Stand In The Rain

Fourteen

Christmas Eve Day involved decorating the tree, and that meant going to the attic to retrieve the decorations. Normally, the maids would retrieve the ornaments, but Maximo wanted to do itself since the whole family was home now. Emily, daddy's girl that she was, tagged along with him.

JJ had to turn down the invitation to go up to the attic because she was very allergic to dust, and the last thing she needed was to have an allergic reaction to the substance while pregnant.

That left her on her own for awhile.

"JJ? Are you in here?"

JJ was in hers and Emily's large bedroom on their bed, which was just out of the sight of the doorway, which, judging by the volume projection of Elizabeth's voice, was exactly where she was located, waiting for an invitation.

"Yeah, I'm in here." she called back. "You can come in, if you want."

Elizabeth entered, and when she saw JJ, she sat with her. "What are you doing up here? I thought you'd be down by the fireplace."

The front room of the Prentiss house boasted a very grand fireplace and a comfortable sitting area. JJ, who normally had a cold body temperature, could be found in front of it when it was lit, basking in the warmth, just as a cat would lay in a patch of sunlight for hours on end.

"I was just thinking about tomorrow, and I got distracted."

"Because it's your birthday?"

"That, and ever since we lost my dad and my sister, Christmas just hasn't been the same."

JJ looked sad, so Elizabeth reached out and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "You don't have to talk about it of you don't want to."

JJ's heart immediately filled with love for Elizabeth because while she loved her own mother very much and would never stop, there were just some things now that they couldn't talk about because their lives had been so dramatically altered by the deaths of their own kin in such a short amount of time. Even Archer couldn't talk about these things anymore.

Now that she'd spent time with all of the Prentisses, she was remembering what it was like to have have a full, normal family, who loved her without reserve, and in spite of the baggage that she carried.

Emily was rehabilitating her and fixing her broken heart, Max could put a smile on her face at the drop of a hat, and Elizabeth was very easy to talk to.

"What if I do want to talk about it?"

"Then I'm all ears, although on one condition."

"Oh?"

"That you let let me do your hair for you." Elizabeth winked, nodding towards the hairbrush and hair-tie in JJ's lap. "I imagine that brushing out your hair with one fully-functioning hand must be hard."

JJ laughed as she handed the brush and hair-tie to Elizabeth, turning her back to her so she'd have easy access to her hair. "It is, although Emily has been doing my hair for me since I broke my arm because she offered to. She's also good at it."

"Emilia started doing her own hair when she was twelve, and was adamant that I not touch it, so I didn't, even when she went goth about five years later. She wanted to learn to be independent."

Elizabeth began brushing JJ's hair.

"What's this about Christmastime being hard? Did you lose your father and your sister at the same time?"

"No, otherwise my mom would have lost her mind, but they both left the world in tragic ways."

"As I said, JJ, I'm all ears."