Snowfalls, Fires and Family - 2. Chapter 2

Another day, another chapter. I forgot to say that this story is 10 chapters long.  So updates for 10 days? Yep. 

Going to bed early, he found himself waking up woke up that morning with a low groan, staggering out of bed and into the bathroom. Turning on the light, he squinted at the low lighting. Turning on the shower, he wondered when his mother had gotten into jewel tones for anything, remembering her as a purely pastel lover, before stepping under the heated fall of water.

It didn’t take him very long to wake up and finish showering, drying and dressing quickly after, rubbing at his head some more with a smaller towel as he checked his phone in the bedroom. He smiled at the early morning text messages from his neighbor’s son about how his cat refused to move from my fucking lap. I have to pee, man! How do you deal with this?

He snickered and told the other to just pick up Marshmallow and move his furry butt but expect him to sit at his feet. Usually in his underwear depending on how he was going to the bathroom. The one eyed old cat was an odd one but loving to those he liked. And it seemed as if he liked Mrs. Mary’s son quite a bit.

It was kind of cute to him.

Shaking his head, he smiled at the new picture of his cat acting like a furry slipper with the caption of ‘he wouldn’t stop meowing at the door. Don’t think he likes being alone’. He had a feeling that his cat had started the moment the front door had been closed and convinced his neighbor’s son to stay. Sending back that Marshmallow really didn’t like being alone, he told him to go ahead and raid the fridge if he had to eat.

Tucking his phone into the front pocket of his jeans, he brushed out his hair, grabbed his jacket, wallet and shoes from where he had tossed them the night before, and headed downstairs.

He had just started to eat a bowl of oatmeal when his aunt walked in. With salt and pepper hair, green eyes that were more yellow than green, she was a good-looking woman in her early fifties. She was still fit and loved yoga, and fully expected to live until her nineties at the least if cancer didn’t pop up in her body somewhere. With their genetic history, it was possible for her.

“Hey, Aunt Tabby,” Tristian greeted after swallowing his mouthful of raisins and oatmeal. Tabby chuckled and pressed a kiss to his cheek with an amused look on her face.

“Hey there, brat,” she greeted in return. Moving around him to the water kettle that Tristian had found and washed out, she filled it with water. Bypassing the coffee that he had made, she turned on the kettle, pulled out a tea bag and dropped it down into a cup, watching as the water heated. “Are you ready to head out to get food? Everyone has pitched in for food and stuff. Including the Christmas dinner,” she said.

Tristian sighed into his coffee cup but put it down with a nod. “Yeah, I’m ready to go shopping. Did you make up a list?” he asked.

Tabby nodded. “Yeah. I got to warn ya, your siblings asked for certain things to be added to the list, but they made sure that it was paid for.”

“Good. Because I am not paying for their shit. I know the brand of coffee that Brian drinks and he’s lucky that we can get any of that in town with how expensive it is,” he said, shaking his head and taking the list. Pulling out his phone, he soon had the ads for various stores pulled up and an attack plan set down on paper.

He was the youngest of his siblings and had long ago learned to live on very little money. Especially since their father hadn’t been all that willing to pay child support and tried to get out of it when he had left their mother and them.

With his plans for the shopping in hand, he took the keys from his aunt, the two leaving the house after cleaning up after themselves. She promised that she had already told his siblings where the extra key was in the key toad just in case they arrived while they were still gone, and climbed up into the rather large truck. As she kicked off the snow from her boots on the runner, he opened the driver’s side door.

“I always keep forgetting that the only way to get around in this place is in a truck or jeep built for snow,” he drawled, shoving his seat back after knocking the snow off his feet.

He hadn’t even noticed it had been snowing over the night and the clouds in the sky were threatening more of the white stuff.

Tabby chuckled as she settled in, pulling her seat belt on. “I promise ya, there’s a stock of candles, lanterns and batteries but we should get more. I didn’t have time to check all of them so I’m not sure if all of them work,” she said. Tristian hummed and pulled around in the driveway that would lead them to the main road.

“And the wood supply?” he asked. “I was thinking about that last night.”

Tabby snorted. “Well stocked. Your mother had it all set up that she had a cord of wood every couple of months during the offseason delivered to her place to dry and get put into storage. If you look out back, there’s a storage shed that’s not far from the backdoor that holds all the wood. Kind of large but it’s nearly fully of wood for the season. She was prepared.”

Tristian whistled as he drove out onto the main road, turning to the town center. “I take it she started doing that after she got out…?” he asked, trailing off, not wanting to say what he wanted.

Tabby hummed. “Yeah. She decided she needed to control her life to keep sane, and the hospital had given that to her during her time there. She just carried that over into her new life after she got out,” she told him. The two fell into silence as Tristian drove carefully through freshly plowed streets. Tabby turned on the radio and found a station that was playing older Christmas songs. ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’ came over the radio, making him groan in pain at the song but allowing it to play.

Just as ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ ended, six songs later, he pulled up to one of the three stores that he called ‘stockpile central’, and parked. Looking at it, he shook his head. “Come on, let’s get this part done,” he grunted, hopping out, Tabby following after him with a smirk.

They took close to two hours in the store, and another three getting through the grocery stores that they were hitting for the day. They bought enough ham and turkey to feed all of them during Christmas Eve and Christmas day, along with stuffing, bread, and various other dish makings.

Luckily for them, Brian, Anna and Tristian could all cook. Brian was going to college for a culinary degree while Tristian just liked to cook and had learned from his aunt. Anna could bake but she wasn’t allowed to cook anything unless it was pastries. Karla and Marco had the basics down, but after the one time that they had all gathered together for dinner three years ago and they had turned the turkey into a leather, they had decided not to cook feasts ever again.

Which worked well for the rest of them and was going to work for them this last Christmas.

With everything bought and snow starting to fall again, the two shoved some of the bags that held cardboard boxes or fresh fruits and veggies into the back of the truck cab instead of the truck bed. It took him close to forty-five minutes to get back to the house with the amount of snow making the streets slick, finding a jeep parked in front of it and the door opened as a redheaded woman walked out.

Sighing at the sight of his one full blooded sister, Tristian parked in the driveway and turned the truck off. He and Anna had had a goodish relationship living with their parents and had kept it over the years through letters and now e-mails, Facebook messages, and the occasional Tumblr rant. As long as they didn’t spend more than a few days together, they were good.

To see her there, about three hours early, told him that she probably had to get away from her ex again. He idly wondered what it was about his sisters and having desperate ex’s stalking them.