She Killed Me at Christmas. I Came Back. Chapter 03

She Killed Me at Christmas. I Came Back. Chapter 03

Brynn turned on the waterworks like flipping a switch.

“Miss Patty, I would never! I thought Sloane said Grant loved peanuts, so I added extra! You know me—you’ve known me my whole life!”

Earl shoved past her. “Twenty-six years old and can’t follow a one-sentence instruction? Where’s your head, girl?”

I watched them tear into each other and felt a smile ghost across my lips.

In my last life, when I was the one in the hospital bed, these same two people had spent an hour at my bedside explaining that Brynn was practically family, that she’d meant well, that holding a grudge at Christmas was un-Christian.

Funny how the knife only hurts when it’s in your own child.

Grant surfaced from the sedatives that night, voice sandpaper-raw. “Mom… Dad… don’t blame Brynnie. I should’ve… reminded her myself.”

Even half-dead, he defended her. I filed that away, cold and useful.

Only when Brynn tearfully offered to cover his hospital bills did Patty finally stop. The money would wipe out Brynn’s waitressing savings. Good.

Two weeks later, Grant was discharged. Back at the farmhouse, I was packing up our things for the drive home when Brynn came scurrying in.

“Sloane, let me help! It’s my fault Grant ended up in there. Please. I’ll feel awful forever if you don’t let me do something.”

I opened my mouth to refuse—and Grant caught my wrist, just like I knew he would.

“Let her, babe. If she can’t make it up to us, the guilt’ll eat her alive.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, Brynn. Thank you.”

As she folded sweaters, she glanced up through her lashes. “Which things are important? I’ll be extra careful with those.”

There it was. The same question. The same trap, offered to me like a gift.

I let my eyes flick—deliberately, anxiously—to the black leather duffel by the closet.

“Everything else, whatever. But that duffel? Don’t touch it. Don’t even move it. What’s inside matters more than anything in this house.”

Inside that duffel sat four hundred thousand dollars in banded cash.

Grant had withdrawn every cent of his savings and taken a quarter-million-dollar loan against his condo—all so he could hand his parents stacks of bills on Christmas morning in front of the whole extended family. His cousin Dale had bought their parents a brand-new truck last year, and Grant had been chewing on that humiliation for twelve months.

“If I show up with nothing again,” he’d told me, waving off every objection, “they’ll never let me hear the end of it. I’ll redeposit it after New Year’s. Relax.”

Now Grant chuckled from the doorway, right on cue. “That bag’s Sloane’s whole world, Brynnie. Seriously—hands off.”

Something dark and hungry flickered through Brynn’s eyes.

The corner of my mouth curved upward, and I turned away to hide it.

In my last life, it was my briefcase. I’d told her three times the folder inside was critical. That afternoon she fed it to the wood stove and blinked at me with those wet doe eyes—I needed kindling, I thought you said it was junk—while eight months of contracts and a multimillion-dollar acquisition turned to ash.

And Grant had stepped in front of her. She misunderstood, Sloane. You’re talented—just go sign another deal. Why are you bullying her?

This time, the kindling was his.

This time, I wanted a front-row seat to his magnanimity.

That night I came downstairs for a glass of water and caught Brynn crouched by the wood stove in the dark, something clutched against her chest. The moment she saw me, she whipped it behind her back.

But I’d already seen the corner of black leather.

I yawned, said goodnight, and walked back up the stairs—counting each step like a fuse burning down.

Tomorrow was Christmas morning. The whole Whitlock clan—aunts, uncles, cousin Dale and his new truck—would be packed into that living room.

And Grant was going to reach for a duffel bag full of ash.