The Bride (The Boss 3)
My grandmother was at the stove. She looked over the shoulder of her red, bedazzled Christmas sweater. “Well, don’t hug me, for heaven’s sake. I only haven’t seen you for a year.”
“Merry Christmas, Grandma,” I said as I went to her with open arms.
I heard my mom ask, “So, Neil. What do you do?”
“I own two multimedia conglomerates, one in the US and England and the other based out of Reykjavik.”
“Oh. How nice for you.” My mom was going to die of a heart attack on the kitchen floor.
“Is there a lot of money in that?” my grandmother asked him, with all the tact small-town Michigan matriarchs generally displayed.
Neil’s eyebrows lifted, and he blinked three times, rapidly, before managing to answer, “I do all right.”
“It’s a wonder anybody’s doing all right these days, with those damn Republicans—”
“Ma!” my mother hushed her. “Nobody wants to talk about politics at Christmas.”
“I, uh, I brought a little something to contribute to the festivities,” Neil said, reaching into the shopping bag to pull out one of the bottles of 1996 Dom Pérignon.
He’d brought the Dom Pérignon because I’d suggested he not go overboard. My mother was going to eat him alive.
She took the bottle and turned it in her hands with a little nod. “This was very thoughtful of you.”
“We’ve got beer, too, Neil, in the cooler outside the door. Just don’t let all the heat out,” my grandmother called, her head in the oven as she peeled the tinfoil off the ham.
“I’ll chill this,” Mom said, taking the other bottle from Neil.
Grandma deposited a heavy bowl into my hands, and I gasped, juggling it quickly so as not to slosh gravy onto my coat. “Take that out to the table.”
I cast an apologetic glance at Neil as I moved past him, into the crowded dining room and out to the porch. As I went, I heard my grandma shoo him out of the kitchen.
It wasn’t a long journey with the bowl, but by the time I got back to Neil, he’d been cornered by my great-uncle Doug, who had an open beer in his hand despite the fact it was eleven a.m. on Christmas morning.
“You heard a dem gingerbread Oreos?” he asked Neil, taking a swig from his bottle.
Neil blinked and stammered, “N-no. That sounds horrible.”
“No, they’re a real ting,” Doug insisted, gesturing with his beer. “They were on the Channel Six news.”
“I’m sorry, did you say noose?” Neil spotted me, and his relief was visible. I should have warned him about the thick Yooper accent that ran in my family.
“Hey, Sophie!” Uncle Doug put out his arm for a half-hug. He was my grandmother’s youngest brother, sixty-five, and he’d recently retired from his job as a DNR officer. “Did ya hear about dem gingerbread Oreos?”
“That sounds gross.” I stood beside Neil and reached up to put a hand on his shoulder. It was as hard as a blacksmith’s anvil with tension. I hoped he’d brought his headache pills with him.
“They got ‘em down in Marquette,” Doug went on. “They don’t got ‘em at the Pat’s here, but I told Debbie’s sister, ‘you better save me some of dem gingerbread Oreos.’”
My aunt Debbie yelled from the living room that there was something wrong with their cell phone, and Doug excused himself. As he walked away, Neil muttered to me, “I feel like I’m listening to an alien language.”
“
Oh, you just wait until I’ve been up here a couple of days. No matter how hard I’ve tried to shake it, the accent always comes back.”
Neil’s eyes widened as he considered the implications of that statement. “I think I do need one of those beers, after all.”
My grandmother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Everybody shut up, we’re gonna pray!”
Since my cousin Jimmy was going into the seminary, he did the honors. As everyone crossed themselves—including me, solely on reflex—Neil bowed his head respectfully. That’s one of the things I really love about Neil; he’s mindful of small stuff, and that lets him fit in anywhere, even when he doesn’t fit in at all.