Grabbing Hold (The Motorcycle Kid #1)

Special: Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a little something to express my gratitude to you guys for all your support in the past months. I haven't been the best author, but you've stuck by me and my characters, and I just want to say thank you. I don't really celebrate Thanksgiving in the traditional American sense (hello, genocide), but I do celebrate showing gratitude for the good things in life.

P.S. The events of this little short have nothing to do with the timeline of the actual story, think of it as a one-shot of sorts :-)

Enjoy!

"Put in the right lock and come back, Em," Derek instructed his daughter as she attempted to reverse the family SUV into a driveway.

"Am I clear?"

"Yep!"

A few seconds later, Emma's jaw dropped as she watched her father lug the heavy bag off his shoulder and chuck it into the backseat.

"Is it really eighteen pounds, Dad?" she questioned in disbelief as Derek shut the back door and hopped into the frontseat.

"Yup, and that wasn't the biggest one."

"What?"

"He told me I had a choice between Martha, Mary and Otis."

Emma burst into chuckles at the thought of her father's friend having named his turkeys.

"Which one is this?"

"This is Martha, she's a beauty, isn't she? Otis was huge, he got stuck in the freezer."

"Martha looks heavy," shot back Emma. "Isn't the turkey frozen solid? What are you going to do with it?"

"First of all, I'm going to call your mother and ask her what time the butchery closes on Sundays. We've got to chop this bird up."

"Can't we stuff it?" asked Emma, heading back towards the main road.

"Have you ever seen your mother or I stuff a turkey, Emma?"

"Come to think of it, I don't think we've ever had a whole turkey at home."

"Exactly my point, your mom's not a big fan, and we always used to spend Thanksgiving at your grandmother's place," Derek said wistfully, his words bittersweet. The Daniels hadn't had a Thanksgiving dinner with just the five of them in over a decade, and certainly not since the divorce.

Derek had been more than surprised when he'd read the WhatsApp message from his ex-wife in an unusually cordial tone:

Hey you, if you're free next week, come see the kids. We're having Thanksgiving dinner at home.

P.S. Bring a turkey. Don't ask.

Needless to say, he'd rescheduled every meeting and appointment set for the week of Thanksgiving and caught the first flight to West Virginia on Saturday night.

"Let's go, Em. Off to market we go."

Needless to say, Martha was a very unhappy, very chopped turkey when they pulled into the driveway half an hour later.

Emmett flew across to West Virginia on the day before Thanksgiving, shocking his sister when he'd called for a ride home from the airport.

"How'd you get the time off from school? You just started college," Emma inquired as she turned on to the main road that would take them back towards Misty Vale.

"I didn't actually, but the assignments are driving me crazy and I needed to get out of my head, so here I am. Plus, we've always spent Thanksgiving together, it'd be weird to not be here," Emmett explained.