Actually, we’d never even talked about it.

  Why hadn’t we talked about it?

  If Roy wanted children, why hadn’t he ever mentioned that before now? I wasn’t getting any younger. I’d be in my fifties by the time Finn graduated high school. Even if I lived a long life, I still wasn’t going to live as long as a sasquatch. I would croak just as Roy reached his golden years.

  I swallowed hard as I further pondered the subject.

  Was he willingly wasting my time? I asked myself, but immediately rejected the thought. Roy just… he wasn’t like that.

  Then why didn’t he tell you all of this earlier? Furthermore, why wasn’t he trying to date someone with a longer lifespan—a nice bigfoot lady who could give him all the children he wanted and live out the rest of their numerous years together?

  Poppy, calm down.

  Roy must have read something in my expression because his smile disappeared. “I said something wrong.”

  I shook my head and tried to keep the tears at bay, surprised that they were suddenly threatening.

  Oh, brother, keep yourself together, Poppy!

  I usually wasn’t a crier, but for some reason this conversation was really testing my emotions. I’d just… I’d thought there was hope for us, that there was a future here, but now…

  Now it was fairly obvious there was no future. Unless Roy had a thing for GILFs because that’s eventually what I’d be.

  But, if he has a thing for GILFs, why would he be into you now?

  Maybe he likes MILFs too.

  I figured that sounded good so I’d go with it.

  “You never… told me how long you’d live. Or that you wanted children.”

  “Hey, it’s okay, Poppy,” he said as he reached out and ran his fingers down my cheek. “It’s not a big deal. Maybe kids just aren’t in the picture for me.”

  But it was a big deal.

  If having a family was important to him, there was no way our relationship could work. All of a sudden, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. At least then I wouldn’t be thinking about my declining fertility and the inevitability of death. It took the edge off my Christmas cheer and then some.

  Darla was still enacting the Christmas Carol in Pig Latin and bouncing off the walls, when she smashed into a vial of one of the potions I’d been working on, Mystic Veil. The oil was incredibly potent and used in psychic endeavors, allowing the weaver to break through the Astral Plane. It took a long time to steep the ingredients and it needed to be near a source of heat. I’d placed it on a shelf near a heating fan, which toppled to the ground alongside the glass, shattering on the hardwood floor.

  Roy’s mouth had just begun to open, probably to reassure me that everything was going to be okay, but he didn’t get the chance to finish his thought before the windows banged open, flying inward with enough force to knock Roy and me right off the couch.

  Thankfully, he dragged us both to the ground the second the windows flew open. The glass panes trembled in a sudden frigid gale, but they didn’t shatter, thank God. Snow flew in sideways, frosting the back of the lovechair, melting not long after settling on the hardwood floors. The wind swept through the room, curling around the Christmas tree and hoisting the garland up, before hurling it down the hall like errant tumbleweeds. Uncle Joey’s baseball cap flew off and made a daring exit out the open window before Uncle Tobias grabbed it out of midair.

  “What the?” Finn started as he stared at the window with an expression of awe and fear.

  “Holy cow!” Uncle Joey started with a big laugh before he downed more ‘gut rot’.

  “That scared the bejeezus outta me!” Darla called out. “I need some giggle water!”

  “The party is over!” I called out.

  I stalked to the window and wrestled the flapping panes shut. It took more effort than I thought it should have—almost as if a pair of ghostly hands were trying to forcibly shove the window panes inward. Which was silly, because the only ghost in the room was trying (and failing) to pick up the glass shards she’d scattered on the floor, something Roy immediately set to help with.

  “What happened?” Uncle Joey asked.

  I shrugged. “It was a bottle of Mystic Veil, you know how potent that stuff is.”

  Uncle Joey nodded. He was very familiar with potions because my mother had been brewing them all her life, and her mother before her. It was a family legacy.

  “But, Mom...” Finn began.

  “No buts,” I said firmly, jabbing a finger at the staircase. “It’s late and if you want Santa to still come, you need to get your little butt upstairs and into bed.”

  “It’s not that late, Mom.”

  “It’s past midnight and if you stay up any longer, Santa is going to know you’re awake and he’s going to fly right over this house. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Finn said and grumbled something unintelligible.

  He hadn’t asked me yet about whether or not Santa was real, and that was a question I was dreading because I’d have to tell him the truth. At eleven years old, he was still hanging onto his early childhood by a string, and I couldn’t help but want to postpone his inevitable growing up as long as I could.

  “Oh, phonus balonus!” Darla cried out before I sent her an angry look and she immediately shut her mouth.

  I turned an accusatory stare on my uncles, who were doing their best to look concerned with anything else. Uncle Joey was inspecting his ball cap and Uncle Tobias was staring at the wall like he was having a conversation with it.

  “The same goes for you two! It’s time everyone got to bed!”

  “Oop, sounds like Mrs. Grundy is on a toot!” Darla said, using her favorite term for me, which meant “an uptight woman.”

  “A toot?” Finn repeated, giggling. “Does that mean Mom’s farting?”

  “No, I’m not farting!” I yelled as everyone chuckled, Darla the loudest. I looked at her with a frown. “And maybe it’s about time Darla got re-acquainted with the Hoover!”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Don’t test me!”

  Just the mention of the vacuum cleaner was enough to send Darla floating through the wall. Hopefully she wouldn’t appear again until morning.

  “Oh, come on, Poppy,” Uncle Tobias wheedled. “Can’t we stay up a little longer?”

  “No!”

  I pressed a fist to one hip, glaring at them until the smiles wilted off their faces. “Off to bed with both of you.” I walked up and took their drinks from each of them, waiting until they both started marching towards their respective bedrooms, Finn between them. Even though my uncles were in their sixties, I had to treat them like children because if I offered them an inch, they’d take a mile.

  “I’ll be up to tuck you into bed in a minute, buddy,” I called after Finn.

  “Okay, Mom.”

  I crossed over to the hall closet, pulling out a scraggly old mop. The snow that had flown in when the windows blew open was already melting, and if I didn’t clean up the mess soon, there’d be water damage on my floors.

  Roy took the mop from me with a smile. “Let me… you seem stressed out enough as it is.”

  “Thanks.”

  He gave me a quizzical look before saying. “Everything is going to be fine.”

  I wasn’t really sure what he was referring to, but I was suddenly too exhausted to ask. I tried to force a smile, but the nagging feeling of doubt remained. Usually, when you moved to a new town, you learned more about it the longer you lived there. But in Haven Hollow, I couldn’t be certain of anything. I wasn’t sure if my witchy neighbor wasn’t going to buy a property and boot me out of town. I wasn’t sure if my bigfoot boyfriend was going to realize we really had no business being together, considering we wanted such different things out of life, and I wasn’t sure if Marty might have been romantically interested in a snarky witch… and I really wasn’t sure why that thought bothered me as much as it did…

  Chapter Three

  “Don’t run down the stairs!” I called after Finn, who was already busily running down the stairs, his treasured stuffed animal, Piggy, clutched in his arms.

  Impetuous as ever, Finn paid me no mind and took the creaking stairs two at a time to reach the front door, almost slipping on his feet on the way down. He caught himself on the banister before sprinting the rest of the way. When he reached the front door, he flung it open wide and lunged for the figure on the other side with an ecstatic cry of;

  “McFly!”

  The man on the other side of the door managed to juggle the packages he carried into the crook of one elbow and wrapped his free arm around Finn’s thin waist.

  Marty Zach (otherwise known as ‘McFly’) was forty-six, 6’3 with blue eyes almost the same color as mine. Whereas his hair and the stubble on his face had once been brown, now both were mainly gray, peppered with white. He was slim in general with a bit of a belly that revealed he enjoyed his snacks. Broad-shouldered, with really long legs, and a contagious smile, he was definitely handsome.

  Behind him were two more familiar faces, RJ and Henner. RJ was six feet or so of Scandinavian stock. He’d swapped his usual T-shirt for an ugly Christmas sweater featuring BigFoot (whom he was obsessed with finding and no, he had no idea Roy was exactly that). He’d pushed back the sleeves enough to expose a layer of blond hair on his forearms.

  He smiled at Finn, as well, stomping snow off his boots and smoothed still more out of his hair. RJ always looked like he’d just stepped off a Viking ship from the middle ages. He had a square jaw, nice straight nose, big green eyes and a mane of thick, blond hair that flowed to his shoulders. But it was the long blonde beard that really completed the look.

  Aside from height, Henner had almost nothing in common with either of his friends as far as looks went, even though they were all handsome. Henner was around six feet tall and was, as usual, dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, this one featuring the grim reaper, and shorts, even though it was freezing outside. He wore black combat boots, and his only concession to Christmas spirit was a red velvet Santa hat that he’d swapped for his usual beret and a necklace of glowing Christmas lights around his neck.

  It was then that I realized I was completely underdressed to be receiving house guests because I was still wearing Roy’s massive shirt I’d gone to bed in.

  Oh my God, Poppy, I reprimanded myself. You might as well be advertising to everyone that Roy slept over last night!

  I still wasn’t used to the whole—I’ve got a serious boyfriend thing.

  Hey, you get used to being single when you’re single for too long.

  I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs as I wondered if I should quickly run back up to change. But, as soon as the thought entered my head, Marty leaned into the house, his eyes finding mine. A warm flush crept into my cheeks as he examined my mostly bare legs. The sleep shirt hung to my thighs, hiding the boxer shorts I wore underneath. I was woefully unprepared for company, but when I checked the clock over the fireplace in the living room, it revealed that Marty and his entourage were thirty minutes early.

  “Hey, Finn!” Henner greeted as he stepped out from behind Marty, his tone of voice sounding like he was nine years old and had just been reacquainted with his best friend.

  RJ offered Finn a high-five over Marty’s shoulder, and Finn had to jump to slap the big guy’s calloused palm.

  “Merry Christmas, buddy!” Marty enthused, glancing up from Finn’s beaming face just long enough to take another peek inside the house.

  “Merry Christmas!” Finn called back and then grabbed Marty’s hand, yanking him into the house. I couldn’t exactly make a quick escape to go get dressed, so I rubbed the back of my neck and smiled, trying to make the best of a potentially embarrassing situation.

  “Sorry we’re a little early,” Marty said as he took in the state of my undress and shrugged, looking a bit sheepish.

  “Yeah, we got so excited to see Finn open his presents, none of us could wait to come over,” Henner answered as he approached me and held his arms wide. “Merry Christmas to you, my friend!”

  “Merry Christmas, Henner,” I answered as I returned the hug and then turned around to accept one from RJ.

  “Duuuude, wait until you see what I got you!” RJ said as he released me and faced my son, giving him a fist-bump.

  “What did you get me?” Finn asked, his eyes going wide.

  “He can’t tell you!” Henner answered as RJ appeared as if the wind had been taken out of his sails. I half wondered if he was actually going to answer Finn.

  Finn looked back at me where I stood at the bottom of the stairs. “Can I open my presents now, Mom?”

  I breathed in deeply. “All I can answer right now is that I need some coffee.” I glanced down at myself. “And I need to get dressed.”

  “Me too,” Marty said and then smiled broadly as he looked at me. “Except, I’m already dressed.”

  “Ha ha,” I grumbled, crossing my arms against my chest. Someone had clearly woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

  Coffee will fix me right up, I promised myself.

  “Me three,” Henner piped up.

  “And me four,” RJ said. “Coffee sounds real good!”

  Yes, coffee was exactly what I needed because I was operating on empty. I’d gone to sleep sometime in the early AM, after wrapping all Finn’s gifts from Santa with Roy. After we retired to my room, I wasn’t able to turn my brain off long enough to get some shut-eye.

  When my alarm screamed at eight o’clock, I’d almost thrown it across the room. I’d barely had time to put on slippers before Finn burst through the door, pulling me out of bed. Roy muttered something unintelligible and promptly rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Finn, meanwhile, pounded on every door in the hall, rousing Uncle Tobias and Uncle Joey. He’d even coaxed Darla out of her hiding place in the wall (apparently she was still worried I’d make good on my threat about Hoovering her).

  And that was when Marty and company arrived.

  Uncle Tobias and Joey sounded from behind me and I turned to watch them slowly making their way into the foyer, each of them grumbling about something and looking like the walking dead. They tended to act and think like my eleven-year-old son, so it was easy to forget they weren’t as spry as they used to be.

  Roy brought up the rear, appearing behind Uncle Tobias and staying close in case one of them took a tumble. He was in the midst of pulling on a shirt, giving me a very inviting glimpse of a chest rippling with muscle. He was a little hairier than I usually liked, but it suited him. After all, when have you ever heard of a hairless Sasquatch?

  Marty’s eyes flicked from Roy’s bare chest, to my underdressed state, and his eyes narrowed. He frowned for just a few seconds before releasing Finn and closing the front door behind him as a gale of wind whipped up a flurry of snow and threatened to bring it inside.

  Well, crap.

  I was suddenly embarrassed and flushed, even though I reminded myself that Marty knew Roy and I were dating and had been for a while. Yet, why did he still seem… jealous? And why was I concerned that he seemed jealous? There was nothing between Marty and me—nothing beyond our fantastic friendship, and that friendship really meant a lot to me. Since moving to Haven Hollow, he was the closest thing I had to a best friend.

  “Get dressed, girl. You’re gonna give our guests a heart attack,” Uncle Tobias said as I felt a blush steal across my face and I gave him a little nod, heading up the stairs.

  “While you’re gone, I’ll regale everyone with stories about you as a girl,” Uncle Joey added.

  I rounded on Uncle Joey with my best don’t-cross-me face. “Don’t you dare!”

  Uncle Joey cracked a smile, slightly crooked and yellowing teeth glinting. I’d told him “no”, so there’d be no stopping him now. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if anyone in my family ever grew up, or if we were all just toddlers with wrinkles, back problems, and knee replacements.

  “So, our family had this… tradition, I guess you could call it,” he started in his story-teller voice. If there was one thing my uncles were good at, it was telling stories. And they did so with feverish excitement. I half-wondered whether all their stories of their travels and the things they’d seen and done weren’t exaggerated or sometimes, downright falsehoods.

  “Right,” Uncle Tobias added. “Every year we took an ice fishin’ trip an’ there was this boy staying at the lodge one year and he certainly liked the look of our niece.”

  “So Tobias and I hatched a plan to…”

  “I’ll be right back!” I half-shouted as I hurried up the stairs, wanting nothing more than to be out of earshot of this story I’d heard five million times already.

  But, it was the expression in Marty’s eyes that still haunted me. I was pretty sure it was… jealousy. And the more that thought reverberated through me, the more I realized this whole situation—me in my nightshirt and Roy halfway dressed—could have been completely avoided. Maybe I should have insisted Roy go home and return in the morning. Or maybe I should have told him to sleep on the couch.

  Why couldn’t Marty and crew have been on time? Then this whole thing would never have been an issue. I would have been dressed, Roy would have been dressed, and we could have bypassed this entire embarrassing situation.

  Even as I walked into my bedroom, I could still hear Uncle Joey’s booming voice as he told everyone about the time I’d had my first kiss.

  I started for my closet, yanked out a pair of last year’s jeans and pulled them over my hips when Darla materialized through a wall, startling me. I slipped on the rug and tumbled backward, landing with an undignified wheeze on the bed.

  “Sorry,” Darla babbled, hands flying up to cover her eyes. “Gee whiz, I thought you’d be dressed by now!”