Snowfalls, Fires, and Family

Snowfalls, Fires, and Family 3

"Aunt Tabby, can you check on her while I start unloading the stuff?" he asked. Tabby nodded and opened the door, sliding out of the truck cab to walk up to Anna as she walked down the path to her jeep. The two women greeted each other with smiles and hugs before Tabby moved to help her with the last of her luggage, a smallish roller bag that most likely held toiletries, and a backpack that looked stuffed.

Opening the back of the truck cab, he grabbed several of the bags and followed the women into the house, Anna putting her suitcases out of the way in the living room. "Hey there, Anna," he called out as he passed, heading for the kitchen to drop off the load.

Anna smiled as she followed him when he left the house to get the next round of bags. "Wow did you guys go hog wild on the groceries," she teased, shaking her head. Tristian snorted and handed her several bags with a smile.

"Here, carry these into the kitchen yeah?" he asked, tweaking her nose before turning back to grab the last of the bags in the cab. Wrinkling her still cold numb nose, she huffed, turned around carefully on the icy sidewalk and headed back in.

"Please tell me that we're salting the driveway and walkway today," she said to Tabby as she dropped off the load in her arms.

Tabby snickered as she separated out the bags into 'cold stuff' and 'shelf stuff'. "Yes. We had to buy a couple of new bags of the stuff. There wasn't any here."

"Mom would have kept it up in the attic," she admitted, biting at her bottom lip. "After Richard ditched out on us, she moved it up there instead of keeping it in the cellar. She hated the cellar."

"The salt? Yeah, we know," Tristian said, walking in and putting the bags down. "Aunt Tabby here checked on it before I got here yesterday. She was prepping to buy some then...well she went into the hospital with a cough and never came out again," he hummed, shaking his head. "Come on. There's more bags. Do you know when the rest of the siblings will be here?" he asked.

Anna hummed and pulled out her phone, checking the time. "I have to head out in about twenty to go pick up Markus from the airport," she said. "I told him that since I was in town that we'd share my jeep, so he could save a few hundred on renting a truck. Poor guy just changed jobs after all so he's kind of dealing with that bullshit."

"That sounds good. Karla and Brian are due in tomorrow. Brian's fiancé is heading to her parents for Christmas. He's heading out that way a couple days after Christmas though," he warned.

Anna hummed, not saying a thing, and headed back out to the truck, leaving Tristian and Tabby to share a knowing look at her reaction. She wasn't particularly fond of Karla, their eldest sibling having taken after their father, her step-father, in a lot of her attitude when it came to her siblings. At least before they had been spread out amongst family.

Shaking his head, Tristian followed her and grabbed the bags of salt, carrying them in and laying them in what used to be the formal living room. He would salt the ground while Anna was picking up Brian. He then went for the turkey's and ham's while Anna grabbed the lighter bags, favoring one shoulder with how much she carried.

Tabby told Tristian that she had some damage to the muscles in her senior year of high school.

Between the two of them, they got all of the bags in, Anna choosing to take her old room that had been redone with soft yellow paint and dark gold trim, a queen-sized platform bed, and matching red wood furniture. It was looking as if Karla and Brian would be able to have their own rooms since Tristian was sleeping in the master bedroom.

"So, you got any idea on what you're doing with this place?" Anna asked as she made fresh coffee for the all of them.

Tristian grunted, shaking his head as he put the turkeys onto large towels that were used for such things in the secondary refrigerator. "Not an idea." He put the hams in with the turkeys and closed the door, knowing that he would submerge the turkey's the next day to defrost over a couple of days. "I have a few options but I'm not sure what I want to do with it."