A Jingle Bell Mingle (Christmas Notch Book 3)

by Julie Murphy

I begged my parents to put one in our media room when I was a teenager, but my dad couldn’t be sold on the upkeep. To this day, it’s the one thing I’d splurge on and buy if I could.

What's a media room?

Judy: That’s because everyone is at MurderCon, which is where we should be. Dee: Judy, we’re too old for cons. They’ll think our medical bracelets are cosplay.

“But Mr. Tumnus won’t accept a gift while you watch. He has too much pride. He’ll eat it after you leave, furtively and under the cover of darkness, and then deny it ever happened.”

“You’re supposed to dress for the weather you want.” “That’s definitely not true.”

My heart had been buried with Brooklyn, and the part of me capable of love and romance along with it.

Dramatic.

Kallum and Nolan loved her, claimed that she used her powers of evil for good—or, at least, their collective good—but I’d been trying to stay off her radar since the wedding.

I wanted to make this last album, pack it full of pine-scented bullshit, and then become a mummy in my own bed.

“Just hear me out,” she said. “I don’t think the problem is in your head, Isaac.” “No, it definitely is,” I told her. “And you’re not broken.” “I unquestionably am.”

“Isaac Kelly, we both know that what you want to be done with is other people’s expectations. You deserve to feel like making music is yours again, not your label’s, not your dead wife’s, and definitely not your mother’s.

She's Not reading the signals!

“She’s terrifying and bossy and I think her high heels could rip through the space-time continuum.”

The thought of talking to Charlie was bad enough, but the fact that he wanted to talk business had my stomach turning. He always found a way to make me feel stupid, like I couldn’t possibly understand the importance of the work Mom and Dad left behind.

“You know, we could just be normal siblings who call each other to check in or text belated happy birthday wishes or vent about the collective trauma we share.”

And I’m great, thank you. I just sold my first script.” “Is it a Pirates of the Caribbean orgy at sea?” he asked.

When you go to a school full of rich kids, the fact that you are rich matters less than how you are rich.

That got me to sit up on the edge of my bed, and already I could feel my chest tightening. It was that same feeling I had when I was so angry I could cry. Another reason I hated conflict. I cried. And when I cried, no one took me seriously.

I feel seen.

But I didn’t want that, and if I was being honest, neither did Charlie—and God, just the idea of that responsibility, of the potential for catastrophe . . . of letting my parents down, even though that was impossible, because they were dead.

“You want me to step down from the one company duty I actually have?” I asked.

Mom and Dad’s deal. Work for four years for Bundles of Joy for free. After four years, I’d get my share. There was my inheritance, of course, but I couldn’t access that until I was forty.

“The board is meeting on Friday of this week. I’d like you to resign before then, so there are no surprises when the vote comes down.”

What a dick.

My perfect son was not making eye contact with the laundry room door and the lobstah within in an Oscar-worthy performance of indifference.

The paper was the thick, unbleached stuff that made noises as the pages were turned and gave off big sourced-from-sustainable-forests energy.

I’m not the one cosplaying as a normie and holing up in a decrepit motel.”

“Yeah, except she was on location filming a summer vacation murder mystery with George Clooney, so that’s why we were in Hawaii to begin with.” I gasped. “Are you talking about Knife Knowing You?”

“Microfiche,” Sunny repeated, like I’d said something in Martian. “Well, I guess it might be microfilm. I don’t actually know the difference,” I confessed.

I didn’t see a desk, but there were nooks upon nooks upon nooks, and I assumed the desk was probably tucked away in one of those, along with a shriveled librarian who would give us frail but meddlesome assistance.

Sometimes out-of-towners don’t know. Christmas Notch used to be called Piney Notch back in the day. They changed it after World War Two.”

A microfilm machine hulked dustily in a corner, while rows and rows of metal shelves held hand-labeled microfilm boxes, bound newspapers, and also what appeared to be every yearbook from every Christmas Notch school since the beginning of time.

Going through the microfilm was a lot more tedious than my mom’s show had made it seem, since about 50 percent of looking at microfilm was wrestling with the machine to get it to zoom and focus so that you could read anything at all.

“Opal called dibs immediately, but plot twist: Fabienne asked if we could make it a double date with me!

“Is it Steph?” I asked. “She’s a shark, but such a mommy.

“Your friends?” I asked skeptically. “You have two friends and I know them both.” “I’m friends with my ex-bodyguard, and you don’t know her.” “I know of her, though. Okay, three friends. Three friends does not a council make.”

“Mr. Tumnus doesn’t have good graces,” I said simply. “Well, I know that now, but at the time I didn’t realize he was a very ancient demon trapped in the body of a feline.”

I narrowed my eyes at him as the middle-aged rosy-cheeked man behind the counter wearing an official United States Postal Service cable-knit sweater let out a dramatic brrrrr.

Santa?

I have been mostly good except for the time I called my cousin Dylan a shit butt. I don’t feel bad about it. I bet he’s on the naughty list anyway. RIP Pinball.

Jesus.

Love was just a pretty word for the part that came before the heartbreak. Before everyone’s eyes cleared and they realized they’d built an altar for a regular mortal after all.

I’d had real wiring run through the mansion, so I could turn on the lights. But seeing was for people who had real lives. People like me, who were little more than phantoms, who were already part of the gloom,

How did they do that? I wondered. How did they remember her and smile? How could they still be so kind and open to me, even when I had to be a living reminder that their daughter had died far too young?

“As lovely as that sounds, I have nothing to say to any librarians until the Orange County Public Library system forgives my fines. It was clean bathwater that book got dropped in, anyway, not that they would listen.”

So many questions

She’d only just met Fabienne last week, and it had been a surprise to them both to find a new coworker who also owned an unironic collection of vintage clip-on earrings.

And far from being bewildered or disappointed, I felt great. After all, if Opal and Fabienne were just another napkin-blot away from falling in love, then maybe I could be excused from making this muse-match work.

“Oh, honey, I don’t know how you young folks do it anymore with all these apps and chats and whatnots. My mother always said if you run out of things to talk about, just ask a person about their first pet. Works every time.” “What if they never had pets?” I asked. She walked to the door and didn’t even turn around as she said, “Doesn’t matter. You’ll figure out if they have mommy or daddy issues right away. And it breaks the ice too!”

Sound advice.

and it’s been all over BiTok, HopeTok, all the Toks.

People are bad and we have to hide from them, Sunny. Didn’t you read Watership Down?”

Despite her mega-stardom, Brooklyn had been just as introverted as me, and so any amount of socializing or schmoozing had been painful for us both—but Sunny was so at ease, so funny and friendly, that she almost made “people” seem not so bad.

“Right, you only get one soul mate, you’re destined to die alone, life is a slow decay, et cetera et cetera.” I was relieved she understood. “Exactly.”

“Is that how muses work these days? Swipe right to find your inspiration?”

“Sometimes the girls who seem like they don’t need anyone or anything are the ones who are the most easily hurt.”

I feel seen.

The idea was as ridiculous as a sunbeam being hurt by a . . . well, I didn’t even know what. A sad tree stump or something.

“I’m going to upgrade my worry to a bundled group rate now.”

I liked Sunny; I thought about her a lot. Being away from her was . . . vexing. But this wasn’t a broken heart waiting to happen. My heart was buried in California. I was just the unlucky body still stumbling around without it.