Carats and Coconuts (3 page)

Roman was no longer upset over Donner
making a snack of his empathy model, and life just felt
right.

I don’t know how else to explain
it.

“
I’m over the moon that you
two are finally here, and with your terrific PI skills, I’m hoping
you can help me out,” Dad hollered over his shoulder from his
sleigh captain’s seat.

“
Sure thing, um, Dad. What
can we help you with?” Roman asked, again looking at me as if I
could help save the day.

“
I swear I’m being
phone-hacked.”

“
What?! By who?!” I asked,
glad to pitch-in on Dad’s latest crazy-trip theory.

“
Father Time, that’s who.
The bastard has a beef with me and my Naughty List, and now I think
he’s got me phone-hacked too.”

And just like that, my belief in life
feeling oh-so-right took a reindeer-sized cabbage crap on me and my
prince.

T
he
sleigh’s runners glided along the long lane then cut through the
snow-covered forest leading to the dunes that eventually gave way
to our main house.

I couldn’t help but be taken in by the
Winter Wonderland feel of my childhood home.

There is the North Pole of storybook
fame. And then there is the North Pole ala Witherspoon.

Dad led the team around the
half-circle drive that bordered the front door of our giant
gingerbread house.

I still couldn’t believe how much my
parents had paid a local mural artist to paint all the cedar
shingles on our home to look like pieces of icing-topped
gingerbread.

And the hundreds of thousands of
multi-colored Christmas lights strung over the house’s eves and
gutters really did look like the gazillion gumdrops on the most
decorative of made-to-be-eaten gingerbread houses.

Two giant evergreens, their boughs so
weighed down with lake effect snow that the poor things looked as
if they were about to snap, were decorated to the max and stayed
that way, along with everything else on our property, the whole
year round.

“
Wow,” Roman said, getting
out of the sleigh and holding his chivalrous hand out for mine to
help me exit the Witherspoon’s version of a family van, “this truly
is magnificent.”

“
You haven’t seen anything
yet,” I said, hardly able to stand it till he saw the inside of our
home, which would be very soon if my mother had her way.

I hardly had Vinnie out of the sleigh,
secured to his leash, and doing his business, before my mother was
all over us.

She wiped her flour-powdered hands on
one of her gorgeous hand-sewn aprons. If my mom wasn’t baking, she
was sewing. And if neither of those were on her agenda, she was
covered in glitter from head-to-toe, making the next batch of
Christmas ornaments she carefully attached to every package my dad
delivered each Christmas Eve.

“
Oh, Roman, it’s such a
thrill to finally meet you. We’ve heard so much about you. But to
finally see you in the flesh just gets me all teary-eyed,” my mom
said, crushing Roman into her bountiful bosom.

The Witherspoon Women are definitely
what you would very comfortably and correctly label well-endowed in
the cleavage department, which could be considered a blessing or a
curse, depending on your point of view.

“
Zoey talks about me? I had
no idea,” Roman said, the ornery twinkle in his eyes was quite hard
to ignore, although I gave it my best shot.

So what if I may have talked about him
a bit? These were my parents, after all. So that fact, on its own,
didn’t mean much. Yeah. Not much at all.

“
Hi, Mom,” I said, letting
myself be the next squeezed-to-death victim. “It’s good to be
home.”

“
You really mean that?” She
asked.

What was that supposed to
mean?

“
Of ‘course I mean it. Why
wouldn’t I?” And I really hadn’t a clue why she would think
otherwise.

She looked at the ground and played
with her apron in the way she does when she’s wanting to say what
she’s thinking but isn’t quite sure she should.

“
After the last
couple…”

Suddenly getting where she was going
with this and chastising myself for not thinking of it on my own, I
gasped. Evidently taking in too big of a lakeshore bitter-cold shot
of air in one dose, I coughed a couple times before pulling myself
together.

Thank the powers that be, Roman was
busy listening to my dad explain the cedar gingerbread shingles to
pay attention to me and my mom.

“
Not a word about
that…little episode. Got it? And I mean it,” I said, and boy did
I.

“
As you wish, but I don’t
think…”

“
No thinkin’. Just please do
as I ask this time.”

The teeniest of icicle-sharp points of
fear pierced my chest. But, on this one point, I knew I was making
the right call.

Besides, my BFFs Roxy, Jules, and
Audrey would be arriving soon, along with their significant others
and The Mom Squad too. That would be enough to scare off
anyone.

“
So what’s up with Dad and
this phone hacking stuff?” I asked, purposely steering my mother
toward my father’s problems and away from mine.

But before she could fill me in, Santa
and his elf-in-training were back.

“
Well, let’s not stand out
here in this frigid wonderland any longer. Into the house. I’ve got
coffee and cocoa, plus cookies about ready to come out of the
oven,” my mom said, herding us all into a little group then
hustling and bustling us towards the front door.

Wanda Lu, my parents’ assistant and
the best damn elf ever, had the door open and waiting for us, a
huge beautiful grin across her beyond-wise face.

God, I’d missed her, perhaps most of
all. All four feet of her.

Yes. My parents thought they lived at
the North Pole, so they had an entire staff of little people. They
could actually film one of those Reality TV dwarf shows right here
in Witherspoon whoville.

I let Wanda Lu burrow into me, feeling
the warmth of her wonderful soul wrap me in her unconditional
kindness. On many occasions, I’d thought about having her come to
work for Roman and I in the castle, but I couldn’t bear to leave my
parents without her. She was my eyes, ears and moral compass where
they were concerned. And with her here, I knew they were well cared
for.

“
I’m so glad my princess is
home. And look, you now have your very own prince, too.”

Roman leaned down to shake Wanda Lu’s
sweet hand and instead got her tiny hug filled with a giant-sized
helping of love.

After letting Roman out of her grasp,
she giggled in her tiny, high-pitched, fairy-like laugh…a laugh I
sometimes heard in my dreams.

She pointed to the rounded archway of
the top of the door’s frame.

There it was…in all its
glory.

A sprig of mistletoe.

The first of what was probably around
147 sprigs throughout our house. One hanging down from each door
frame.

My parents had a thing for
mistletoe.

“
Well…what are you two
newlyweds waiting for?” My Dad’s robust voice boomed through the
grand entryway of his home.

Roman looked at me as if to silently
seek my permission.

I nodded, then gulped.

Little did he know how much
more-than-fine it was with me to make good on mistletoe
superstition.

And then…my prince kissed me like
mad.

But being as we were now in
Witherspoon Whoville, there’d be a ton more madness under the
mistletoe.

H
oliday-themed mugs full of my mother’s amazing hot cocoa with
chocolate-tipped peppermint sticks poking out of the tops and a
Christmas-china plate full of her superfab spritz cookies sat on
the giant coffee table in the center of our family room.

I grabbed another camel-shaped cookie,
admiring the way the food coloring she’d added turned them the
perfect shade of yellow. Of the green trees, reddish-pink
poinsettias, and blue wreath-shaped cut-outs to choose from, the
camels were my personal faves.

I settled into the sofa opposite the
fireplace, while my parents took their usual places in their his
and her’s high-backed wing chairs on either side of the
mantle.

If the decorator-perfect holiday décor
didn’t warm a visitor’s soul, the radiant heat from the crackling
fire sure would.

Forget the fire, for me, though. All I
needed were the thirty-nine Christmas trees my mom had throughout
our home. Yep, even the bathrooms had Christmas trees, a couple
with miniature rolls of toilet paper for decoration.

The thirty-nine trees, plus the
grander-than-grand, twenty-five-footer sitting in front of the
large, floor to ceiling picture window of our gingerbread house
family room, warmed me up to nothing short of holiday
magnificence.

I’ve definitely gotten the love of the
season gene from my parents.

I loved the full balsam fir we all sat
around now, but it was second in my heart to the tree in my old
bedroom, which still held all my favorite ornaments, handmade by my
mother each year since my birth.

I took a moment before starting any
conversation and simply gazed at our grand tree.

It was filled with all my mother’s
best ornaments. Not a single store-bought ornament could be found
anywhere in the Witherspoons’ Whoville.

Every red bow, every sparkling candy
cane, every mouth-blown glass ornament or Styrofoam-based fabric,
beaded and glitter-soaked ball came straight from my mother’s
workshop.

It wasn’t just Santa who had a
workshop in this Santa Claus Land. Mrs. Claus had her own place to
hang out, a special place that served as a playground for her
muses.

“
Your tree is like none I’ve
ever seen,” Roman said.

“
Why thank you,” my mom
answered, the warm glow flushing her cheeks was not from the
fire.

She was always so humbly taken aback
when anyone complimented her talents. I’d been at her for years to
sell her creations, but she said doing so would stifle her muses.
She said she could only create out of love. Making anything for
money would be her muses’ undoing.

“
And Zoey tells me you’re
not just Santa Claus, but an inventor as well,” Roman said, opening
up who only knew what kind of invention tell-alls.

“
Indeed I am, Son. But
that’s precisely what’s now gotten me into a wee bit of
trouble.”

Oh boy. My mom and I looked at each
other and rolled our eyes.

“
Better trade in our cocoa
for egg nog. Spiced and well-spirited egg nog that is,” my mother
said.

As if perfectly on cue, Wanda Lu
brought in a tray with four Irish Coffee-style mugs filled with
perfectly frothy, cream-colored egg nog and ground cinnamon
sprinkles.

“
I hope mine has plenty
of
spirit
,” I
said, winking at Wanda Lu.

“
I fixed y’all right up,”
Wanda Lu said, never missing a beat with my family’s
needs.

Even if we didn’t quite know what we
needed, she always did.

Some people cope and de-stress with
massages or rich and decadent food. I use my all-things-green Naked
Juice most of the year then switch to spirited egg nog – spirited
with brandy, not the moonshine my Dad prefers - from November first
through January first.

Okay. Sometimes it’s mid-January. The
timing of the egg nog to Naked Juice switcheroo depends on how
stressful the Witherspoon holiday’s have been that given
year.

“
So tell me about this
trouble,” Roman said, taking a healthy pull from his egg
nog.

Smart guy. See why I love
him?

But just to clarify…

It’s not that I’m “in love” with him.
I just really adore him. I love all he stands for. And love the man
he is.

Anyhoo…back to the latest Whoville
hang-ups…

“
Ahhh, yes. Trouble there
is. And I do so hope you can help me,” Dad said, practically
chugging his egg nog.

“
You see…my latest invention
is really quite brilliant. So I can see why Father Time would love
to get his hands on it. But anyway, yes. First, the invention
itself. I’ve developed a revolutionary new reindeer diet formula.
Guaranteed to lighten our sleigh load, if you know what I mean,”
Dad said, his robust laugh shaking his bowl full of
jelly.

“
I’m not quite sure I do
understand,” Roman said.

As for me, I thought I might have a
pretty good idea what Dad was talking about. I knew he’d been
working on some top-secret reindeer diet food for several years
now.

“
Does this have to do with
Operation Holly?” I asked.

My mother shifted uncomfortably in her
chair.

My dad played with his snow-white
beard, which now, thanks to the roaring fire in the fireplace, had
taken on a magical aura.