From the other side of the long kitchen island, Landon’s mother called over her shoulder, “Was your house also a disaster zone on Thanksgiving morning, or did your parents have the good sense to space things out a touch?” Landon froze, and Rose knew him well enough by now to know he was concerned that his mother was displaying his trademark foot-in-mouth disease. Or perhaps she was where it originated. Rose gave her body a beat to see whether the question bothered her and found, mercifully, that it didn’t.
“It was a disaster zone, too,” Rose said. “More of a disaster than this. My dad didn’t believe in cleaning while you cook—said it pulled his focus from the art form. It was worth it, though. The man wouldn’t have been caught dead with mashed potatoes that were too light on the butter.”
Landon’s mother dropped the whisk in the bowl of cold cream she’d been whipping by hand. “Oh, Rose, honey,” she said. “I didn’t mean—”
“I don’t mind talking about him,” Rose said. “It feels good, actually. I was thinking about him anyway. How much he would have loved this.” It was the mashed potatoes. She hadn’t meant to think about him, but the connection between her hands and herhead had proven too powerful. She must have been four or five the first time he’d pulled over a stool for her so she could help mash. Rose wondered whether, for the rest of her life, there were certain acts that would conjure him whether she wished them to or not.
“Then I’m glad a little piece of him is in the room with us,” Landon’s mother said, the faux pas rolling like water off a duck’s back. Rose thought it the perfect thing to say.
“Me too.” And just like that, she felt at home.
Day quickly bled to night, and the cavernous, cozy house filled with more cousins, aunts, and uncles than Rose could keep track of. Though she knew she was drinking at a steady clip, her wineglass was somehow always half full, her empty hand always seconds away from merging with Landon’s. Moments burrowed in her memory like photographs. Jess called her into her father’s study to flip through old photo albums of her and Landon as children, the resemblance between them more prominent when comparing tiny bodies to arms and limbs fully grown. Leaves unfurled on the dining room table and folding chairs were hauled from the basement, and Rose ate until her stomach hurt. She knew her face was flushed and was sure her hair was wild. The overworked oven and throng of family had raised the room’s temperature to the point of steaming the windows, and Rose could feel the makeup she’d hastily applied dripping down her chin. Landon didn’t seem to care. All morning he’d looked at her like she was some kind of saint, every vegetable she diced the most perfect cube he’d ever seen. Evening told a different story. In his warm, glassy eyes she was no saint, but with every sidelong touch he made his desire to worship her clear.
Jess floated two plates of pumpkin pie on the table in front of them, and Landon reached for the half-full bottle of merlot at thesame time Rose did. Their fingers met on the smooth glass. Rose held him there long enough to transmit a message:I want you, too. I want everything you want.The room swirled, and children yelled, and people cheered, but they might as well have been alone in her dorm room for all anything else in the world mattered. “My dad gave you the key to the pool house,” Landon said, sliding his pointer finger down her thumb. “Didn’t he.”
“Yes,” Rose said, somehow already breathless. And before she could say or do anything else, Jess was pulling her from her seat, hauling her up, shouting in her ear, “It’s time for the songs!”
Landon groaned so loud Rose heard it over the increasing commotion. “Songs?” she asked, pleading with Landon. “What do you meansongs?”
“We’re busy,” Landon said to Jess. “Nobody will miss us.”
“Literally everybody will miss you,” she said. “Eighteen years of tradition, and you think you’re going to just skip out and hide in the pool house?”
“How did you—”
But Jess and Landon said at the same time, “Twins.”
A cousin with a face and name Rose had learned and forgotten over the course of the evening passed her a sheet of paper. “‘Simple Gifts’?” she asked. “Like the Shaker song?”
If it was possible for Landon’s face to turn redder than the heat and the wine had already made it, it did. “It was my grandpa’s favorite.”
Sure enough, as if on cue, his father pounded on the keys of the Steinway at the base of the stairs that Rose had assumed was just for show. “Gather, gather!” he called out, an actor in a play who’d said the line a hundred times on a hundred different nights.
“We don’t have to do this,” Landon said. Rose knew he meant it.
“We should,” she said. “It’s tradition.” And though she’d only ever heard the song sung by earnest choir singers at school assemblies, she wasn’t worried about joining in. Jess gripped her right hand, Landon her left, and she felt that there might be a world in which she could actually have it all.
“I can’t breathe!” Rose doubled over with laughter, cradling her stomach. “Oh my God, I really can’t breathe!”
Landon chuckled, nowhere near as strapped for breath. “So that’s it, then,” he said. “I blew my one shot.”
“Did you see how much wine your grandma had to drink?” Rose asked, again folding in on herself. “How was she still singing? How was she stillstanding?”
“Muscle memory, I suppose.”
The trees and the sky and the stars blurred, and Rose tilted her head back. “I had too much wine,” she said. “Oh my God, I’m just like your grandma.”
Landon grabbed the collar of her shirt playfully and pulled her close. “You are absolutely, positively, nothing like my grandma.” He placed a whisper of a kiss on her neck in the spot he knew sent shivers down her spine. “And please never say that again.”
“That I’m just like your grandma, or that I’ve had too much wine to drink?”
“The former,” Landon said, placing another kiss just below the first.
“Youhaven’t had too much wine to drink or else you would have used plain English.” Rose leaned her head back. She’d seen stars like this before. Dozens of times, and it still bowled her over. At this point in her life, she was fairly sure the novelty wouldn’t wear off. “Formerandlatterare stupid words for stuffy people.”
Landon sighed, but even in her state she could tell he wasn’t blowing out exasperation. “I love you,” he said. “My English major with a scorn for the English language.”
“I love you, too,” she said, then stuck out her tongue like a child. “We’re gross.” Rose threw her arms wide and spun in a circle. “We’re gross, and in love, and I’m drunk, and I love you and I love your family and I love these stars and I—”