The Christmas Sisters. Sarah Morgan

It’s crowded. I see a lot of people.”

      Beth gave up trying to extract information. “Ruby and Melly miss you. You’re the only family that lives close by. They love it when you visit.” She decided to test a theory. “Come over next weekend.”

      “You mean to the apartment?”

      Beth was sure she hadn’t imagined the note of panic in her sister’s voice. “Yes. Come for lunch. Or dinner. Stay the whole day and a night.”

      There was a brief pause. “I’m going to be working right through. Probably best if you and I just grab dinner in the city one evening.”

      A restaurant. In the city. A child-free evening.

      Beth scooped Ruby up with one arm, feeling a wave of love and protectiveness.

      These were her children, her kids, her life. They were the most important thing in her world. Surely her sister should care about them for that reason if nothing else?

      The irony was that because Hannah rarely saw them, the girls saw her as a figure of glamour and wonder.

      Last time Hannah had visited, Ruby had tried to crawl onto her lap for a hug and Hannah had frozen. Beth had half expected her to yell Get it off me! In the end she’d removed a bemused Ruby and distracted her, but she’d been hurt and upset by the incident. She’d remained in a state of tension until her sister had left.

      Jason had reminded her that Hannah was Hannah and that she was never going to change.

      “Fine. We’ll grab dinner sometime. You work too hard.”

      “You’re starting to sound like Suzanne.”

      “You mean Mom.” Beth unpeeled Ruby’s fingers from her earring. “Why can’t you ever call her Mom?”

      “I prefer Suzanne.” Hannah’s tone cooled. “I’m sorry I’m canceling, but we’ll have plenty of time to catch up over Christmas.”

      “Christmas?” Beth was so shocked she almost dropped Ruby. “You’re going home for Christmas?”

      “If by ‘home’ you mean Scotland, then yes—” Hannah’s voice was muffled as she said something else to the stewardess—I’ll have the smoked salmon and the beef—

      Beth might have wondered why her sister was ordering smoked salmon and beef when they both knew she’d take two mouthfuls and leave the rest, but she was too preoccupied by the revelation that her sister would be home for Christmas. “You didn’t make it last year.”

      “I had a lot going on.” Hannah paused. “And you know what Christmas is like in our house. It’s the only time we all get together and the place is a pressure cooker of expectation. Suzanne fussing and needing everything to be perfect and Posy blaming me when it isn’t…”

      It was so unusual for Hannah to reveal what she was thinking that Beth was taken aback. Before she could think of an appropriate response, Hannah had changed the subject.

      “Is there anything in particular the girls would like for Christmas?”

      The girls. The children. Hannah always lumped them together, and in doing so, she somehow dehumanized them.

      Beth knew her sister would delegate gift buying to her assistant. It would be something generous that the girls would forget to play with after a week and Beth would be left with the feeling that her sister was compensating.

      She thought about the fire engine currently smacking against her leg as she walked and knew she wasn’t exactly in a position to criticize anyone for overcompensating. “Don’t buy anything that squeaks or emits sirens in the middle of the night. And spend the same amount on both of them.”

      She kept a mental tally and watched herself constantly to check she wasn’t showing a preference, that she wasn’t admonishing one more than the other, or showing more interest in one than the other.

      Her children were never going to feel their parents had a favorite.

      “I am the last person you need to say that to.”

      In that brief moment, she and her sister connected. That single invisible thread from the past bound them together.

      Beth wanted to grab that connection and reel her sister in, but the blare of horns and the general street noise made it the wrong place to have a deeply personal conversation. And then there were the listening ears of the girls, who missed nothing.

      “Hannah, maybe we could—”

      “What are they into at the moment?” With that single question, Hannah chopped the connection and floated back to that safe place where no one could reach her.

      Beth felt a pang of loss. “Melly wants to be a ballerina or a princess, and Ruby wants to be a firefighter.”

      “A princess?”

      Beth heard judgment in her sister’s tone. “I buy her gender-neutral toys and tell her she could be an engineer and apply to NASA, but right now she just wants to live in a castle with a prince, preferably while dressed as the Sugar Plum Fairy.” She didn’t bother adding, “Wait until you have children and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

      No matter how much their mother longed for Hannah to fall in love and settle down, anyone vaguely grounded in reality could see that was not going to happen.

CHAPTER THREE

       Hannah

       PREGNANT.

      Hannah closed her eyes and tried to control the panic.

      There was still a chance she might not be pregnant. True, she was five days late, but there were other things that could cause that. Stress, for example. She was definitely stressed.

      She dropped her phone back into her bag, feeling guilty about Beth.

      She hadn’t forgotten dinner. She’d canceled because she knew she couldn’t handle an evening in the child-centered chaos of her sister’s apartment.

      Was she crazy going home for Christmas this year? Last year she’d lost her nerve at the last minute and pretended she was working. She’d switched off her phone and spent the time in her apartment numbing her feelings with several bottles of good wine and a reading marathon. By the time she’d closed the final book, the festive season had been over.

      This year that wasn’t an option.

      She dreaded the forced togetherness of Christmas and the pressure that came with it.

      Her family thought she was a career woman, with no time for relationships.

      That was going to make for an interesting conversation if she was pregnant.

      She should do a test. Find out one way or another. But then she’d know, and right now she’d rather cling to the vague hope that her perfectly organized life wasn’t about to become complicated.

      “Everything all right, Hannah?”

      Hannah opened her eyes. Adam was standing in the aisle of the first-class cabin, stowing his overnight bag.

      “Everything is fine.” Hannah already had her bag safely tucked away and her laptop by her seat. She lived with a sense that things were about to go horribly wrong, and did what she could to prevent it by planning and controlling every last detail of her life.

      “Are you sure? That conversation sounded tense.” He sat down next to her. He was tall and rangy, his long legs filling the abundant space in front of his seat. “Problems?”

      Normally when she was traveling, Hannah preferred to keep herself to herself. If such a thing as a Do Not Disturb sign existed for passengers, she would have been wearing it.

      Today,