by Cara Malone
Nineteen
Joy
Joy went to the Castillo cabin the next evening, still feeling a little bit anxious. She’d never met a love interest’s family before – most of her relationships never got that serious – and she knew that by the end of the week, she’d probably never see this family again. Despite that knowledge, she couldn’t shake the idea that tonight was a big deal and she wanted to do her best to impress Carmen’s family. When she knocked on the door, Carmen answered and gave her a quick kiss.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, looking Joy up and down and smiling in approval of the dress pants and neatly pressed plaid shirt that Joy had agonized over. She hadn’t known whether this was too formal, not formal enough, or just right, but in the end, plaid always put her into a festive spirit and her choice was validated when Carmen leaned in and whispered in Joy’s ear, “You look hot.”
“So do you,” Joy said. “As always.”
Carmen was wearing a short black dress with three-quarter length sleeves that made her look sexy and elegant all at once. She had on a modest string of pearls and she was wearing her long, raven-colored hair up in a bun, a few curled tendrils framing her face. As she led Joy into the cabin to meet the rest of the family, she pointed to a small gift bag that Joy had looped over her arm and asked, “What’s that?”
“You’ll see,” Joy said with a smile, and then Carmen introduced her to the rest of her family.
They were all standing around the kitchen island, chatting with their other guest for the evening, the chef, while she cut vegetables and talked them through the dish she was preparing.
“Joy’s here,” Carmen announced and they all turned to acknowledge her.
“Umm, hi,” she said, her nerves getting the better of her once again. “Nice to meet you… again.”
“Come on in and make yourself at home,” Mr. Castillo said, smiling gregariously at her. Then he chuckled and added, “Although I guess this place is more your home than ours. We’re the guests here, it’s your resort.”
“It’s not my resort, Mr. Castillo,” Joy said. “I just work here.”
“Please, call me Tony,” he said, extending his hand and catching hers in a firm handshake. Then he made introductions all the way around the island. “That’s my wife, Lucia, and my daughters Marisol and Maria, and Chef Julia who will be preparing our meal tonight.”
“We’ve met,” Joy said, nodding at Julia. “She has catered some wonderful meals for events taking place at the resort. Thank you for having me to dinner.”
“Our pleasure,” Lucia said. “Do you want something to drink? We’ve got red wine, juice, soda, water, or I could call for room service if none of those things suits you.”
“A glass of wine would be great,” Joy said, feeling flustered at the abundance of options being laid out before her. She wondered if the menu would show the same lack of restraint, and if the Castillos were used to having everything their hearts desired.
“I’m just about to put the entre in the oven,” Julia said, then she added for Joy’s benefit, “You’ll be having beef wellington with sautéed new potatoes and green beans. It’ll be ready in about thirty minutes if everyone would like to have a seat in the living room until then.”
“Sure, we’ll get out of your hair,” Tony said with a wink, leading everyone over to the living room. “I’m sure we can find a way to entertain ourselves until then.”
“Oh,” Joy said, remembering the gift bag on her arm. “I think I’ve got something.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked. Carmen was looking at her with curiosity, eager to find out what she had up her sleeve, and Joy was pretty sure she was going to love it.
“I brought a little before-dinner treat for the girls to try,” she said, sliding the bag off her arm and looking at Carmen as she produced a jar of molasses. “Do you want to try making snow candy?”
“No way,” Tony said as soon as he saw it. “Carmen, you remember when you were a kid and we tried that? Man, what a disaster!”
“Yeah,” Carmen said, grinning at Joy. “I sure do. Girls, come over here.”
She called her sisters over and they looked at the molasses skeptically. Joy wondered for a moment if she should have brought a more traditional gift – a bottle of wine, or maybe a pack of holiday crackers for the twins to play with – but she was committed now so she explained to the girls, “Carmen told me the other day that when she was a kid, she read that you could pour molasses on the snow and it would turn into candy. She tried it and it was a big mess, but I wanted to see if we can try it again and get better results. I looked it up and apparently, there’s a little more to it than just pouring molasses on snow.”
She shot a comical look at Carmen, then pulled a small box of brown sugar out of the gift bag.
“If Chef Julia doesn’t mind the intrusion, we can boil the molasses along with some sugar,” she said, “and make candy the way that Laura Ingalls Wilder intended. What do you guys think?”
“I’ll give it a whirl,” Marisol said with a shrug. She didn’t look overly enthusiastic about it, but at least she’d agreed to try. The elder Castillos, on the other hand, looked downright excited – Tony was smiling approvingly and Lucia looked curious. And the look on Carmen’s face… that look warmed Joy’s belly.
Joy looked to Julia in the kitchen and she said, “The more the merrier. I’ll make room for you.”
“Alright, let’s do this,” Carmen said, and she put her hand on Joy’s back as they all headed over to the kitchen island. It brought color to Joy’s cheeks, and somehow melted the remaining apprehension that she felt. Everything was right now, and she immersed herself in the process of making molasses into snow candy.
“Okay, first we need to gather up some snow,” Joy said.
Julia dug around in the storage beneath the island, pulling out a couple of cookie sheets and asking, “Will these work?”
“Perfect,” Joy said, giving one each to Maria and Marisol. “Can you two go outside and collect some snow? Pack it firmly and make sure it’s clean.”
Tony accompanied the girls out the back door, past the snow-covered patio and into the yard beyond. Joy knew there was at least a half-foot of untouched snow out there, and they’d have no trouble filling their cookie sheets.
While the girls gathered snow, Joy worked on boiling the molasses while Carmen and Lucia watched. She poured the jar into a saucepan, along with half a cup of brown sugar, then stirred it constantly as she waited for it to boil.
“Ah,” Carmen said with a smile. “That would be where I went wrong as a kid.”
“I remember daddy being so mad about that,” Lucia said. “I came home from work and there was molasses all over the yard.”
“I seem to remember a different person getting angry,” Carmen said, laughing and teasing her mother.
Joy smiled at them, suddenly missing her own mother. They used to have moments like this when she was a kid, picking on each other for the sake of it, before her mom’s rheumatism got so bad she lost her sense of humor.
Joy was thinking that she ought to call her again after dinner, and again it occurred to her that Danny and her mom were right about leaving Emerald Hill. Then Carmen nudged Joy’s shoulder with her own and said, “It’s boiling.”
“Oh,” Joy said, stirring it down and removing it from the heat. Then the twins and Tony came back inside and Lucia went over to help them carry the sheets of snow without spilling it all across the cabin.
“Thanks for doing this,” Carmen said, giving Joy a quick peck on the cheek. “This is really sweet.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Joy said with a laugh. “All I did was research it – I have no idea how it’ll taste.”
Julia passed Joy a measuring cup to pour the molasses mixture into after it had cooled down a little bit. She filled the cup and then set it on the kitchen island next to the two baking sheets of snow Marisol and Maria had collected.
“Be careful, it’s hot,” she said. “
What you want to do is slowly drizzle the liquid on top of the snow. Try to keep it thin, sort of like you’re making a funnel cake, so the snow can freeze the molasses.”
The whole family stood around the island watching as the two youngest Castillos took turns drizzling the mixture onto the snow, and when the pans were full of stringy lines of hardened molasses, everyone took a piece out of the snow.
“Moment of truth,” Joy said, smiling at the twins.
“It’s already much more successful than what I ended up with as a kid,” Carmen said, snapping off a little piece between her teeth.
Joy tasted her own piece, watching as the Castillos each reacted to the candy. The twins both made disgusted faces, Lucia put her piece down pretty quickly, and Carmen looked more than a little disappointed. As for Joy, she found it to be a little bitter, very rich, and somewhat akin to taking the essence of a gingerbread house and concentrating it into a frozen piece of syrup.
“What do you think?” she asked everyone.
“Gross,” the twins said in unison. Then Maria asked, “Is dinner almost ready?”
“Just a few more minutes,” Julia said, tasting her own piece of snow candy. She shrugged and said, “It’s not bad. If you don’t like the taste of molasses then it’s not going to do much for you, of course.”
Carmen smiled at Joy and said, “I don’t think they could ever live up to the idea of them that I got from reading Little House on the Prairie, but they’re a thousand times better than my first attempt.”
“It was a fun activity,” Lucia said. She laughed and added, “I think the twins enjoyed it until the tasting part.”
Tony was the only one who unabashedly enjoyed them, reaching for another piece in the snow and saying, “I think they’re good.”
Julia’s beef wellington was ready shortly after, just in time for the Castillos to get the bitter taste of molasses off their tongues. Everyone sat down around the large dining table beside the kitchen and Joy slid into the seat next to Carmen. She put her hand beneath the tablecloth, lacing her fingers into Carmen’s and resting her hand on top of Carmen’s thigh.
“It’s going well, right?” she asked. The snow candy had not won anyone other than Tony over, but they’d all had fun making it, and they seemed to be getting along.
Carmen squeezed Joy’s hand and smiled at her. Julia was bringing plates to the table, setting them down in front of Tony and Lucia first, and while they were occupied with admiring their meals, she leaned in and said into Joy’s ear, “You’re fantastic and everyone loves you. They’d be crazy not to.”
It sent a rush of adrenaline through Joy’s system, and just as her own plate was set down in front of her, she wondered if there was any subconscious significance to Carmen’s choice of words. Everyone loved her? She brought Carmen’s hand to her lips, kissing her fingers quickly before letting her go so they could enjoy their meal.
She’d eaten Julia’s food before so she knew that it would be good, but it turned out to be more extravagant and delicious than she could have imagined. Her mouth was watering before she’d even picked up her silverware, and the whole cabin smelled like home-cooked comfort food. They all complimented Julia on a job well done, and then settled in to eat.
They all seemed to break off into their own conversations – the twins were talking about the things they knew were waiting under the tree for them and that they were eager to open nonetheless, while Tony and Lucia reminisced about their house in Massachusetts and how their version of Christmas back then was wildly different from the one they were enjoying now.
“Oh,” Joy said to Carmen after a minute of getting accustomed to this sort of disjointed style of dinner conversation, “I wanted to tell you that Tyler cashed the check you wrote him today, in case you need to know to balance your books or something.”
“Good,” Carmen said. “Is he going to be able to get everything he needs for the Christmas morning breakfast?”
“I’m sure he will,” Joy said. “He’s got plenty of money thanks to you. I think what he needs most is more hands on deck to help out.”
Overhearing the subject of their conversation, Lucia cut in to say, “Carmen told us a bit about your work at the homeless shelter in town, Joy. How did you get involved with it?”
“I went there as part of a volunteering day with my high school class,” she explained. “I saw the difference that I could make in my community, so I just kept going back to help.”
“What is it that you do there?” Tony asked.
“Just about anything that the shelter coordinator asks me to do,” Joy said, “which is pretty similar to my job at the resort. My biggest project every year is organizing the food pantry, which tends to get pretty out of control around the holidays. Carmen can attest to that – she helped me with it a couple of days ago.”
“It really does need some intervention,” Carmen said with a laugh. “But we got it sorted out, at least for a while.”
“Interesting,” Tony said. “What exactly is the problem with the organization system?”
“It’s perfect for about ten months out of the year,” Joy said. “It’s just that with the amount of donations we receive every year during the holiday season, it’s impossible to keep the freshest foods at the back and everything shelved according to type. It all ends up disorganized and I think we waste more food than we would if we had a better system.”
“Hmm,” Tony said, sitting back in his chair and setting down his fork as soon as he’d polished off his beef wellington. He rubbed his hand over his chin and said, “I wonder if we couldn’t figure out a solution to your problem.”
Joy shot a look at Carmen. She wanted to inquire about his inventions, to ask what he meant by that, but she wasn’t sure if she could do that without giving away the fact that Carmen had told her about the origins of GoGet. Instead, she glanced at Carmen and then said, “Did you know that your daughter made a very generous donation to the shelter the other day? We’re going to be able to serve Christmas breakfast to nearly two hundred people who might not have had more than one meal on that day, and restock the pantry after the holiday rush is over.”
“Is that so?” Lucia asked, smiling at Carmen. “That’s sweet of you.”
“I was thinking about when I was a kid,” Carmen explained. “You took me with you a couple of times when we had to use a food pantry, and there wasn’t a lot to choose from. I wanted to help.”
“That’s great, kiddo,” Tony said, but he still seemed preoccupied, and Joy guessed that he was thinking about her pantry organization problem.
After dinner, while they waited for Julia’s award-winning chocolate soufflés to be ready, they all went into the living room and sat down on the couches. Joy and the rest of the adults drank coffee, while Marisol and Maria had hot cocoa, and after a while Lucia gestured at the Christmas tree in front of the window, saying to Joy, “I’ve been wondering this since we arrived. Does every cabin have the same tree in it?”
“No,” Joy said. “Every cabin has its own theme and they’re each decorated differently. Your theme is ‘rustic Christmas,’ see? Your tree has a burlap garland, some wood slice ornaments, and your mantle is decorated to match. Last year I actually spent an entire day trimming every single one of the trees in the twenty cabins, plus the big one in the resort lobby. This year I got to pass the task off to another coworker, and you know what? I actually missed it – that job always puts me in the mood for the holidays.”
“We haven’t trimmed a tree in at least five years,” Lucia observed. “I didn’t even really miss it until now. Tony, when do you think was the last time we had a tree?”
“I think you’re right,” he said. “The twins were just starting kindergarten and we went to a tree farm upstate. We got that tall one you loved that I practically had to climb in order to decorate the tall branches.”
“It was so pretty, though,” Lucia said. “And the fresh pine smell was so festive.”
“What happened afte
r that?” Joy asked. “Why don’t you get trees anymore?”
“I don’t think they have pine trees in Cancun,” Lucia said with a laugh. “I think that was the last year we stayed at home for Christmas, and after that we were content to look at palm trees.”
December 23
Twenty
Joy
Joy stayed at the Castillo cabin for a while that night, enjoying every bite of the incredibly rich soufflé that Julia baked for them and then stuck around to talk with Carmen and her parents after the twins headed into their bedroom to play with their tablets. Lucia and Tony were much easier to talk to than Joy had feared, and when she found out that they’d been putting off skiing lessons for fear of the crowded slopes, she offered to take them out the next day.
“Are you sure?” Lucia asked.
“Absolutely,” Joy said. “I’ve been skiing and snowboarding since I could walk. I’d be happy to teach you and save you the price of a private lesson. You can’t leave Emerald Hill without conquering the mountain.”
So she got up early on her day off and met the Castillo clan in the rental area of the ski lodge. Lucia was all too happy to have a place to wear her expensive ski jacket and prove her family wrong about its usefulness, and the twins were excited to try their hand at a pair of snowblades when Joy explained to them that they were a little more manageable than regular skis, and infinitely more cool. Tony was the only hold-out, absolutely convinced that he was going to fall down and break both of his legs if he went out on the slopes.
“I promise I won’t let anything happen to you,” Joy said as she tried to tempt him to get into the ski rental line.
“Did you make that promise to my daughter before she twisted her ankle?” Tony asked stubbornly.
“No,” Joy said with a laugh. “She didn’t get hurt learning to ski – she got hurt standing around where other people were skiing.”