“You’re young at heart, but I’m not letting you on the ladders anymore.” Delilah came down the stairs, toting a heavy pipe wrench.
“Hi again,” I said, waving.
She gave me an oddly puzzled look as she went to duck behind the reception desk for something.
“We met yesterday morning when I was checking out,” I reminded her.
“Oh,” she said knowingly, smirking at Pops. “That was Delilah. My twin sister. I’m Bea. Nice to meet you.”
“My granddaughters,” Pops told me proudly.
“Bea, we’re running low on soy milk.” Delilah—for real this time, I hoped—entered from around the corner. “These guests are drinking a ton of it.” She noticed me and nodded warmly. “Oh, hi. You’re back.”
Identical twins. I was a bit whiplashed.
“What can we do for you?” Pops asked.
“Well, apparently you have rare and highly coveted cookies. I’ve been sent to acquire them by any means necessary.”
Bea rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. You’re working for the Hawthornes.”
“Wow,” I said with a chuckle. “That is a very good guess.”
“Amelia,” Delilah said, looking slightly annoyed. “She’s got a problem.”
“Apparently,” I admitted. “You’d really be helping me out though, if I could get some for her.”
“Oh, go on,” Pops told the girls, chiding their sour expressions. “What’s one more batch?”
“I’ve got a toilet to fix.” Bea took her wrench and hurried back upstairs.
Delilah huffed. “Fine,” she said to her grandfather. “But I don’t want to see you outside on that ladder again.”
“I’m just using the step stool to do the front windows.” Pops pulled a cardboard box from behind the reception desk.
“No way,” she argued, grabbing the box. “Give me those. It’s too icy out there for that. You’ll break your neck. Go see if you can scrounge up some more non-dairy milk for the vegans. They’re getting cranky in there.”
“Oh, now you’re the boss, I see.” Pops lifted his chin, sauntering away from the desk. “Telling me what to do like I ain’t been running this place since before your mama was born,” he muttered to himself as he left the room, playfully affronted.
“Guess he’s not ready to give up the garland just yet,” I said to Delilah.
She sighed, shaking her head. “He will sulk a little, but eventually he’ll remember that we’re just trying to keep him safe. He had a bad fall a few years back. Maybe we’re a little overprotective.”
“He’s fortunate to have family who look out for him,” I told her.
I knew exactly how difficult it was to take on that caretaker role. And how frustrating it could be when they didn’t always want the help. My mom had been fiercely independent. She hated being waited on. Sometimes I’d find her in the kitchen in the middle of the night, burners going and everything, because it was the only time I wasn’t there to tell her to sit back down and let me do it. She couldn’t stand letting go of that autonomy.
“Yeah,” Delilah scoffed. “Try telling him that.”
“So, what else have you got in there?” I asked, nodding at the box of decorations.
“These are our sprinkles,” she replied, plucking a small bow out of the box. They were in every size from teeny-tiny that could have fit on the end of a pencil, to a few that were large enough to fit on a front door or the top of a tree.
“Sprinkles?” I questioned, running my fingers over the soft velvet.
“My nan used to say that nothing was finished until it had sprinkles on it. Need to decorate the tree? Add sprinkles. Garland? Sprinkles. They could be anything from bows to ribbon to small jingle bells. It didn’t matter during the holidays, as long as every square inch of available space was covered and beautiful. If it was coated in glitter too, even better.”
Pops stood in the doorway again, with a wistful and misty look in his eye. If I had to wager, I would have guessed that Nan was Pops’s wife. “Delilah and Bea agree with me that in November we will always start decorating. As soon as Halloween is over and pumpkins are stored away, we move on to generic autumn, with a smidge of Christmas decorations, before going the whole hog starting December first.”
