Текст книги "Immaculate"
Автор книги: Katelyn Detweiler
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
Jesse didn’t waste any time leaping full speed ahead into my mother’s grand plan.
I spent the next week and a half living on the opposite side of Jesse’s camera, trying my best to pretend that he wasn’t there and that there wasn’t a tiny machine recording every movement, every expression, every word. I was used to seeing the camera in his hand—it was more unusual to see him without his second set of eyes—but I wasn’t used to the lens being focused so exclusively on me.
Our classmates weren’t fazed by Jesse filming me, probably because he was either A, invisible to them, or B, already the weird kid who always had a camera in front of his face. Whichever reason, the camera definitely didn’t curtail any of their typical behaviors. If anything, the pre-Christmas hype had made some of them even more determined to harass me. Kyle and his crew fell to their knees and hailed me whenever we crossed paths in the hallway, and I was getting more notes jammed in my locker, more balls of paper wadded up and thrown at me during class or in the cafeteria. I’d stopped reading the messages altogether after catching Jesse recording over my shoulder, making a point of throwing them away unopened. I had always suspected that some of my classmates thought I was a bit of an outsider, maybe, a grade snob who didn’t dare to step outside of her little social circle. But I’d never realized how outside I’d really been. How detached I was from all but a measly little handful of companions. It’s funny, really, the kind of pseudo-safety a few qualified close connections can give you. Nate, Izzy, Hannah. They’d been my guardians, and I’d never once stopped to think about who I’d be without them. But now I knew. Now I had no delusions.
There were, thankfully, some people who cruised right past me in the hallway, too—as if I was anyone, or maybe even as if I was no one at all. Kids who’d either gotten sick of the hype or had never really cared in the first place. They cared about Christmas, exams, college applications, their own best friend and relationship dramas. Their own lives.
Sadly, though, those indifferent classmates were still in the minority.
Jesse met me at my house each weekday morning, but instead of just waiting outside for me to hop into his truck, he’d come in first, take random footage of me getting ready for the day, reading over the latest Virgin Mina web posts, talking with my mom and Gracie at the breakfast table about nothing and everything—what kind of pizza we’d have for dinner that night, or how my mom had woken up one day to find BURN IN HELL written in bright red spray-painted capital letters on our porch.
We’d had it painted over that same day—the same day that we also, not so incidentally, ordered the installation of a new state-of-the-art home security and surveillance system—but I still saw the words every time I stepped up to our front door. They couldn’t be painted over in my memory. I couldn’t stop thinking about the stranger who had prowled across our lawn the night before, wondering who and why—and what he or she might do next. Maybe this had just been a warning, like Elliot S’s cryptic call. A preview for something much bigger than a few nasty words. I hadn’t watched the footage, but I already knew how petrified my face would look on playback. I was completely vulnerable—my entire family was vulnerable. We were never safe, not even in our own home. But other than a few slips on mornings like that one, I kept a straight face. I pretended to be brave.
Jesse shadowed me over the weekend, too, when he wasn’t working at Frankie’s or schlepping around for his uncle. Me wrapping presents on my mom’s bed, pretending not to cry as It’s a Wonderful Life played in the background. Me watching birthing videos in our living room, my substitute for actual group instruction because I refused to go to any public classes, no matter how enthusiastic my mom and Hannah had both been about filling in for the “daddy” role. Jesse never offered, but I think we both more than understood that his role in all this was already suspicious enough. And after that birthday kiss, I had a feeling that playing mommy and daddy together, even for a ninety-minute class, would topple our fragile balance.
I had a hard time, though, believing that this was the kind of real-life drama strangers would want to watch—that there was something compelling to be gleaned from my morning bowl of cinnamon and brown sugar oatmeal. But I didn’t want to challenge Jesse’s vision for the project. And as much as I refused to admit it, out loud and just barely to myself, I didn’t want to say anything that would make Jesse stop. I didn’t want to say anything that would mean us spending less time together. Because despite what I’d said—and how I knew things had to be—it was hard to imagine starting and ending my day without him.
• • •
“Are you coming to church with us, Jesse?” Gracie asked, looking around behind her to make sure my mom was nowhere around. Satisfied that there was no imminent risk, she reached into the tin of freshly baked cutout sugar cookies we’d be giving to our pastor’s family later that night, swallowing a sparkly blue snowman in two massive bites.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude on your Christmas Eve family time,” he said, glancing up from his camera, where he’d been replaying some of the day’s footage for Gracie to see.
“Does your family go to church, too?” Gracie asked, licking a few stray sugar crystals from her thumb.
“Yeah, but not until much later. Midnight mass. It’s a tradition in my family.”
“Weren’t you ever worried that Santa would come while you were still at church?”
Jesse put the camera down on the kitchen table and looked over at me, fielding the question in my direction. Gracie was just on the outer cusp of no longer believing—or maybe she had stopped believing but wasn’t ready to admit to it, not yet, just in case that would mean fewer presents under the tree.
“Santa knows to come late enough,” I said, ducking my head below the table as I pretended to tighten my bootlace. I didn’t want Gracie, the human lie detector, to spot my giveaway “squiggly” eyebrows, as she’d put it. “He knows when everyone is tucked in their beds and fast asleep. All part of the Christmas magic.”
Gracie nodded, content with that answer. “So will you come with us then, Jesse? Please? If you don’t have to go anywhere until midnight?”
“Gracie.” I sighed, squinting at her. My nerves were wound too tightly to be patient. “Don’t pressure Jesse. He probably wants to be with his family for Christmas Eve.”
“Well, I’d be happy to go,” he said, his eyes still on me. “As long as that’s okay with you and your parents.”
“Oh,” I said, hoping my cheeks weren’t as red as they felt. The room was suddenly ten degrees too warm for the scarf that I’d wrapped around the top of my chunky black sweater dress. “Of course you’re welcome to come with us. I didn’t know you’d want to come along, or I would have asked sooner.”
“Awesome. Then I accept the invite.” Jesse smiled and turned back to the camera.
I’d always loved the Christmas Eve service, but I was anxious about tonight. I hadn’t been to my church in months now, and I didn’t know how everyone would react to my being there. My parents had assured me it was fine, and regardless, I couldn’t imagine not being there, with them, for the first time in eighteen years. But I felt better knowing that Jesse would be there, too. I felt even more secure.
Fifteen minutes later we were all bundled in our thickest, puffiest jackets and piled into the minivan: Gracie, my mom, and Jesse in the back, me in the hallowed passenger seat next to my dad because it required the least amount of squeezing and squishing for my awkwardly round belly—which, according to my most recent visit with Dr. Keller, now carried my massive three-pounder of a baby. How the baby could still more than double in size in the next two months before delivery left me equal parts mystified and horrified.
My dad dropped us off at the front steps of the church, insisting that I not have to walk too far in the bitter cold. I opened my mouth to argue, but the look of genuine concern in his eyes made me stop myself. I nodded instead, stepping out onto the sidewalk as my mom took my arm and ushered me through the twinkling entrance lined with boughs of evergreen. I started to duck my head, screening my eyes from any open hostility—but then the homey piney smell washed over me, reminding me of everything that I loved about Christmas Eve. Even this Christmas Eve, which was so different from every one that had come before it—but still so similar to them, too. My family, my church, the same carols and the same familiar faces of people I’d known my entire life. But there was more this time. There was my baby, of course. There was Jesse. I liked to look at it that way—I had more than instead of less than. I had gained rather than lost.
So I kept my head up. I didn’t want to miss anything about this night.
As people passed, I smiled and waved along with my family, and while eyes maybe lingered on me for a few beats too long, no one seemed offended by my presence. We sat right in front of the altar in our family’s regular pew—or at least what had been my regular pew, too, before I’d stopped going every Sunday with the rest of them. Church was still, miraculously, a safe place for my parents. Church was about listening, singing, letting all the day-to-day worries and hopes go. It was about drifting to a better, more purposeful place. I envied them that kind of devotion, and that kind of certainty in an actual doctrine, a rulebook to play by. I had my beliefs centered on my baby—my own individual, tailor-made kind of faith—but that didn’t translate to a neat and orderly way to worship.
I couldn’t call myself a Christian, not anymore; that much I was certain of. And even though I would have previously considered myself a Christian, in my life before this baby, I’m not sure that it would have been accurate, looking back now. It had been a stamp without real meaning, a word I’d carried with me because of my parents and my upbringing—because it was expected of me—rather than a realization I’d come to on my own. If I’d never really thought about my beliefs, how could I have known? How could I have been classified as anything, really?
I certainly couldn’t give myself any kind of traditional label now. I just believed in the power of something beyond myself, something beyond the physical world of science and math and predictability. What did that make me? Was I the sole member of a radical new religion?
Aunt Vera and Uncle Teddy and the kids swept in, interrupting my thoughts with big, jolly Christmas hugs as they settled into the pew behind us. I’d last seem them at Thanksgiving, when both Vera and Teddy had locked me in a fierce hug the second they’d walked through the front door. I was their niece, they’d said, and they would always love me no matter what. Nothing was said after that. But nothing else needed to be said. Vera rested a hand on my shoulder now, and I squeezed it, silently thanking her for being there. They didn’t usually come to church, not even on Christmas Eve—but they were here tonight, and I had a feeling that I was the reason. The opening music started up, and I felt my mind and my body soften, the usually nonstop anxiety easing away. Tonight was about family and tradition and cozy carols by candlelight—everything else could wait.
I smiled up at Pastor Lewis during his readings from the Bible, the oh-so-familiar Gospel of Luke, and the sermon that sounded more or less identical to me every year. He ended the message with a few moments of silence, and then, as part of the Christmas Eve tradition, we all reached down for the miniature white candles placed at each of our seats. The lights overhead dimmed as ushers carried a lit candle to each pew, their flame passing down the line until every face in the room was lit from below, golden balls floating eerily in the shadows.
This was always my favorite part of the service by far, a moment that I looked forward to all year. This was Christmas. This was happiness—pure, simple, unconditional happiness. Standing shoulder to shoulder with my family, singing at the top of my lungs, knowing that Christmas morning was just around the corner.
The choir stood from their mounted pews behind the altar as the first few notes rose up from the piano. “Silent Night.” Just like always.
A small figure emerged from the dim corner of the pews, her head down as she edged slowly forward to stand ahead of the rest of the singers. As she stepped into the glow of the candlelight, I could see her face clearly.
Iris.
She was luminous against the darkness around her, her white hair glistening and her pale face like a moon hovering above the altar. Her green eyes landed on mine as she opened her lips and the first words poured out, fuller and richer than I could have ever imagined coming from her petite, fragile body.
Silent night, Holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
The song somehow sounded new coming from Iris, so much more profound, entirely raw and visceral, as if she were singing the words as they came to mind—as if the lyrics and the melody were being created right then and there. As if she were weaving them all together. For me.
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child,
Holy Infant so tender and mild.
I was terrified to look away, to risk losing her again, but I needed to know that Jesse was seeing her, too. That I wasn’t imagining her, not this time, not last time either. I looked up at him, squeezing his elbow to get his attention. “Do you see, Jesse? Do you see?”
He looked down at me, head cocked in confusion. “See what?”
“Iris,” I said, fighting to keep my voice low as I pointed at the altar. “It’s Iris. Singing.”
He glanced at the altar and back at me, his face looking even more bewildered.
I turned back to the choir, frustrated. How could he not have noticed as soon as I did?
But as my eyes fell on the woman singing, I realized why Jesse didn’t understand. She wasn’t Iris, or anyone who looked remotely similar to Iris. She was a tall blonde woman, curvy even in the folds of her oversized choir gown, who had been my fifth-grade Sunday School teacher. The same woman who had sung the “Silent Night” solo the year before, and the year before that, and every other year for as long as I could recall.
What was wrong with me? Was I going crazy?
Throughout all this—through Iris, the pregnancy, the idea of an actual miracle, all the absurd and all the irrational—I had always trusted in myself. I had always believed in my own mind.
Because if I couldn’t do that, how could I believe in anything?
My throat clenched around warm bile, and I shut my eyes, the pinpricks of flame all around me suddenly too much to take in. Tiny lights everywhere, flashing, flickering behind my eyelids. I needed to leave, needed to be anywhere that wasn’t this room, this song. I blew my candle out and pressed Jesse back so that I could slip out from the aisle.
“Mina,” he said, breathing against my ear, his fingertips brushing my wrist.
“Never mind what I said. I just need some fresh air,” I whispered, pushing past him. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I ducked my head and pushed through the side entry, careful to close the door softly behind me. I started toward the bathroom, but as I rushed through the hallway, my eyes were drawn to the dimly lit cement stairwell that led down to the lower level of Sunday School classrooms. I veered off down the steps, to guaranteed solitude. The hallway was pitch-black when I reached the bottom of the stairs, and I groped along the wall, fingers fumbling until I found the switch. A lazy bluish light spilled over the walls, every inch lined with bulletin boards and crafts, watercolor Bethlehem scenes and sparkly pipe-cleaner angels. The air was damp and cool, permanently infused with the scent of glue sticks and markers.
The doors I passed were all a blur, until I reached the room clearly marked as the second-grade classroom with a six-foot number two in bright red glitter—Gracie’s class. I pushed the door open and flicked on the lights. As I stepped inside, my eyes instantly froze on the elaborate display in front of me, a life-size nativity scene that spanned the entire length of the back wall. Gracie had come home from Sunday School for the last few weeks gushing with enthusiasm. She was so proud of their work, and now I could see why. My feet drifted forward, one step, two, until I could reach out and rub my hand along the crinkly blue construction paper of Mary’s tunic, the prickly bits of real hay glued inside of the manger that held a smiling baby Jesus. I’d seen so many versions of this scene in the books stacked in my room, my online scouring for answers—so many different interpretations from every artistic period of the last two thousand years. But none of them had held this kind of power over me. None of them had ripped through my chest, squeezed and pounded at my heart like this second-grade art project. Maybe it was the sheer size of the display, or maybe it was because it was Christmas Eve, and I was still shaking from seeing Iris. Maybe it was because it had been pieced together by seven-year-old hands, Gracie’s hands, so sweet and innocent, with its asymmetrical faces scrawled with crayons, the jagged scissor cuts.
“I’m not crazy!” I yelled to the mural, to no one at all. “I’m not! I’m not . . .”
My knees caved and I sank to the ground, my outstretched hands sliding down along the bottom of Mary’s thin paper robe. The tears came fast and heavy, and I pressed my lips against the top of my shoulder to muffle the sound. Not that anyone could hear me from the basement, not as they sang their hymns and recited their prayers above me. I cried, even though I didn’t know exactly who or what I was crying for. For me? The baby? Our future? For all of it, maybe—for every struggle I’d been through already and for every struggle I knew we’d still face.
I needed Iris to really come back. I needed her to explain things, to make it all easier. I needed to know why my baby and I were meant to fight through this. What were we fighting for?
“Mina?”
A sob caught in my throat, and I wheezed as I lifted up my head.
“Mina, are you okay?”
Jesse was hovering over me, his lips and eyes and forehead all sharp and pinched toward the center of his beautiful face.
I looked away. “I told you not to follow me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m glad I didn’t listen. You shouldn’t be alone down here. Not like this. Not on Christmas Eve. Come back upstairs with me.”
“Like it’s that easy to just put on a happy face, right?” I could feel the anger rising through me, the anxiety and resentment I had hidden so well and for so long. “How do you think Christmas makes me feel, Jesse? You can’t understand. No one can.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but I cut him off. “I mean, seriously, for two seconds pretend that you’re me. Pretend that you’re some potentially crazy modern-day Mary impostor who believes—who actually fucking believes—that she could be the human carrier for some kind of twenty-first-century miracle baby. Another Jesus type maybe, but who the hell knows? Maybe it’s the Devil, maybe it’s a demon spawn, some sort of evil black angel who will take over the whole—”
“Stop it, Mina!” he yelled, wrapping his hands around my shoulders and snapping me upright to face him. “Stop it. You know you don’t mean any of that. You’re not crazy and this isn’t some demon baby. I don’t know what this is, Mina, but it’s not bad. It’s not, and you know that. You can feel it, just like I do.” He paused, loosening his grip on me. “I know that whatever is happening to you is somehow good. It’s meant to be. You just have to believe that. It’s the only way, Mina.”
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and breathed. I wanted to believe him. And I did, in my strongest and best moments, the times I was convinced that miracles could exist and that I—I was lucky. I was part of a life that would be everything but ordinary. But seeing Iris up at the altar had made me question myself—and questioning any piece of this led to a slippery slope.
“I’m sorry, Jesse,” I said, reaching out for his hand as I pulled myself to my feet. “I shouldn’t have talked like that, not to you. You didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Don’t worry about it. All forgiven. Really. ’Tis the season and all that.” He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the edges, and I realized that his hand was still wrapped in mine. I wanted to pull him closer, lean my cheek against his thick red sweater. I could feel myself moving in, the air between us tightening.
“We should probably head back upstairs,” he said, taking a step back as he dropped my hand and pretended to study the nativity scene. “The service might be over by now.”
I nodded dumbly and started toward the door, unable to meet his eyes.
My family had been looking for us, their jackets already on as they stood waiting by the front doors. The lobby was mostly emptied at this point, which was a relief. I was in no state to mingle with the merry crowds.
“Where were you guys?” Gracie asked, pulling away from them to hand me my coat. “You left during your favorite part.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I just needed someplace quiet for a few minutes to be alone.”
“But you weren’t alone. Jesse left, too.”
I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. The tears, the awful things I’d said. I needed to apologize. I needed to tell him about that glimpse of Iris, about how unsteady I was afterward. He would understand.
As we made our way down the steps to the sidewalk, I leaned in, careful not to brush against him as I whispered. “I’m sorry again, about all that. I need to tell you something later. About . . . Iris.”
Before he could answer, a blinding flash came from somewhere in the dark lot in front of us. I jumped, grabbing on to Jesse’s arm to steady myself.
The light flashed again, and this time I saw the person directly behind the flash, the man holding the camera in front of his face. A photographer was there to take a picture of me on Christmas Eve. The new virgin worshipping the old. Too sickeningly appropriate for him to pass up.
Jesse moved to block me from the camera, but the flashes kept coming, faster, closer.
“Leave my daughter alone,” my dad growled. I peeked from behind Jesse’s shoulder to see him approaching the photographer, who was much shorter and smaller than my dad’s solid six-two frame. The man cowered and brought the camera down behind his back, protecting his goods.
“I’m done, I’m done,” he said, taking big steps backward. “I’m leaving now.”
“I want those pictures deleted first.” My dad was matching him step for step, the distance between them shrinking. “Give me your camera.”
“You’re crazy, man. No. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You’re stalking my daughter and taking pictures without her permission. Outside of church on Christmas Eve, damn it. Don’t you have any decency? Any respect?” He was spitting, he was yelling so hard, angry white flecks glistening under the streetlamps.
“I’m just doing my job. I have kids, too, you know. We all have our work to do. You do yours, I do mine.” The man’s voice was louder now, less shaky and intimidated, and he’d stopped moving away.
“I feel sorry for your kids then. I feel sorry that their dad puts food on the table with money he made taking advantage of innocent people’s lives.”
“And I feel sorry for you that you actually believe your daughter is innocent.”
In a hazy blur, my dad hurled his head toward the man like a bull, knocking him flat on his back against the pavement.
“Dad, no!” I screamed as Jesse lurched forward.
“Paul! Paul!” My mom’s pleading shrieks cut through the darkness, and Gracie’s softer, weaker cries followed like an echo.
I stood frozen where I was, too numb to react. They were fighting because of me. I was ruining Christmas. My hands rushed to cover my stomach. My belly looked so big under the padding of the jacket, a ball that seemed too impossibly round to be a part of my actual body.
“Jesus! You’re fucking crazy!” The man screamed as he picked himself up, camera nestled protectively under his arm. Jesse was fighting to keep my dad controlled, tugging his arms back to lock him in place. “You’re just lucky my camera didn’t bash open on the ground, or we’d be going straight to the police station right now, you asshole.”
My dad was seething, but he’d stopped fighting against Jesse’s grip. “You tell the cops. They haven’t done a damn useful thing for my family. They haven’t lifted a finger to stop people like you from intruding in our lives.”
“If you want us to go away, tell your pretty little daughter there to give up the bullshit. If she admits that she had sex, she’s suddenly just like every other stupid knocked-up kid out there. But as long as she gives us a story, we’re not going anywhere.” He spit on the ground, just barely missing my dad’s shiny brown oxfords, before spinning away from us and jogging across the dark lot.
“Merry Christmas, everybody!” he called out over his shoulder, leaving the five of us standing there, silent in his wake.
• • •
Christmas morning was anticlimactic after that—no calls from the cops, thankfully, though we all flinched every time the phone rang. Police, angry zealots, reporters who would stop at nothing to get a holiday feature. There were too many potential land mines lurking behind each ring to risk picking up the phone. Family or friends calling to wish us a merry Christmas could be filtered through the answering machine.
The present opening was somber, except for Gracie, who still squealed over every shiny pink package she tore open. Her big gift—a baby doll that ate, drank, peed, and pooped—seemed a bit young for her, considering that she’d cried last spring when my aunt gave her a doll for her seventh birthday, saying that she was a big girl, too old for dolls anymore. But she’d insisted on this particular doll, plastering wish lists to Santa on the refrigerator, the kitchen table, my parents’ nightstand, the bathroom mirror—anywhere and everywhere to make sure the request couldn’t possibly be overlooked.
“I need practice to be the most perfect aunt ever,” she had said to me when the commercial for the doll played on TV. “I can feed her, hold her, put on diapers—just like I will with your baby, Meen. Our baby.” I hadn’t known if I’d wanted to laugh or cry when she’d said it.
Everything Santa brought me was baby related, too—a few red and yellow unisex footy jumpers, a night sky–themed mobile with a smiling man in the moon and twinkling stars to hang over the crib, and the crowning present, a beautiful bright green stroller with every kind of attachment and compartment that a new, helpless mom could ever possibly need. Gracie proceeded to push around her doll—“Baby Mira for miracle,” she proclaimed—in the stroller for the rest of the afternoon, making tireless laps around the living room and kitchen.
Aunt Vera and Uncle Teddy came over for Christmas dinner with Lucy and Danny—both of whom immediately pounced on Gracie, begging for turns at pushing Baby Mira around. I did my best to look merry and bright with the rest of the adults, hovering around my mom and aunt in the kitchen. But when I saw my phone light up with Jesse’s name, I was thankful for a good reason to excuse myself.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, closing my bedroom door behind me.
“Merry Christmas, Mina.”
“It’s strange, you know, a full day without having you and the camera shadowing me. I’m not used to going unrecorded.”
He laughed on the other end, but I knew him well enough to know that his eyes and his lips didn’t match the sound.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. “About last night—”
“Mina, it’s fine, really. Don’t worry about it. I called because I wanted to ask if you’ve . . . if you’ve checked out the website at all today.”
I hadn’t. A day without Virgin Mina updates was my Christmas present to myself. I hadn’t even felt the urge, not really. Christmas was always that way for me, a day to feel entirely disconnected and removed from the outside world, to soak up every minute with my family, lying around in pajamas eating cinnamon buns and candy canes until we all passed out on the couch, deep in our sugar comas.
“No. I’m afraid to ask.”
“Damn,” he said, sighing. “I knew I probably shouldn’t have said anything until tomorrow. But I was worried that you did see it and were too upset to call, and I didn’t want that to happen either.”
“What does it say, Jesse? Just tell me.” I sat down on the edge of my bed.
“It’s us. From last night. A few of them, actually. You’re leaning in pretty close to me in one of the photos. I know you were just whispering something to me, but in the picture . . . in the picture it looks like we’re about to kiss. And the others . . . Well, your arms are wrapped around me. It was after the guy with the camera popped out and scared you. But we look pretty close in the pictures, Mina. We look a little more than friendly.”
The phone was suddenly blazing hot in my hands. I wanted to look, but I didn’t want to look. I could already imagine the scene in my head more clearly than any photo could have captured. This was why I had said no when Jesse had kissed me. This was why I had pushed him away. It wasn’t right, dragging him into the spotlight next to me. I hadn’t been careful enough, but I would try harder. I had to.
“I’m so sorry this is happening,” I said, the guilt swirling in my gut. “Where did you see the pictures? Where are they posted?”
“They’re on the Virgin Mina site, which is where I first saw them. But they’re on a few news sites that I’ve found, too. No respectable ones, but they’re definitely up there pretty widely for people to see. There’s a lot of speculation about me now. About us. And the fact that I’m with your family for Christmas Eve makes it look like we’re pretty serious, I guess.”
“Did they say anything about my dad? About the fight?”
