“Are you kidding? I’m burning this costume in the fireplace tonight. Seriously. And I’m going to round up all the others tomorrow, and burn them, too. I’ll order new ones for next year.”

“I think it’s cute.” He inhales deeply. And pauses. “Is that you that smells like mothballs?”

“See? Ugh!” I peel off the felt potato sack and toss it next to the fireplace, leaving me in the red-and-green-striped pants and the black Lycra top I wore underneath.

Jonah makes a sound, his excited eyes roaming the material that’s stretched across my chest like a second skin. “You still smell.” He tugs on my shirt.

“Not here!” I hiss, nodding toward the upstairs where Astrid and Björn are tucked away.

“Why not? They took sleeping pills. They’ll be dead to the world until at least four. Come on, arms up.”

I hesitate but then reach over to turn off the table lamp, leaving us in darkness save for the white lights on the tree, the fire, and a small over-stove light in the kitchen. I lift my aching arms high above my head, allowing him easy access to strip my shirt off me. Warmth from the fire radiates against my back, but there’s still a chill in the air, made all the more obvious when he unfastens the hook of my bra.

“Jonah,” I admonish softly, but the mood in the room is shifting quickly, his hands eagerly slipping over my bared chest. Heat courses through my body beneath his skilled touch.

I don’t utter another word of complaint as I shift and shimmy to help him work off my striped pants.

“Cute,” he whispers, noting the mistletoe print on my panties before also sliding them off. That we’re not alone in the house seems to goad us into moving swiftly, peeling off his shirt, pushing his sweatpants and boxers down his thighs. His erection stands at attention. “Something’s missing.” He looks around. “Oh, yeah.” Grabbing the elf hat, he positions it on my head. “There. Perfect.”

My mouth is on his, my tongue teasing the seam of his lips as he reaches down between us to grip and line himself up, when the bottom step creaks.

With a startled gasp, I peel away from Jonah’s mouth and look over to find a shirtless Björn ambling toward the kitchen, his eyes half-closed, his steps heavy with sleep.

Fumbling for the wool blanket stretched across the back of the couch, I quickly wrap it around our naked bodies, and then offer Jonah a scathing glare.

Jonah tips his head back to watch his stepfather dig a glass out of the cupboard and go to the fridge to fill it with water from the Brita. “I don’t think he saw us,” he whispers, a hint of amusement in his voice as we huddle on the couch, naked other than the blanket, and in a compromising position.

I don’t think Björn is even fully awake. He casually scratches his round belly as he gulps a full glass of water. He then fills it up again and shuts the fridge, muttering something in Norwegian as he wanders back toward the stairs.

I hold my breath.

Just before he takes that first step, he turns to the couch and sees us there, silently watching him, and there is no way a lucid adult would not be able to put two and two together and realize what he interrupted.

“Nice hat,” he mutters and then eases back upstairs, using the rail to help him.

My cheeks burn with mortification. “I can’t believe that happened.” Did he see us on his way down and pretend that he didn’t? Did he know we were here, naked, the whole time and decide the least awkward handling of the situation would be to ignore us?

What exactly did Björn see?

Jonah lets out a heavy sigh of relief that I don’t feel at the moment. “Where were we?”

“Going to shower.” I climb off Jonah’s lap, taking the blanket with me to wrap around my nude body.

“Fucking Björn,” I hear Jonah grumble as I scamper up the steps.

Chapter Six

“You know, when I was a kid, we had a golden retriever who waited at the window for my mom to come home,” Jonah notes.

I cast a glare over my shoulder and catch Astrid delivering a soft whack against his biceps before she moves her game piece. Along with a gingerbread house—what she keeps calling the pepperkake—Astrid brought a suitcase full of housewarming gifts, including an advent candle that is burning in the corner of the living room, an ugly little Christmas gnome that is supposed to bring good luck and is sitting next to Ethel’s raven and goose-wife carving, and several jars of edible things for Christmas Eve that I can’t identify and most certainly won’t eat.

But what excited Jonah most was the Swords and Shields board game that he and Astrid are facing off at now. It’s the same one they used to spend hours playing when he was young.

“Come on. Why don’t you sit down?” Jonah pats the space on the couch beside him. Not too far over, Björn snores softly in the reclining chair he seems to have claimed as his own. He hasn’t made any reference to last night’s intrusion, and I can’t decide if it’s because he wasn’t aware what he’d walked in on or if even Björn has an ounce of tact.

“They were supposed to be here forty-five minutes ago, and she’s not responding to any of my texts.” It’s dark. Far darker than anything they’re used to driving around Toronto’s brightly lit streets.

“Her phone probably died.”

“So then she’d used Simon’s phone.”

“Maybe his died, too.”

“Simon travels with battery packs.”

Jonah pauses in his move to give me an exasperated look. “I don’t know what to tell you, except they’ll be here. It’s a two-hour drive from Anchorage, it’s snowing, and they don’t know where they’re going, so they’ll be driving slow, but they’ll be here, Calla.”

I refocus my attention out the window, to the pitch-dark broken only by the white twinkle lights we stung around the porch. It’ll be a year tomorrow since Mom and Simon dropped me off at Pearson with my one-way ticket in hand. Sure, we talk and text regularly, and FaceTime often enough, but a screen can’t replace sitting across from real-life Simon while he sips his tea and doles out wisdom, and no matter how many times I inhale, I’ll never catch a whiff of my mother’s floral perfume through the phone line.

I knew I’d miss them when I left.

I didn’t realize how much.

Finally, I spot the dull beam of light, followed by two glowing orbs slowly moving up our driveway. My squeal awakens a dozing Björn as I rush through the living room to the door, throw on my bulky coat and boots, and charge outside. I slip and nearly wipe out on the snowy path as I rush to where the SUV comes to a stop.

“You would not believe the time we had at the rental place,” my mother exclaims in a flurry, sliding out of the passenger seat. “They tried to sell us an upgrade, and when we said we didn’t need an upgrade, they tried to downgrade us to a minivan—a minivan! On these roads!—because they didn’t have the SUV we requested. Can you believe that? Oh my gosh, I’m tired. Come here.” Mom ropes her arms around my neck and pulls me in tight to her. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” I return the long embrace, exhaling at the first hint of her perfume. It’s a bit like the nostalgia of coming home. “Looks like it all worked out, though?”