Christmas Steele by Vanessa Gray Bartal

So of course it couldn’t last.
    After cleaning up the kitchen, everyone
retired to the family room to relax when Frannie’s phone rang. Lacy
knew by the tone that it was her sister, and she tensed, clutching
her hands on the edge of the sofa. Her mother answered cheerfully,
asking a hundred questions about the Hamptons and Robert. At first
Lacy was paralyzed, and then she felt as if she were drowning, as
if each question her mother asked was sucking her into inky, icy
emotional darkness from which there was no recovery. Hearing her
mother’s joy at talking to Riley and Riley’s apparent happiness on
the other end of the line was too much for Lacy’s fragile psyche.
Any emotional stability she had gained the last few months was
suddenly shattered, and her only thought was escape.
    With no clear objective in mind, she sprinted
from the house, slamming the door behind her. Then she stopped
short on the porch, looking around in dismay. Where could she go?
She was already at her dead end. She had already fled New York and
come to the solace of her grandmother’s house. If she couldn’t find
comfort and healing here, then maybe there was none to be
found.
    She had no idea how long she stood on the
porch, but suddenly her father was beside her, wrapping her in her
coat.
    “You forgot this,” he said gently.
    Lacy realized then that she was freezing. She
shrugged into the coat, shivering. “Thanks, Dad.”
    He stood beside her, his hands braced against
the railing as he peered out at the dark yard. “Your mother doesn’t
mean to be as insensitive as she seems about the Robert situation,
Lacy.”
    “I know,” Lacy answered dully, not really
believing the words.
    “It’s hard on a parent to see their kids not
getting along. She just wants things to be better between you and
Riley; we both do.”
    “How can they ever be right again, Dad?” Lacy
asked, her voice cracking. “How could she have done this to
me?”
    Her father wrapped his arms around her, and
she gave in to her tears then, crying against his chest as she had
when she was a little girl.
    “It just hurts so much,” she said.
    “I know, baby,” he soothed. “I know.” When
she had cried herself out, he transitioned them to the porch swing.
Keeping his arm around her, he began to swing them as her
grandfather had done the night before. “I have to tell you
something about Riley, Lacy, something you don’t know. It doesn’t
excuse her behavior, but maybe it might explain it a little.”
    “What is it?” Lacy asked, fear making her
throat constrict. Was Riley dying?
    “Riley has always been jealous of you,” he
said.
    The statement was so unexpected that Lacy
laughed. “What? Why me?” Riley had always been the center of
attention, always been the fun little fireball that drew adoration.
She knew how to work a room, how to flirt with men, how to make
friends. She had been the popular cheerleader while Lacy had been
the stuffy band geek.
    “Because you possess something naturally that
Riley has to work hard for,” her father said.
    “I don’t understand what you mean,” Lacy
said.
    “I know you don’t, and that’s what drives
Riley crazy about you. Don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. I
think both my daughters are the most beautiful girls on the planet.
But Riley, with her curly brown hair and freckles, looks like a lot
of other girls with curly brown hair and freckles. Her dream is to
stand out, to be different, to be the woman in the room who draws
everyone’s eye. And that’s what you do, honey, without even trying.
You with your long red hair and piercing green eyes. You walk into
a room and heads turn, and you don’t even know it. Riley has to use
everything at her disposal to gain the kind of attention that you
receive without even trying. And it makes her crazy.”
    “Dad, I think you might be a little biased.
I’m not an ingénue. I’m the chubby girl who played clarinet in the
marching band.”
    “Lacy, you’re