating app,” I say, holding out my empty paper cup. “So, fetch your brother another eggnog, then leave me alone. I’ll find my way home when I’m good and ready.”
Elliot rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, Luke. The shops and the café are all closed, and you know I was only teasing. I just want you to loosen up and enjoy yourself. Or to at least stay alive to ring in the New Year. It’s not safe to sit out in the freezing cold, getting drunk by yourself. Jingle Bell Junction hasn’t had a corpse in the park since Captain Herbert and his parrot kicked the bucket in 1812, and I think we should keep that trend going.”
At the mention of the Captain—the founder of Jingle Hell, whose rancid peg leg serves as the town’s tree topper every year—my lip curls. “And who’s idea was it to shove a sea captain’s peg leg on top of a damned tree in landlocked Vermont?” I demand, incensed all over again. “It looks like a giant middle finger. Or a prehistoric dildo.”
Elliot snorts. “It does kind of look like a dildo. Awfully splintery, though. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any peg-leg-dildo-love. Or on the giving end, for that matter.”
“Someone should have torched that ridiculous thing a hundred years ago,” I say, the fire in my chest blazing higher.
I don’t know if it’s the whiskey, the ghosts haunting this town, or truly the dildo tree topper that’s set me off, and I don’t care.
I finally see a reason to be in Outer Bumfuck, Vermont, wasting six weeks of leave humoring a dead man.
I have a mission, a purpose, and I won’t rest until it’s been fulfilled.
I stand, clapping Elliot on the shoulder. “Send the car down in thirty minutes. It should still be safe to drive. Tell the chauffeur to wait for me by the gazebo.”
“Where are you going?” Elliot says as I toss my cup into a nearby trash can.
I start across the empty square.
“Luke, seriously,” my brother calls after me. “Don’t do something stupid.”
I pause, turning back to him with an arch of my brows nearly as icy as the frozen grass beneath my feet. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“To my responsible, hard-working, generous brother who’s hurting right now,” he says, his brow furrowed. “And we all do dumb things when we’re hurting. Please, Luke. Just come back to the house with me. We can skip the tree trimming and just…talk. Or play pool or whatever. You don’t have to go through whatever you’re going through alone.”
But I’ve always been alone.
I’m the oldest sibling, the one singled out to be my father’s captain when I was still too young to see over the wheel, let alone steer the ship. I bore the weight of his poor business decisions and numerous affairs on my shoulders, sheltering my siblings from the fear and uncertainty of those years before I took control of our family. I was the firewall between them and my feckless father, neither child nor adult, stuck somewhere in between, guarding my secrets so fiercely I wouldn’t know how to share the burden if I tried.