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Coming Home 11
On Boxing Day morning, Stellar burst into the bathroom as Thalassa was finishing brushing her teeth.
“Oh, Sis!” he said. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to interrupt your privacy.”
She laughed. “I’m a mother. I’ve been a doctor at camps where the bathroom is an outdoor spigot. I don’t even know what privacy means anymore!”
“My sister the adventurer,” he said.
She pulled out her phone and showed him…
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Coming Home 10
On Christmas evening, after all the friends and neighbors left, when it was just the family in the big house again, Cinnamon found her daughter looking thoughtful at the dining room table.
Before she had a chance to join her, Stellar came in.
“Big day, huh, Sis?” he said, pulling up a chair, and as Cinnamon went into the kitchen to fetch a cookie, she felt her heart warm to see her two children…
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Coming Home 9
“Tell me again how Christmas morning goes?” requested Marshmallow when Grandma came down to tuck her in.
“Why,” said Cinnamon, “all the little children sleep in until around noon, and then the grown-ups tiptoe downstairs and softly say to them, ‘Wake up, sleepy heads! It’s Christmas!'”
“That’s not how it goes!” protested Marshmallow.
“Do you remember?” her grandmother asked. “You tell me!”
“Ho…
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Coming Home 8
Early in the morning on Christmas Eve, Thalassa found her mother alone in the kitchen.
“Have you got a minute, Ma?” she asked. “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, and it’s neither simple nor easy.”
Her mother looked worried.
“It’s not bad!” Thalassa said quickly. “Or at least it doesn’t have to be. It’s an opportunity. For me. Or maybe even for all of us.”
“Well, in that case,” said…
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Coming Home 7
Kumar decided on a cookie for breakfast.
“You can have anything!” he told his sister. “Even ice cream.”
“No way,” she said. “You’re tricking me, Robber. No one has ice cream for breakfast.”
“They do here!” said Kumar. “Why do you think our grandma’s name is Cinnamon? It’s because everything is sugar and spice!”
Marshmallow wasn’t so sure. She’d never heard of a place where you could choose…
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Coming Home 6
From the moment Thalassa called to say she and the children would be coming home for Christmas, Cinnamon had been longing for a heart-to-heart with her daughter. When Thalassa was very little, she and Cinnamon had tea parties every morning, and Cinnamon wished they could share secrets and tea again.
But Thalassa never sat down. From morning til night, she did the dishes, played with the…
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Coming Home 5
“I like it here, Grandma,” Marshmallow said. “Everything is clean and the food tastes good and the sheets smell like vanilla.”
“You’ve lived a lot of places, haven’t you, Marsha?”
“Yeah. Brussels was the best, but Rio and Calcutta were cool because if we hadn’t gone there, we wouldn’t have picked up Tomas and Kumie, and they belong with us. But it’s too bad that both those places were so stinky…
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Coming Home 4
Cinnamon brought her coffee and a dog-eared copy of Persuasion down to the basement where her grandchildren played.
Tomas had laid claim to Thalassa’s old red Ferrari.
“Drive like this,” he said, “up hills, down the ways, over the valley, round the curve. Don’t worry. You can’t crash because Master-Supremo-Driver-of-the-Year is behind the wheel! Together, we win!”
Marshmallow found Stellar’s…
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