Page 11 of Wish For Me

Lennon looks up at his older brother and smiles sweetly. “You really are. You’ve been corrupting me my whole life.”

“Corrupt this,” Cash mutters, making a rude hand gesture, which my mom promptly smacks aside.

“Can you please not teach my granddaughter to do that?”

“Granddaughter,” Lennon snorts. “God, Daise, you’re so old.”

“Fuck off, Len,” she says sweetly.

“Who’s teaching the little kids to be nasty now?” My dad asks.

“Wait, I have a great idea,” Reed says, grabbing another Santa cookie. He adds the blue jeans and jacket like Uncle Lennon’s and then starts smearing white frosting on the head. “See, it’s an old man,” he says. “In honor of old Grandpa Daltrey.”

“Reed!” Paige cries as my dad gets up to tackle my uncle. Cash jumps in their impromptu wrestling match. Most of the family hasn’t even batted an eye at this. It wouldn’t really be a Ransom gathering if the brothers didn’t start wrestling.

When they finally decide to act like adults again, they find that all of their cookie decorating supplies have been removed. “What the hell, Paige?”

“You can twist the dough for the candy cane cookies,” she says.

“No fair," Lennon says. “That’s the most boring job!”

“You should have thought about that before you decided to bother me.”

“Cookie dictator strikes again,” my dad grumbles.

“Hey, where’d Poppy go?” Jasmine asks, looking at my dad, who had been holding her.

“Uhh…” he looks around.

“Nice, Dad,” River says. “You’re so busy acting like a jackass with your brothers that you lost my kid.”

“I didn’t lose her,” Dad says sullenly. “She’s around here somewhere. It’s not like she could have left the house.”

“I’ll find her,” I say, standing and putting a hand on River’s shoulder. He currently has his hands full with a very squirmy Harrison.

“Thanks, Rosie.”

Poppy doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the first floor. After a quick check of the kitchen and the den, I decide to try the second floor. Poppy is fascinated by all things pink and sparkly, which means the Brennen girls’ bedrooms are an irresistible draw.

“Poppy baby,” I call at the top of the stairs. “You up here sweetie?”

“I hiding,” she calls, giggling. I grin, sneaking down the hall. I try Santana’s room first and don’t see her. As I inch towards Vega’s room, I hear another loud giggle. I pop around the doorway and she squeals, diving to hide under a pink furry bean bag chair.

“I caught you, little missy,” I say, swooping down to grab her feet. She laughs uproariously while I tickle her. “More, more!” She shouts when I stop, climbing up onto my lap.

“I think we should go back downstairs. Auntie Paige has piles and piles of cookies to finish.”

“Mountains of cookies!”

“Hugemountains. So we should help.” I pull her out into the hallway where she casts a glance down at Everly’s old room. The light is on in there.

“Don’t needta look in that room,” Poppy says in a strange, stilted voice. “There’s nothing in there. Nope, nope.”

Which means there’s totally something in there.

“Poppy, were you playing in Everly’s room before I came up?”

Her eyes widen. “No, Ro Ro. I never been in that room before, not ever.”