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Holly sort of thought Tara’s relationship with her family could use some lighting on fire.

“Is the access you get worth the hoops you need to jump through?” Holly would cut her own mother off for good if those kinds of machinations were normal.

Tara hugged her knees to herself. “The work needs to be done, and I love it.”

Holly digested that.

“The other thing,” Tara said quietly, after a long silence, although Holly wasn’t sure what the first thing was, “is that we can’t pretend to be dating with my aunt Cricket. Actually, we can’t pretend to be anything. And there’s a non-zero possibility she’ll go on a homophobic rant about Cole. Don’t stab her with a salad fork, no matter how much you want to.”

Holly cleared her throat. Stay patient. “Does your aunt Cricket not… know? I thought you were out to your family.”

“Oh, I am, and she does. She just enjoys pretending I’m not, to get under my skin.”

Here were the body snatchers again—why was Tara putting up with family (or barely-counted-as-acquaintances that her parents called family) who were this toxic? She ground her teeth in exasperation.

“I can hear you judging me,” Tara said. “You’re not wrong, but it’s not that simple.”

It seemed pretty damned simple to Holly.

“You don’t have to go in with me.” Tara sighed. “In fact, your life will probably be immeasurably improved if you don’t. You don’t need to be subjected to that.”

No way was Holly letting Tara go into that lion’s den alone.

“And stay out in the snow?” Holly scoffed. “I’d much rather watch the storm with you.”

When they arrived at Cricket’s row house, an actual butler was waiting for them on the sidewalk, holding an ineffectual umbrella. He offered to take the car and park it, and Holly looked to Tara for confirmation. Tara nodded, so Holly handed him the key fob.

As their coats were taken by a maid and they were seated in a glass-ceilinged atrium to await Cricket, Holly peered around cautiously.

“Have you ever seen Suddenly, Last Summer?” she asked Tara quietly.

“I’m gay and Southern, Holly,” Tara whispered, sounding amused. “I am intimately acquainted with all the works of Tennessee Williams.”

“This looks like the kind of garden where a woman would find out her son had been eaten alive as penance for his sins,” Holly hissed, pulling at the neck of her sweater. In the humid heat of the atrium, she suddenly felt suffocated.

“The Venus flytrap, a devouring organism, aptly named for the Goddess of Love,” drawled a voice behind her, quoting the play.

Tara stood, running her hands down her impeccably neat skirt to smooth an invisible wrinkle.

“Aunt Cricket, I’m so pleased you were available to host us. It’s so gracious of you, especially on such short notice.” She was putting on a brand-new voice, one Holly had never heard before.

There was the icy deep Southern politeness she used when she was uncomfortable, and a terse brevity when she liked you enough to not waste your time (ironically, this was her more relaxed voice). This, though, was syrup sweet and full of poison, designed to tell the listener exactly what you thought of them without ever crossing a single social boundary.

It was the Charleston version of Midwestern Nice, and it made Holly glad she wasn’t on the wrong end of it.

Tara gestured to her, and she also rose. “Cricket Bailey, this is my friend Holly Delaney.”

Aunt Cricket stared at her so long and witheringly, Holly expected her to pull out a monocle. “Delaney. Irish, are you? Explains that whorish shade of hair.”

Ah, outdated ideas about redheads on top of everything else. How tired.

The question seemed rhetorical, so Holly didn’t bother to respond, though she considered mentioning that we called them sex workers now. She didn’t think Cricket would appreciate it.

Eventually, Cricket turned to Tara without acknowledging Holly’s outstretched hand. Holly had been in the South long enough to know that whoever annoyed another person into breaking with hospitality rules automatically won a standoff. Score one for Tara.

“Your mother tells me you’re skipping Christmas with the family to attend the sinful nuptials of that woman.” Something about the way Cricket said woman led Holly to believe that she really meant a slur of some kind. Whether one about bisexuals, Jews, or women Cricket viewed as loose, Holly didn’t know.

Perhaps all three.